City of Angels

by Kristi Belcamino

“Stop. Help. Leave her alone.” My voice, small and hoarse and probably not loud enough for anyone to hear, echoed in the alley. “Stop,” I said, racing down the alley. I’d tried to sound mean and as tough as I could, but even I could hear the waver in my voice.

  But I must have startled the man because he bolted; leaving the girl huddled on the ground. My footsteps reverberated in the dark alley, which was lined with garbage cans and smelled like a toilet and rotten vegetables. When I got to the girl, she was curled in the fetal position, half lying in a puddle of something foul, clutching her stomach.

  “He took my backpack,” she said, sitting up. Fat tears streamed down her face. She looked around, head swinging from side to side and blurted, “My glasses!” She patted the pockets of her big flannel shirt. She pulled a pair of jeweled cat-eye granny glasses, but instead of putting them on, she clutched them to her chest and closed her eyes.

  I crouched beside her. “You okay?”

  She shook her head, her lank hair swinging in front of her eyes. “I need my backpack.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s long gone,” I said, standing and walking over to the end of the alley. The streets beyond were dark and empty. I was still jumpy, worried the man would return. I helped the girl to her feet, feeling her ribs through her shirt. When I put my arm around her, she winced.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “I need my backpack,” she said, looking up at me and biting her lower lip with small teeth. Then she mumbled, as if talking to herself. “He’s already gone for the night. He won’t be back again until tomorrow afternoon.”

  She wasn’t making sense.

  “I need my backpack.” She pulled at her hair. Her eyes darted around like a wild animal trying to escape. It reminded me of something. Or rather, someone. My mother. I yanked up the sleeve to the flannel shirt she was wearing as a jacket. Her arms were pale white—without a scratch.

  “Do you smoke it?”

  She looked down.

  “Was that your dealer in the black car? Was it Kozlak?”

  “He says after nine it’s too dangerous around here.” She squinted up at me, not answering my question. “There’s a guy under the Fourth Street Bridge. He’ll have something. I have to go there.”

  She scrambled to her feet. I got right in front of her. I waited until she looked up at me. “You need to answer me. This is very important. Was that the director in that black car?”

  She gave me a blank look. “I need money. I need to go under the Fourth Street Bridge. Help me. Please.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “I can help you, but I’m not going to help you get high. And not until you tell me if that man in the car is Kozlak, the movie director.”

  “Why would you think that old disgusting man is down here?” she yelled, spitting the words out angrily. She turned and stomped down the alley.

  I knew I should let her walk away. I kept telling myself to run far away from this girl. She’s trouble. But I knew I couldn’t. I’d bring the girl home with me. But only for one night. I’d figure out what to do with her in the morning. Maybe not the police station, but something. There had to be some shelter or something she could go to. I ran to catch up to her. I took her arm and gently pulled her back.

  “You’re coming with me.”

  She didn’t resist.

  As we walked, I told myself again—it was only for one night.

  Back at the American Hotel, I heated a can of SpaghettiOs on a hot plate I’d found at the thrift store the other day. I’d also picked up two towels, a washcloth, and a few items of clothing.

  The girl sat with her back to the wall and shoveled in big bites with a plastic fork. When she finished, she dug into my cigarette pack and lit one with an expert flick of her wrist. I decided to keep my trap shut. Smoking was the least of her issues right then.

  I sent her down the hall to the bathroom with a towel, a large t-shirt, shampoo, and a bar of soap. While she was gone I paced. I’d been looking for the girl for days, but now that I found her I didn’t know what to do with her. This was such a bad idea. Ripples of apprehension ran through me.

  It wasn’t like I could save her. I couldn’t save anyone. I’d proven that. I couldn’t save my baby sister from dying. I couldn’t save my mother. I could barely save myself. I had no reason to want to save this girl. Deep down inside, I knew part of it was because she was the same age my sister would have been. Besides, letting her stay one night wouldn’t kill me. Tomorrow, I’d figure out what to do with her.

  I paced and smoked waiting for her to return. The sound of a motorcycle starting up filtered into my window. I peeked out. It was that band boy. A tall mini-skirted girl with a pixie cut was on the bike behind him, her arms wrapped around his chest. I stared until they turned the corner.

  After more than thirty minutes, when I was starting to worry she had run off, the girl came back from the shower freshly scrubbed with the large t-shirt hanging to her knees. Cleaned up, she looked even younger than twelve. She was shivering. It wasn’t just a chill from her wet hair. I wrapped my unzipped sleeping bag around her. She looked wary, ready to bolt any second. Easy questions first.

  “Rain, how long have you been on the streets?” It was the first time I hadn’t thought of her as “the girl.”

  She looked down, thinking, her nose scrunched. “A month?”

  That meant she was living on the streets before I saw her at the beach house.

  “What happened?” I said. “Where’s your family?”

  Stretching her legs out in front of her and staring at the wall, she told her story without any emotion, as if reciting something she’d memorized.

  She’d lived with her grandmother for as long as she could remember. After finding her grandmother’s body in their Santa Cruz home last month, she fled with her backpack and grandmother’s glasses. Worried about being put in a foster home, Rain went looking for her parents. They were living with a bunch of other homeless hippies in an area of Santa Cruz dubbed Tent City because transients camped there and called it home. I asked Rain what her parents were like.

  “They did their own thing, you know,” she said, still not meeting my eyes. “Smoked weed…just chilled out most of the time. I kept asking if they could help me find a ride to school, but they kept forgetting.”

  I asked why she wasn’t living with them anymore.

  “They left. I was getting some firewood down by the river and when I got back, the tent was gone. Stan from one of the other tents said they took off to Cabo San Lucas or something.”

  She said it so matter-of-factly, without malice, that my heart broke right then and there.

  The other people in Tent City raised enough money for Rain to buy a bus ticket to Union Station in downtown L.A. In her grandmother’s old address book, she’d found an L.A. address for her mother’s sister. But when she got to the house, she was told her aunt had died years ago. Not knowing where to go or what to do, she made her way back to Union Station and slept in the bus station that night and the next. During the day, she’d walk over to Little Tokyo and beg for money from Japanese businessmen.

  One night the Big Shot Director pulled up to the bus depot in a limo, offering her food and new clothes and promises to make her a movie star. But when she got to his beach house, he kept her locked in a room. She never saw him, just watched TV all day. He would occasionally unlock the door and hand her a tray of food without saying anything except, “Eat up. Boys don’t like skinny girls.” The night I saw her, Rain had been there four days. She had escaped her room that night for the first time by jamming little pieces of paper in the lock mechanism.

  “Let’s go to the cops,” I said. “They’ll arrest that guy. You can’t hold a kid prisoner. They can help you, help find you a place to live.”

  She drew her knees up to her chest and put her chin on them. “I’d rather die than go to a foster home. I’ll run away and go right back to the streets.”

  She lifted her head, eyes unwavering. She was
serious. Her lips were pressed tightly together and her arms were crossed. Her gaze never left mine. In the back of my mind, I knew going to the cops probably was a bad idea for me, too. Even though my dad didn’t want me, I was technically a runaway, too. Maybe she was right. A foster home would be hell.

  She started itching her arms and clutched her stomach. “I don’t feel good. I need some more.”

  “When did you start smoking heroin?”

  She shrugged. “When I got to Kozlak’s house. He gave it to me.”

  Fury rose in me, making my hands clench into fists. With the anger came something else. The girl’s desperation reminded me too much of things I’d pushed deep down inside.

  “How’d you get it after that? Since we ran away? The guy in the black car?”

  Wariness spread across her face. She eyed the door.

  I stood and opened it for her. “I don’t do drugs and I’m not going to let someone who does drugs stay with me.” I raised an eyebrow and stood in the open doorway. “Either you try to kick or you leave right now.”

  I waited, watching as she picked at the blue polish on her toenails. Pressing her lips together, she nodded and scooted back against the wall.

  “You’ve got five minutes to think about it.”

  I told her to wait and went down the hall to that guy Danny’s room. His door was open and a sheet of paper was tacked to it.

  My cheeks are numb

  I’ve been drinking too much

  My brain’s numb

  I’ve been thinking too much

  My heart’s numb

  I’ve been loving too much.

  I peered in the open doorway. He was pecking away at his typewriter. When I knocked, he gestured for me to come in.

  “What you doing?”

  He stopped typing.

  “Poetry, man. Keeps me sane.”

  He looked at me, waiting.

  I blurted it all out. “There’s this girl. And she’s twelve and homeless and hooked on heroin.”

  He swiveled the chair to face me.

  “She’s in my room. I told her she can stay the night but she needs to get off drugs. Some guy stole her stash. She said something about going under the Fourth Street Bridge to get more.”

  Danny nodded his head. “Under the bridge—that’s where all the homeless junkies live. It’s a goddamn miniature city. She can’t go by herself. Shit, I wouldn’t go there alone if you paid me. You say you want to help her off the junk, huh?” He stood and paced as he talked. “Takes about three days and it ain’t pretty. You gotta basically babysit her the whole time. Make sure she doesn’t get dehydrated and shit. Hold her hand and all that stuff. She’ll freak on you. It ain’t easy, my friend.”

  “Three days?” I turned to leave. “I barely know her. I can’t do that. I have to work tomorrow.”

  “I guess you’d better kick her to the curb, then,” Danny said, stopping his pacing and staring at me. “Unless you stay with her, she’s gonna go find some more in the morning.”

  “Well, she can’t. She doesn’t have any money. She doesn’t have anything. I told you she got mugged in Little Tokyo.”

  Danny’s face grew serious. “There are other ways to pay for the junk, chica.”

  His words sent me spiraling back to the abandoned house with my mother’s claw-like grip on my blouse, ripping it until my pink lace bra showed, her hoarse whisper in my ear, the frantic look in her eyes. I knew all about the other ways.

  I could try to help this girl get off drugs, which could take more than one night, or I could send her back to the streets right then and there. I’d left my mother in that abandoned house. This time was going to be different. I had no choice.

  “Will you sit with her for a few minutes?” I asked Danny. None of us had phones in our rooms so I’d have to walk to the restaurant to ask for time off.

  Danny grabbed a deck of cards and we headed to my room. Before I left, outside my room, he grabbed my arm.

  “Hey, home skillet. You said you don’t really know this girl. And while it’s cool and all, why are you helping this girl?” He didn’t say it in an accusatory voice, more like a matter-of-fact, trying-to-figure-me-out way.

  Danny watched me closely, eyes fixed on my face.

  For a long few seconds we stared at one another. Finally, I shrugged and turned away. I couldn’t possibly explain it to him since I didn’t exactly know why myself.

  A girl with a huge afro and kohl-rimmed eyes sat sentry in front of my door when I got back to the American Hotel. When she gave me a shy smile I recognized her as that waitress from the first night at the bar—the one kissing on that goateed guy.

  “Don’t you work at Al’s?” I said.

  “Yeah, I work there a few nights and at the café in the mornings.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Eve. I’m keeping an eye on your girl while Danny runs to the store to get some Gatorade. Last time I checked she was sleeping. That’s good.”

  “Thanks,” I said, surprised this girl was spending her night helping a complete stranger.

  “No worries,” she said, smiling. Up close I could see a light dusting of freckles across her nose. It was just the thing that propelled her looks from pretty to stunning. She would be an amazing portrait subject.

  “I heard you just moved onto our floor,” she said. “I also heard you got at least two names: Nikki and Delilah. Now, I like them both, but I guess I’d rather have you pick one name for me to call you. Otherwise, it will be too confusing for me. I’m just a simple gal.”

  Heat flushed my cheeks. “How about Nikki?”

  Her eyes crinkled with a smile. “Girl, you don’t know how glad I am another woman moved in up here. Now there are three of us on this floor. You, Sadie, and me. I’m a couple doors down from you, in four oh five. I was starting to think the entire floor was going to be all guys because Sadie keeps talking about moving to the west side as soon as her boyfriend leaves his wife. We girls need to stick together.”

  Eve told me a little about Sadie. Even though Sadie’s married boyfriend was a jerk, he’d fixed up Sadie’s tiny box of a room nicely.

  “She’s got a fancy bed, bookshelves, a little desk, even an air conditioner in the window. It’s like a little girl’s room, all flouncy and stuff.”

  “Trippy.” The Barbie waitress had her own mini dream house? I chewed on my lip trying to imagine that.

  We talked a bit about the other people who lived on the fourth floor. I sat up straighter when she mentioned the boys in the band. They worked as bike messengers, Eve said.

  “Wholesome farm boys from the Midwest. Whatever they feed those boys on the farm…whew. Let’s just say they are the most enthusiastic boys I’ve ever met. I didn’t go to bed last night. I haven’t slept yet, if you know what I mean.”

  I was a little embarrassed. I wasn’t sure if it was her candid talk about sex or if it was imagining the three of them in bed together. I got out a cigarette, offered her one, and tried to change the subject.

  I lit her cigarette. “Can I take your picture someday?” She nodded, but it was her turn to blush.

  “How did you end up here, in the American Hotel?” I exhaled as I asked my question.

  “I’m just a girl from Inglewood. Nothing special. I’m hanging around here until I find the love of my life and then I’m going to move into a little house somewhere on the east side and have two point five kids and be a housewife.” She smiled, looking down.

  “No offense, but that sounds like hell to me.”

  “You’re funny. I like you.”

  Danny returned with his electric guitar dangling from a strap around his neck like an oversized necklace and a cigarette hanging from his lips. His black eyes were somber.

  “What’d your boss say?”

  “He told me I couldn’t save someone from themselves,” I said, and rolled my eyes. “But he gave me the time off.”

  “He’s right. It’s bad, man,” he said. “That girl is hurting. Too messed up to even
play Crazy Eights with me. She puked at first and then stuff started coming out both ends. Eve barely got her down to the bathroom in time.”

  I gave Eve a grateful smile.

  “I don’t think that little girl’s got anything else in her anymore,” Eve said.

  Danny handed me a bottle of lime green Gatorade and told me to make Rain take tiny sips every once in a while so she didn’t get dehydrated.

  Eve got up to leave. I swallowed a lump of something that seemed stuck in my throat. These two strangers had gone out of their way to help me.

  Danny gave a lopsided grin. “Everything cool now? We’re going to head down to Al’s for a cerveza. Think you’ll be okay? We can check back later.”

  I wanted to beg them to stay with me and tell them I was scared to go into that room alone and needed their help, but instead, I nodded. I waited until they disappeared down the hall before I cracked the door. A dark mass was huddled in the middle of my futon mattress. Someone had brought in a few candles, which flickered from the door opening and sent eerie shadows bouncing around the room. I closed my eyes. My feet felt heavy, as if it were impossible to take a step inside that room.

  “Nikki?” Rain’s voice was scratchy.

  Her voice jolted me from my daze. I knelt beside the futon, brushing her hair back. “I’m right here.”

  She surprised me by grabbing the collar of my leather jacket and pulling herself up to a sitting position. She drew herself close to me, inches away from my face. Her eyes glittered in the candlelight, huge dark pools. I’d never seen such massive pupils in my life. They almost seemed to absorb all the white in her eyes.

  “Please help me,” she hissed. Bony arms clutched me, all the tiny blond hairs on her arm standing straight up. Sweat was dripping down the sides of her face and her nose was running. The way her tiny fingers clutched my arm and the haunted look in her eyes threw me back almost two years to the night I found my mom in that abandoned house.

  Closing my eyes to shut out the memory only brought it spinning to the forefront: the dark clouds that day, the distant wailing of a baby, the stench of my mother’s breath, her once manicured fingernails, now yellow and jagged, ripping the necklace off my neck, begging me for help. Telling me that only I could save her. That if I walked out that door, she would die. And then—how I turned my back and walked out.