I catch snippets of conversation. Letitia tells them about what happened, about the freeways, the tlepilli, all of it. Well, most of it. She doesn’t know about me and Santa Muerte, or that I have the bottle. I’d like to keep it that way a while. Gabriela will figure it out before too long. She knows enough of Darius’s history to piece things together.

I catch them glancing at me every once in a while. Particularly Vivian. Like I’m some weird organism she’s never seen before.

They give me space and I don’t intrude. Vivian starts to come over, but Gabriela stops her with a hand on her arm. Eventually their conversation shifts away from the nightmare the city has become.

Letitia talks about the Cleanup Crew, about how she and Annie met. Letitia’s good people and has a good sense of a person’s character. I mean, she did stab me and all.

Vivian and Letitia recount stories of high school. Gabriela talks about her family in Mexico, stories I’ve never heard, how she killed an El Cucuy to save a boy on a train, how her grandmother told her to be a revolutionary before she died.

They’re exhausted and wired at the same time. It’s funny to watch people tighten the bonds that hold them together. By the time they finally head their own ways they’ll be thick as thieves. You can see it all slowly come together and then it clicks, and you can’t imagine a time when they weren’t. Gabriela looks more at ease than I’ve seen her in months. Vivian actually laughs. I haven’t heard her laugh like that since before I left L.A.

This is theirs, and I’ve got no place here. I wait until they’re all engrossed in each other’s conversation and then get up and limp out of the building. The air outside is filled with smoke and reeks of burning chemicals. It will for weeks, I’m sure. Nobody pays attention to me as I leave. I’m okay with that.

I break in to a car that hasn’t caught fire or been vandalized a couple blocks away. I turn on the radio and listen, still parked, to an AM news station. It’s a grim night out there, and when the sun comes up it won’t be much better.

A litany of places damaged or destroyed. Staples Center, the entire row of old theaters on Broadway, Grand Central Market, Grauman’s Chinese, Hollywood and Highland, the Bradbury Building, Olvera Street, most of Chinatown. Huge sections of Beverly Hills, Studio City, Encino, Tarzana, Boyle Heights, Leimert Park, Burbank, Pasadena, El Segundo, Long Beach, North Hollywood, Torrance. On and on and on. Nothing has gone untouched.