Dying In the Golden West
Barbara Haas
for Carlos Domínguez
A woman was pecked to death down at Balboa Pier by frenzied gulls while jogging," Bobby Lu said, reading from the newspaper spread on the picnic table before her. "A man was playing chicken with the widebodies at LAX and was mutilated. They found his legs 200 yards down the runway. At Zuma a youth hit his head on a surf board and drowned. Here's where they found some woman's severed hand. The right hand," she said and pointed to a haywire line-drawing of where the Artesia and Cypress Grove freeways joined at Hawaiian Gardens. "Such peaceful names, too," she murmured. "What's going on?" She riffled the pages of the newspaper. "The word "grisly" has been used five times already. Doesn't some old lady somewhere out weeding her pansies stand up, suddenly clutch at her heart, and then keel over? Won't that ever happen? Or do I have to go back home to get the soft-core news?" She bent over the paper, stabbing her finger at a small column with a large block headline. "An adolescent was fished from the San Gabriel River, his wrists chained to his ankles, cigarette burns on his nipples. Jesus, are there only public deaths out here?"
Emily was sitting neck-deep in the hot tub, her head resting back on a wadded-up towel. Steeping, she thought, watching the water churn and swirl, as if boiling, around her. She glanced across the patio. Bobby Lu had black newsprint shadows on either elbow; she'd been making her study most the morning. "That's just the Santa Ana Register," she said. Sweat rolled down the sides of her face. "It reports sensationalistic news items."
