Ghosts

There are more than twenty-one-hundred bars in LA. Rhea narrowed her search down to twenty-seven. Figuring that a fifty-something year old Mexican woman wouldn’t be mixing Twinki-tinis at the Skybar or pulling drafts at Barney’s Beanery or pouring it neat at the Frolic Room eliminated over a thousand. Adding in the geography of LA and transit times, that knocked out another nine hundred. She figured she’d start closest to the scene of the deaths and work her way out.

The closest turned out to be a new joint called Time Out, coming in at just under a mile from Domingos. It had taken over where the iconic La Golandrina had once held center stage on the famed old tourist haunt, Olvera Street. Olvera – denouement or self-inflicted wound.

Rhea hated Olvera. She hated the constant memory of the frantic search for that little girl. Hated the panic that roared up like bile. Hated her fear. Hated her failure. She sucked it all up and walked inside. It was over in minutes. A creamy thirty-year-old was blending classic margaritas behind a hundred year old dark wood bar. No Myrna.

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.