Walking Alone

by Bentley Little

  Johnny suddenly stood. “I have to go,” he told Susan.

  “What?” She stumbled as she got up from her kneeling position, and he took her arm. “Go where? What are you talking about?”

  He couldn’t explain it, and she wouldn’t believe him even if he did.

  “I’ll be gone for a day or so—” he said.

  Now she grabbed his arm, pulling him out of the chapel. “What? You’ll be gone? With Angelina here?”

  “I’m doing this for Angelina.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Just trust me.”

  “Trust you? Johnny…”

  The non-conversation continued out of the hospital and all the way out to the parking lot, where he took both of her arms in his and looked into her face before getting into his car. “I can’t explain,” he said. “And it would sound crazy if I did. But I might know a way to help Angelina.”

  “You’re not making any sense!”

  “I know,” he said. “Watch her while I’m gone.”

  “Johnny!”

  Then he was in the car and driving.

  ****

  The Orozcos were long gone. He learned from neighbors that the family had not had an easy time of it, that the girl—

  Angelina

  —had died, and that one of the boys was in jail for drugs. The parents had lost their house paying for his defense. No one seemed to know what had happened to the other boy.

  He had returned to East L.A. to see if the neighborhood god could cure his daughter, but after hearing about the Orozcos, the thought occurred to him that it was because of his experiences with the god that Angelina had been stricken. He didn’t know about those other kids from other streets, but the lives of the people he knew seemed to have been ruined. It was as if they had all been punished for believing in the god. Maybe the Christian God, the one they were supposed to have been worshipping at mass, had been angry at their defection and had penalized them for it.

  Or maybe it was a psychic tradeoff. Maybe the small god had extracted what was good from their lives, providing them with the gifts they asked for, the wishes they requested, while leaving behind darkness and emptiness. If the first halves of their lives had been weighted toward happiness, the back ends were made up of misery. Angelina’s cancer could be the payment for that trip to Disneyland and that new bike and the good grades.

  There was no way to know, but whatever the truth, he was not afraid of repercussions. At this point, if Angelina could be cured, he would do whatever it took, no matter what the consequences.

  Leaving his car parked on the street in front of what had been his grandmother’s house, he walked the old familiar route. It was loquat season, and Abuela’s old neighborhood, even the blocks succumbing to gentrification, smelled of the fruit. The abandoned house was long gone, replaced by a taqueria, but he had no doubt that the god was here somewhere. He could feel its presence, a sense of hopefulness in the air as he passed a group of children playing on a swing set in a new small park, a tangible counterforce to the blankness he felt when he walked by St. Mary’s.

  Some of the kids who’d joined the Orozcos in the abandoned house must still live around here as grownups, must have inherited their parents’ homes, and Johnny walked slowly in the direction from which those other kids had come, looking for faces that might be older yet familiar. He examined the faces of men mowing lawns, women tending flowers, couples manning garage sales. He walked into beauty salons and ethnic markets, but after a while he’d seen so many people that he wasn’t sure he would be able to recognize anyone.

  Then he saw an overweight woman with a noticeable birthmark above her right eyebrow.

  She looked like an adult version of a chubby girl with a birthmark who had always wished for her parents to stay together, though Johnny remembered Roberto saying once that there was no indication her parents had any plans to split up.

  He stopped in front of the woman. “Hello,” he said.

  She looked at him suspiciously. “Yeah?”

  “I’m Johnny. My Abuela used to live next to the Orozcos.”

  The woman tried to have no expression, but the flicker in her eyes told him that she knew exactly who he was.

  “Do you remember that house we used to go to on Sundays instead of going to mass?”

  She shook her head, attempted to step past him.

  He blocked her way. “I need to find it,” he said, lowering his voice. “I need to find him.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He was getting frustrated. “My daughter has cancer. She’s going to die. I need her to be cured.”

  “My daughter is dead!” she spat back at him. “And so is my husband!” She pushed past him. “I don’t want to talk to you!”

  Johnny watched her go. He understood her pain—it was his pain, too—but he refused to give up. Time was wasting, and rather than pausing to formulate a coherent plan, he immediately started walking up and down neighborhood streets, knocking on doors, hoping to run into someone else he remembered or who remembered him. The search was fruitless. No one looked even remotely familiar, and after several hours, he took a break and bought himself a Coke at a convenience store. Standing outside with his drink, he was trying desperately to think of what he could do next, when he realized that tomorrow was Sunday.

  Sunday.

  He felt a small surge of hope. If the loquat god—or any god—was still around, Sunday was the day it would be visited. All he had to do was look for a group of kids who were dressed for church but not going to church—and follow them to their destination. But he would have to be careful, discreet. It was a god of children, and he was no longer a child. They would not let him in. He had no doubt that if he could get in, he would be able to petition the god for a cure, but he remembered how carefully he and the Orozcos had been to keep their visits secret and shield all knowledge of the god from any adult.

  He spent the night in a cheap and rather frightening motel, calling Susan from his cell to make sure that there was no news about Angelina. Everything back home was status quo, which was the best he could hope for under the circumstances, and in the morning, he awoke early, filled up the tank of his car with gas, and cruised slowly up and down the streets of Abuela’s old neighborhood. The few people he saw on the sidewalks were either homeless or turned out to be on their way to St. Mary’s or a Korean church around the corner. Still, he refused to give up, and eventually found what he was looking for—a well-dressed boy and girl, brother and sister most likely, walking toward St. Mary’s.

  And then past it.

  He parked the car halfway down the next block and got out, remaining far behind but following the brother and sister down the sidewalk, trying to appear casual and not draw attention to himself, aware of how this would look to an outsider. In his mind, he kept going over various scenarios and possible approaches, ways that he could get in to see the current incarnation of the god without the kids calling for help and having him arrested as a stalker and a pedophile.

  Unfortunately, it turned out that the brother and sister were just on their way home, maybe from another local church, maybe from a relative’s house. They went into the front unit of a duplex, speaking excited Spanish to a careworn woman who greeted them in the doorway.

  Some sixth sense caused her to look up at him as he passed by, her eyes narrowing suspiciously, and he strode past purposefully, as though he had a specific destination and was late for a meeting.

  Afraid to pass the apartment again, he walked all the way around the block and dejectedly back to the car. The morning was a bust, and he began to wonder if belief in the god had just died out over the years.

  So what if it had?

  That didn’t mean it couldn’t be resurrected.

  The thought instantly galvanized him. Maybe the neighborhood kids were no longer sneaking off to worship their own homemade deity, but maybe he didn’t really need them. He had belief and desire and need enough to pow
er up a panoply of gods. On an impulse, he drove a mile or so east to where gentrification had not yet encroached. The homes were rundown, their windows protected by wrought iron, the brick walls shielding their back yards tagged with spray-painted graffiti. This was the East L.A. he remembered, and he cruised around for a while, up and down side streets, looking for something that would suit his purposes.

  He found it finally on a block where several homes had been torn down and the rest were marked for demolition: an empty house that had been gutted by fire. In the back yard, next to the doorless garage at the end of the driveway, he could see a loquat tree full of fruit.

  Johnny pulled next to the curb and got out of the car, walking straight into the back yard of the abandoned house, not caring if anyone saw him, thinking only of Angelina in her bed in the hospital. Most of the loquats were high on the tree, but the branches were thin, and he leapt upon the lowest ones, breaking them off and leaping aside as entire sections fell onto the dead brown grass. Loquats grew in clumps, and there were literally hundreds of the small yellow-orange fruits attached to the branches. Squatting down, he began picking off the clumps, throwing them into a pile on his right. When he had pulled down two more long branches and it seemed that he had what he needed, he began carrying armloads of the clumped fruit into the burned house, settling on a room with only one window that faced the side of the lot.

  Once all of the loquats had been brought inside, he knelt down and started squishing them between his fingers, letting the sticky mash fall in front of him.

  He molded the mashed fruit into a vaguely humanoid form.

  Though it looked only glancingly like the god he remembered, he gazed upon the figure and believed in it.

  He just needed a girl now, and here it was going to get tricky. He thought of trying to pick one up through a dating app or even calling for a young female Uber driver and then paying her extra to do what he needed, but those results could be iffy and would leave a traceable trail. He remembered Arturo’s sister, the first girl he’d seen act as handmaiden to the god, and he decided to find a similarly slutty-looking teenager if he could. Sunday probably wasn’t the greatest day for it, but he went up to Whittier Boulevard, where stores and fast food restaurants were, then to various parks, searching for a girl who would fit the bill.

  There were actually quite a few teenagers who might suffice, but nearly all of them were wearing pants. He finally found one wearing a babydoll dress standing outside a liquor store and smoking. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen. “Hey,” she said when she saw him walking up. “Do you think you could buy me a beer?”

  “No,” he told her. “But I could use a little help with something, if you’d be willing. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “You want me to suck it?” she asked in a voice that tried to be seductive but missed by a mile.

  “No,” he said. “I need you to do something else.”

  “I won’t do—”

  “It’s not sex stuff,” he promised her.

  She dropped her cigarette and frowned, starting to get suspicious. “What do you want, then?”

  “I just need you to go with me to a house. Literally, you will just stand there for a few minutes, then I’ll drive you back here. I’ll pay you…” He took out his wallet, looked to see how much money he had. “Forty dollars.”

  “Just for standing there.”

  “Right.”

  She seemed confused. “Are you going to take pictures, or…”

  Johnny was starting to get frustrated. How much time did Angelina have left? “If you don’t want to do it, I’ll find someone else.” He turned, starting back toward the car.

  “I’ll do it,” the girl said, hurrying after him.

  He kept walking. “Good. Get in.”

  She talked nervously as he drove back to the house, her breath smelling of cigarette smoke, but he ignored her, not listening, filled with a hope he had not had since hearing his daughter’s diagnosis.

  “Almost there,” he said, turning onto the nearly empty street.

  “You live here?”

  “Oh, this isn’t my house.”

  The girl was suddenly silent.

  He pulled into the driveway. “We’re going in there,” he told her.

  She looked frantically around at the bulldozed lots and condemned houses, the color draining out of her face. “Oh my God! You’re going to kill me!” She already had her phone out and was desperately tapping on the screen.

  He took the phone from her hand, throwing it in the backseat. “I’m not going to kill you.”

  “I knew there was something wrong with you! I should’ve trusted my instincts!”

  “All you have to do is stand there. Like I said.”

  “That app I hit calls the cops! They know where I am! They’re coming for me!”

  “Then we’d better do this fast,” he said. He didn’t believe her, but in the state she was in, it was going to be hard to get her to cooperate, and the quicker they got this over the better. It occurred to him that he should just take her back and find someone else, someone more willing.

  But he was so close.

  And he wanted to get this done.

  “Let’s go,” he said, getting out.

  He half-expected her to run away, but she got out of the passenger side and walked in front of him, cowed. He led her through the open side door, through what had once been the kitchen, to the room where the god awaited. From outside, far away but getting closer, he could hear the sound of sirens.

  She’d been telling the truth.

  The girl was crying. “What do you want me to do? Please don’t kill me. Please!”

  “I told you, I’m not going to hurt you.”

  The sirens were louder now.

  “See that…thing?” he said, pointing to the figure he had made. “I want you to stand over it.”

  “And do what?”

  “Just stand there for a minute. Then it’ll all be over.”

  “It’ll all be over? I’ll be dead?” She started screaming. “Help!” she cried. “Help!”

  He slapped her. “Stop it!”

  The sirens were nearly here.

  “Stand over it!” he ordered.

  The girl was still crying, but she did as she was told.

  Maybe it wouldn’t work. Maybe the figure needed to set awhile. The loquats definitely hadn’t been there long enough to attract gnats. Did it need the gnats?

  Cars pulled up outside, at least two of them, sirens cutting off at the peak of their volume. Flashing red and blue lights entered through assorted broken windows, reflecting off the charred walls.

  Was the girl still crying? Or was she laughing? He couldn’t tell.

  Police were shouting incomprehensible orders, though whether to each other or at him, Johnny wasn’t sure.

  The girl’s skirt suddenly billowed upward.

  Laughing. She was definitely laughing.

  He heard footsteps in the front room, accompanied by loud voices.

  It was now or never.

  He sat down hard on the burnt floor, took a deep breath and addressed the figure.

  “God—” he began.

  THE MAID

  (2016)

  “I think the maid forgot to give us conditioner,” Shauna announced, picking up the little plastic bottles from the bathroom sink counter and reading the labels. “There’s shampoo and bath gel and lotion, but I don’t see any conditioner.”

  “Damn it,” Chapman said. “You pay top price to stay at a resort, you’d think they’d get these things right.”

  “We’re not paying top price,” Shauna pointed out. “It’s their summer deal.”

  “That’s not the point. You even get conditioner at Motel 6, for Christ’s sake.” He picked up the phone, dialed 0. “Listen,” he said. “This is Chapman Davis in Room 312. The maid didn’t leave us any hair conditioner. Could you send someone over to bring us some?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Thanks.”


  “It’s not that big a deal,” Shauna said.

  “Then why did you mention it?”

  “It was just something I noticed. I didn’t know you were going to start making phone calls and throwing your weight around.”

  “It’s the principal of the thing. We’re staying here for three nights, damn it. We should get what we pay for.” He turned away from her to make sure everything else in the room was satisfactory. The view, of course, was amazing. They’d asked for the room Jack Donaldson had told them about, and it overlooked both the lower pool and one of the gardens. Beyond that, the city of Tucson stretched out below them, and on a clear day like today, from this vantage point on the hillside, they could see almost all the way to Mexico. The room itself was spacious and elegantly furnished, with a flat screen TV in the sitting area and another on the wall in front of the bed. He opened the refrigerator: well-stocked. He tested the televisions: both worked. He checked for wi-fi: instantaneous. There was even a tray with a welcome note and two complimentary bottles of Perrier on top of the dresser.

  All they had to do was wait for the conditioner to be delivered and they’d be set.

  He leaned back on the bed and switched the channel to CNN, while Shauna continued unpacking the bathroom stuff. He half-hoped that she’d see him lying down, notice that he was aroused and…take care of things, but when she didn’t, when she sat down in the sitting area, picked up a glossy lifestyle magazine off the table and started to read, he decided it was just as well. He’d be able to save his energy for tonight.

  After three sets of commercials and three false promises of “breaking news after the break,” Chapman sat up, annoyed. “Where’s our conditioner?” he said.