Cheta passed over her buzz-around bumblebee-yellow jeep, the seawater-green Sebring convertible and the boring-black Mercedes that sat on blocks since her father left. It had to be the drab brown Taurus, Carmilita's shitmobile. Bummer. Carm had taught her to eat tacos, to paint her toes tomato-red when she was seven. Mother would scare up another beater for the woman. Otherwise, mama mia would break her porcelains scrubbing the saffron tiles, polishing the tea set, keeping up with the neighbor domain. Like, no way.

Easy enough to abandon the junk in Twenty-Nine Palms where servants drove common dust-bags with broken air-conditioners and strawberry air fresheners. Cheta could hitch the rest of the way. Or she could ditch it in a river wash where some bowser from East L. A. would chop it.

The Pacific Ocean mirrored in her father's eyes, as he sat at the Rose Café, eyeing the blonds strolling by.

Cheta layered whiteout over the last digit on the license plate, squirreled thirty-seven hundred dollars into her Spade bag along with a stack of bonds. The baby blue sweater she left, reluctantly. Winding down the drive, Cheta looked last at the fruity-fancy mailbox and balanced the round Brie cheese, the Wheat Thins and the Mapquest directions on the seat next to her. Rolling onto the highway, she chuckled at the bearded truckerman who checked out her shiny fake-tan legs. Hick. “Watch out, California, here I come,” she shouted.

On speaker, Cheta chirped, “Coco, what's up? I'm only twelve miles out. Sure you can't come? …. “No, I can't wait till next week!” Cheta screeched. “Of course, I sound pissy. You broke your promise. Scared? No, I'm not scared! I'll find him.” Coco's auntie lived in the valley, so not Cheta's destination, but a backup address was a good idea. “Gotta go, Coco, the dork behind me almost ass-ended me around that last bend."

At the stop, the Caesar salad didn't look all that perky, but Cheta, after five hours driving, was starved. She smelled the man behind her, all diesel oil and sweat before she turned, after his hand brushed her skirt. “What the hell?”

“Nothing, chickie. You big on greens? I got me some weed like you never had. Guaranteed,” the man answered, circling his phlegmy tongue on the inside of his cheek.