by Ivy Pochoda
“It’s not me who’s been sleeping two days straight.” Her father’s eyes haven’t left her face, like he’s appraising her, judging her—like he’s shopping her.
“Papi, stop staring.”
“I can’t look at my daughter? My daughter everyone tells me is so beautiful. I can’t look at her so I can see for myself?”
Julianna pulls out the coffeepot and scratches a jagged nail in the brown crust at the bottom of the glass carafe. She takes it to the sink, turns on the water, and begins to scrub.
“So you live here now?”
“This isn’t my house?” Julianna says.
Armando drags a slice of chuleta through a sludge of refried beans and shoves it in his mouth. “The whole neighborhood knows your business,” he says.
Julianna doubts people know everything, but then again the Fast Rabbit is local and now she’s seen the crew her father’s running with, she can’t be too sure. “How come you’re not working?”
Armando gestures at the clock with his fork. It’s four P.M. He’s already returned from his low-cost tax preparation business.
“You going out tonight, Papi?”
Armando drops his fork and pushes his plate away, like someone is going to clear it for him. “What’s that mean?”
“I’m saying, do you have plans?”
“I do, baby, but unlike you, I’m the one enjoying the entertainment, not providing it.”
In one surprising, swift motion, Julianna reaches across the table and tosses the plate at Armando like a Frisbee. He ducks to one side, toppling the chair, as the plate crashes to the floor.
He picks himself up and laughs.
There’s a knock at the door.
“Clean that up,” Armando says, pointing at the floor. “Your mother doesn’t like a mess.” He smooths his polyester dress shirt and pats his hair like he’s off to do business. He opens the inner door, then peers through the riot gate. “Can I help you?”
Julianna can’t hear the rest. But next thing, her father’s pushed the outer gate wide, not caring that she’s standing there in her underwear.
There’s a woman in the doorway. She’s so short Julianna almost mistakes her for a child. But the suit gives her away.
“LAPD,” Armando says, moving to the couch and kicking up his feet. “Looks like you got trouble, baby.”
Julianna crosses her arms over her chest, trying to compensate for the fact that she’s in her pajamas in the late afternoon.
“Detective Perry,” the woman says, holding up a badge.
“Perry?” Armando says. “You don’t look like a Perry, Señora LAPD.”
“Julianna, maybe we could talk outside,” the detective says.
Julianna knows how news travels, how things get exaggerated, how people trade stories to help themselves out. It would be nothing for someone who might have been swept up at the Fast Rabbit to have filled in the cops on Julianna’s tirade—told them she was tricking in the back, told them she was holding, told them she was guilty of assault, told them any number of things that Julianna may or may not have done.
Julianna can feel her father’s eyes boring into her—his joyful need to judge.
“You can put on a sweater if you want,” the detective says.
Julianna dashes to Hector’s room and grabs one of his oversized Lakers sweatshirts. It hits midthigh, covering her boxers. She finds the detective standing on the porch.
The woman is tiny. Like Julianna, she’s dyed her dark hair. But it’s a cheap job, probably one of those boxes from the drugstore with the light-skinned Latina lady on them. Julianna pays for her color. A couple of hundred every other month to brighten her curls to a fiery orange, to make her look fly.
“I’m going to smoke,” Julianna says, taking a seat in one of the plastic chairs and drawing her knees to her chest. She lights a cigarette and takes a deep drag. She notices the detective is chewing gum, working her jaw like she’s mad high. “You used to smoke?”
Detective Perry looks at her blankly.
Julianna points her cigarette at the detective’s jaw.
“Never smoked,” Detective Perry says, removing her phone from her suit pocket and tapping the screen.
Her nails are round and neat, polished in a neutral tone. Her suit is spotless. She’s wearing low black heels, sensible shoes for walking or whatever it is detectives do all day. She’s even got bangs—the no-nonsense haircut Julianna associates with people who don’t give a shit.
Julianna pulls her sweatshirt lower, more aware than ever of the whole inappropriate mess of her. “Is this about the Fast Rabbit?” Julianna says. “Because that shit wasn’t my fault. I don’t know who told you what but—”
Detective Perry tucks her phone away then gives Julianna a look that makes it pretty clear she hasn’t heard a word she’s said. “Katherine Sims,” she says. “You know her.”
It doesn’t sound like a question. And Julianna doesn’t know a Katherine Sims. “No.”
“You were friends.” Detective Perry isn’t exactly looking at Julianna when she addresses her. She’s glancing at something scribbled on a piece of paper. It’s like she’s in two places at once. Like Julianna is only part of her business.
“I don’t know any Katherine.”
“Julianna, what is it that you do for work?” The detective looks as if she’s thinking about something else. Like she left the stove on or forgot where she parked or missed some other appointment.
“Nothing,” Julianna says. Because that’s the truth, at least right now. No work. No dancing. No hustle.
“But you used to work.”
The way the detective doesn’t make eye contact when she talks is starting to bug Julianna. “I guess.”
“So Katherine Sims.”
“I told you. I don’t know a Katherine. I know a Coco, a Marisol, a Princess, a Yessina, a Ruby, a—”
“Katherine Sims. Kathy.”
Fucking Kathy. More than a decade later and Julianna never learned her last name.
“You know Kathy Sims.” Again it’s not a question. It’s like the detective turned up on Julianna’s porch so Julianna could tell her what she already knew.
“Who told you that? Dorian?”
“Dorian?” The name gets the detective’s attention and her eyes meet Julianna’s for the first time.
“I bet it was Dorian. That busybody.”
“Your face,” Detective Perry says, as if she’s just noticing Julianna for the first time. As if she’s just seeing her. “What happened to your face?”
Julianna’s hand flies to the gash above her eyes. “Nothing. Some shit.”
“Interesting,” Detective Perry says.
“You sure you’re not here about the Fast Rabbit?”
“The Fast Rabbit?” The detective repeats the name as if it’s the first time she’s hearing it. “Is that where you work?”
“I told you, no.” If she doesn’t know already, Julianna isn’t telling her. Let the detective do her job and find shit out.
“Is that where Kathy worked?”
“Hell, no.”
“She worked the streets.”
“I guess you already knew.”
“And you already know she’s dead.”
“Everyone knows. Everyone knows everything.”
“That makes my job easy.”
Julianna exhales and grinds her cigarette out on the cement porch. “So what do you want to know about Kathy?”
“There was another woman who died,” the detective says, “fifteen years ago.”
“Now this shit is about Lecia?”
“This shit. That’s an interesting phrase. What do you mean by ‘this shit’?” Detective Perry takes out a small notebook and a pen, like she’s actually going to write Julianna’s answer down. She sits in the other plastic chair on the porch.
“You know,” Julianna says, “this. You, me, here, what you’re asking.”
“So far I’ve only asked you if you knew Kath
y.”
“I knew Kathy,” Julianna says.
“You were good friends. My partner wrote you up the other day. Then I spotted a picture of you on Kathy’s social media.”
“Must have been an old-ass picture.”
“So, you were friends.”
“It sounds like you’re telling me the answers to your own questions. But yeah, we were.” Because she’s not going to lie about the dead, not going to disrespect Kathy to save herself. Kathy was a good friend, a fucking great friend.
Detective Perry clicks her pen, then snaps her gum. “How did you know each other?”
“We worked together. She got me a job.”
The detective’s pen goes click-click. Her gum snaps. She’s waiting for more.
“Dancing at Sam’s Hofbräu.” What kind of bullshit is this to be sitting on the porch in her pajamas next to this detective in her neat suit and the rest of it? Maybe there was another world where Julianna finished high school, didn’t start partying, wasn’t the kind of girl Kathy noticed, the kind of girl Kathy read as someone who wanted to get in the game. Maybe there was a world where she could have been the lady in the suit, the one who spent weeknights with a glass of wine and some takeout, whose weekends involved some straight-world shit—dinner, movie, a free concert in a park.
“So you and Kathy started hanging out when?”
“When I was fourteen.”
“So after Lecia Williams.”
“What’s that have to do with it?”
“Did she come around the house?”
“Sometimes,” Julianna says. Kathy sure did come around. Always pulling up in a fast car that would roar to a stop in front. Julianna would look out and see Kathy leaning over the driver’s lap, laying on the horn until everyone on the block came out and took a look at her ride—Armando included. Julianna thinks half the reason Armando didn’t object to her going out with Kathy was the cars—the Camaros, Corvettes, the lowriders, and even the El Caminos.
Detective Perry scribbles something down. “When was the last time you saw her?”
Julianna pulls her hair back, twists and tucks it into a topknot. “Not for years. Kathy and I turned out different.” She pulls out another cigarette but she doesn’t light it. She can guess what this detective thinks of her and those like her. Just look at the woman—her bleached hair hiding who she really is. The suit, the basic white-girl makeup. Pretending to be someone else.
How many women like Julianna does Detective Perry come across in a week? How many who are working some part of the game—dancers, strippers, hookers, hos, and bitches? How many does she question, book, dismiss? How many does she discard when she turns the page of her little notebook?
“You were how old when Lecia died?”
The redirection startles her. “What’s that?”
“Eleven. You were eleven.”
“Something like that.”
“You were the last person to see her alive?”
Julianna glances off to the side. Her next-door neighbor, a bitter white woman, thin and pinched like a starved rodent, is watering the front yard in the corner house—a spray of water arcing toward the sidewalk, dropping a rainbow as it falls. Julianna watches her spray the flowers. It’s a loveless gesture, as if the flowers are asking too much.
“That’s what they said.”
“Did they know each other?”
“Kathy and Lecia? Like you said, I was eleven. I didn’t know anything about anything.”
To talk about Kathy is to reduce her to what the detective needs her to be. A streetwalker, a hooker, a bitch who tricked her life away. Julianna won’t do that. Because there was more to Kathy than what she did for cash. There was the woman who always made sure other dancers had money for a cab home, who organized day trips to the beach, the theme park—anything to distract the girls from what they had to be. There was the woman who loved crappy movies, who taught her crew to sneak into the multiplexes for a whole day.
“What was she like?” Detective Perry asks.
“Kathy?”
“Lecia.”
“She was fucking beautiful.”
Now Detective Perry follows Julianna’s gaze, watching the water from the hose rain down. “That’s honeysuckle,” she says. “Honeysuckle and huckleberry. People plant them to attract hummingbirds. You know, some hummingbirds’ wings can beat over five thousand times per minute.” The detective pauses and squints, like she wants to summon one of the birds into view. “You can kill them with a swipe of your hand.” She takes a slim leather wallet out of her breast pocket and passes Julianna a card. “Call me anytime,” she says. “About Kathy or Lecia.”
Julianna takes the card and puts it into the pocket of Hector’s sweatshirt. No way she’s calling because there’s only one reason girls like her call people like Detective Perry. A trade. A deal. I’ll give you info, you cut me some slack the next time I’m hauled in.
She lights her cigarette and watches the detective head off down the steps. Detective Perry opens the gate, then turns and doubles back.
“You’re a dancer.”
Julianna opens her mouth to object.
“Let’s say you’re a dancer. What’s interesting about the men you perform for?”
“What do you mean?”
“What is memorable about them?”
Julianna looks at the burning cherry of her cigarette. “Nothing, they’re a bunch of losers.”
The detective has her notepad out and is scrawling something down.
“You give them a lot of power,” she says without taking her eyes from her notes.
“That’s what they think.”
Detective Perry looks up from her pad, then makes one more note before tucking it away in her jacket. Without another word, she opens the gate again.
There’s a bike chained to a street sign just down the street. Julianna watches her unlock it, then unhook a helmet clipped around the rack on the back and climb on.
“Nice ride,” Julianna calls.
She can hear her phone ringing somewhere in the house. She doesn’t have to look to know it’s probably Coco or Rackelle wondering where the fuck she is, what the fuck she’s doing, and what her problem is. By now, gossip about her show at the Fast Rabbit will have spread, the story exaggerated until Julianna’s been turned into a wild, violent crackhead, a dirty, unhinged bitch. She should change her number, get a new phone. That’s what she should do. Because she’s done with this, them, and the rest of it. Done with Coco and the dudes at the Fast Rabbit and the others who ask for “dates” on her off night, who take her to what they think are fancy restaurants out in Inglewood or near Watts, pay the bill, then take her home for their due. But Julianna knows what a real fancy restaurant is like, knows the menus aren’t in plastic sleeves, that the water doesn’t come in cafeteria-style cups, that half the food isn’t fried, that the wine isn’t poured from a box or a jug, and the tablecloths aren’t waterproof. She knows it’s a poor trade.
She heads inside, passing Armando, who’s camped out in front of a Central American soccer game on the television. “What did the lady cop want?”
“Some shit I didn’t know anything about.”
“She seemed like a bitch.”
Julianna’s phone is ringing again—the reggaeton tone that used to get her in the groove but now only irritates her. She looks at her chipped nails—her pricey gel extensions that she ruined back at the Fast Rabbit. Maybe she’ll swap them out for something understated like the detective’s. Maybe she’ll change that ringtone too.
“Don’t make me ask why the LAPD’s after you,” Armando says.
Julianna jams her hands in the pouch of her sweatshirt. “I won’t.”
She goes to Hector’s room and slides open the drawer on the nightstand, searching for more weed. But he’s empty or he’s found a new place for his stash. She rattles her hand around and finds a scrap of one of her brother’s preposterously large joints. It’s about an inch long but plenty wide.
She opens his bedroom window, sparks the tip, and stares at the house next door.
There’s a large hedge that obscures much of the yard. Above it, Julianna can see the fresh red paint and perfect siding of the house—nothing like the chipped and splintering exterior of her parents’ place. She blows smoke at the hedge as if she can part it and glimpse the tidy lives of her next-door neighbors.
There’s someone on the far side of the hedge. She can hear feet on the concrete, the sound of a hose spraying the plants. Even the plants are cared for over there.
There’s only about three tokes’ worth in the roach. Julianna grinds out the filter on the windowsill and tosses it.
“Isn’t it time you get your own weed?”
Julianna starts at the sound of Hector’s voice.
“You’re out,” Julianna says, tapping the top of the nightstand.
“And whose fault is that?”
Julianna shrugs. “Where do you get your shit anyway? You have a card?”
“Cards are for nerds. I use some dude named Peter.”
“Peter? You buy weed from a white boy?”
“So the fuck what? He gets medical grade. Anyway, the shit from the dispensaries is mad expensive.”
“You want to get me some?”
Hector checks his nightstand to see whether he’s really out. “Fuck. You really are a bitch.” But he’s smiling as he slams the empty drawer. “So you’re living here now? Is that the deal? You’re crashing all permanent?”
“Why?”
“Because I’ll need to find a better hiding place for my shit is why.”
“Tell you what,” Julianna says. “Give me the address of this Peter and I’ll hook us both up.”
Hector pulls out his phone and starts clicking through his contacts. “Don’t be stingy now. And get the good shit.”
6.
THE ADDRESS HECTOR GAVE HER IS A FIFTEEN-MINUTE WALK from Twenty-Ninth Place—but she might as well have crossed into another dimension. The house is a giant white mansion on a row of mostly derelict mansions a block south of the 10 and a few blocks east of Western. It looks like something out of a movie—an old horror movie—a crumbling stone exterior with wings, towers, and windows, several of which are broken. Along one side of the house is a covered archway. There’s a whole mess of scaffolding on the exterior and Julianna can’t tell whether it’s there to fix the building or hold it up.
