Rhea left Gallows’ office and walked to her car, parked half a block up, in the department lot. The air was thick with the undertone it gets just before a Santa Ana wind has been freed. It tickled the back of her neck and got under her skin – made her edgy. Angry. Everybody’s rules started exploding in her head: “Fix yourself. Forgive yourself. Date old guys. Don’t drink too much. Don’t eat sugar. Pay your rent. Stop the bad guys. Forgive yourself. Find your sister. Find your sister. Find your sister…”
She had a choice: continue to see Gallows and “fix herself” and go back to the LAPD or… try and up her word count at the Pulse and make enough extra money 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 advantages. Except for the money thing. And the power thing. And the resources… She needed to think.
The crawling traffic slammed to a stop just past Micheletornia. At this rate, it would take Rhea forty minutes to go the four miles to her apartment. She needed food. A chocolate chess tart and a cup of coffee would surely help her think. The next light was Echo Park Boulevard. A right turn took her a few blocks into the little hood studded with stucco bungalows that was home to Valerie Bakery.
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. She watched his backside as he paid and took the tart. He had a Day-Lewis vibe; sexy, she thought. Maybe she would ask if he wanted to split the tart. But he had to be about forty, too old to turn her on. He walked away, further on up Echo Park boulevard.
She approached the counter; got a five buck cookie called the “Durango” and a four dollar cup of coffee. At eleven dollars including tip, she was over her limit but, fuck-it.
She sat at a little outside table, wondering how many words she could possibly conjure up to describe the medium sized chocolate chunk and pecan cookie, dusted with Hickory salt. She contemplated going back to Gallows and wondered how long it would take her to successfully fake self-forgiveness.
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.”
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