by Ivy Pochoda
Peter meets her in the scraggly garden that wraps around the house. He’s white, of course, and wearing the skinniest pair of jeans Julianna’s ever seen a man wriggle into and a tight plaid shirt. He sells her the weed from a cigar box. She buys a quarter. It’s packaged like it comes from a hospital or pharmacy—RX and the name of whatever strain printed like a prescription label.
Julianna tucks it into her purse.
“Want to check out the party?” Peter asks. “No charge for customers.”
She gives him a look that tells him she’s not sure why anyone would pay to enter the run-down mansion.
“It’s like a fund-raiser. We’re trying to restore the place. So normally we’d charge. But since you already paid.” Peter taps the cigar box.
“I’ll check it out,” Julianna says.
She follows Peter up a crumbling staircase. She’s all too familiar with what goes on a few steps from here on the side alley she could probably hit with a rock if she aimed it right, the place where Kathy and her crew worked their freeway business. But here on Harvard and La Salle it’s a whole other party. A type of party Julianna can’t quite figure.
If they are planning to make the mansion habitable, they sure have a strange way of going about it. The entire place is covered in graffiti, floor to ceiling. And not just random graffiti but the shit Julianna’s heard the local taggers dismiss as “street art.” Murals and stencils and paper transfers. Pictures of famous people she should recognize, political figures she would never recognize.
Julianna looks out of place and feels it too. She had dressed down—superdown, not wanting to be confused with the girls she knew she’d pass on her way here. She’d put on an old pair of jeans that don’t fit as high and tight as the ones she usually prefers. Her shirt is a souvenir from the Santa Monica Pier—a pastel California sunset splashed across her chest with the pier disappearing toward the horizon.
Even in loose clothing she’s a rolling wave in a flat sea of skinny women who are dressed like moms in old TV shows—pleated jeans, fuzzy, boxy sweaters, fussy blouses, and the kind of glasses her school nurse wore. Julianna’s built for a different world—a world of jiggling and taunting, of sauntering and displaying.
Julianna pulls in her stomach, rounds her shoulders, tucks herself into herself as she walks through the party. There are people everywhere drinking beer and wine out of red plastic cups. The staircase wobbles under their weight. On the second floor the wallpaper is artfully stripped away and made to look as if shadowy figures are climbing through the walls to join the action.
There’s art everywhere. In one of the back bedrooms a young man with tufted dreads is working on a mural. People have gathered to watch him paint a strange version of Los Angeles where the main boulevards are replaced by rivers that seem to be moving along the plaster. He works oblivious to the chatter around him.
He’s painted a man’s face in the center of the mural. Julianna recognizes it as the kid on TV, the one the cops killed in Brooklyn. She can’t quite grasp the name. But then she sees it painted on a ribbon below the kid’s neck: Jermaine Holloway. The story is everywhere. Pulled from his cousin’s car, kicked black and blue, then shot for good measure.
Julianna tilts her head side to side. The artist did a bang-up job capturing the dead kid’s good looks—his soft brown eyes, high round cheekbones.
From what she’s seen on TV, Jermaine Holloway had wild, kinky hair, corkscrew curls that sprang from his head in all directions. But on the mural something totally different is taking place. There’s another type of explosion happening on the kid’s crown—a woman bursts from his head, breaking through his brain, full-formed and regal. She’s emerging, arms raised, circled in golden light and bolts of blue energy. There’s a ribbon around this woman’s chest like a pageant queen: Idira.
Julianna moves on down the hall where people are leaning on a railing they shouldn’t lean on, pushing past each other and craning their necks to see what they’re missing, commenting on everything.
She comes to an enormous room at the back of the house—the only room where the walls are untouched by graffiti. There’s a crowd and it takes a moment for Julianna to figure out what they are looking at.
She can’t see past the people blocking the doorway so she elbows her way in. There’s a woman standing in the middle of the room. She’s naked. Her body is painted blue—lighter at the top, darker at the bottom. There’s an enormous bucket at the woman’s feet and every so often she fills a ladle with water and dumps it on her head, letting the paint run down.
The crowd shifts. People watch the woman dump two or three ladles of water, then move on. But Julianna is transfixed.
There are people out there who would consider this woman hot. She’s skinny with good enough breasts and long hair. Her butt curves nicely and her stomach is tight. If she were in Julianna’s business, she’d have to do something about that bush between her legs. But no one’s looking at her that way—or if they are, they’re keeping it to themselves.
It’s not the crowd’s response that interests Julianna, it’s the woman herself, the way she’s standing there, letting herself be looked at but not giving herself away. Even with it all hanging out, it’s like she’s holding some part of herself back.
Julianna finds a place near the window. She’s been around naked women for years. She’s checked them out, compared, found faults—so many faults—but she’s never admired them.
A couple has moved into the space next to Julianna. They’re drunk or stoned or whatever it is that sets their voices at speaker volume. They stumble back and forth, rocked by their own laughter.
Julianna tries to see if the naked woman hears this but her face shows nothing. She just dumps another ladle of water.
“I know you’re not supposed to say what’s the point,” the woman says. “But what’s the point?”
“Power.” The answer flies from Julianna’s mouth before she can stop it.
The couple turn and stare at her, then back at each other. “Sure,” the man says. “Power.”
“I like your shirt,” the woman says, pointing at the sunset on Julianna’s chest.
Julianna gives her the kind of look she gives men who can’t pay.
“No, for real,” the woman says. “Where’d you get it?”
“The Santa Monica Pier,” Julianna says.
The couple leaves. The crowd changes. The naked woman has nearly run out of water. Her face, breasts, and torso are almost entirely cleaned of paint. The floor around her feet is streaked with blue.
She dumps two or three more ladles.
Soon Julianna is the only one watching. The woman rolls her neck to one side, picks up the towel from behind the bucket, and dries her hair, her face. She rubs her shoulders and stretches her back from side to side.
Julianna pulls out her phone.
Click.
The woman lifts her face from the towel and looks at Julianna.
Julianna tucks the phone away. “Sorry.”
“I just stood naked in a room for two hours. It’s not like I mind if you take a picture.” She wraps the towel around her chest and spins her hair into a topknot. “You’re into performance art?”
“Kinda,” Julianna says. Because she could be. You could call what she does, or did, performance art.
“Most people think it’s pointless.”
Julianna inclines her head, hoping that the woman won’t elaborate, won’t explain any further. Because Julianna knows what this means to her and she doesn’t want to be told different.
“I know you, don’t I?” the woman says.
“I don’t think so,” Julianna says.
“We’re neighbors.”
“On Forty-Seventh?” A lot of women come and go in the apartment building where Julianna used to crash, where her old life unfolded deep into the night. But she’s pretty sure she’s never seen this skinny white girl.
“You’re Julianna, right? I grew up next door on Twenty-N
inth Place.”
It takes Julianna a moment. “In the nice red house with all the plants.”
The woman taps the towel on her chest. “Marella—you don’t remember me, do you? I used to watch you from my window when I was little. You were always—”
She doesn’t finish. She doesn’t need to. They both know what Julianna was always doing.
Julianna does remember, kind of. A girl next door was a year or two younger. The fence between their houses must have been more like a fortress.
“As early as they could my parents sent me away for school, so I wasn’t around much. They were supercautious, borderline paranoid,” Marella says. “Pretty odd for people who moved from one war-torn country to the next before I was born.”
“Your mom doesn’t like me.”
“Anneke? She doesn’t like anyone.” Marella squeezes water from her hair.
“You live at home?”
“For now. Me and some of the other artists around here are looking for a studio or something. You should swing by sometime. You know, neighbors.”
“Maybe,” Julianna says. “Sure.”
“I got to wash this blue crap off,” Marella says. “Just knock on the door.”
Julianna watches Marella go, walking out into the party wrapped in her towel like she’s dressed to kill.
7.
JULIANNA’S STILL THINKING ABOUT THE PARTY—ABOUT THE mural with the flowing river and naked Marella dripping blue paint, her body getting cleaner and clearer as the party progressed. She’s on autopilot as she heads home, paying no attention to the streets as she wends her way from Harvard toward Western.
She catches herself before she almost trips on a paint bucket filled with flowers. A few dried bouquets lie next to the bucket. A shrine. Julianna doesn’t have to cast the light from her phone over the photo in the plastic frame to know that she’s standing in front of the lot where Kathy was discarded.
She squats down and runs a hand over the flowers in the bucket, sending a cascade of petals into the dirty water. She picks up the photo. It’s a blurry shot, pixelated, blown up from a low-res image that shows Kathy and her three kids dressed for a holiday. A mother, not a hooker, but still not the Kathy that Julianna remembers. The woman in the photo looks remote, drained, not filled with the crazed energy and wild laughter that Julianna caught in her own photos.
“You knew her, right?”
Julianna drops the photo.
There’s an arm on her shoulder. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Dorian. Of course. Always Dorian.
“What are you doing here?” Julianna asks.
“Same as you.”
“Not me. I’m not doing anything.” Because she wasn’t. She was just passing by. Kathy had nothing to do with it. “I’m just on my way back from somewhere.”
Dorian stoops to replace the photo next to the bucket. “But you’re here.”
“By accident. There was a party.” Julianna waves her hand in the direction of Harvard. “This artist thing.”
Dorian picks up the photo again and wipes the plastic frame with the hem of her shirt. “I used to see the two of you together. A long time ago.”
“No you didn’t.” That was a different Julianna. That was a young Jujubee.
“I did,” Dorian says. “She was wild, she made you wilder.”
Julianna runs her fingers through her hair. “So, I knew her.”
She knows what’s coming next—the questions, the suspicions, the connections.
Julianna holds up a hand to stop Dorian before she starts. “I knew her way back. But that’s it. Kathy and I danced together. And for your information, that’s what I do. I’m a dancer. Or I was a dancer. Because, well, that’s another story.” Julianna takes a breath, trying to catch up with her own thoughts. “Kathy—she was a street girl. It’s a different life.”
“Kathy and Lecia are both dead. And you knew them.”
“You think that’s something more than coincidence? I know lots of people. And lots of them have died. Not just Kathy and Lecia, but also Marianna who ODed and Stacy who had some kind of cancer and Little Juan who wrecked his car on the 10 and Jimmie who got knifed and—”
Dorian puts a hand on Julianna’s wrist to silence her. “Julianna, please.”
“Please what?”
“You need to be careful.”
Julianna laughs. She can’t help herself. Who is this woman who couldn’t even protect her own daughter to tell her to be careful?
Dorian tightens her grip on Julianna’s wrist. “He’s still out there.”
“Who?”
“The man who killed Kathy. The one who killed Lecia.”
Julianna jerks away, making Dorian stagger back. She’s startled by the violence of her own reaction. “Who says I’m not careful? Who says I’m any which way at all? I told you I’m a dancer. Was. How come you think otherwise? How come you think there’s something I need to be careful about?”
“Julianna, please.”
“Please what?” She cocks her head to one side. “Was it you who put that lady detective on me?”
“Lady detective?”
Julianna holds her hand to chest height. “This one.”
“Detective Perry?”
“Yeah, her. You sent her my way? Because I don’t like that shit. I don’t like LAPD messing with my business.” It’s easy to be hard with Dorian. It’s as if the woman demands it with her pained looks, her pathetic pleading eyes.
“No,” Dorian says.
“Bullshit,” Julianna says. It’s too much of a coincidence to be otherwise. Dorian down at the Southwest. That lady cop showing up at her place. “Let me make a suggestion. Mind your own business.” Dorian couldn’t help solve her own kid’s murder. There’s no way she should be nosing around Kathy’s.
“This is my business.”
God, the pain in Dorian’s voice. The fucking desperation. And underneath it all the same goddamned echo—if Lecia had lived, Julianna wouldn’t have gone wrong. Even worse—that Julianna had gone wrong, needed saving, and couldn’t save herself.
“Kathy was crazy. She worked crazy. And she picked up the wrong dude. Occupational hazard. Comes with working the streets. Don’t watch yourself you wind up dead in a place like that.” She nods toward the empty lot.
“Lecia didn’t work the streets.”
This is the moment when Julianna should apologize. But what she really wants to do is slap the pain off Dorian’s face. Instead she runs. And for once she’s wearing sneakers. She flees Kathy’s memorial, the dirty lot where she was either killed or tossed. This is a life to be left behind, a life gone, dusted.
But Dorian’s on her. Chasing her. Calling her name.
What a scene the two of them must be making running down Twenty-Seventh Place toward Western. A young Latina woman pursued by a middle-aged white lady. Not your average South Central commotion.
“Julianna!”
Julianna runs faster. So easy to escape in sneakers. The things street girls do to stack the deck against them—the alleys they work, the hours, and the shoes.
Was it the shoes that brought Kathy down? Or was she careless in another way?
Dorian is closing in. But Julianna’s got one final burst left. She accelerates. There’s a bus pulling out of a stop on Western. She flags it. The door opens and scoops her up, leaving Dorian on the sidewalk, panting.
Julianna doesn’t have change for the bus or a TAP card. What she does have she uses, tossing her hair, rolling her shoulders, sticking out her chest. She knows what the driver likes, what’s going to excuse her from paying her fare.
The bus climbs the incline from Adams toward the freeway, then rumbles over the 10 and farther north out of West Adams into Koreatown. Julianna has no plan, no place to go other than away from Dorian. She rides until Wilshire, then gets off, winking at the driver as she goes.
She crosses the street to the southbound bus stop. The usual banners hang from the streetlights, ad
vertising various cultural events Julianna has never paid attention to—museums, plays, stuff that takes place in a whole other city. But this time, they catch her eye. Because the picture hanging above Western is the same Larry Sultan photograph she tore out of LA Magazine and stashed in her purse. She steps out into the street to get a better look.
A car swerves, barely missing her.
Getthefuckout of the way, bitch.
Normally Julianna gives the driver a little bit of whothefuckareyoucalling bitch, bitch? Get back here and say it to my face.
But she doesn’t care. She’s staring at the streetlight on the eastern side of Western—another Larry Sultan photo of a porn set. Two women who’ve just finished with each other, tangled on the couch and laughing with the director. Julianna turns and looks south. The banners line both sides of Western, images of women and men in the downtime between takes.
She follows the photos south. The pictures of women not too different from her crew—their working lives made into art and displayed not just on these streets but in a museum. A whole exhibition of these women for the city to see and maybe even to admire.
The sickly smell of the fire hangs in the air. Particles of ash swirl like moths.
She walks home beneath the banners, crossing against lights, making cars squeal and honk. Ash from the wildfires is blowing down Western. Her neck aches from looking up at the scenes the photographer captured, the moments when the women are themselves—the stolen moments where the self slithers in. The very same moments that Julianna saves on her phone.
She comes to the final set of banners at the intersection of Western and Washington. She takes out her phone and turns the camera around. She puts on the flash and crouches down so the banner above is in the frame.
Click.
8.
HER PHONE IS GOING, BUZZING AND JUMPING ON THE dresser. Coco again. She’s been calling nonstop for forty-eight hours, which lets Julianna know exactly what her crew’s been up to and why she shouldn’t pick up.
