Prologue
Three hours off the plane, and my welcome to Los Angeles was a pool of my own blood spreading across the concrete.
Great, I thought, staring at the gash. There goes my favorite pair of slippers.
My mugger hadn't even finished demanding my bag before he completely lost control of his weapon. He’d attempted a flashy knife-flip to look intimidating, but mid-rotation, the handle slipped right out of his palm. The blade plummeted, grazing the top of my foot on its way down and slicing cleanly through my slipper before clattering onto the sidewalk.
To give the world’s worst criminal some credit, he looked way more traumatized than I did. His eyes darted in a frantic loop: my purse, my bleeding foot, my expressionless face. For five endless seconds, we stood locked in silence under the yellow hum of the streetlamp.
“Man… fuck this shit,” he finally muttered, with the sheer resignation of a guy quitting a retail job five minutes into his first shift.
Without a second glance at his weapon, he turned on his heel and jogged off into the dark.
Somewhere down the street a horn honked, followed by the distant bark of a dog. The city kept right on moving, unbothered by the fact that I was leaking onto its pavement.
When the first throb of pain pierced through the shock, I took a breath and began an awkward, soggy limp toward the store entrance.
I’d only stepped outside to buy cigarettes anyway. At least now I had a valid excuse to smoke the entire pack before sunrise.
