Later that week, Aria got more creative. When they passed a Starbucks on the way to the library, she worked up the courage to pop inside and ask one of the men behind the counter for a few packets of plastic utensils. He handed them over with quizzical slowness. Aria pulled a pile of napkins free from its dispenser and went to the bathroom with them. She unwrapped the plastic package from the utensils and placed the napkins on top of it, so that if she bled through the napkins, it would collect in the plastic.

Aria had to deliberately plan her week around whatever restrooms were available to the public. A couple of times, other women who visited the restroom at the same time looked at her as if they had guessed that she was homeless. Aria hated that. She abhorred being looked down on. There were times on the street when she watched everyone else rushing around the world like they were caught in one big hamster wheel. At times like this, she felt better than them, possessing a self-government that they severely lacked. But, at other times, she felt subhuman and humiliated to be looked at like a pest or pitied.

Beaten by the trials of the week, Taylor’s optimism had diminished to a sanguine commitment to do the best he could with whatever he had. Aria had figured out by the second day what it took Taylor the week to accept. She could tell that he was deluded: sure that the person he considered a friend was in fact a friend, when the truth was she wasn’t. Sure that he would have support and opportunities once he made it here, but he didn’t.

After a close call with police, who were placing notices to vacate on camps in one of the places they tried to stay for the night, they trailed a couple of the men when they packed up to leave. Taylor had the idea that perhaps the men would lead them somewhere where the chances of getting hassled by police was lower. And if not, the worst that could happen was that they would discover other potentially useful places in the city. Instead, they ended up on a street that made them both all too aware of their inexperience.

When the Union Rescue Mission in LA opened its doors in the 1800s, people without jobs, hobos and transient workers congregated there because it was the last train stop in the country. Naturally, the infrastructure that built up around it catered specifically to both transience and poverty. In the late 1900s, the city adopted a “policy of containment” whereby the services for the homeless and needy were moved directly to the places where they had already naturally collected. The area was called Skid Row.