Sing Her Down, page 21
What would they have called her? Pocket-Pal? Peanut? Snack-Size?
Or worse?
Dick-sucking height.
Blowjob tall.
Something in this woman’s eyes tells Florida that she’s not down for denigration.
“Detective Lobos, I’ve been waiting for you. You have something of mine.”
The detective comes down the steps and squints at Florida.
She knows how she looks. Her face battered by the woman outside Renny’s. Her hands still bruised from pounding Drew. Her clothes torn from tangles with brush and debris around the city. Her cheeks hunger-hollow. Eyes wild. The chlorine scent of her mother’s pool clinging to her hair.
She feels turned inside out.
“Florence?”
Florida blinks blindly at her old name.
“Florence Baum?”
There’s a note in Detective Lobos’s voice that Florida can’t place.
“My debit card?”
“You want to step into the station?”
Florida jams her hands into her pockets and backs down the steps. “I just want my card. I didn’t do anything.”
“Except break parole,” Lobos says. “And there’s a chance you’re an accessory to murder. Or even guilty of murder.”
“I wasn’t even on that bus when it happened. I read about it in the paper.”
“That’s hard to swallow. But let’s just say I believe you.”
The lady detective is lying. Her whole job is not to believe women like Florida.
“Then give me the card and I’ll be back in Arizona before I need to check in with my PO.”
“I’m not sure that’s how this is going to work.”
Florida looks over Lobos’s shoulder for the backup that doesn’t seem to be coming, for the reinforcements to handcuff her and lead her away. For an unceremonious end to this whole mess Dios created.
Weak, Dios would say. Down without a fight. Surrendered your own goddamn self like that’s all you deserve.
“Would you like to sit?” Lobos says.
“Here?” Florida looks at the station steps.
Lobos comes closer, then sits on the low wall that runs along Sixth. “You’re in some trouble.”
“The man on the bus—I didn’t. I told you.” But how many things has she told to officers in the past? How many were lies? How many truths that weren’t believed? What does it matter anymore what she did and didn’t do? What does it matter what she says? You are who they say you are, and at the end of the day you do what they tell you to do.
Dios was right about that. They remake you.
Lobos takes out an empty Tic Tac canister and taps it on the wall. “Have you been home?”
“It’s not my home.”
“When were you there last?”
“Earlier today.”
“See anyone?”
Florida side-eyes the detective. She knows. “Dios.”
“Anyone else?”
“No.”
“Did you leave her at the house?”
“Yes.”
“How come?”
“Because Dios is— Because Dios wants…” Florida pauses. “She wants to destroy me.”
“Why?”
“Because she thinks we are the same.”
“Are you?”
Florida looks down at her battered hands. “She’s crazy. I’m just fucked up. She can’t tell the difference and she will hunt me until I see it her way.”
“And your mother? Did you see her?”
The shame—that’s what this strange sensation is—feels unfamiliar. Like a passing glance at a world she barely recognizes. “She called us in, right. I ran before she finished.” She glances over Lobos’s shoulder into the station. “Is she in there?”
Lobos rubs her hands on the thighs of her pants. “We got a call a few hours ago from one of your mother’s neighbors.”
You think you’ve hit rock bottom, that you’ve been scraped raw, brought low, emptied out of emotion. You think you’ve lost the ability to care what happens to you or to anyone else. And then …
Florida doesn’t really hear Lobos’s next words as much as she feels them with a nauseating disorientation, like falling off a cliff and never hitting the bottom. Falling and falling in a sickening descent that stretches eternal.
For the rest of her life she will fall through this space in purgatorial suspension.
You think there’s nothing left, no you in you. No there in there. You think you are empty and calcified, nothing soft left to bruise or damage.
Then someone reaches in and finds a lingering weakness, something intact and fragile. And they trample it to shit—mutilate and destroy it, which hurts worse than anything that came before because you thought you were done with pain. You thought you were harder than pain. You thought you were less than human and more than tough.
Lobos has finished talking and is staring at Florida with a look of concern, like she’s worried Florida’s going to rage or going to pop off. Or worse—fall to pieces.
What Florida will remember from this moment is the smell of the streets. The tang of the unwashed. The antiseptic the city sprays to mask it. She will remember the scent of herself—her sweat and the chlorine odor from her mother’s pool, the same water where Dios strangled her mother and left her to drown.
She smells of her own mother’s death.
That’s what she is going to remember most of all. It’s funny how in an instant you recognize what you will carry forever.
“I know where she is,” Florida says.
“Tell me.”
“I know where she will be. I can find her. I can bring her to you.”
“No,” Lobos says. “That’s not how this is going to play out.”
Florida stands. “I have nothing left. I have no game. This is all I’ve got. Let me go and I’ll tell you where I’ll meet her. Otherwise, nothing doing.”
“Florence—”
“My name is Florida.”
“You know I can’t let you go.”
“If you don’t, you’ll lose Dios forever. She’ll be gone tomorrow. Let me go and I will help you find her.”
Now Lobos stands and places her hands on her hips. There’s a strange look in her eyes that Florida can’t quite figure. “We don’t all get the chance to fight our own battles. Sometimes the fight comes to us before we can react and other times it’s out of our hands before it’s begun. But too often we run from our own fight.” Lobos holds up the debit card. “If you give me the info, I’ll give you this free and clear. I’ll get you on that bus back to Arizona if possible.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“This could go easy or it could go badly. Come inside.”
“No,” Florida says, taking a single step backward. “If you take me in there, I won’t tell you anything. Then Dios will disappear.”
“When it goes wrong, it’s going to go very wrong,” Lobos says. “And I can’t protect you.”
“Do you want Dios or not?”
“Do you?” Lobos holds Florida’s gaze, a challenge lingering in the question.
“We want the same thing.”
“Now, I don’t necessarily believe that,” Lobos says. “Maybe we want the same outcome.”
Florida takes another step back and another, waiting for a takedown that doesn’t come.
“Where will I find Dios?”
Florida backs across Sixth, her eyes never leaving Lobos’s, who hasn’t moved from the station steps. She’s blind to whatever cars may come. Her only focus is on the tiny detective.
On the far side of the street, she cups her hands over her mouth. “Where Olympic hits Western. At noon tomorrow.”
“Where exactly?”
“That’s all I know and that’s all I’m giving you.”
* * *
In the dark the choppers circle like vultures, waiting for the carnage below.
On Figueroa, Florida runs into a melee of protesters, their numbers not yet strong enough for a march. Where there are protesters, there will be police.
Florida picks up her pace, turning south until she comes to the ramp where the 110 meets the 10.
She continues alongside and underneath the freeway in the miles-long shanty city of cobbled-together communities and shooting-gallery hideaways.
A trade.
A bargain.
A barter.
How do you exchange nothing for something? She hurries, keeping an eye on the camps she passes, looking for discard, scrap, anything of value. Something no one will miss but someone wants.
But everything is already claimed, repurposed, or stashed. It’s hard to steal from people who already have nothing.
Here’s a gas station, though. An off-brand one. No credit card machines at the pumps. No quickie mart. No customers.
Florida glances through the smudged and scratched window. The sole attendant is sequestered behind bulletproof glass. He’s hidden behind his own mask and scooted way back from the counter. A sign on the door reads PLEASE PAY THROUGH OUTSIDE WINDOW.
Florida sees a window that’s been carved out so customers can slide their credit cards through without having to enter the store. She tries the door. The attendant bangs on the glass, furiously shooing her away.
But the door isn’t locked. The sign is the only thing keeping people out. She will have to be fast, use whatever legs she’s got left.
Florida steps inside. Next to the door is a display of red plastic jerricans. Before the attendant can burst from behind the safety of his hermetically sealed counter, she’s grabbed two of the cans and is back outside.
Her legs are numb. The cans slap-bang her thighs as she hurtles to the on-ramp for the 10. The attendant was shouting after her and then he wasn’t, giving up the chase before it started.
Florida is on the freeway now. Like last time, the few cars are wide-spaced.
The sky is flat black under cloud cover that has blown in.
Here’s a brush fire on the far side of the freeway—a loose blaze that leaps from tree to tree.
Here’s a man sitting on the guardrail, sipping something from a champagne coupe.
Here’s a shrine.
Here’s a tent in the breakdown lane.
Fireworks explode in the smothered sky. Dogs howl. Sirens wail—their alarm rising and rising and getting nowhere, like a barbershop pole.
* * *
The man is standing in front of his encampment. The ribbons, mirrors, and wind chimes sway in the slight breeze. He’s wearing a dirty silk robe open over a pair of shorts that look made out of burlap. He’s not alone. A large woman seated on an overturned bucket is weaving torn strips of fabric together.
“You’ve returned,” the man said.
“I brought these,” Florida says, holding out the jerricans. “A barter.”
“Set those down,” the man says.
“I want to trade.”
“Set ’em.”
Florida lowers the cans.
The woman looks up from her weaving. “I can smell the trouble on you,” she says.
“I’ve got something to do,” Florida says. “And there’s something I need to do it.”
“Trouble is what you’ve got,” the woman says. “Trouble is what you’ll get.” Her hands are swift and deft. Her nails hard, black claws. “Sometimes trouble is the only destination and you might as well take the shortest path.”
“Sit,” the man says, indicating a camp chair that’s missing a leg. It sinks to the ground under Florida’s weight, tips her back until she finds her balance. “Take off your shoes,” the man says.
“I’m fine. I just need—”
“She already told you we’ll get you where you need to go,” the man says. “And that we will give you what you need.”
“I haven’t told you.”
Before Florida can object, the man is at her feet, unlacing her boots. “I told you before. It’s the feet they check first. Whatever’s coming for you, the feet come first.”
“I don’t need—”
The woman considers Florida top to toe. “You hardly have anything, so don’t get started on the list of things it seems you need. There’s a list that goes on.”
Florida’s feet breathe. The wind brushes her toes.
“Tell me where it is you’re going,” the woman says.
“Nowhere good,” Florida says.
“Don’t tell me what I already know. There’s no magic in this world. Nothing but the need to put one foot in front of the other until you come to what’s next. No point in explaining the past or guessing what’s waiting ahead. The only thing that matters is what’s right in front of us.”
The man hands Florida a soda bottle filled with water. She tips it to drink. Then he hands her a rag. “Wash,” he says.
She soaks the rag, crosses one leg, and begins to clean her blistered foot.
“We are nothing more than our own scars,” the woman says. “But they don’t tell the future. They only remind us of the past.”
Coyotes cry, a frenzied fever song. Behind the camp, Florida can hear the chickens tut their panicked response.
There’s food in cans—sausage and beans eaten cold with plastic forks that are bent and weak with use. The man cranks a radio and plays a station somewhere between Spanish and static.
The food is electric in Florida’s stomach, sparking her nerves, reviving her head to toe.
Fireworks take to the night—blossoming yellow and purple, white and blue.
A caravan of cars streams down the 10, honking and flying homemade banners bearing the names of the brutalized Black.
“All these rich folks fleeing their homes,” the woman says. “Always imagining they can outrun their problems instead of figuring out they themselves are the problem.”
The caravan passes, its noise melting away.
Now cars stalk the freeway at distant intervals. Their headlights twinned eyes, searching the dark.
“They leave the city for us to do as we please,” the woman says. She stands. She takes Florida’s hands and leads her in a dance round and round the encampment.
* * *
Coyotes come to the far edge of the camp, their eyes glowing green. They stare, unblinking, then pace the perimeter, before the hunt calls them off.
Florida knows that when she lets go of the woman’s hands she will have spun into a new world. She will have shed her old skin and be reborn under a violent moon. When she lets go, she will step into a moment from which there will be no release.
The man makes her a bed again, this time in the shelter of two oleander shrubs. She camps on an old sleeping bag, her jeans for a pillow. She can hear the radio crackle. She can hear the murmur of the man and the woman conversing. She stares into the knot of branches that protect her from the city.
She doesn’t dream of the freeway, of prison, of her mother or her mother’s house. She dreams of the ocean as it was when she was nine years old. She dreams of the rocky outcrop where the tides were trapped and the waves churned and spat. Where the lifeguard told her not to swim. Where she went anyway. Where she felt the ocean pull her in two directions before returning her safely to shore.
Her parents somewhere else. Not watching.
The lifeguard paled at her daring. Cautioning her. Warning her.
And yet she went again, diving back. Letting the current pull her toward the rocks. Letting the waves churn and buffet. Feeling in control of the dangerous slip of ocean. Taming it. Overpowering it with her spirit. Small and mighty. The world, the ocean, no match for her.
Until it broke her. Knocked her out. Cracked her skull and somehow, mercifully, returned her to the beach, half-dead, half-drowned, but suddenly alive to destruction.
* * *
She wakes having slept hard. Her body sleep-strengthened.
The man and woman are already up. They’ve fixed her a breakfast of beans. When Florida has eaten, they prepare her with fresh socks and a clean T-shirt. The woman combs her hair until it flies up and out from her head—a burned, yellow halo. Then pulls it back.
The man is holding a small case, which he hands to Florida. It’s not what she came for, but she takes it anyway. Inside are a few small paint palettes and brushes. He dips a brush into a cup of water, dabs on black paint, then sweeps two lines beneath each of Florida’s eyes. He rinses the black and switches to red, defining the curve of her cheekbones.
Then he puts the paints away.
The jerricans are where Florida left them when she arrived. The man picks them up and disappears into the cluster of bushes where he makes his bed.
He emerges with the gun and hands it to Florida. She checks the chamber. Full. She tucks it into the waistband of her state-issued pants.
Now is the time for endings.
* * *
Florida crosses Pico just before midday by the sun, although it’s hard to tell under the marine layer. She can’t be sure of the exact time, but time barely matters now and won’t for much longer. She will be early. She will be waiting for Dios.
She checks the street signs to make sure this is the place. Like the time, this place isn’t anywhere in particular. It’s a street crossing another street, emptied out like the rest of the city—soaped-over windows, vacant parking lots, vanished businesses. A world up and gone.
Behind her, Western rises slightly, blocking the southern reach of the city from view—an expanse of lost consequence. To the north, the road is a deep cut running toward the hills and the distant Hollywood sign, which hovers like a dream that overstayed its welcome.
The storefronts and restaurants that line the avenue are boarded with plywood that’s layered with graffiti that’s been graffitied over already. Stories on top of stories that will be erased and forgotten.
* * *
Western dips before a gentle incline toward Olympic. There’s a slight wind, the air free of exhaust but also tanged with the trash stockpiled on the sidewalks and the stench of outdoor living.
The wind gathers masks and gloves, sending them swirling south over the cracked sidewalks, where trash and weeds have made their stand.
