'Yvonne,' Niki said, drinking her beer.
'Eat for two,' Rena said.
Niki and Rena went off somewhere in the van. Yvonne lay on one side, asleep on the couch, sucking her thumb. The white cat curled against her back. There was an empty bag of Doritos on the table. The TV was still on, local news. A helicopter crash on the 10. People crying, reporters interviewing them on the shoulder of the freeway. Blood and confusion.
I went out onto the porch. The rain had stopped, the earth smelled damp and green. Two girls my age walked by with their kids, one on a tricycle, the other in a pink baby carriage. They stared at me, plucked eyebrows rendering their faces expressionless. A powder-blue American car from the sixties, somebody's pride and joy, all shining chrome and white upholstery, roared by, the engine deep and explosive, and we watched it rise to the top of Ripple Street.
A crack opened in the clouds to the west, and a golden light washed over the distant hills. Down here, the street was dark already, it would get dark early here, the hillside across the freeway blocked the light, but there was sunlight at the high end of the street and on the hills, gilding the domes of the observatory, which perched on the edge of the mountain like a cathedral.
I walked toward the light, past businesses and little houses advertising child care, two-story fourplexes with wooden stairs and banana trees and corn growing in the yard, the Dolly Madison bakery. An electronics shop. A movie prop outlet, Cadillac Jack's, a Conestoga wagon in its fenced lot. Salazar Mazda repair shop on the corner, where Fletcher Drive crossed the river.
From the bridge, the view opened to the river, warmed in the last light like a gift, streaming between bruised gray clouds. The river ran under the road, heading for Long Beach. I rested my arms on the damp concrete railing and looked north toward the hills and the park. The water flowed through its big concrete embankments, the bottom covered with decades of silt and boulders and trees. It was returning to its wild state despite the massive sloped shore, a secret river. A tall white bird fished among the rocks, standing on one leg like in a Japanese woodcut. Fifty views of the L.A. River.
A horn honked and a man shouted 'Give me a piece of that' out of a car window. But it didn't matter, nobody could stop on the bridge anyway. I wondered if Claire was here, if she could see me. I wished she could see this crane, the river bottom. It was beautiful and I didn't deserve it, but I couldn't help lifting my face to the last golden light.'
THE NEXT DAY Rena woke us before dawn. I was dreaming I was drowning, a shipwreck in the North Atlantic, it was just as well to wake up. The room was still dark, and freezing cold. 'Workers of the world, arise,' Rena said, banishing our dreams with the smoke of her black cigarette. 'You got nothing to lose but Visa Card, Happy Meal, Kotex with Wings.' She turned on the light.
Yvonne groaned in the other bed, picked up a shoe and threw it halfheartedly at Rena. 'Fuckin' Thursday.'
We dressed with our backs to each other. Yvonne's heavy breasts and lush thighs were startling in their beauty. I saw Matisse in her lines, I saw Renoir. She was only my age, but by comparison I had the body of a child.
'Gonna report that puta to the INS. Kick her ass back to Russia.' She pawed through the piles of clothes, pulled out a turtleneck, sniffed it, threw it back. I stumbled down the hall to wash my face, brush my teeth. When I came out, she was already in the kitchen, pouring coffee into a battered Thermos, stuffing handfuls of saltines in a bag.
In the cold darkness, clouds of white vapor escaped from the tailpipe of the Ford panel van, ghostly in its whitewash, which didn't entirely conceal the gray bondo underneath. In the big captain's chair, Rena Grushenka smoked a black Sobranie with a gold tip and sipped coffee from a Winchell's slotted cup. Rolling Stones played on the tape deck. Her high-heeled boots tapped time on the dash.
Yvonne and I climbed into the back and closed the doors. It was dark and smelled of moldy carpet squares. We huddled together on the ripped-out carseat against the far wall. Niki got in the front and Rena slammed the three-on-the-tree shift into place. 'Find 'em, don't grind 'em.' Niki lit a Marlboro, coughed wetly and spat out the window.
'I quit smokin' for the baby, but what's the damn point,' Yvonne said.
Rena found first, and we lurched into the stillness of Ripple Street. The orange streetlights illuminated the quiet neighborhood, the air perfumed caramel and vanilla by the night shift at the Dolly Madison bakery. I could hear the trucks pulling up to the loading bays as we ascended from the river bottom. A deep truck horn honked, and Rena fluffed her tangled black hair. Even at five in the morning, her shirt was already unbuttoned, her cleavage heightened severely by a Fredericks push-up bra. She sang along with the tape in her good alto voice, about how some girls give you diamonds, some girls Cadillacs. Her Jagger impersonation was impressive.
We turned left on Fletcher, past the Mazda repair and the Star Strip, our van rattling like cans in the moist darkness. We went under the 5 and crossed Riverside Drive, fragrant with hamburgers from Rick's. She turned left at the Astro coffee shop, its parking lot half-full of police cars. She spat three times out the window as we passed by.
Then we began to climb, up into a neighborhood of narrow streets, houses crowded along steep slopes wall to wall, stucco duplexes and nondescript boxes, occasionally an old Spanish-style. Stairs on the uphill side, carports on the downhill. I knelt between the captain's seats for the view. I could see the whole river valley from here — headlights of cars on the 5 and the 2, the sleeping hills of Glassell Park and Elysian Heights dotted with lights. Vacant lots full of wild fennel, ferny and licorice-smelling in the dewy darkness. The smell mingled with the mold of the van and cigarettes and the reek of leftover alcohol. Rena flicked her cigarette out the window.
Yvonne snapped on the interior light and flipped through a water-bloated Seventeen magazine. The blond girl on the cover smiled bravely, although clearly dismayed to have found herself in such circumstances. I looked at the magazine over her shoulder. I could never figure out where they found all those happy, pimpleless teens. Yvonne paused at a picture of a girl and a boy riding a fat horse bareback on the beach. 'Did you ever ride a horse?'
'No. I went to the racetrack once.' Medea's Pride at five-to-one. His hand on her waist. 'You?'
'I been on the pony ride at Griffith Park,' Yvonne said.
'Over there,' Rena pointed.
A gray texturecoat house had black plastic bags plumped next to the trash. Rena stopped and Niki jumped
