ONE
THE BIFURCATED GIRL
Two boys surfed the sidewalk on Longine Avenue in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles in August 1990. Phil was tall and wiry with blond Beach Boy bangs, wearing a Butthole Surfers T and cutoffs, his board bearing Brian Pulido’s Lady Death. Jesse was short and slight with a nose like a conning tower, wearing baggy jeans that sagged over his skinny butt. His board bore a Big Daddy Roth Rat Fink knock-off. Both boys wore ball caps with the bill backward. It was 9:00 am, sunny and hot, the air redolent with the scent of jasmine and garbage.
Phil soared off the curb at the end of the block, landing on all fours with a clack and a sizzle. Jesse flipped his board expertly into the air with his foot, caught it, and set it down on the street. His left leg paddled wildly to keep up, white sneaker pushing against the pavement and picking up gum. At the opposite curb, he heel-flipped the board over the lip, came down on the sidewalk, and rolled. The boys were looking to get high. Phil had scored a half lid of primo from a friend’s uncle who lived in Humboldt County and grew his own. The sticky burned a hole in his pocket. Soon it would burn a hole in his mind. That was the Plan.
They cruised by a strip mall: pizza, karate, nails, pet hospital, liquor. They cruised by a block of two four-story red brick apartment buildings, named respectively The Alhambra and The Cascades. Cars lined the curbs. Smacking the passenger side mirror on an Olds as he passed, Jesse caught up with his taller pal.
“What about the park?” Jesse said.
Phil stuck an American Spirit in his mouth. “No, dude! There’s a nark in the park!”
“What nark?”
“Come on, dude! That dude in the hoodie and the Air Jordans, been there every fuckin’ day reading High Times pretending he ain’t looking. He’s straight out the academy.”
“You don’t know that.”
Phil nosied to a stop, pulled a lighter from his pocket, and lit the cig. “You want to chance it? Maybe get hauled down to Juvie, have your mom come pick you up? Why’s he wearing a hoodie in this heat? To hide his radio, camera, and gun?”
A sheen of sweat glistened on Jesse’s pale forehead. He was already on notice at James Dean High School. He was about to enter junior year under a cloud of suspicion. Last semester he’d been placed on academic suspension for cutting classes and general bad attitude. He lived with his mother and two sisters in a third-floor walk-up. He hadn’t seen his father in years. “Well let’s find a place. Being straight is bullshit.”
Phil swooped on. “There’s a vacant lot up ahead.”
A pickup filled with Mexicans passed hauling a trailer filled with lawn equipment.
“There go your customers,” Jesse said. Phil worked at a Taco Bell.
“I never see beaners at the Bell,” Phil said. “They all eat offa those curbside vans that smell like chorizo, park at the jobs. Only people I see at Taco Bell are stoners and fat white guys coming off work.”
They came to the vacant lot. Once the home of a stucco apartment building surrounding a courtyard and a pool, it had been razed and fallen into desuetude, thigh-high weeds covering everything except the cracked concrete rectangle of the pool which had yet to be broken up and filled in. A run-down Dodge Stratus listed at the curb. Orange tape bearing the message CONDEMNED KEEP OUT stretched from rebar to rebar, falling into the weeds where it had broken or been cut. Empty bottles and cans glittered in the sun: Miller High Life, peppermint schnapps, Red Bull, Jägermeister.
“Dude,” Jesse said. “I could use a Jägerbomb myself.” He released a high-pitched cackle.
“I hear ya,” Phil said. “We’ll get your brother to pick some up. That rag head at Curt’s Liquor don’t give a shit. We could probably buy it ourselves.”
Broken glass sprinkled the sidewalk and the first couple of feet surrounding the lot. Newspaper inserts. Condoms tossed from parked cars. Phil and Jesse flipped up their boards and carried them as they swooshed through the tall weeds heading for a place of concealment. A rat scurried away. They came to a mound of earth and nodules of concrete left over from the razing and sat, their boards at their feet.
Phil removed the doobie from his cigarette pack and lit up. Exhaling a gray cloud, he passed the joint to Jesse who inhaled deeply followed by a paroxysm of coughing. Phil pounded him on the back.
“Don’t hit so hard, dude! You’ll blow your lungs out.”
Jesse frowned at the joint. “Man, it’s running. It’s running ’cause you rolled it too fast.”
“Bullshit!”
“You roll the joints too fucking fast.” A seed exploded. “See? See? You’re always in such a hurry. You didn’t break the bud up properly.”
Phil snatched the reefer from Jesse’s hand. “Gimme that!” He spit on his finger and applied it to the burning tributary. He massaged the joint and relit it until it carbureted to his satisfaction. They passed the joint back and forth until their skulls felt like pressure chambers. “Hey man,” Jesse said reaching into his baggy pants. “Check it out.” He withdrew a small, silver balisong and began twirling it around, blade catching the sun.
Phil held his hand out. “Gimme!”
Jesse flipped the knife shut with a flourish. “Nahh. You’ll cut yourself.”
Phil reached for the blade. Jesse danced away giggling.
“Hand it over you little prick! I won’t cut myself!”
“Remember that time you gouged a hole in your foot with that screwdriver? You bled like a stuck pig!”
Phil lurched to his feet. Jesse ran through the weeds, laughing and swinging the knife. He stopped, did a comic wave pulse, whole body whipping slo-mo from the ground up. Phil caught up and looked at what lay in the grass, his eyes refusing to make sense of it.
“Fuck,” he said.
Jesse whirled and vomited. He staggered, gagging, knife forgotten. Phil felt as if he were in some cheap horror movie with really crude special effects. If he kept that attitude, he’d be all right.
A girl lay in the weeds; naked, split at the waist. An empty green wine bottle was jammed between her legs. Phil saw into the cavity of her abdomen. Her eyes had been gouged out and laid in the sockets. The pinkie finger was missing from her left hand. It would later be found in her vagina. That’s all Phil saw before he turned and ran.