Rios rode the bus home to their studio apartment on South Boyle Avenue, where they could hear traffic from Interstate 5 all night long. Their building was old, with some exposed wiring and gaping holes in the plaster walls. Esmeralda stepped over an unconscious, tequila-drenched heap of an old man on the stairs and continued up to their second floor apartment.
She was exhausted. Ashleigh’s spirit had possessed her only for a matter of weeks, but in that time, Ashleigh had managed to wreck Esmeralda's life.
First, her mother had kicked her out, or rather not allowed her to move back in, when Esmeralda had returned home to Los Angeles on the back of Tommy’s bike. Ashleigh had been a terror who never showed Esmeralda's mother the least amount of respect, and of course Esmeralda's mother had always hated Tommy, the dirty blond gringo she’d brought home. Her mother had much preferred her previous boyfriend, Pedro, who worked construction while studying law at night. Esmeralda hadn’t spoken to Pedro in over a year.
Esmeralda had also lost her mortuary cosmetics job at Garcia y Garcia Funeral Home. The only job she could find was part-time at the much larger and cheaper Hernandez place, where the pay was poor and the jobs were all rushed. She’d been spoiled by the quiet, leisurely speed of work at Garcia y Garcia. Hernandez was more like a factory, a fast-paced corpse processing plant.
She had finally saved up enough for tuition, though, and she was about to start her final classes toward her Associate of Applied Science in Funeral Service degree. Then she would find better work while continuing her education, and in time, all would be well.
That was what she told herself as she walked down the crumbling second-floor hallway, sore and miserable, worrying about which utility she would have to pay next, and whether it would be easier to live without water or power.
She slid the key into the rusty lock and opened the door.
Tommy sat on the bed, smoking a Basic cigarette and watching their small TV set. The ashtray on the windowsill was overflowing with cigarette butts, and the entire place reeked of cheap tobacco. The only light came from the open window behind him, sunlight that turned fuzzy and nicotine-yellow inside the cramped one-room apartment.
“I told you to stop smoking in here,” Esmeralda said. She closed the door behind her and hung her purse on a nail in the wall. “It’s so bad for our health.”
“Well, hey, nice to see you, too,” Tommy replied.
“I mean it.” Esmeralda sank to the bed next to him. Tommy was watching a rerun of an old Christopher Reeve Superman movie. He smelled like cheap whiskey, probably Ten High. “Are you working tonight?”
“It’s Thursday, right?”
“Thursday.”
“Then I’m working.” He glanced at the rumpled blanket heaped beside him, then gave a little shrug, reached under it, and slid out a bottle of Ten High. He gave her a little defiant look as he lifted it to his lips. It was a fight waiting to happen, and he knew it.
Tommy had trouble getting good work because he couldn’t even use his real name or identification. Esmeralda had a cousin who was good at finding jobs for illegals, so he’d set Tommy up on a job unloading produce trucks. He’d gotten fired for being late and missing work, so her cousin then found him a job washing dishes in a Taiwanese restaurant in Monterey Park. He’d gotten fired for the same reasons.
Now, he worked a few nights a week as a bouncer at a seedy North Hollywood bar. Tommy wasn’t an especially big and muscular guy, but his touch spread fear into anyone. He could seize a troublemaker, fill him with his own worse nightmares, and then shove him out the door as easily as a crying child.
“I still don’t like you at this job,” Esmeralda said. “Using the fear. It troubles you so much.”
“It doesn’t trouble me.” Tommy snorted at her and swigged his whiskey.
“The more you use it, the worst your own nightmares become. You’re screaming and crying in your sleep.”
“Who wouldn’t, living in a shithole like this?” Tommy waved his bottle at the small, rank room around them.
“I understand about all your bad dreams from childhood,” Esmeralda said. “That’s why you must let the fear rest. It stirs up these things.”
“You don’t understand anything. What else can I do? Your cousin won’t even talk to me anymore. He calls me an embarrassment to his reputation, whatever that means.”
“It means