Rhea followed Sheena along the top rim of the cement embankment that cradled the LA river. It was a little after nine, daylight was almost gone. As they neared the Chavez Bridge, Sheena hesitated above a clutter of debris lumped under the bridge. Sheena’s camp.
“Stay here.” Rhea told Sheena as she scrambled down the bank where the trickle of river water ambled under the bridge. She walked a few yards to the camp remains: a moldy sleeping bag, some squishy old sweat pants, three empty Cheetos bags and an empty can of Progresso Light Pot Pie soup.
A sudden whoosh of air brushed down on her – a Santa Ana gust – that carried on it the smell. Unmistakable. She looked around for a body but she knew it would be a little farther away. She took another whiff then looked up the opposite embankment toward where it came from. A skinny coyote sauntered across the bridge just above. A woman in her twenties followed it, stopping mid-bridge to gaze out and around. It was the same woman who sat on the stone wall overlooking the reservoir. She was still barefoot. Noticing her, Was she homeless? Rhea wondered. Maybe not… she carried an old 35mm camera and an air of cool. The woman looked back at a building just behind her. Then she looked down at Rhea. A look came over her – a hesitant half-smile that pulled Rhea in like a memory.
“Find anything?” Sheena’s voice broke the spell.
Rhea turned. Sheena was about to skitter down the embankment.
“Stay there!” Rhea called up to her. Rhea glanced back up at the woman on the bridge. She was moving on… just another hipster photog, Rhea figured, looking for a moody downtown LA pic.
Rhea scrambled back up the embankment to where Sheena was waiting. “You have somewhere you can stay for a few nights?” she asked her.
“What is it?” Sheena asked, unsure if she wanted to know.
“Probably just a dead dog or racoon. I’ll get animal control to pick it up in the morning. Is there somewhere else you can crash-“
“I’ll find somewhere–“
“Try the shelter on San Pedro–“
Sheena shook her head. Hard.
“They’ve got better security now–” Rhea half-heartedly tried to convince her but Sheena wasn’t having it. Rhea understood – it would take an army of security and the compassion of masses to stem the violence and troubles of the homeless in LA. Rhea dug around in her pockets and gave Sheena all she had, almost seventeen dollars.
“Get some food. And be careful–“
Sheena took the money. Suddenly she grabbed Rhea and hugged her. “You too.” she cautioned then hurried across the street and headed downtown.
Rhea walked across the Chavez Bridge. Below her was the homeless camp. Behind her was the city skyline. A few yards from the boulevard on the northeast side of the bridge was a sagging, shuttered old bar called Domingos. She went around to the back. She checked in trash cans and knee high weeds, sniffing and honing in on a spot behind an old tire.There it was: a rotting dead possum. She backed away then turned around. She was facing the back of the bar. She sniffed; smelling something else. She walked to the bolted back door and put her nose to the edge of it. She sniffed again. She went around to the front. That door was jammed tight with twenty years of grime and a ten dollar lock. Deciding the smell gave her cause, she jimmied it open. The whiff of charred beans kissed her as it escaped the place. She went inside.
The light of an LA night bled through three small curtained windows. Her eyes adjusted to a hazy dimness. There was a bar against one wall, a pool table in the middle of the small room and a closed door in the back. A page of smoke slid out from under it. The door was locked. Three kicks knocked it open. Smoke veiled the room. Rhea walked through it. A blackened stove stood against a burned wall, splattered with the scorched remains of a pot of food that had exploded.
Rhea slid a finger through a layer of wet soot, pitted by drops of water from the ceiling sprinklers that had put out the fire. But they hadn’t put it out fast enough. There was a spent extinguisher on the floor, still in the hand of a dead girl lying there. The girl looked around eleven. Her other arm reached out to two more dead girls, huddled together by the bolted back door. They looked about six and seven. Their arms were around each other. Their eyes were open. Their bodies were splattered with extinguisher foam. Their nostrils were blackened with smoke.
Rhea checked them for a pulse. The youngest girl was still warm.
She pressed the sides of the girl’s mouth open. Her blue lips puckered like a snapdragon. A poof of air slipped out, shimmered, then fluttered away, as though she’d exhaled one last dream.
It made Rhea jump.
Outside, on the cement bank across the river from Domingos, the young photographer dropped to one knee. She braced her elbow on her thigh to steady her lens and snapped off a half dozen pictures of a faint little puff of shimmering light as it rose up into the night sky just above Domingos.
In the blackened kitchen, Rhea checked again for a pulse on the little girl. Nothing. The girl was dead. Rhea took out her phone and snapped a few pics of the three bodies. Then she called the boss.
