E. M. Walker

Dream City

Carla Hall stepped out into deep indigo, that never-quite pitch that hovers until dawn. It’s as if the planet spots its head, never quite taking her eye off the sun. Or maybe the world revolves around this one city. Some Angeleno’s would certainly thrill to believe that. Others hold it in their bones as absolute truth. But night falls here. And Carla tumbles into it. Down from the rooftop bar with its buzzing heated lamps and six tops of bros, one floor leaked reggaeton into the stairwell. The next pulsed out top 40 hip hop. Until finally, Carla slithers through sweaty, matted clusters, ebbing and cresting under the incantation of some anonymous pop karaoke. Two men cowering from the approach of middle age lob crass anecdotes overhead as she pinches through the dried urine miasma of the doorway. They are a pair of good midwestern boys flexing their edge at one another in their uniforms of distressed denim and pomade tousled hair.