Sing Her Down, page 16
Men like Renny like it easy, take the easy way out, the path of no resistance. He’ll have stayed if he could.
No rules. No guidance. Nothing but a stupid sense of self-preservation. Living on fumes and running on empty is how Renny survives or survived. Hand to mouth. Foot in mouth. Day by day by day. And night by night.
So it’s really no surprise to see his last name—Toth—scrawled on the doorbell. The bell clatters into the hollow echo of an empty warehouse.
Florida leans on the bell until her finger aches and then she slumps down. She’ll wait here in this doorway. She’ll wait. Renny will come. He’ll be angry. But he’ll help. He’ll understand. Lost or worse. Ruined.
First the AIS and now this side street off Olympic. She never knew its name. But here she is, falling away, spinning into something like sleep as the sun struggles to brighten the streets. And Florida, eyes heavy, heart and mind sluggish and sullen, struggles to see what the sun shows. So she sleeps.
* * *
This is a dream but also a memory distorted by two sleepless nights and the passage of time and by the time spent inside, where truth and reality got fragmented.
But still a memory and a dream—real and unreal, in lurid combination.
Florence and Ronna sixteen and flying free. Florence and Ronna just back from Mexico, where Florence’s father’s friend had taken them, where they learned what their youth and arrogance could do, how much power they had to enchant, entertain, and destroy a man more than three times their age.
They were too young to be blamed, so they must be blameless. That was what they were told.
They were also told not to talk about it.
They were told it was over. And that they were fine.
Leave all of that behind.
So. Florence and Ronna, high on their girl power, sneaking into Les Deux in Hollywood to drink vodka cranberries. Although it’s not really sneaking when the club is going after girls just like them.
Florence and Ronna invited back the next day to the manager’s office to interview for jobs they don’t want. Florence and Ronna excited to see the club in daytime—the illicit after-after-after hours for the hardcore.
The girls lined up at the bar four deep waiting for their turn to interview.
Then after, Florence and Ronna downtown in Renny’s apartment after he’s learned they don’t want the jobs he offered. They don’t want anything from him except to feel older and more special and tougher than their classmates, that, and a fistful of drink tickets and a cut to the front of the line every time they show up.
Florence and Ronna and Renny flying on the PCH in Florence’s Jag. Florence steering with her feet round a curve near Topanga. Renny grabbing the wheel. Florence driving too fast. Renny telling her to cool it. Ronna urging her on. Renny in thrall to them. Renny in the palms of their hands.
Swimming off someone’s private beach in Malibu. The frigid Pacific no match for them.
Dinner at a restaurant even their parents would consider pricey, Florence and Ronna in the private room as Renny’s guests—his calling cards at a party where the wines are older than they are.
Then the spring break weekend that turned into a week at Florence’s house in Hancock Park, her mother away. Diving into the pool, which was bluer than blue that week. The sun somehow perfectly warm and never hot. Renny hanging with them as night rolled to day and then to night until Les Deux told him not to bother returning to work.
Renny fuming and furious.
Ronna and Florence making it up to him with their parents’ credit cards, their parents’ cars, their parents’ booze and food. With long drives crammed into the Jag.
Ronna and Florence telling Renny their parents’ secrets. And their own secrets.
Florence and Ronna competing, each one trying to seem older, wiser, more damaged and daring.
Ronna jumping in the pool fully clothed, drink in hand.
Florence jumping in the pool naked, smoking a cigarette.
Florence telling Ronna that Ronna’s father likes to feel Florence up. Florence telling Ronna that her father likes to get Florence alone.
Ronna telling her that she is nothing special. Just another stupid girl. One of her dad’s stupid girls. She’s one of many. Many, many, many.
Ronna crying and crying by the pool.
Florence backpedaling but it’s too late. Florence hiding the fact that it’s gone a little further than she has admitted to her best friend. That she maybe encouraged it. Because maybe she kinda liked having that power over her friend, being the one who her friend’s dad liked.
Except she wasn’t the one. She was one of many.
Then Ronna cold as a glacier.
And then Florence convincing Ronna that her dad betrayed them both. That he’s an asshole. More than that. A perverted one. A cheater and a snake. A danger to them both.
And Ronna agreeing with Florence. And Renny agreeing with them both. Anything to keep the party going.
But there was a chill between the girls that didn’t disappear the rest of that week.
Day into night. Night into day. Until the final weekend, when Renny slunk off to the loft above the sweatshop. And Ronna went home a few blocks away, where her parents hadn’t missed her. And Florence driving and driving all night, afraid to be alone at home. Afraid of the empty house. Driving deep into the Inland Empire and then south toward the industrial Port of Long Beach. Driving until she came up with a plan to win them all back.
And then a week later, Ronna’s dad assaulted in the street near his office. Deaf in one ear, traumatized, his brain permanently injured.
Ronna, who hadn’t spoken to Florence since their weeklong party, called her and said one word: Renny. Florence already knew.
* * *
The memory hurts like a gut punch. A searing, pulsing pain that shocks Florida awake.
Here’s where the dream ends and the beating begins.
Her assailant is too close for Florida to gauge the details, only that she’s using some kind of stick to ram into Florida’s stomach.
Bitchgetoutmyspot.
Bitchgetoutmyspot.
Bitchgetoutmyspot.
Inside, the beatings had a strange temperance and a quickness. A swift lesson that endured until the guards arrived to break up the fight. A lesson whose message was the painful meaning and not an eternal finality.
Bitchgetoutmymotherfuckingspot.
This woman will not stop until Florida moves or dies.
Florida tries to stand. But a blow from the stick clips her forehead, knocking her back. The pain is a bright explosion—a spark shower raining behind her eyelids. Blood trickles into her eyes.
Her assailant is a whirlwind, a dervish coming at her from all sides, driving into her flanks and back—the stick bouncing off Florida’s vertebra with a crack like a fire-split log.
Florida curls into a ball, her hands cupped over her ears, her head tucked, part defensive, part battering ram. With one burst of strength, she plows forward, knocking the woman aside.
She’s rolling down the filthy sidewalk, her bruised, battered insides on fire with each revolution. She bounces off the curb into the street and comes to a rest, her entire body a nimbus of hurt.
She lifts her head. Her attacker has settled herself in the doorway where Florida had waited for Renny. She’s turning something over in her hand, holding it up to the light like a jewel. Florida’s debit card courtesy of the Arizona DOC.
* * *
Like an animal, crouching, cowering, fetid, and feral, Florida slinks across the street, curls into a doorway, and watches.
The woman’s skin is a color that Florida cannot identify. Weathered by the wind and sun. Tanned by years of dirt and smoke. Her skin is more animal hide than human. Her hair is the absence of color—a canvas for the ambient splatter of life outside.
But she is regal and poised. She carries herself with the confidence of a conqueror.
She has arranged four enormous plastic bags bound together with tape and twine at her feet. She places the debit card on top of one of them. A temptation and a challenge. The stick she beat Florida with lies to her side.
She takes out a stack of newspaper and spreads the pages wide, marking her turf. She begins to unpack her bags, unfurling a blanket, arranging knickknacks, turning her body into the focal point of a scavenged shrine.
Florida only has eyes for the debit card, its small hologram glinting faintly in the gray sky.
She feels her bruised abdomen, her battered flanks and hips. The bruises will blossom—the color of a storm along the horizon. Her eyelashes are sticky with blood. She wipes her forehead, feeling the rough, damp wound.
Her injuries can wait. For now she must watch her assailant. She watches the woman slip the debit card into a pocket. Florida knows where to search. She knows something else. She knows this woman will soon sleep. Because she’s fumbling in her pockets, finding a syringe, prepping to inject herself to take the edge off whatever put the fire in her veins and drove her to beat Florida.
The sun is up now. Those who move through the city have begun their journey, making their slow revolutions on the streets.
Florida’s bruised stomach pulses. Her hip bones ache. Her forehead throbs.
The streets will settle soon. The day will fade. Before dark, she will make her move, reclaim what is hers. That debit card—the only thing tethering her to the straight world.
For now she will wait. The day will pass. She’s an expert at holding a vigil over each passing second until they are all gone.
KACE
The rumors are like wildfire. All that breath being passed from cell to cell. All those germs. A story in the wind.
Dios and Florida on the run.
Dios and Florida guilty of murder.
Dios and Florida killed an officer of the law.
Dios and Florida on a revenge spree.
Dios and fucking Florida—their names whispered between the coughing. Their names inside the coughing. Their names transmitting the disease up and down the rows.
* * *
Marta tells me not to say a thing. Not to get involved. Not to speak my piece. Like I need her advice.
I know better than to pass along intel I got from Tina’s ghost. I know how that will sound.
And yet—Tina’s story bears telling.
Tina was the keeper of Florida’s truth and she paid the price.
Sometimes I hear them—those dead desert hippies Florida torched. It took me a while to figure out who they were because Florida never owned up to that crime. They were angry, those dudes. They were unclaimed, at least by Florida. They wanted their due.
It was Tina who finally explained them to me. Tina who told me Florida had lit the match that ignited the bomb that lit those motherfuckers up. She’d been flying high, but she wanted revenge all the same.
You see, more revenge. A pattern. But Marta told me not to tell.
Also, you see, not like Tina’s story at all. Florida straight-up remembered what she did and she stone-cold lied about it. That shit just isn’t right.
Own it. That’s the one law. The one command of inside. Own it and you can keep on. But Florida—she kept it at arm’s length.
Except to Tina. She told Tina one night not long after she came inside. One night she was hungry for human connection, hoping to be as hard as the other women.
Problem was—Tina couldn’t talk shit about her crime because she couldn’t remember shit about her crime. Doesn’t mean she pretended she didn’t do it. Not like Florida.
* * *
And now, I’ve got the warden up in here asking questions about a CO named Reyes. New kid. Got killed on the outside.
I don’t know shit about Reyes. Never even heard his name. And I don’t fucking care what happened to him.
You know him, Marta says. Think.
I close my eyes, trying to picture a Reyes.
Like Tina, I come up blank.
* * *
But the warden won’t let it drop. And I’m hearing him, but really I’m practicing meditating on my inner peace. I’m tripping on some soothing ocean vibes, feeling the sand between my toes and tasting the salt water. I’m pretending to drink the fresh air instead of this diseased shit that’s fixing to kill me one way or the other. I’m doing the thing they told me, keeping my cool, hoping for a better world, a better me, even if I know there is only one me. And now this nonsense.
Not your fucking business, Marta says. They made their own beds. All of them.
Marta’s got her hand on my throat when they start asking me about Dios and Florida. Sandoval and Baum.
They keep wanting to know if those two had something cooking.
They keep wanting to know if I knew their plans.
“I don’t know shit,” I say. “I don’t know fuck-all.”
“Because if they were planning something and you didn’t tell us, that makes you an accessory,” they tell me.
“Get the fuck out of my cell. Get the fuck away from me. You’re going to kill me coming so close. You’re going to kill me with your poisoned outside air.”
I could straight-up murder that man with his questions, his outside-world problems. I could hammer his face into oblivion. I could … I could … I could.
They light such a fire under me, I worry I’m going to go up in smoke.
* * *
I’m rage hot in the hellscape of the yard.
My head is roaring with all the voices calling at once.
The women clear as I come, even slipping out of the shadows to make way for me.
The fuck is wrong with you, Marta says.
There will be no release. No reprieve. We are yoked to our fucking path eternal. Our path and our past.
There’s no helping it.
There’s no overcoming. There’s no straight and narrow, only this motherfucking stranglehold that’s got us tight.
Even those fancy-ass bitches and their goddamn tree.
All their big talk and what do you know? The only thing that matters is that we are given our time in this world, yet some of us choose to run in a single spot.
And that’s sometimes the only thing there is to do.
LOBOS
Diana Diosmary Sandoval. Aggravated assault. Two-year sentence.
Smart. Educated (not the same thing). Former cellmate of Florence Baum.
No known Los Angeles connections as far as her mother or parole officer knew. Father not in the picture, now or ever.
No contact with her former employer.
No social media presence.
No trace.
* * *
There’s something coded in the way the prison staff talks about Sandoval. The way they drop the words “smart” and “educated” like they have special meaning. As if prisoners are expected to be a certain way and Sandoval was not that.
“What do you mean, ‘smart’?” Lobos asks the warden when he finally gets on the line.
“What do you mean, what do I mean? You’ve never heard the word?”
“Not the way you say it—like it’s a crime.”
“Maybe it is,” the warden says.
Lobos stares at her phone after the warden has disconnected. Smart: like it’s something to fear.
* * *
“Easton.” Lobos summons her partner by shaking her mint canister. “What do you think when someone tells you a woman is smart?”
“That I don’t want to date her.”
“Why?”
“She’s intimidating. She’s work.”
“What else?”
Easton rubs his round chin. “There’s something wrong with her.”
Lobos knocks back the mints and cracks a couple in her molars. “Would you say I’m smart?”
“Driven.”
“That also sounds bad.”
“Listen, I’m just telling you. And you are. And you’ve got issues.”
“Like?”
“Like I don’t know. But I know you do.”
Issues. Problems. Ideas. Vague words men—her husband—use to drag her down. To make her question her thinking and to belittle her thoughts.
“I don’t have issues,” Lobos says.
“Well something’s eating you,” Easton replies. “Something’s got you peeking in tents and scanning the streets. I got my eye on you.”
His tone is almost playful.
“Mind your own business, Easton.”
Easton’s jaw tightens, then relaxes. “Jesus, Lobos, all I’m really saying is if you want my help, I’m here.”
Where does the anger come from that rises from her toes to her fingertips, that makes her want to bang her keyboard, spit her mints, spill her coffee? Where does it hide the rest of the time?
“Lobos?”
Sometimes she can still feel that hand around her throat. And always, her own powerlessness to do anything about it. That’s the worse hurt.
“The only help I need is with this.” Lobos points at Diana Diosmary Sandoval’s photo on her computer.
Black hair. Green eyes. High forehead. Part Latina if you look closely, but easy enough to miss.
“Pretty,” Easton says. “Very. That’s what I would have said instead of smart. You wouldn’t think, would you, that she could kill a man the way she did?”
“Why not?” Lobos asks.
“It’s just hard to imagine.”
“Can you imagine someone else doing it?”
Easton takes the time to think. “You know, I really can’t. Not until I have to.”
* * *
Trace it back. But with Sandoval it’s a dead end. No record before her assault charge. Lobos pulls the case file.
Defended herself against a colleague who was behaving aggressively, accidentally blinding him with a cell phone. Seems cut-and-dried—conventional. A woman fighting back and still serving time. Prosecuted to the fullest by a high-powered lawyer paid for by the vic’s affluent mother. A story Lobos has heard time and again. The inciting incident spelled out for her on the page.
