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An LA Crime Story

Mar 31
0

Windy

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Rhea walked out of Gallows office at nine-thirty-five that same morning. Her car was parked half a block up, in the department lot. The air was thick with the edgy undertone it gets just before a Santa Ana wind has been freed. It tickled the back of her neck and got under her skin as she clenched her fists and walked fast – the sudden anger in her nearly exploding with the rules in her head:. “Fix myself. Forgive myself. Date old guys. What the fuck?! Don’t drink too much. Don’t eat sugar. Pay your rent. Stop the bad guys. Forgive yourself. Fuck! Find your sister. Find your sister. Find your sister…”

This was her choice: continue to see Gallows and “fix herself” and go back to the LAPD or… try and up her word count at the Hollywood Pulse and make enough to pay her rent and hopefully, eventually make enough more to go down to Ensenada and pursue the Domingos case – which could be connected to her sister- on her own. That wasn’t a bad idea. Working outside the system had it’s disadvantages. But it had it’s advantages too. She wouldn’t have to lose her driving force – her edge – by “forgiving herself” (what bullshit!) She wouldn’t have to follow department rules, either – and she could start sooner. Except for the money thing. Maybe she could start here in LA and wait to go to Ensenada. She needed to think.

The crawling rush hour traffic slammed to a stop just past Micheletornia. There was road work for a block and a half. She figured it would take about forty minutes to go the four or so miles to her apartment so she turned right on Echo Park Blvd and drove a few blocks up into the hilly little hood studded with little stucco bungalows to Valerie Bakery. A chocolate chess tart and a cup of coffee would surely help her think.

She was second in line at the funky neighborhood cafe, behind a tall lanky man with salty brown hair. She looked past him at the bakery case. There was one chess tart left. Then she saw his brown skinned finger point to it. Bummer.

She approached the counter, glancing at both the pasty case and the chalk menu – her choice now was between a six buck piece of pie, a six dollar croissant, a five dollar side of toast or a three buck cookie called the “Durango”. She went with the cookie and a three dollar cup of coffee. At six dollars, she was over her limit but, fuck-it.

She sat at a little outside table, wondering how many words she could conjure up to describe the medium sized chocolate chunk and pecan cookie, dusted with Hickory salt. Enough to survive? She contemplated going back to Gallows and wondered how long it would take her to successfully fake self-forgiveness.

As she pondered her options, the man with the tart walked up Echo Park boulevard. She watched his backside as he strolled deeper into the hood. He had a Day-Lewis vibe, she thought, with a little more hunk but, at about forty, he was at least twenty years too old to turn her on.

She turned her attention to a twenty-year-old riding his bike down the street. He stopped at a stop sign. He was a little skinny but fit. He looked at her. She smiled. He smiled back and rode away. In her mind he’d have to do. Words came. She wrote a few of them down:

“He brushed past me with a smile in his eyes and a random way of walking that could easily hypnotize any two-bit writer from Paradise to Blythe and baby… that was me. I followed his invitation up a windy little street to his bungalow … and gave him a bite or two of my cookie named Durango.”

Jun 04
0

Tart Man

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The man walked another four and a half blocks, up a winding little street to a four-unit stucco building built in the thirties. He entered the garden apartment. Inside, a battered and dusty old sky-blue surfboard propped up against the living room wall was the only bit of personality in the cracked plaster interior of the little one bedroom unit.

The man went into his tiny kitchen and put the tart on a paper towel. He got a dark beer out of his fridge and popped the top. As he started to take a bite of the tart, he heard a key turn in his front door. He opened the utensil drawer next to the ancient stove and took out a small twenty year old glock.

“Mr. Jones?” came a familiar voice. “You here? I’m gonna kill you.” The afore-mentioned Mr. Jones pocketed the glock and went into his living room.

“It was an accident, Leland.” Jones told Leland Hays, who was standing in his entryway, pissed off. “And stop threatening me every time shit happens.”

“Shit?!” Hays hissed, turning red. “That’s seventy five grand up in smoke! Why the hell were those girls in there?!” He carried on, talking about the Domingos fire.

“Ozrin wanted the pick-up there.”

“He never told me.”

“I thought he did–” Jones carried on, returning to the kitchen.

“You thought?! No. You don’t think, you do as you’re told. I had to hear it from the cops? The COPS!” Hays followed him.

“I just found out myself.” Panama told him, keeping calm.

“When?”

“This morning. I went over there for the pick-up, saw the Police tape–”

“The fire was three days ago. You were gonna leave them there for three days?”

“…I left them food.” Panama took out a knife, sliced the tart in half.

“I called Ozrin.” Leland informed Jones, “He says the pick up was tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? No–” He offered half the tart to Hays.

“And he said the location was never changed–”

Jones put the beer to his mouth, “Ozrin’s paranoid. He changes the location every other time then changes it back.”

Hays watched him take a long pull of the beer.

“Thought you quit all that.”

Jones took another. “I did.”

Hays took out his wallet,

“Get three more now, Before Ozrin takes his business somewhere else.” He tossed five twenties on the worn counter. “There’s a hundred for gas.”

He turned to leave, then turned back and almost smiled,

“Those girls dying is on you.” Then he was gone.

Panama Jones checked the time. It was ten-forty-five. He dumped the rest of the beer, took a bite of the tart, grabbed his board and left.

Jun 15
0

Jim Beam

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After writing five hundred and twenty words, Rhea hit a wall. She was done. She couldn’t think of another thing to write about donuts and twenty-year-old men or tarts and forty-year-old men. She’d tried her best to imagine it but she couldn’t. What she had wasn’t going to cut it – word-wise and, thus, money-wise. She took a break and decided to concentrate on the Domingos case.

She retrieved her LAPD passwords from an encrypted file and entered them into a department database. She waited, fingers crossed. She got in. Before her were the databases of records; the histories of people and buildings – the pages that told the stories that made up LA. She searched records and more records and more records trying to find any info she could on Domingos, Leland Hays and a bartender named Myrna.

Forty seven web pages into looking at Domingos’ business tax records and scant employee records she’d found little of importance except a three-year-old misdemeanor building code violation regarding the steps leading down to Domingos’s liquor storage cellar. That got her thinking about liquor delivery to the place. She wondered if the bartender signed for the deliveries. She called seven local liquor distributors and found two who had delivered to Domingos in the last year.

Young’s Liquor Distributors had an office and warehouse five and a half blocks west of Leland Hays’s Furniture Import warehouse.  The manager – a nice, neat man named Mavery – was on the floor, counting cases of Jim Beam. Rhea flashed her badge – man this was getting easy – and Mavery told her Domingos was one of their smallest accounts but he remembered them well and was “Sorry to see them shut down.”

“Do you remember who signed for the deliveries?” Rhea asked him.

“Yeah…” he thought, “The bartender. A woman. ’bout fifty. Mexican, I think.”

“Do you remember her name?” Rhea asked, trying to push back that little thrill she felt when something just might go her way.

Mavery shook his head, “No. But–” Rhea held onto the thrill and he delivered, “I should have a copy of the receipt.”

Rhea followed Mavery into his office. And there in the middle of a tidy book full of receipts was a messy, scrawled signature: “Myrna Saldano.” Rhea took a photo of it, thanked Mavery and left.

She got in her car and smiled. She had a name! Her first impulse was to call Strickland. It was habit. Every little bit, good or bad, about a case she would share with him. But now she couldn’t. Her momentary high faded. She went back to her apartment determined to find Myrna Saldano.

But Myrna Saldano was nowhere. On paper, she did not exist. After again scrubbing through her best databases, Rhea found no record, no past or no whereabouts of Myrna Saldano. The only hint that the woman existed was that signed liquor delivery receipt and Mavery’s description.

Still… if she did exist and lived in LA, she’d need money. Her trade was bartending. Time to hit the streets.

Jun 04
0

Gardening

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About four-thirty that afternoon, a landscaper named Bernardo, with a survey map in hand, staked out the boundaries of Daisy’s land. The flattened little mound where the coyote had laid was, indeed, just outside the markers, like Daisy and Travis had thought.

“Do you want all succulents?” Bernardo asked her as they discussed the landscaping of the wild, sloping part of her back yard. “Or also some native brush, some rock rose, some agave.”

“The agave sounds good.” Daisy told him as she studied the placement of his markers, “And some flowering natives would be nice – maybe a tree for shade? A Palo Verde tree, right down there.” she pointed to a spot a few yards down the slope.

“Do you want hardscaping?” he asked her.

“Yes.” Daisy nodded, “I do… but maybe just some flagstones in the dirt. And a path to a small bench. Can you carve out a little path alongside the edge?” she pointed to the side of her property, next to the mound.

Bernardo looked around and made a few calculations. “It need some grading. And it’s a big area… Again Daisy nodded. “Six grand.” he estimated. “Ballpark.”

Daisy agreed. “When can you start?” she asked.

“I can start in five weeks.” he told her, adding, “I’ll need a two grand deposit at least a week before.”

“I’ll give it to you now.” she offered, “Then we’ll be all set.”

She easily scrambled up the few yards to her back wall. She stepped over it and strode back across her patio to the iron gate over her back door. It was heavily arched with a thick fuschia bouganvillea vine, studded with thorns – part of which had fallen across the gate. As Daisy grabbed the vine to pull it aside, Bernardo hurried to her.

“Careful, Miss–! It has thorns–” he warned. She smiled, unscathed and went inside.

A minute later she came back out with two thousand dollars, in cash. “Five weeks from today, I’ll expect your workers here.” she told him. “Don’t change the date, I don’t like to wait. If you do, I’ll take the deposit back and get someone else.”

Bernardo realized she wasn’t one to be messed with. He thought for a minute, going over his schedule in his mind. Satisfied he could deliver, he nodded then took the money. The date was set.

Bernardo drove his old pickup down the hill. Daisy went back out onto her patio. Poo and Ralphie were there, waiting. Inquisitory looks were on their faces. “Right now, it’s just landscaping.” she told them, “I don’t know yet if I want it dug up. I have five weeks to decide.”

Aug 26
0

Taquitos

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Out of the almost Seventeen hundred bars in LA., Rhea narrowed her search down to twenty-seven. Knowing that a fifty-something year old Mexican woman wouldn’t be mixing Twinkie-tinis at the Skybar or pulling drafts at Barney’s Beanery or keeping it neat at the Frolic Room eliminated close to a thousand. Adding in the geography of LA and transit times, that knocked out another six hundred.

Rhea started at eight at La Golondrina. It was Friday night. The popular place stayed open until eight-thirty. Weird. Especially for a tourist place but that’s the way it was. She knew Myrna probably wouldn’t be there but La Golondrina was on Olvera Street and walking Olvera was a good place to start – walking Olvera was also, for Rhea, a self-inflicted wound.

The trinkets and sweet treats sold at the brightly-colored wooden vendor booths hadn’t changed in twenty years, making it easy for Rhea to let the pain of her past memory there fuse with the goal of the present. Pain always focused Rhea, as did guilt. And the three-buck taquitos with green sauce at Cielito Lindo momentarily took the edge off. She bought two classic ones. She took them to a little green table and dug in. Heaven. Not wasting the moment and thinking ahead, she took out a little paper notepad she carried and a pencil and jotted down a few words: Young. Creamy, Hot Mouthful – about the creamy tang of the signature sauce that blanketed crispy curled tortillas and the promising guy who was dipping them into the fryer.

Downing the last bite, she walked across the brick path to the famed La Golondrina. The bar area was packed. The two bartenders were male. “Is Myrna on tonight?” Rhea asked one of them. “Who?” he replied. Rhea waved him off; knowing it was a long shot to ever expect to see a woman bartender working an old-school Mexican restaurant.

Next up, she crossed Alameda and went into Union Station. The deco Traxx restaurant had an old bartender who looked like Nosferatu. But they didn’t have a Myrna.

The third, fourth, fifth and sixth bars were scattered over a few blocks around downtown. All bartenders were men except for one transgender Russian woman. None had heard of a Myrna.

The seventh was a dark-red old-world bar in a classic Chinatown joint that featured Mu Shu pork, Won Ton soup and lots of plum sauce. Behind that small bar was a snake-skinned old dame named Madame Wu. Rhea asked her over a sidecar if she knew of another woman in town who poured named Myrna. Her dyed-black eyebrow barely raised. But it raised in recognition of the name Myrna. Ignoring Rhea, she moved down the bar to pour a shot of Chartreuse for a ninety-year old dancer. Rhea now had an answer. Myrna Saldano was real. And local.

It was last call. Rhea left three-fourths of her sidecar on the bar and left.

Once home, Rhea forced her mind away from bartenders and darkness and tried to finish her taquito review. She fished the notepad from her purse and jotted some more thoughts down. She liked using paper. She’d been using paper to take notes ever since she got her first notepad from Strickland when she was sixteen, a terrified kid looking to him for hope on the darkest night of her life.

“…write down anything you remember.” He’d told her as he wrote his phone number on the pad, “Anything at all, then call me. Anytime.”

She wished she could call him now and tell him how sorry she was for letting him down. But she couldn’t. She wrote. She had to make a lot of it up… “–a sinewy gaucho casually walking by bought me three taquitos with extra heat for five-twenty-five and he sprung for a Champurrado. In the back of his Camaro parked in a lot on Main, he turned me into a liar for every time I’ve ever said “no” to a man or a meal that could set me on fire..” She hated making it up. She wanted it real. She found a snack sized bag of Maui potato chips and turned on the tv. Not much was on her basic cable. OVC. News reruns. Old PBS shows. She settled on a Huell Howser re-run. He was visiting Porto’s Bakery. It was an entire show about cakes: Mango cheesecake. White chocolate raspberry mousse. Kiwi merengue torte. Grand Mariner with chocolate ganache. Lemon curd pound cake. Vanilla custard cake with pineapple filling… she should have turned it off but her mood was dark and so she watched and let her mind be pierced with thoughts of her sister.

A pledge break reeled her mind in. She turned the tv off and went outside to the courtyard. It was late. All the apartments were dark. She sat in a plastic chair by the pool. The only sound was the constant whisper of cars driving by outside.

A moving shadow startled her. A young coyote darted from behind a trash bin enclosure. It stopped when it saw her – stared her down, unafraid. Finally it skulked away and slipped out between the rails of the courtyard gate, heading up Laurel, toward the hills. A greeting came to it from somewhere in those hills, the sound of its entire pack howling. It died down. Rhea shivered. She looked at her phone. Three AM. When the quiet settles into the cracks of the night and the ghosts in the air kiss your skin.

Apr 01
0

Photo I.D.

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It was a green curry wan that beckoned Rhea hardest. ‘Toolong’ on Hollywood Boulevard was a tiny, cheap joint wedged between a used appliance store and Mel Pierce Camera. She had always thought they had a so-so Kee Mao but a pretty decent Pad See Ew. But she’d never tried their Wan. She found a parking spot only a half block away – a miracle in LA. As she approached, she passed by three young men hanging around outside.

“You shouldn’t eat alone.” the one with olive skin and a careless vibe whispered as she opened Toolong’s decaled door, around nine that night. She’d intended to write the sexy parts of her reviews based on memories and fiction – but this one smelled like clean cotton T shirts and summer skin. He smelled like youth. She didn’t intentionally hold the door open for an extra second but maybe she did.

She took the booth farthest from the front windows. He slipped in across from her.

“What’re we having?”

She pulled two menus from the slot behind the bottle of soy sauce and slid him one. As he looked it over, she wasn’t quite sure he could read. The waitress showed up.

“Something to drink?”

“A Tsing Dao” Rhea told her “For me and…”

He nodded, “Me too.”

“You have some ID?” The waitress asked him.

Though his ID said twenty-one, Rhea was pretty sure he was younger.

“But all we’re doing is eating.” She thought, then ordered,

“Green Curry Wan, Pad See Ew, Phad Thai and…” she looked at the kid. He smiled,

“Whatever you want.”

“Chicken Sa-Tae.” Rhea closed her menu. The waitress left.

“So…?” She asked him.

“Andy.”

“Andy. Yeah,” she thought. And my name is Beyonce. Still, the less she knew, the better. And… all they were doing was talking.

“Been in L.A. very long, Andy?” She asked as the waitress brought them their beers.

“’bout three years. I’m from St. Paul.” He answered and told her he’d left there so he wouldn’t be a burden on his mom who “Praise God” had beaten cancer but still had a lot of bills to pay. It was an OK story, good for playing the “heartstrings” card. He even wore a saint’s medal around his neck, which he fondled: Saint Nicholas. Patron saint of children.

Even if it wasn’t just a prop, Rhea didn’t want to tell him there wasn’t any God or any saint that protects kids so she let him ramble on… about video games, comic books and bands. While all she could think about was how smooth his arms were, how soft his lips as he mouthed the neck of that beer; how young his dick was, how good it would feel and how bad this could be for her… Trying to concentrate on her new job, she got out her notebook and wrote down a few words.

“What’re you doing?” He asked.

“Writing.”

“Is that your new job?”

She looked at him.

“Kevin’s a friend of mine.”

Ah. Her reputation preceded her. She wanted to ask how Kevin was – if he was still on probation. She hadn’t seen him around. Not that she was looking. But she missed him a little. She’d come close with him.

“I made more money when I knew Kevin.” Was all she said, letting Andy downsize his expectations.

“That’s ok.” he smiled. She felt that familiar, addictive throb between her legs and smiled back.

The waitress brought the food just then. As she set it down, he told her,

“We’ll get this to-go.”

Apr 03
0

Semi Dark

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The food was getting cold and they were getting hungrier as Rhea drove past the third in a row of her favorite dark parking places… but it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet and there were too many people around.

“The alley behind IHOP is pretty good–” Andy offered.

“They closed it off.” she let him know, “Construction”

“The streets around Michelortenia?”

“Zero parking.”

“Pico?”

They both shook their head.

“Your place…?” He asked, casually. Hopefully.

“No.”

Though she and Kevin had gotten busted in her car and it clearly wasn’t a good idea to fuck in it anymore and they were only about a mile from Rhea’s apartment, she sure as hell didn’t want any of these guys there. It was just too personal. And besides, Strickland was on call that night. He could be home. No way would she risk him seeing her with this kid. If anyone was going to see her going down again, so to speak, it wasn’t going to be him. In a way, she loved him. She sure as hell respected him. He’d tried so hard for so many years to be a friend to her.

SHe started to wonder what the hell she was doing. “This is a bad idea.” she told Andy and headed back toward Toolong’s. “You can have the food and I’ll give you ten bucks, but–”

He was quiet. He nodded; seemed OK with her decision.

“I just can’t risk this right now–” she tried to explain.

“That’s OK.” he agreed. “It’s still early. I’ll find another one.”

She laughed. “I’m sure you will.”

She stopped at a stop sign.

“It’s warm out.” he said. She nodded. “Yeah. Well, it’s August…”

“Yeah.” he agreed then pulled off his T shirt. She tried to keep her eyes on the road but his arms, his shoulders, his chest– the fitness of youth was something to savor.

“Thanks for the food. OK if I eat?” he said and opened a carton of Phad Thai.

“Sure.” she said and glanced over. He thrust a finger into the carton, then two – deep into it, the angle of his thrust let her know he knew what she wanted. He rubbed the nub of a prawn that stuck out, circling it. He pulled his fingers out and sucked the sauce off. “It’s still warm.”

She looked away. Kept driving. She was hot; wiped her brow.

“Want a taste?” he asked. Before she could answer he leaned across her, pressing down on her then he opened her mouth and put some noodles inside. They were thick and warm and flecked with heat; she let them slip down her throat. His fingers lingered; she sucked them. He pulled them out.

She drove up Cahuenga then down Odin to a little street below the Hollywood reservoir. It was quiet and almost dark. She parked, jammed against a clump of chaparral. He grabbed her legs and pulled her to him, kissing her neck, her shoulder, the hollow beneath her collar bone. He pulled her T shirt down with his teeth then sucked her breast as he pulled off her underwear. She grabbed his head and shoved it down, down down. He draped a string of noodles around her core.

“Jesus. They’re cold!”

He leaned in and blew warm breath on her, then sucked and ate and blew until she screamed.

“Get the fuck in me NOW.”

He reached down, unzipped with one hand, then came up to her. A second before he parted her, she shoved him away.

“No, no. No dipping.”

He grabbed her hand and put it on him. “Feel it–”

“Use your fingers–”

A little pissed, he asked, “Why?”

“Because it doesn’t count–!”

He put his face back into her. And his hands. But he wasn’t that into it anymore. She moved against him, harder and harder.

A loud sudden THWUMP! Rocked the car, scaring them. He jerked up, hitting his head. “What the fuck?!”

Rhea looked out the window and saw a coyote skulking up the street. There were coyote footprints on the hood of her car. Andy rubbed his head.

“You OK?” She asked him. He nodded then zipped back up. They were done.

Rhea grabbed a napkin out of the bag and wiped herself off. “What a waste.” She muttered.

“You can just give me forty.” He told her. “And a ride back.”

She closed the boxes of food and put them in their bag. She dug into her purse. She gave him twenty bucks. Neither said another word. She dropped him off on Cahuenga then went home.

Rhea parked in her spot in the underground garage of the Laurel apartments then hurried up the ramp and past the pool in the courtyard. She opened the door of number 114 and went inside.

She slammed the Thai Food into her microwave; nuked it then ate it with a cold Tecate by her open window. God she hated herself. She’d failed at absolutely everything in her life and now this… thirty eight years old and she still couldn’t come. She wondered why people always said “Failure wasn’t an option.” It was always an option… hence flavored coffee, anything soy, Domino’s pizza… Now here she was in the warm nicotine light of an LA summer night thinking up frothy innuendo for two bits a word and all the oyster sauce she could eat.

She opened her notepad and read the words she’d written there. “Noodles. Sticky. Young lips.”

She ate the nuked Thai food. She thought, then she wrote more on the paper pad:

“–I kissed pungent curry wan oozing from blistered chicken hunks dense with a lingering heat– And under a coyote moon with Phad Thai dripping down my thighs, good lord he made me smile – like every other time I’ve ever said ‘yes’ to a man or a meal that could set me on fire…”

She crumpled the paper and threw it in the trash. She grabbed another beer and went outside to the courtyard. It was late. All the apartments were dark. She sat in a faded plastic chair by the pool. It was quiet except for the soft constant whisper of cars driving by outside.

A moving shadow startled her as a young coyote darted from behind a trash bin. It stopped when it saw her – stared her down, unafraid. It skulked away and slipped out the open courtyard door, heading up Laurel, toward the hills. And coming from somewhere in those hills she could hear the distant sound of a pack of coyotes howl.

Rhea shivvered. She looked at her phone. Three AM. When the quiet settles into the cracks of the night and the ghosts in the air kiss your skin…

Mar 31
0

Hour of the Wolf

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At that moment, in the moonlit tangle of brush that edged a wooded ravine, a skinny coyote lay, listening. His ears perked up as a car whispered by. When he heard a soft thud in the brush below, he moved toward it.

On a ridge above the ravine was a cracked old house with a stone patio that kind of crumbled down the hill below the first O of the Hollywood sign. On the edge of that patio sat a barefoot young woman looking down past the ravine at the dark little forest that grew around the Hollywood Reservoir. She was twenty-seven. Her name was Daisy Valentine. She held an old Pentax camera in her hand. When she saw a little glow of light rise up through the trees, her eyes lit up. Excited, she slipped off her patio and scrambled down the brushy hill toward it. The only sound in the night was the sharp “Click. Click. Click” of her camera as she snapped pictures. Nearer to the forest, she stopped by a rock, bracing herself as she rattled off another 24 snaps of the puff of light as it ascended into the starless sky above LA. A gang of coyotes yelped and howled. She moved toward them. She stopped when she came upon the skinny coyote with something in its mouth.

“Let it go.” She told him. But he didn’t. He held on… to the little child’s arm in his mouth.

“Let it go–” she said again. “Here, have these,” she pulled a small bag of Cheetos out of a pocket and offered them. It was hardly a fair trade and she knew it. He shook his head and skulked away with the arm, toward the ravine. She looked up at the sky. The little puff of light disappeared into the heavens. She turned and went back up the hill.

Apr 04
0

Two Bits a Word

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Rhea leaned in the doorway of Manny’s office, eating a strawberry swirl ice cream sandwich. She was watching him as he finished reading her Toolong review. She was nervous, hoping he liked it. He blushed as he got to the part where she’d written “… I licked the last bit of peanut sauce off his left ball, trying to cool us both down. The hint of sesame oil in that salty butter eased us into the eve’s last hour. As his hands slipped from my head, I left him there, sated by fat noodles of buckwheat flour.”

“Poetic.” he glanced at her, still blushing. It made her laugh.

“It’s OK?” she needed to know.

“The curry thing was five-ninety-five?” he asked.

Rhea nodded, “Sorry. I’ll try and watch that.”

“OK.” He nodded, “The rest seems OK.”

“Great.” she let out her breath. “So when do I get paid?”

“You like Mexican food–?” he changed the subject.

“Who doesn’t?”

“You like Posole?”

“Of course.”

“You tried the one at Tres Hermanos?”

“Are you kidding?”

“It’s good.”

“They buy their tortillas at Ralph’s.” she informed him.

“Don’t be a snob.”

“On a five buck limit?”

“Ok. OK…” he let it go for now then informed her, “You get paid Thursday, when it prints.”

“OK, I’ll see you Thursday–” she started to leave. He stopped her, “Did you really? In the car… or– ”

“Or?” she asked him.

“Did you make that up?”

“Yes, Manny.” she answered, “I really ate in my car.”

She again started to leave. Manny stacked her notepad pages. “I’ll type this up this time but next time use a word doc and email it to me or use your phone and message it.”

“I always use paper.”

“I am your boss you know.”

“I know.” She nodded. “I know.”

Apr 04
0

Piece of Cake

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Rhea had been using paper to take notes ever since she got her first notepad from Strickland when she was sixteen, a terrified kid looking to him for hope on the darkest night of her life.

“…write down anything you remember.” He’d told her as he wrote his phone number on the pad, “Anything at all, then call me. Anytime.”

She wished she could call him now, she thought as she snuck past his apartment. She wished she could call and tell him how sorry she was for letting him down. He’d tell her “You can do better.” She’d try not to cry. He’d put a hand on her shoulder, careful not to hold her close. Then tomorrow they’d carry on, trying to make a dent in the booming business of child exploitation… and still trying to find who kidnapped her sister 22 years ago.

The door to apartment 112 opened.

“Rent was due yesterday, Rhea.” the 60 year old apartment manager wheezed at her.

“I paid you–” she started.

“Seven hundred. You owe nine fifty.” he finished.

She dug into her purse and gave him all the cash she had: eighty four bucks. “I’ll have the rest on Thursday.”

“plus the late fee.”

“Yes, Cubby, I know.”

She opened the door to 114 and went inside. Her studio was tiny. A sofa bed slammed up against the kitchen counter and a little desk in a corner filled the room. She got a beer out of the little half-fridge and opened a bag of Maui onion potato chips. She turned on her old Sony TV to PBS. A Huell Hauser rerun was on. Porto’s Bakery. An entire show about cake. Mango cheesecake. White chocolate raspberry mousse. Kiwi meringue torte. Grand Mariner with chocolate ganache. Lemon curd pound cake. Vanilla custard cake with pineapple filling… every single one reminded her of her sister.

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