The bus’s engine made a new sound, made it again, then died. I coasted into a shopping mall parking lot. I tried to restart it and was able to get a spark and a turn of the starter motor, but I knew what was wrong. The bus was out of gas. I turned to look at Rosalita, then I stood and observed the frightened faces of the other ten. I waved my arm. “Vamonos,” I said.

They followed me out onto the surface of the parking lot. There was a dry cleaner, a defunct computer shop, and a Thai restaurant. From where we stood, I could see the Santa Fe Bridge. We walked. If we weren’t conspicuous before, we were now. I looked like some pathetic cult leader. I didn’t help matters. I was so eager to get to the border that I walked much faster than I should have, leaving the women to nearly trot to keep up with me. In the heat my khaki shirt was soaked and stuck to me. Finally, Rosalita caught up to me and put her hand on my shoulder. I turned to face her.

“Maribel is not good,” she said.

Maribel was well behind me with two other women. I could see from thirty feet that she was fading. Her arm was bleeding again.

I stopped at the cart of a man selling fruit and asked where there was a hospital. He pointed across a market parking lot at an urgent care sign.

I went to Maribel. She looked so weak. To Rosalita I said, “Todos ustedes continúan.”

“We stay together,” she said. She and the other women spoke feverishly to one another. I didn’t understand. “We stay together,” she repeated to me.

And so we all walked across the parking lot and into the urgent care center. The place was already crowded. Everyone inside turned to regard us, almost as if with fear. Rosalita and I went to the desk.

“May I help you?” the woman behind the counter asked me.

“Our friend needs some medical attention,” I said.

The woman burned a look right through me. “What is wrong with her?”

“She’s been shot,” I said.

The woman looked at Rosalita and then at the other women. She fidgeted with her pencil and looked back into the office. “We generally are required to report all gunshot treatments.”

“Her arm is bleeding,” I said. “I believe she has lost a lot of blood.”

“Carlos!” she called back. “What is her name?”

“Maribel,” Rosalita and I said together.

“Occupation?”

“Slave,” I said.

The clerk stared at me. I looked away, out the window, at the parking lot, at the moving cars. It was raining again.

About the Author

PERCIVAL EVERETT is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of nearly thirty books, including I Am Not Sidney Poitier, Erasure, and So Much Blue.