A. In a Southern California dysburb, why do people click the ol' tenant issue garage door opener and head out in the middle of the night? Job in Barstow, hope to retire to a trailer on Lake Elsinore one of these days?

Cop sirens. Multiple cop sirens.

Is that a man bashing in a pasteboard door, or a train, amplified by night and El Nino rain clouds?

She's too deep in for coyotes.

The woman resettled herself on her best friend's loveseat, her legs unwilling to be comfortable. Second gen Californian, Dustbowl stock, away nine, ten years—one flying visit paid eight years back, attendance on a comfort funeral. That was her old best friend, dead, life bled all over his upholstery on a freeway off-ramp, special enough to mourn, even when she was deep in therapy.

B. Flying required three Bloody Mary's to erase the memory of an Aero Mexico 747 plowing the flight pattern neighborhood two blocks east of her final foster home. All aboard lost and raining fingers, twelve, maybe seventeen fireballed to death on the ground. She hated flying.

Except.

Over the desert, this time. After years of lush, escapist New England green, her spine thrilled to the folded, pinyone napped, arroyo-veined desert. Face against the window, she absorbed the dry intensity of spotless sun on her skin. Like the fear had never been, she'd remembered flying.

The seat 10D nurse's aide from Ohio had tried to chat with her, certain another woman alone wanted to talk. "Hello, where are you headed?"

Why were so many nurses fat?

She'd let the silence last; leaned across the empty middle seat.

"Babylon."

The nurse smiled without opening her lips.

"I love the Mojave, the mountains red with rust, the alkaline flats. They're . . .empty." She unfocused her eyes, sure from mirror practice the crackle-glaze blue appeared mad.

The nurse's aide shuffled open the award-winning in-flight magazine, the article on Tom Cruise at home. She thought, waiting out her new best friend's drive time: Those aren't coyotes, are they, why am I in L.A.? And unrolled the guest futon.

C. Knock, knock, knock.

Actually, metallic clank and shiver of screen door. The woman startled. The pasteboard door hung angled open to catch the breeze. The screen door was unlocked.

A cholo boy stood outside, dressed in a black shearling jacket, the almost pompadour 'doo, carrying a clipboard; from the kitchen-dinette, the clock glared 9:02.

"Uh...uh," she said. The sticky ooze fear of teenage boys pooled on her tongue.

"I'm collecting sponsors to keep kids off drugs," he said, sans pre-amble.

"Can I—I'm from outoftown—just give a, a donation?" She fingered the roll of ones in her pocket. Call it another travel tip.

"See it says 'NO DONATIONS'?" The boy pointed to inch-high bold letters on the dark green photostat clipped to the board.

The woman searched for the bulge of sponsor forms behind it.

Is that a gun underneath his jacket?

"Well, I'm from outoftown, you know,” WON'T HAVE TO OPEN THE SCREEN, "so...."

Panic attack.

"When will the girl—lady—who lives here be home?"

"It's a man...." AND HE'S FUCKING BIG, YOU BASTARD. "Any time now. With friends for the, uh, game. Try next door."

The boy leaned, extended delicate fingers toward the latch.

Cheap Cali dysburbia apartment complex, o god. Is that a woman screaming or just having, you know, fun?

"Yeah," she said. Her voice rose. "Any second, now...." What happens now; I'm going to slam the door.

Coyote swift, he leapt. Pelt shaded, his ese-dude hair caught the light. Ten inches of blade bit her throat. His hand twisted up her long, blonde hair.

The clipboard lay abandoned on the balcony.

"Don't make a sound, bitch." He had beautiful teeth, white and regular. Mostly Mayan, Aztec, Tarahumaran. Her New England trained mind jabbered slogans: !ZAPATA VIVE! !...UH! !CESAR CHA....

His thing's hanging out. Somehow, she is facing him.

"On your knees, puta."

Sick scent of strange boy-man's balls, cologned pubic hair, naked turkey buzzard penis: she'd never gotten used to them, raised in a house of women. So she blows him. He comes.

He cuts off her ear like an artichoke sepal. Face soaked with sobless tears, exploding laundry detergent flavored cum in her mouth, strange wilting dick flaccid against her sharp back teeth, deafened, she bites down, hard. Gristle, soap, and blood.

He shoots her in the shoulder. The gun has a silencer. No big deal, he shoots her in the shoulder, he's seen Clint Eastwood and oh yeah, L.A.

She has no shoulder. Shock adrenaline, bleeding nugget of dick, no goddamn shoulder. Mindfuck overdrive, and all she can think of are the red iron bleeds down the sides of cartographic mountains. She lurches, a fevered attempt at balance, the shreds of her left arm swinging, banging against her belly.

He grins like a mad skeleton. Those teeth.

LMNO. . . .Z.

News on god knows how many fucking channels, some cities you gotta pay to have T.V. at all, that's L.A.; microwave some popcorn, Hon, and shit another one got it, the guy used dark green paper this time, can't believe they show this stuff, Hon hurry, you gotta see this; god, how dumb, I'd never be that stupid letting him in....

Didn't she watch T.V.?