As You See the World by Paul Ryan O'Connor
When MÃa's car and dog are stolen, she leans on her lacklustre boyfriend Rich for help.
"Can you describe the person who stole your car, ma'am?"
"No, I told you, I only saw it pulling away, I didn't see who was driving."
"And you left the car running, with the keys in the ignition?"
"Yes, it's been hard-starting lately and I was only gone for -"
"Any identifying marks on the car? Body work or bumper stickers?"
"There's a big dent in the driver side door. The rear window has a SFPBR sticker - that's this rescue group where I work."
"Anything important in the car?"
"Yes! They stole my pup!"
"A dog."
"Lomi. He's an American Pit Bull Terrier, a rescue."
"Is that the same thing as a pit bull?"
"Pit bulls aren't really a breed," MÃa said. "With all the backyard breeding, it's hard to pin down."
"Is he dangerous?"
"No. Well, sometimes, yes. I've been working with him."
"I see. Was he loose in the car?"
"No, in a carrier."
"That's something at least."
Traffic crawled by on Saticoy. Rubbernecking late-afternoon commuters slowed for the police cruiser at the side of the road, saw it was only a cop talking to an anonymous twenty-something, then sped off.
"Anything else we should know about your car?"
"There was a gun in the glove box."
The officer stopped typing, and looked at MÃa.
"What kind of gun?"
"A revolver, .22 caliber."
"That doesn't really narrow it down."
"Sorry, that's all I know," MÃa said. "It was silver with a black handle, and kind of snub-nosed."
"And when I asked if there was anything important in the car, you thought of a dog before you thought of the gun?"
"He's more important."
The officer gave MÃa a sharp look.
"Are you the registered owner of the gun, ma'am?"
"It's not registered."
Another sharp look from the cop.
"It's an old gun. It belonged to my father. I don't think it was ever registered."
"If an unregistered gun is loaded and you have it in a public place, that is a felony in the state of California."
"When we get the gun back we can worry about felonies, OK?"
"Of course, Miss Hernandez," the officer said, not sounding servile. "So we are looking for a 2001 Ford Taurus, white, body damage driver-side door, SFPBR sticker in rear window, and there was a .22 revolver in the car."
"And Lomi."
The officer's stare was glassy.
"My dog."
"Right, the dog."
The officer confirmed MÃa's contact information then snapped his laptop shut. He mumbled something about the department doing its best to find her car, then got in his cruiser and he was gone.
Just like MÃa's Ford. And Lomi.
MÃa Ubered home to see the curtains of her ground-floor apartment were drawn tight, as always, cloaking a little living room filled with an out-sized, C-shaped desk. Rich sat at the desk in a tall gaming chair, barricaded behind two curved computer monitors. Rich's CPU tower pumped out heat and fan noise in equal measure, the tower's icy blue lights playing across bare white walls and ceiling.
"Hey," MÃa said.
Rich didn't respond. He was wearing a headset and microphone, intent on his monitors. He was motionless save for his mouse hand, which twitched and scribbled at the end of his arm like the recording pen of a polygraph machine.
"Ford got stolen," MÃa said.
Nothing from Rich. Monitor images reflected from his glasses, obscuring his eyes.
"NASA discovered a statue of Keanu Reeves on the Moon," MÃa tried.
Still nothing.
MÃa moved into Rich's peripheral vision, waving her hand so as not to startle him. She planted a kiss on his cheek between headset and beard and said she had news.
"I can't right now. Our main station is under attack," Rich said, not looking away from his screens, which were peppered with spreadsheets and chat windows around a colorful central display of a spaceship hovering in an asteroid field. "This is the third and final reinforcement timer. If this station goes down we'll lose the entire constellation and our capital ship."
MÃa's internal gaming jargon translator unspooled that as, "I'll talk at you sometime between thirty minutes to three hours from now."
This was the part where the gaming widow watched Netflix by herself or ran mad in the streets for all Rich might care, but tonight - with Lomi stolen and the cops indifferent and the shame she felt that it was all her stupid fault for leaving the car running - MÃa was anything but the indulgent partner.
She lifted a headphone from the side of Rich's head and spoke directly into his ear. "They took Lomi!"
"What? Who?"
"Some damn scumbag thief! They stole my car and Lomi with it."
To his credit - sort of - Rich logged out of his game in record time, then folded MÃa up in his soft and thick arms while she cried and felt weak that she cried.
Rich ran through his rotation of Things MÃa Might Want - solutions, weed, sex (this in hopeful terms) - all naked ploys to get back to his game. It did not occur to him that what MÃa might most need was a sympathetic ear for talking through her trauma.
But MÃa didn't want any of those things.
"I'm getting Lomi back," she said.
Rich was dismissive.
"We find the car and we might find Lomi. Maybe he's still in the back," she said.
"It could be anywhere in LA by now."
"Maybe. But maybe it was some jerk walking by who saw my car and took a joyride. If he was on foot, he's a local."
"That seems a stretch," Rich said. MÃa saw his eyes flicker back toward his gaming rig.
"We just go in a grid. We start at the shelter - I was running back in there when the car was stolen. Then we go out, street by street."
"And if we find it, what then?"
"We steal it back!" Fury built inside MÃa, alongside fear. What if they checked her registration, and came to the apartment? There was a house key on the key ring.
"MÃa, they've got your gun."
"And they've got my dog! We're going!"
MÃa found the spare key to the Ford, and fished Rich's wallet and Honda keys from the bowl on the table by the door. Rich hesitated but MÃa's look was blistering, and then they were driving across the Valley to MÃa's shelter on Saticoy.
They worked a grid, Rich driving and MÃa calling out the turns, perched on the edge of her seat with her face close to the windshield. The grid plan held up for a while, but the streets east of Lindley went at odd angles and they had to backtrack. The nighted neighborhoods took on a depressing sameness - apartment blocks, low ranch houses, cars parked nose-to-tail at every scrap of curb, and none of them her car.
MÃa felt the city weighing her down, the house fronts all hiding hostile secrets. She imagined the wall of an apartment block fallen away, to reveal the living rooms and kitchens and bathrooms behind, regular and horrible like the chambers of a wasp nest. The people vibrated inside, each thinking they were unique and trapped by believing they could get out any time they wished.
They widened their search, starting to drive aimlessly. Rich pulled into a Jack-In-The-Box off Roscoe and finished MÃa's combo when she scarcely touched it. It was after nine but the heat had hardly abated. It rose up from under the car, like it was baked into the pavement. Rich ran the radio, listening to the Lakers getting blown out in Sacramento, saying nothing, his mind far away, probably focused on make-believe starships or anything except MÃa, her car, or her dog.
"There!" MÃa shouted, gesturing toward the street and knocking over Rich's Strawberry Red Daze Red Bull. Rich cursed and righted the drink and tried to blot the spillage from his jeans with napkins while MÃa pounded on the dash and shouted to go, go, just go, they're getting away. By the time Rich pulled into traffic the taillights of the car MÃa had spotted were blocks away, separated by stoplights Rich refused to run.
And then the car was gone, if it had ever been there at all.
They worked out a car-sharing plan, MÃa taking Rich's Honda to work three days a week and Ubering the other two. Rich was a good sport giving up his car, but couldn't resist joking about not leaving it running at the curb.
Obsessive patrols of the neighborhood near work made MÃa feel like a rat running a maze. She was haunted by memory of Lomi, remembering him as she'd found him, with his face half-chewed to hamburger, having never seen a world that wasn't violent. He had too much fight for a bait dog, and too much heart for a killer. She mourned the sweet boy he was just starting to become. He was probably dead by now and MÃa hoped it had been quick.
MÃa doubled-down on work at the shelter, coming home late to exchange grunts with Rich, not even having sex anymore, not that there was much to miss. Rich wasn't a bad guy, but their relationship was months past its sell-by date even before her car was stolen. Now MÃa didn't have a car of her own, and if she left Rich she wouldn't have a car at all. Plus everywhere she might move was still the Valley - just a different heat-blasted courtyard apartment on a different street with different donut dives and nail parlors in the corner podmalls.
It was loud and dangerous and hot everywhere she looked.
MÃa found her car walking back from lunch through a JON'S supermarket parking lot.
It was like a UFO had landed. After being gone for months, it was just there, parked inside the lines between two minivans.
How was this possible? Did car thieves go to the supermarket?
MÃa checked the license plate three times, angled her head to confirm the dent in the driver-side door. She felt for her purse and knew the spare key was in there, a thing she'd taken to carrying like a talisman, long over hoping she'd find her car.
But here it was.
MÃa couldn't move.
Were they watching her now? Did they have her gun?
There was a job to do. It was like when she was with the crew that saved Lomi and the other dogs from that yard. In the moment there'd been no time for tears. After, there was nothing but.
She unlocked the door, slid behind the wheel. Cranked the ignition one time, two times, three. Hard-starting piece of junk. The starter was loud and she felt bullseyed in the car, windows all around. Fourth time and the engine caught, the fuel light popping on and the needle near zero. Back out without looking, lucky not to hit anyone, swerve through the lot at greater than parking lot speed, hard turn onto Sherman Way, the smell of burning rubber heavy as she smoked the tires.
MÃa's breath caught when she saw the dog carrier in the back seat, glimpsing it in the rear-view mirror, but it was empty, of course. Her eyes darted around the car, taking in what was different - the grime on the seats, the overflowing ashtray. The gun was gone. He'd slashed the headliner for some reason and it hung down in tatters. Jerk.
Her eyes kept returning to the rear-view mirror, expecting pursuit, then MÃa laughed out loud when she thought of the thief coming back to find the car stolen. Take that!
MÃa was afraid she'd run out of gas but was more afraid to stop. Ten miles home but she made it, rolling into the carport on fumes. She popped the trunk and found the generic car cover she'd senselessly bought at Pep Boys and used maybe three times, still snug in its elastic stuff sack. She spread the cover over the Ford, tugging it over the sides and under the front and rear bumpers, making sure the license plates were covered.
Then she fell apart and for the first time in forever, Rich was there.
MÃa phoned in her car's recovery and the cops were happy to mark another case cleared for LA's finest.
MÃa had the Ford detailed, got a cheap blue paint job at Maaco in Van Nuys, and put in for a personalized license plate. The Taurus was still junk but it was her junk, and stealing it back gave her control of the world again. Never in her life had MÃa felt empowered, but if there was such a thing, MÃa felt this must be it. Lomi was lost but she felt like she could save every dog in the world. She started going back to the gym and things even got better with Rich, to their mutual surprise.
Life was great.
Then MÃa told Rich it was time to leave the Valley.
"I've always wanted to live at the beach."
Good luck, Rich replied, saying something about rent and how they were broke.
"I thought about that," MÃa said, still convinced she could do anything. "You've got LA, and you've got San Francisco, right? Both on the coast and everything near them is expensive. The farther you get from LA, the less it should cost. So let's drive to the coast, go north, check the rents as they go down, then settle before San Francisco starts to push them up again."
"We can't just go. Our lives are here."
"What lives?"
"You love your job."
"There are dogs to save everywhere," MÃa said, frustrated that Rich was being fearful. He echoed an internal voice that MÃa didn't want to hear anymore.
"We've got a decent set-up, here," Rich said, gesturing vaguely around the apartment.
"Can't we just go, Rich? Just pick up and go? We've always done the safe thing and it's led us nowhere."
"We need more of a plan."
MÃa thought of the looming apartment next door, the wall vanishing and all the people vibrating like bugs inside.
"Maybe we set some money aside, think on it a bit, take a trip up the coast later."
Rich's PC fan sounded like it was careening out of control and the blue light of his tower was everywhere.
"Is there someone you'd like to call? Or maybe have some weed, or..."
The Valley was a concrete maze and MÃa a rat running in it.
MÃa almost said something about how Rich could play his stupid game from everywhere, but that was a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency taboo. She closed her eyes and imagined moving out on her own, wondering if the tears would come. It had been better lately, enough that she wanted Rich to join her on this big change in life. She felt heat behind her eyes, but no tears.
She didn't know how she felt.
She needed space.
MÃa mumbled something about going out for a drive and before she could grab her keys and purse, Rich was settled behind his monitors and launched into the starry void. His hand started scribbling away with his mouse, his body still and his expression blank.
MÃa walked to the carport with her eyes down.
"You stole my car, chica."
MÃa turned and her keys dropped from her hand. A man stood near the rear bumper of the Ford, hemming her in between her car door and the carport wall. He was medium height and dark-haired but mostly MÃa just saw her gun in the man's fist, pointed at her face.
This was crazy. She was right outside her apartment. She could see the icy blue light of Rich's PC leaking around the tightly-drawn curtains of the living room window, just yards away.
"Pick up the keys," the man ordered.
How did he find her? She'd been so careful. The new license plate wasn't on yet but the car looked completely different with the new paint.
"Now!" the man ordered.
MÃa squatted down to feel for the keys, felt her hand close on them where they lay under the car.
She saw the man had Lomi.
MÃa straightened, her eyes on Lomi where he strained against his chain, growling.
"We're going to take a drive, chica," the man said. "I have friends for you to meet."
The man stepped closer, the gun looking huge. There was nowhere to run.
"Lomi!" MÃa shouted, with all the fleeting power she'd felt at finally having control of her life, and seeing the world, however briefly, as something other than a concrete maze.
Lomi turned on the man, bearing him down in the narrow space between the car and the wall. The man's hand banged against the side of the Taurus and the gun went off, the shot impossibly loud in the constrained space. The bullet sped uselessly to some dark corner of the carport, and then the only sounds were screams and Lomi tearing at the man and the clanking of a chain that did nothing to restrain him.
MÃa snatched up the gun and took hold of Lomi's chain, not sure if she could pull the dog from his prey, and not sure she wanted to. She wanted the man to die - to pay for sleepless weeks of mourning her Lomi and the shame she'd harbored at getting her car stolen. She wanted him dead for shoving her gun in her face. She wanted this creep torn to ribbons.
He had it coming.
But Lomi deserved better.
"Lomi," she said, surprised that her voice was soft.
The dog looked up, his muzzle bright with blood.
"Lomi, stop."
Lomi whimpered, confused. MÃa tugged his chain taut.
"Lomi, heel."
The dog looked at his bloody prey, then back to MÃa. He strained toward the man.
"Heel!"
There was a moment when MÃa was certain Lomi was turning on her, but then the dog positioned himself at MÃa's side, between her and the man.
MÃa looked down at the tangle of the thief. The right part of his ribcage was a bloody ruin and Mia thought she saw a flash of white bone.
He shouldn't be able to move, but he did, first getting to one knee, then groaning up into a crouch. He muttered something obscene but MÃa didn't want to hear it.
"Run," she said, gesturing out of the carport with her gun. "You better run and never come back."
The man staggered off, ping-ponging off of cars, his hand pressed to his side. Lomi strained at his chain and MÃa wanted to let him go, but knew that if Lomi killed a man, it was as good as killing Lomi himself.
MÃa looked at her apartment, the icy blue lights still glowing in the window. No one had responded to the gunshot or the mayhem in the carport. It was like it never happened.
It never happened!
She didn't have to call the useless cops and have Lomi taken away and destroyed. She didn't have to wait for the thief to repay her mercy by coming back with friends. She didn't have to pretend she was comforted by Rich's performative sympathy.
She didn't have to see the world as a damn concrete maze.
MÃa put Lomi in the Ford. She left the Valley on the 101, headed toward the coast, not caring when or if Rich might unplug from his PC and notice she was gone.
North of Ventura, where the hills crowd against the highway in a narrow strip beside the ocean, MÃa rolled down the window so she could smell the sea. Lomi put his face into the wind, happy to be alive, and after a moment, MÃa did too.
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| Image generated with OpenAI |
"No, I told you, I only saw it pulling away, I didn't see who was driving."
"And you left the car running, with the keys in the ignition?"
"Yes, it's been hard-starting lately and I was only gone for -"
"Any identifying marks on the car? Body work or bumper stickers?"
"There's a big dent in the driver side door. The rear window has a SFPBR sticker - that's this rescue group where I work."
"Anything important in the car?"
"Yes! They stole my pup!"
"A dog."
"Lomi. He's an American Pit Bull Terrier, a rescue."
"Is that the same thing as a pit bull?"
"Pit bulls aren't really a breed," MÃa said. "With all the backyard breeding, it's hard to pin down."
"Is he dangerous?"
"No. Well, sometimes, yes. I've been working with him."
"I see. Was he loose in the car?"
"No, in a carrier."
"That's something at least."
Traffic crawled by on Saticoy. Rubbernecking late-afternoon commuters slowed for the police cruiser at the side of the road, saw it was only a cop talking to an anonymous twenty-something, then sped off.
"Anything else we should know about your car?"
"There was a gun in the glove box."
The officer stopped typing, and looked at MÃa.
"What kind of gun?"
"A revolver, .22 caliber."
"That doesn't really narrow it down."
"Sorry, that's all I know," MÃa said. "It was silver with a black handle, and kind of snub-nosed."
"And when I asked if there was anything important in the car, you thought of a dog before you thought of the gun?"
"He's more important."
The officer gave MÃa a sharp look.
"Are you the registered owner of the gun, ma'am?"
"It's not registered."
Another sharp look from the cop.
"It's an old gun. It belonged to my father. I don't think it was ever registered."
"If an unregistered gun is loaded and you have it in a public place, that is a felony in the state of California."
"When we get the gun back we can worry about felonies, OK?"
"Of course, Miss Hernandez," the officer said, not sounding servile. "So we are looking for a 2001 Ford Taurus, white, body damage driver-side door, SFPBR sticker in rear window, and there was a .22 revolver in the car."
"And Lomi."
The officer's stare was glassy.
"My dog."
"Right, the dog."
The officer confirmed MÃa's contact information then snapped his laptop shut. He mumbled something about the department doing its best to find her car, then got in his cruiser and he was gone.
Just like MÃa's Ford. And Lomi.
MÃa Ubered home to see the curtains of her ground-floor apartment were drawn tight, as always, cloaking a little living room filled with an out-sized, C-shaped desk. Rich sat at the desk in a tall gaming chair, barricaded behind two curved computer monitors. Rich's CPU tower pumped out heat and fan noise in equal measure, the tower's icy blue lights playing across bare white walls and ceiling.
"Hey," MÃa said.
Rich didn't respond. He was wearing a headset and microphone, intent on his monitors. He was motionless save for his mouse hand, which twitched and scribbled at the end of his arm like the recording pen of a polygraph machine.
"Ford got stolen," MÃa said.
Nothing from Rich. Monitor images reflected from his glasses, obscuring his eyes.
"NASA discovered a statue of Keanu Reeves on the Moon," MÃa tried.
Still nothing.
MÃa moved into Rich's peripheral vision, waving her hand so as not to startle him. She planted a kiss on his cheek between headset and beard and said she had news.
"I can't right now. Our main station is under attack," Rich said, not looking away from his screens, which were peppered with spreadsheets and chat windows around a colorful central display of a spaceship hovering in an asteroid field. "This is the third and final reinforcement timer. If this station goes down we'll lose the entire constellation and our capital ship."
MÃa's internal gaming jargon translator unspooled that as, "I'll talk at you sometime between thirty minutes to three hours from now."
This was the part where the gaming widow watched Netflix by herself or ran mad in the streets for all Rich might care, but tonight - with Lomi stolen and the cops indifferent and the shame she felt that it was all her stupid fault for leaving the car running - MÃa was anything but the indulgent partner.
She lifted a headphone from the side of Rich's head and spoke directly into his ear. "They took Lomi!"
"What? Who?"
"Some damn scumbag thief! They stole my car and Lomi with it."
To his credit - sort of - Rich logged out of his game in record time, then folded MÃa up in his soft and thick arms while she cried and felt weak that she cried.
Rich ran through his rotation of Things MÃa Might Want - solutions, weed, sex (this in hopeful terms) - all naked ploys to get back to his game. It did not occur to him that what MÃa might most need was a sympathetic ear for talking through her trauma.
But MÃa didn't want any of those things.
"I'm getting Lomi back," she said.
Rich was dismissive.
"We find the car and we might find Lomi. Maybe he's still in the back," she said.
"It could be anywhere in LA by now."
"Maybe. But maybe it was some jerk walking by who saw my car and took a joyride. If he was on foot, he's a local."
"That seems a stretch," Rich said. MÃa saw his eyes flicker back toward his gaming rig.
"We just go in a grid. We start at the shelter - I was running back in there when the car was stolen. Then we go out, street by street."
"And if we find it, what then?"
"We steal it back!" Fury built inside MÃa, alongside fear. What if they checked her registration, and came to the apartment? There was a house key on the key ring.
"MÃa, they've got your gun."
"And they've got my dog! We're going!"
MÃa found the spare key to the Ford, and fished Rich's wallet and Honda keys from the bowl on the table by the door. Rich hesitated but MÃa's look was blistering, and then they were driving across the Valley to MÃa's shelter on Saticoy.
They worked a grid, Rich driving and MÃa calling out the turns, perched on the edge of her seat with her face close to the windshield. The grid plan held up for a while, but the streets east of Lindley went at odd angles and they had to backtrack. The nighted neighborhoods took on a depressing sameness - apartment blocks, low ranch houses, cars parked nose-to-tail at every scrap of curb, and none of them her car.
MÃa felt the city weighing her down, the house fronts all hiding hostile secrets. She imagined the wall of an apartment block fallen away, to reveal the living rooms and kitchens and bathrooms behind, regular and horrible like the chambers of a wasp nest. The people vibrated inside, each thinking they were unique and trapped by believing they could get out any time they wished.
They widened their search, starting to drive aimlessly. Rich pulled into a Jack-In-The-Box off Roscoe and finished MÃa's combo when she scarcely touched it. It was after nine but the heat had hardly abated. It rose up from under the car, like it was baked into the pavement. Rich ran the radio, listening to the Lakers getting blown out in Sacramento, saying nothing, his mind far away, probably focused on make-believe starships or anything except MÃa, her car, or her dog.
"There!" MÃa shouted, gesturing toward the street and knocking over Rich's Strawberry Red Daze Red Bull. Rich cursed and righted the drink and tried to blot the spillage from his jeans with napkins while MÃa pounded on the dash and shouted to go, go, just go, they're getting away. By the time Rich pulled into traffic the taillights of the car MÃa had spotted were blocks away, separated by stoplights Rich refused to run.
And then the car was gone, if it had ever been there at all.
They worked out a car-sharing plan, MÃa taking Rich's Honda to work three days a week and Ubering the other two. Rich was a good sport giving up his car, but couldn't resist joking about not leaving it running at the curb.
Obsessive patrols of the neighborhood near work made MÃa feel like a rat running a maze. She was haunted by memory of Lomi, remembering him as she'd found him, with his face half-chewed to hamburger, having never seen a world that wasn't violent. He had too much fight for a bait dog, and too much heart for a killer. She mourned the sweet boy he was just starting to become. He was probably dead by now and MÃa hoped it had been quick.
MÃa doubled-down on work at the shelter, coming home late to exchange grunts with Rich, not even having sex anymore, not that there was much to miss. Rich wasn't a bad guy, but their relationship was months past its sell-by date even before her car was stolen. Now MÃa didn't have a car of her own, and if she left Rich she wouldn't have a car at all. Plus everywhere she might move was still the Valley - just a different heat-blasted courtyard apartment on a different street with different donut dives and nail parlors in the corner podmalls.
It was loud and dangerous and hot everywhere she looked.
MÃa found her car walking back from lunch through a JON'S supermarket parking lot.
It was like a UFO had landed. After being gone for months, it was just there, parked inside the lines between two minivans.
How was this possible? Did car thieves go to the supermarket?
MÃa checked the license plate three times, angled her head to confirm the dent in the driver-side door. She felt for her purse and knew the spare key was in there, a thing she'd taken to carrying like a talisman, long over hoping she'd find her car.
But here it was.
MÃa couldn't move.
Were they watching her now? Did they have her gun?
There was a job to do. It was like when she was with the crew that saved Lomi and the other dogs from that yard. In the moment there'd been no time for tears. After, there was nothing but.
She unlocked the door, slid behind the wheel. Cranked the ignition one time, two times, three. Hard-starting piece of junk. The starter was loud and she felt bullseyed in the car, windows all around. Fourth time and the engine caught, the fuel light popping on and the needle near zero. Back out without looking, lucky not to hit anyone, swerve through the lot at greater than parking lot speed, hard turn onto Sherman Way, the smell of burning rubber heavy as she smoked the tires.
MÃa's breath caught when she saw the dog carrier in the back seat, glimpsing it in the rear-view mirror, but it was empty, of course. Her eyes darted around the car, taking in what was different - the grime on the seats, the overflowing ashtray. The gun was gone. He'd slashed the headliner for some reason and it hung down in tatters. Jerk.
Her eyes kept returning to the rear-view mirror, expecting pursuit, then MÃa laughed out loud when she thought of the thief coming back to find the car stolen. Take that!
MÃa was afraid she'd run out of gas but was more afraid to stop. Ten miles home but she made it, rolling into the carport on fumes. She popped the trunk and found the generic car cover she'd senselessly bought at Pep Boys and used maybe three times, still snug in its elastic stuff sack. She spread the cover over the Ford, tugging it over the sides and under the front and rear bumpers, making sure the license plates were covered.
Then she fell apart and for the first time in forever, Rich was there.
MÃa phoned in her car's recovery and the cops were happy to mark another case cleared for LA's finest.
MÃa had the Ford detailed, got a cheap blue paint job at Maaco in Van Nuys, and put in for a personalized license plate. The Taurus was still junk but it was her junk, and stealing it back gave her control of the world again. Never in her life had MÃa felt empowered, but if there was such a thing, MÃa felt this must be it. Lomi was lost but she felt like she could save every dog in the world. She started going back to the gym and things even got better with Rich, to their mutual surprise.
Life was great.
Then MÃa told Rich it was time to leave the Valley.
"I've always wanted to live at the beach."
Good luck, Rich replied, saying something about rent and how they were broke.
"I thought about that," MÃa said, still convinced she could do anything. "You've got LA, and you've got San Francisco, right? Both on the coast and everything near them is expensive. The farther you get from LA, the less it should cost. So let's drive to the coast, go north, check the rents as they go down, then settle before San Francisco starts to push them up again."
"We can't just go. Our lives are here."
"What lives?"
"You love your job."
"There are dogs to save everywhere," MÃa said, frustrated that Rich was being fearful. He echoed an internal voice that MÃa didn't want to hear anymore.
"We've got a decent set-up, here," Rich said, gesturing vaguely around the apartment.
"Can't we just go, Rich? Just pick up and go? We've always done the safe thing and it's led us nowhere."
"We need more of a plan."
MÃa thought of the looming apartment next door, the wall vanishing and all the people vibrating like bugs inside.
"Maybe we set some money aside, think on it a bit, take a trip up the coast later."
Rich's PC fan sounded like it was careening out of control and the blue light of his tower was everywhere.
"Is there someone you'd like to call? Or maybe have some weed, or..."
The Valley was a concrete maze and MÃa a rat running in it.
MÃa almost said something about how Rich could play his stupid game from everywhere, but that was a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency taboo. She closed her eyes and imagined moving out on her own, wondering if the tears would come. It had been better lately, enough that she wanted Rich to join her on this big change in life. She felt heat behind her eyes, but no tears.
She didn't know how she felt.
She needed space.
MÃa mumbled something about going out for a drive and before she could grab her keys and purse, Rich was settled behind his monitors and launched into the starry void. His hand started scribbling away with his mouse, his body still and his expression blank.
MÃa walked to the carport with her eyes down.
"You stole my car, chica."
MÃa turned and her keys dropped from her hand. A man stood near the rear bumper of the Ford, hemming her in between her car door and the carport wall. He was medium height and dark-haired but mostly MÃa just saw her gun in the man's fist, pointed at her face.
This was crazy. She was right outside her apartment. She could see the icy blue light of Rich's PC leaking around the tightly-drawn curtains of the living room window, just yards away.
"Pick up the keys," the man ordered.
How did he find her? She'd been so careful. The new license plate wasn't on yet but the car looked completely different with the new paint.
"Now!" the man ordered.
MÃa squatted down to feel for the keys, felt her hand close on them where they lay under the car.
She saw the man had Lomi.
MÃa straightened, her eyes on Lomi where he strained against his chain, growling.
"We're going to take a drive, chica," the man said. "I have friends for you to meet."
The man stepped closer, the gun looking huge. There was nowhere to run.
"Lomi!" MÃa shouted, with all the fleeting power she'd felt at finally having control of her life, and seeing the world, however briefly, as something other than a concrete maze.
Lomi turned on the man, bearing him down in the narrow space between the car and the wall. The man's hand banged against the side of the Taurus and the gun went off, the shot impossibly loud in the constrained space. The bullet sped uselessly to some dark corner of the carport, and then the only sounds were screams and Lomi tearing at the man and the clanking of a chain that did nothing to restrain him.
MÃa snatched up the gun and took hold of Lomi's chain, not sure if she could pull the dog from his prey, and not sure she wanted to. She wanted the man to die - to pay for sleepless weeks of mourning her Lomi and the shame she'd harbored at getting her car stolen. She wanted him dead for shoving her gun in her face. She wanted this creep torn to ribbons.
He had it coming.
But Lomi deserved better.
"Lomi," she said, surprised that her voice was soft.
The dog looked up, his muzzle bright with blood.
"Lomi, stop."
Lomi whimpered, confused. MÃa tugged his chain taut.
"Lomi, heel."
The dog looked at his bloody prey, then back to MÃa. He strained toward the man.
"Heel!"
There was a moment when MÃa was certain Lomi was turning on her, but then the dog positioned himself at MÃa's side, between her and the man.
MÃa looked down at the tangle of the thief. The right part of his ribcage was a bloody ruin and Mia thought she saw a flash of white bone.
He shouldn't be able to move, but he did, first getting to one knee, then groaning up into a crouch. He muttered something obscene but MÃa didn't want to hear it.
"Run," she said, gesturing out of the carport with her gun. "You better run and never come back."
The man staggered off, ping-ponging off of cars, his hand pressed to his side. Lomi strained at his chain and MÃa wanted to let him go, but knew that if Lomi killed a man, it was as good as killing Lomi himself.
MÃa looked at her apartment, the icy blue lights still glowing in the window. No one had responded to the gunshot or the mayhem in the carport. It was like it never happened.
It never happened!
She didn't have to call the useless cops and have Lomi taken away and destroyed. She didn't have to wait for the thief to repay her mercy by coming back with friends. She didn't have to pretend she was comforted by Rich's performative sympathy.
She didn't have to see the world as a damn concrete maze.
MÃa put Lomi in the Ford. She left the Valley on the 101, headed toward the coast, not caring when or if Rich might unplug from his PC and notice she was gone.
North of Ventura, where the hills crowd against the highway in a narrow strip beside the ocean, MÃa rolled down the window so she could smell the sea. Lomi put his face into the wind, happy to be alive, and after a moment, MÃa did too.
Really engaging! I liked the MC, and felt she was well drawn. The plot is terrific!
ReplyDeleteSo proud of Lomi.
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