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I followed him inside. The apartment was painted parrot green. Two fans droned away, airing it out. Even next to this individual, I preferred the indoors to the barbecue-like heat outside.

“Small,” the man said. “It’s hard for me to guarantee steady income. But I develop the photos at home and don’t need much else.”

The kitchen had been installed on the short side of an L-shape, whose long side was the living room. The man set his grocery bag on the counter. I wanted to run to the sink and soak my face, or take a ten-minute shower in cold water. On the kitchen table, next to a bowl with milk and cereal leftovers, lay two pieces of plaster, like the cracked shell of a walnut, and a hammer.

“Remodeling?” I asked.

The man stepped toward me, casting a sidelong glance at the hammer.

“I needed to bash something. Arms up, friend.”

I raised an eyebrow. He made a gesture like surrendering to the police. When I obliged, he patted down the underarms of my jacket, searching for holsters. He checked the sides of my belt, then stepped back and rubbed his chin.

I straightened my jacket.

“Your potential employers come armed?”

He moved past me into the living room.

“After they booked me, a guy tried to stab me. You never know.”

He led me to the back of the room, partitioned by an orange velvet curtain with patterns like something that might emerge under the influence of hallucinogenic mushrooms. He pulled the curtain aside. On a table, he had left two cameras, three plastic trays for soaking negatives, and a lamp fitted with a red bulb.

The man slid the curtain closed, plunging us into inky darkness. The fans droned like a generator. My stomach turned, and the hair on my forearms prickled. After two steps and the press of a button, the lamp’s bulb struggled to ignite like an old engine, then bathed us in fluorescent blood-red light. His blond hair, skin, and teeth, even his pupils, all took on the hue of a cartoon demon.

“I’ve gathered what I need in this nook,” he said. “The magic depends on how you treat women and on framing, and you can’t buy that. People like you just rent it for a while.”

He opened a cabinet. Inside were five albums stacked up.

“Want to take a look at this year’s work?”

“Sure.”

He pulled out the first album. The look on his profile hinted at the pride he took in showing it off. When he opened the album, I glimpsed three rows of photos per page: gorgeous faces emerging from beneath cascades of hair, voluptuous bodies posed in varying degrees of undress, all tinted red.

He snapped the album shut.

“We’ll need a different light.”

With the album tucked under one arm, he switched off the bulb, and slid the curtain open. The living room consisted of a coffee table he’d pushed against an old sofa and a wicker chair. He might have bought them at a flea market or salvaged them from a dump. Concert posters hung on the walls, including a stand-out shot of Hendrix in a fancy jacket, laughing as he held his guitar. Above the sofa, a poster of Kubrick’s take on Lolita: the close-up of a pale girl donning heart-shaped sunglasses and clutching a lollipop to her cherry lips.

I nodded toward the piece of furniture where he’d set up a Thorens TD-125 turntable. In the open space below were about twenty vinyl records in their sleeves. Atop the turntable lay a record sleeve showing a cloud of pink smoke escaping a subway entrance—an album by The Velvet Underground.

“Nice setup for that other hobby of yours.”

“Photography’s my job, but yeah, you can’t live without music. And there’s never been better music than now.”

He set the photo album down on the coffee table. I sat in the wicker chair, which creaked as though riddled with termites.

“You must be surprised,” the man said.

“No. I love music.”

“There’s no TV. My guests always bring it up. They need the box that tells them what to think.”

“That’s a point in your favor.”

The muscles around his eyes helped shape his smile.

“Something to drink? A beer?”

“As long as it comes out of the fridge, anything works.”

He walked away and turned the corner that concealed half the counter, the oven, and the refrigerator. One of the fans rotated toward me, cooling my face. On the piece of furniture opposite the couch, the man had stacked a dozen books. Now that I was calmly looking around, I read the titles on the spines: Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche, Parerga and Paralipomena by Schopenhauer, the Bible, Story of the Eye by Bataille, Down There by Huysmans.

I heard a drawer slide open, some utensils clatter, then the drawer slam shut. The man reappeared clutching two bottles by their necks, and a bottle opener. He slumped onto the sofa, in front of the photo album. With the opener, he popped the cap off his beer.

“One of the greatest sounds.”

He took a swig.

“And the best one?” I asked.

He wiped his lips and glanced aside.

“A secret.”

He tossed me the opener in a smooth arc. I opened my beer. As I drank, the bitter brew ran down my throat and settled in my stomach, cooling my insides the way flash floods scrub dry riverbeds.

The man opened the album halfway and turned it so we could both see. I studied the photographs, flipping through several pages. A blonde woman with cobalt eyes, nude and seated on a king-size bed, had tilted her face away from the camera in a calculated pose. A woman with wavy brown hair, kneeling on the bed, looked over her bare shoulder as though inviting the watcher; her half-lidded eyes suggested she might have been high. The same woman standing on the mattress or on a carpet, striking ballet poses. A necklace of wooden beads strung on a bronzed wire reached between her pale breasts. Another woman wore a salmon-colored blouse, and the ends of her hair flipped upward, mimicking the style shown in magazines and on TV. She was smiling as if mustering the courage to undress. The same woman leaned against a window that cast back her phantom-like reflection. She had slipped into a dress a size too big, and one strap had slid off her shoulder. Other photos caught this woman mid-conversation, her face suggesting she was talking to a friend. Another woman, her dyed-blonde hair tied into pigtails, knelt naked in front of the camera, looking up with the confidence of someone who knows her beauty. A woman silhouetted against an unlit spotlight had black hair streaked with glints of midnight blue, her gaze roaming the room as though familiarizing herself with her surroundings.

The sun washed out half the face of a little girl who was tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. A nude woman lay on the couch where the man was now seated. Huge headphones covered her ears, and her eyes were closed to listen more intently. A father, a boy, and a girl stood under a spray of water pouring from one of the Venice Beach showers, against the backdrop of the ocean and a lifeguard station. One photo captured a woman from her bangs down to the top of her breasts. She had rested her head on a pillow, and her lips glistened with moisture. A woman dressed as though she were out for a Saturday stroll posed shyly in front of blurred branches resembling a tattered curtain. The pigtailed girl, topless, sat in front of this apartment’s record collection, her hands pressed against her headphones. A series of pictures showed women in wet hair and swimsuits, outlined against water like molten metal where the sun had burned white holes.

I imagined these women living on for centuries. Wearing the same clothes and accessories, their skin immune to wrinkles, their expressions forever fresh. A secret community bound by the knowledge that they all once confronted the same camera lens. Perhaps I would find the bed, apart from the lights that had illuminated many of these shots, in whatever place the man and his aspiring model were heading to yesterday.

The man rubbed his chin as he nodded.

“Fascinating, isn’t it? How everyday life differs from those moments immersed in the ritual. The camera knows. If you saw many of these women on the street, you’d walk right by, but in the photos, they’re goddesses. And they’ll endure until the pictures turn to dust.”

I locked my eyes on his. When he noticed, he raised his brows. He tipped up his beer bottle and drank.

“How many of these women have you slept with?” I asked.

He laughed as he swallowed. After giving himself a thump on the chest, he bent forward, elbows on his thighs, and shot me a roguish smile.

“Trade secret. Pretty unprofessional of you to ask. But women open up to whoever makes them feel beautiful.”

I drank half my beer, swished the bitter liquid in my mouth, swallowed. I set the bottle next to the album and leaned back against the wicker chair.

“How many of these women are still alive?”

He gave me a once-over, imitating the way his future prey had scrutinized me yesterday, trying to figure out if I was joking.

“When they leave my studio, they vanish into the jungle.”

“You really don’t know if any of them dropped dead around the time they met you?”

He soured like a kid who just unwrapped the box for the game console he wanted, only to find socks inside.

“You drop remarks like you did yesterday. I get your perspective, but airing it is pointless. Do you think people want to stay close to someone who dredges up that stuff?”

“I don’t want them close. How many of these women walked into your studio, got photographed, and disappeared? How many families are searching for their daughters?”

His lips parted in a dark slit. His brow furrowed, and his face lost some of that California tan. He stood up straight. From his shirt pocket, he yanked out three fifty-dollar bills and slapped them onto the table.

“Your mind is twisted. I ignored the vibe you were giving off, but I should’ve refused the job the moment I realized who was offering it. Money corrupts—blinds you, blinds me too. Out. Don’t ever contact me again or show your face around here.”

“I’m staying for now.”

He held his breath, closing the fingers of his right hand on his knee so hard that his knuckles pressed white against the fabric.

“You think you can stay when I forbid it?”

“I’ll say what I have to say and then leave.”

The man squared his shoulders. His right fist trembled. A tendon in his neck bulged like a strip of wood.

I primed my muscles, bracing for an attack. While my gaze held his, I also kept an eye on the edges of my vision in case he reached for a weapon.

“Yesterday, July 16, 1977, you followed little Cassie June—doe-eyed Cassie—while she skated home. Maybe you smiled when you offered her a ride to spare her the heat and exhaustion. She trusted you. She got into a stranger’s car because you were kind enough to offer. She was raised to embrace life with a smile, to enjoy the rosy world inside her bubble, before that bubble popped and exposed her to the rancid air of adulthood. Cassie June. She belonged to a dance group with several school friends. Four days a week, she skated. She loved birds and had asked for books so she could learn to identify them. She loved spending afternoons at the beach. Sometimes, sitting on the rocks, she wrote in her journal. She wondered what lay on the far side of that mass of water, and kept saying how badly she wanted to find out.”

The man let one eyebrow drop. His fist unclenched, then tightened again as though trying to recall his anger. I didn’t let the rage quake my voice.

“But Cassie June got into your car. Instead of taking her home, you took her somewhere else. Maybe to your studio, where you shot many of the photos in this album. For two hours you raped her and sodomized her. When you were done, you strangled her until she was nearly unconscious—or with luck she passed out—and then you crushed her face with a hammer. You got rid of the corpse. It destroyed her family, obviously. When they woke up every morning, they remembered the midday they last saw Cassie, a scene that ate at them each night before they fell asleep.”

My red blindness faded as the pounding in my temples eased. The man was smiling like a TV host, a smile that said every hole he had to dodge was already paved over. He knew he had never picked up Cassie June in his Ford Thunderbird just as well as I knew he had—and thanks to me, the evidence for that knowledge was gone.

“You’ve made up one wild story,” he said.

I took another sip. The man did the same, tipping his bottle by fractions of an inch until the last drop trickled into his mouth.

“Those who knew Cassie remembered her as a beacon of joy,” I said. “She signed up for everything. She was inquisitive. Instinctively she got along with everyone she met, without hesitation or fear. The adults in her childhood listened to her, helped her. Whenever she needed them, they were there. People like her, with that innate trust and radiance, can make living in this world worthwhile. But Cassie believed a smiling stranger would drive her home, and that’s why you were able to rape and kill her. California and the West have turned into a hunting ground, open season all year round. If people knew what lurks in the dark, the diet of monsters like you, who would they trust? If Cassie had been afraid of strangers, if she had refused to get into strange cars, would she have been as happy? I don’t think so. Would she have been miserable? Maybe. She would have grown used to fear, to the myriad dangers it signals. But she’d still be alive. What does that mean?”

One fan blew a strand of the man’s hair aside. He looked at me like a blank sheet of paper, wanting to speak but unable to string words together, absently twisting his empty bottle.

“Not long ago, I questioned my role,” I said. “I could crush the trust of people like Cassie, scare them so they never get into strangers’ cars, never walk down dark alleys, never let a slick-talking man with a winning smile charm them. They’d learn they live in a sandpaper world, prowled by evil that would exploit their faith and innocence and grind them to the bone. Or I could keep them from discovering it. I could make sure that evil never reaches them—make sure they get into my car instead of the one behind me. They’d go on dancing, skating, sitting on those rocks by the beach, writing at sunset. Any stray bits of night would remain sedated beneath the anesthesia of their hope. Should I remove monsters like you so that these potential victims can go on living with a smile, still believing this world that almost devoured them is actually worth inhabiting? Is it better to stare into the abyss, or to look away and trust in humanity? Maybe those who see light everywhere must build the world they need, while people like me, the tar-smeared brethren, stand guard around the perimeter, making sure those who’ve drowned in tar don’t choke out that light. I followed that approach for years. And it worked, more or less. It saved thousands. But aside from sparing those people, what good am I really doing? I stand watch at the edges of the darkness, stopping the beasts from slipping into the glow of a streetlamp around which these bright-eyed souls flit. They learn they can let their guard down. They preach that self-defense is a vice or a sin, that monsters can be bought off or cured. I spare them the worst that might happen if they keep wearing those tinted glasses.”

The man reclined on the couch as he rubbed his eyelids, and snorted.

“You see,” I went on, “I found out by accident that this girl existed. I felt lost, torn from where I belonged, all while searching for the albums and classic movies that had bubbled into existence the last time I tangled with the timeline. Then I stumbled upon the news. They found Cassie June’s skeleton in the desert, stuffed in a rusted barrel under a pile of rocks. Usually I steer clear of news like that. The gallons of blood spilled in the darkness as I turn away corrode me, keep me up at night. But I read every article I could find about that girl. They described her life. They interviewed her family—whoever was left. I gathered every fact, every video, the court cases. Most people who heard the story during dinner might have lost their appetite for a minute, but what would that information do for them? They lock it away, forget it by the next day. They accept that the abyss has swallowed another sacrifice and are relieved it happened to someone else’s child. How could anyone keep walking burdened by the weight of so many injustices? Even I manage to let most of these stories pass right through me—otherwise, I might throw myself off a building. But that night, I was drowning in the black tide. Cassie’s murder stabbed me like a lance. I wanted to prevent it, to stop that trusting, life-loving girl from being snuffed out. A window of opportunity had opened, and if I’d refused to step through, I’d have to live knowing I could have saved her but instead swallowed a handful of sleeping pills, crawled into bed, and pulled the covers up to my forehead. I came back to get the job done and avoid Cassie’s ghost trailing after me to my grave.”

I paused for breath, but all the air had fled the apartment. The sunlight coming through the window had dimmed as though a translucent veil had wrapped my head. My body still sank into the wicker chair, but it felt like I was viewing the scene from a few yards beneath it, from the bottom of a pit. I spoke with effort, like cranking up some ancient, forgotten machine.

“It hit me, you know. The lack of meaning. We live for a handful of orbits around this star and then vanish. Some people, whether they deserve it or not, vanish much sooner, before they get to die in a bed surrounded by loved ones. Cassie’s life was cut short when she could have been spared. And that news story tied her to me, this irate beast. Merely annoyances and irritating noises stoke my anger until it boils over, and one day the flames might break out and burn this world to ashes. But my locomotive furnace devours that coal to plow into monsters like you. There have always been Cassies, and there will be more. Anyone you care about can die at any moment—I know that better than most because I live it week after week. It usually comes down to luck. Coincidence. Cassie’s luck was crossing your path. Your luck was crossing mine.”

Author’s note: this novella belongs to a self-published book titled Los reinos de brea (The Kingdoms of Tar), that released about ten years ago. I presented this scene to the writing course I was attending at the time, and those present were disturbed, even the instructor, who is a reasonably famous local mystery writer. I don’t think the scene is that impactful, but I’m glad to find out that I still like it after these many years.

The Deep Dive couple produced an interesting podcast about this part of the story:

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At half past ten the next day, in my hotel room, I spread my jacket out on the rumpled sheets and slipped the ammo magazine into the left inside pocket.

I sat down beside the little table that held the phone. I cleared my throat. I picked up the receiver, wedged it against my ear with my shoulder, and dialed the number.

On the third ring, it cut off. I heard the man breathing against the microphone.

“Richard Alcala,” I said.

“You know who you’re calling.”

“The photographer.”

“My reputation precedes me.”

“I was flipping through some old issues of Black Tux. The photos you shot. These women you framed… if you ran into them on the street, you’d notice moles, asymmetry, maybe slack flesh, but thanks to your touch, they’re competing to be the next Marilyn Monroe.”

“You need to update your references, pal. But I remember those shoots. I was born with the gift.”

“I work for a magazine, and we need your gift. You’d coax the beauty out of a dozen or so women.”

“You tempt me, but a personal project has me busy.”

“It’s a well-paid week of work in Los Angeles. I’m sure you could squeeze it in.”

The line crackled as he crunched on something brittle. I pictured him hunched over bloody dirt, naked, caked in grime, gnawing on a femur.

“Have you talked to other magazines in the field?” he asked, voice turning gravelly.

“Yes.”

“And you’re still calling me? Lately, nobody wants to hire me. I bet they rushed to tell you why.”

“You mean your trouble with the law.”

He pulled the receiver away from his face to clear his throat.

“My trouble with the law, yes.”

“Who cares? You’ll take the shots we need. Your previous sessions prove it.”

He fell silent for a few seconds.

“How much?”

“Money? One fifty up front, three hundred at the end of the week. Four or five sessions, depending on a few variables.”

“Your usual photographers turned it down?”

“They don’t shoot like you. Plus, the women will be dressed in outfits many would call pornographic. In this decade, there are still plenty of photographers with outdated scruples. Listen, we need these women to look like Greek goddesses, not like they’re waiting around a street corner at three in the morning.”

“I get you, pal. Bring the money, and we’ll work something out.”

“I’ll drop by around eleven-thirty.”

“Today? I’m busy all day. Starting tomorrow.”

“I’m afraid I leave for Dallas tonight. You sure you can’t spare a slot at eleven-thirty? You’ll pocket the hundred and fifty, and we’ll iron out a couple details.”

A silence swelled on the line, undone by the ringing in my ears—scar tissue from years of gunfire. I heard him close a drawer or a door. Cloth brushed against cloth.

“Eleven-thirty,” he said. “Bring the money. You know the address?”

“I wrote it down before calling.”

At eleven-ten, I spotted the parking spaces outside the two-story building where he lived. Each floor’s facade was lined with doors and windows. Next to the metal stairs going up to the second floor stood two crooked, half-stripped palm trees like birds with plucked necks. The first-floor windows, right at street level, had iron bars.

They’d left a space free next to the Ford Thunderbird. While maneuvering into the spot, I scanned the surroundings in case he was loitering outside. I parked beside the Thunderbird, trunks aligned.

I switched off the engine and got out. Circling to my trunk, I rummaged in one pocket for both sets of keys—mine and the copy that would open the Thunderbird. I sized up the pedestrians drifting down the street as well as the silhouettes moving behind the building’s windows. I slid my key into my trunk’s lock and opened it. An acrid smell of dirt greeted me. As I lifted the trunk lid all the way, I slipped behind the Thunderbird. I inserted the copy of the key and turned it. The trunk popped open a crack.

I bent over my own trunk, grabbed the gloves from the back corner, and pulled them on. I wedged my forearms under the canvas bundle, held down by two bungee cords. Once I lifted it, the weight yanked at my arms, its lumps digging into my forearms and palms. I crouched, like lowering a loaded barbell, set the bundle on the asphalt, and stood up again.

In the apartment next door to his, an old woman in a robe had drawn her curtain aside. She scratched her nose while surveying the foot traffic and passing cars. Once she moved away, the curtain veiled the interior again.

I lifted the Thunderbird’s trunk. It held ropes, two rolls of electrical tape, a shovel, and a can of gasoline. I took the can out, laid it on its side, and pushed it under my car with my foot, metal scraping on asphalt.

I hoisted the bundle in both hands and placed it in the center of the Thunderbird’s trunk. I unclipped the bungee cords. Covering my nose, I turned my head away, unwrapped the bundle, and let the trunk lid fall until it clicked shut.

A tingling spread across my nape. My ears felt tight. I fully expected a line of passersby who’d pelt me with questions, or a group of cops, or the man himself.

I pulled off my gloves, tossed them into my trunk, and shut it. Then I leaned against the back, pressing my shirt sleeve to the sun-baked metal. If he showed up, I wanted to seem casual as I glanced over the street and the building.

Sunlight warmed my hair. Beneath my jacket and shirt, sweat trickled down my spine, probably making my scalp gleam. I crouched by the car’s side and nudged the half-empty gas can farther in with my foot so no one would notice it. I scanned the Thunderbird’s bodywork to be sure I’d left nothing behind. I forced myself not to check the transponder stuck underneath.

“I hope you’re not looking to steal it,” said a voice to my right.

He was walking through the lot with a paper grocery bag in one hand, two inches of a cereal box sticking out the top. He squinted against the glare, grinning like he adored the neighborhood. He wore a tight shirt striped in brass and peanut tones. The oversized starched collar cast triangular shadows. He had it tucked into flared navy-blue pants cinched with a white belt.

I pretended to be admiring the Thunderbird.

“It’s a beauty,” I said.

He set his free hand on the raised center of the hood, stroking it like a dog’s head.

“Best buy I ever made. A V8 engine with three hundred sixty horsepower. Zero to sixty in nine seconds. Never once let me down.”

When he looked at my face, his features slipped out of his control.

“You’re the gloomy guy from yesterday, on the beach.”

“An hour ago, we spoke on the phone about a job I want to hire you for. Yesterday I approached you about it, but we got sidetracked.”

“So that job was for real, I guess.”

I pulled three fifty-dollar bills from my jacket’s other inside pocket. When the sunlight hit the bills, he snatched them, folded them, and slipped them into his shirt pocket. He smiled.

“Which magazine did you say you work for?”

“Maybe I forgot to mention.”

I pulled out a card and handed it to him. He glanced over it and nodded.

“I’ll show you my gear, and we’ll hash out the details. Let’s go in. I’m getting cooked out here.”

We climbed the stairs to the second-floor landing. He pulled out his keychain, letting it jingle. Dangling from the ring was a tiny latex penis. As he guided the key toward the lock, he seemed to pause in slow motion. He propped the grocery bag against the doorframe and leaned over the railing to study the parking lot.

“You drove here?” he asked.

He stared blankly at my rented car.

“I parked at the Dallas airport. Came by taxi.”

He watched the passersby and peered at the windows across the street, as if searching for a hidden sniper. He shook his head, turned around. Still smiling, he fit the key into the lock and opened the door.

Author’s note: this novella was originally self-published through my book Los reinos de brea, that I wrote about ten years ago. I figured that I might as well translate it and post it here, given that nobody buys my shit. Back in the day, I regularly set stories in places I had never visited, perhaps because I thought that it would make the story more interesting for others. These days, as I don’t expect other people to care, I try to make the places I know more interesting for myself by setting stories in them. Anyway, I hope you’re enjoying this tale to some extent. It’s going to get gnarly soon.

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I tracked the Ford Thunderbird to a parking lot bordering Venice Beach. I parked six spaces away, past three empty slots, two cars, and a delivery van. In case the man was roaming nearby, I took in the view through the windshield and side windows. Next to the half-buried asphalt of the bike path, clumps of palm trees had sprouted from the sand, some as tall as, or taller than, the shops along the boardwalk. The sun, sinking into the Pacific, bleached white the fronds of one palm, while the rest stood out like green torches. Silhouettes bustled across the wide beach, and at intervals lifeguard towers rose in the distance.

The beeps from the tracker echoed through the car like pinball ricochets. I switched the machine off. I could hear the surf rumbling, waves breaking their stride from the sand; the squawking of gulls; the din of shrieks and laughter from the bathers. The sun beating down on the windshield was browning me like a roasting chicken.

I had to find that man and stop him. I was following the plan like a musical score, but my back stayed pressed against the leather seat, and anxiety was growing in my chest. My subconscious lacked the vocabulary to describe the cataclysm it had foreseen.

I had saved Cassie, who had cried, yet tomorrow she would skate under the sun while her brain boiled and steam blew from her ears. If some grinning long-haired guy asked her to ride in another car, she would hop in before waking up to reality. And these folks ambling around Venice Beach like buffalo in a zoo enclosure, this pink-and-orange horizon—would it matter to them if one day Cassie ended up in the dark, panties gone, while the man on top of her strangled her?

The girl was alive and had learned nothing. Her mother, after rushing home, might have taken out her revolver and imagined forcing me to face the black maw of its barrel. I closed my eyes and saw her face as though draped in dusty cobwebs. Cassie’s mother, hating me. Hate upon hate, from people who refused to understand.

If I spirited the victims away from the shadows, they remained ignorant; if I saved them and they found out, they despised me.

I got out of the car and slammed the door. I wandered the parking lot to stretch my legs while the burning asphalt sucked at my soles. A car honked. I realized I was in the way of someone trying to maneuver into a space.

How long until the owner of that Ford Thunderbird got hungry? Or was he circling around to satisfy the hunger left over from when I saved Cassie?

What if I refused to hunt him? I could hit the nearby theaters in case they were showing Jaws or Star Wars again. I would make a pilgrimage to the record stores and buy first-edition vinyls of Nick Drake, Roy Harper, Karen Dalton. I could dine into the dusk until I emerged into the odd world I’d find.

If that starving coyote went hunting and left another corpse behind, would I even find out? Would I care? Another anonymous woman would vanish. Her face printed on milk cartons. With luck, in several years or decades, some hiker would discover that the femur his dog was slobbering over had belonged to a woman—or a child.

Dozens of miniature black holes roamed the United States, swallowing pretty hitchhikers, teenage runaways, prostitutes. Black holes wandering immortally: when one disappeared, another took its place. The rest of the population kept working, birthing, gathering to celebrate the Super Bowl, filling baseball stadiums, balancing on surfboards, or doing whatever else they fancied in this period of time that blended with all the others like spilled paint in a swimming pool. News of a woman’s disappearance would spoil someone’s snack in between bites of bacon and sips of beer. Most people believed (though they wouldn’t say it) that some sin had condemned that photographed woman to deserve it, or the universe would had chosen someone else to punish. The sacrifice was part of an obscure plan that someday would drain into some blend of justice and harmony. But if I stepped in, the masses would go on smiling in ignorance.

The tension in my neck hurt. How many times had I told myself that every life I saved was worth it, even if it stuffed my mind with skeletons and cadavers, a mounting heap at the bottom of a bloody pit?

Music drifted out from the turntables and radios in the boardwalk shops and apartments. Graham Nash protesting war and the military. Dolly Parton. Hendrix. As if at a concert, different acts played on neighboring stages. A warm breeze carried the scent of incense from the apartments. Dozens of people strolled around. A girl in shorts too tight to crease and a crop top that showed her belly button skated while holding the hand of another skater—a man in his early twenties with long hair and a mustache. On the sand, groups lying on their towels cackled like flocks of birds. They had been born in a cell where some invisible hand projected pictures of puppies, babies, cakes, and tropical beaches onto the walls.

All this laughter and enjoyment while somewhere in this city—not to mention the rest of the world—someone was getting beaten, raped, or murdered. Thousands of crimes went unnoticed, and criminals moved on to their next victim. So many beatings where the battered victim avoided the police, or reported the assault only for no reporter to pick it up. So many rapes where, for whatever reason, the victim stayed silent. In any neighborhood where kids pedaled on tricycles, in the basement of some house with neatly trimmed grass, a man might be exploiting a woman’s body as a semen receptacle the same way he would use a toilet for urine, and when he killed her, he’d dispose of her corpse like flushing a used condom. Maybe that woman never made it onto the list of thousands of missing persons, or she was mentioned briefly in a newspaper, and I would never find out.

I skirted the beach, eyeing every passerby and every group member, just in case I recognized the individual. I stuffed my hands into my pockets. Sometimes I had to remind myself that I had come out here to hunt. I stopped to look back at those who had just passed by, though some were already shrinking in the distance on their roller skates, skateboards, or bikes.

No matter which era I ended up in, I was surrounded by cheerful voices, smiling groups, couples holding hands. The same actors in different costumes, sporting whatever haircuts each era deemed acceptable. The plumage of exotic birds. In every decade, they believed everything would be fine, that a clear path lay ahead and they only had to look for it. I felt set apart from them, the last member of some other human species clinging to the edge of extinction. What could I tell these people? They would react as though I had blasphemed against their divine maxim that goodness always prevails. But goodness prevailed only because, before they even arrived, I had cleared their path. When I failed to worry about it, evil triumphed time and again.

I watched a volleyball game among a coed group where more than just the ball was bouncing. A figure nearby stood out. The man hovered near the bike path, scanning the beach. Sometimes he hid his face behind a camera and snapped a photo. His voluminous blond mane fell to his shoulders, and from behind one might mistake him for a woman.

When his name and surname flickered at the edges of my mind, I shooed them away. Names were for people unlike these rabid coyotes wandering around, ready to rip off a piece of someone unless the police—or I—put them down.

“I recognize that look. My friend Pete.”

It took me a second to realize the voice to my right was speaking to me. A man of about twenty-five. He was smoking a cigarette. The fringe of his long hair covered his forehead, and the wiry ends curled at his neck. His goatee protruded two inches from his chin. His gaze implied he enjoyed meeting strangers.

“He went from one party to another,” said the man, “loved to play guitar. Plenty of women would hang around for private songs. But he got drafted. When he returned, he threw away his medal. Every couple of months I spot him far off, just standing in the middle of nowhere, looking like you do.”

He drew closer as if to offer me a cigarette, but I wanted him gone.

“Do Pete a favor. Next time you see him, stab him through the heart.”

The man twitched his head like it was a nervous tic. He lowered his eyebrows and sucked on the cigarette filter. I walked away toward the bike path.

When the photographer’s features grew sharper, I stopped. By the look of him, his mannerisms, maybe he had a portfolio of pictures he’d posed in. As if his fishing line had gone taut, he fixed his gaze on a woman in her twenties wearing a black floral-print blouse with balloon sleeves and a triangular neckline. She had tied the blouse at her waist. Her jeans ended where her thighs began.

He held the camera at belt level and followed the woman’s rising and falling hips. That golden hair gleamed like satin. Any film studio would insure such breasts.

As she passed by, he blocked her path. His lips parted, curving along the gingival margin without showing the gums. A toothpaste-ad grin, with prominent canines. The muscles in his cheeks framed the smile like curtains revealing a show. Though I pictured those teeth pulverizing bones, splinters flying between his molars, she matched his smile in a fraction of a second.

“I had to stop you,” said the man. “Tell me, gorgeous. Which agency hired you?”

“What kind of agency would hire me?”

“A modeling one, of course.”

She cocked a hip to one side, and her laughter filled my mind with the urge to drop to my knees at her feet.

“Thanks, but no one’s ever noticed me for that.”

“They probably figured you were already taken by the best, under a million-dollar contract.” He lifted the camera to chest height. “Will you let me be the first to sign you?”

The woman swayed as if gripping an invisible pole, twirling a golden lock around her fingers.

“Do you just wander around the beach photographing girls?”

“I work for some magazines, making any man lust after mediocre girls and the world kneel before beauties like you. So tell me, want to get started? A few studio sessions and you’ll end up in Hollywood.”

Her nipples showed in the blouse like buttons. The man struck exaggerated poses and clicked away. She tilted her head, pursed her lips in a pout, and tumbled into a stream of laughter.

I closed my eyes and shoved my hands in my pockets. I would have preferred to buy a towel, lay it out on the sand, and bake until the sun dipped below the horizon. Tell me, beautiful: why should I bother, why should I sacrifice myself just to prolong your infinitesimal blink of existence, so your years can unfold—at best—for a handful of people who will also vanish? Cities buried under cities buried under cities. I’d save another person who had wandered blind and deaf into a trap, and if she found out I had intervened, she’d blame me for it. But I had to stop this coyote, or else he’d keep killing.

I didn’t know her name. I looked at another face and body I had to accept corresponded to a complex life. I had to assume this woman deserved salvation. But why add another nightmare to my crammed attic? Who would miss her? Whenever she set foot outside, hundreds of men—and some women—imagined the feel of her skin, how her breasts would fall when she took off her bra, how she would look lying in bed, eyes half-closed, face flushed, lips wet, thighs parted, displaying the earnings of her genetic lottery ticket—the product of a generation raised on the streets. But who actually loved her? A mother, a father? A little sister who yearned to see her? A boyfriend who believed she was irreplaceable? How many people would cry for her years from now, when barely any scraps of flesh were left clinging to her bones? Would this retinue of ghosts I was inventing convince me she was worth saving, instead of letting her get lost among the grains of sand formed by billions of forgotten humans?

I had to keep this man from killing her, or tomorrow I’d wake up in a sweat, haunted by the image of the woman talking to the photographer, stuck to my face like a gas mask. I would know I could have saved her but chose not to. I’d save her to spare myself the pain. Whoever she might be was irrelevant. I was just a pillar against the avalanche so that between me and the tongues of oncoming snow, someone might survive.

I approached, focusing on the man, his runner’s physique. I called his name. He lowered the camera and gave me the look of a hyena that, chewing on a carcass with strips of flesh dangling from its fangs, growls at another predator trying to sink its teeth into the entrails. But he rebuilt his grin and nodded at me, like you’d greet a neighbor you share a beer with every couple of weeks.

“How’s it going?”

“You sold several sessions to Esquire and Black Tux.”

His smile slanted, showing that canine.

“My reputation precedes me. You recognize me by my face?”

“I work in the field.”

He looked me up and down, while the woman—arched, chest thrust forward—cast her eyes down his body, tracing an invisible mole with her fingertips just below her mouth.

“What did my previous work suggest about how this shoot with this lovely thing will turn out?” the man said.

I stopped myself from staring at the woman’s bubblegum-pink lips or the dip dividing her full lower lip.

“That you woke up lucky this morning.”

She laughed as if nothing in her life had ever troubled her. She swept her hands through her hair, which unfurled in the air, glimmering in the late-afternoon light. My groin tingled.

The flash from his camera pulled my attention away.

“Spontaneous smiles are priceless,” he said.

The woman bent forward, laughing as if drunk, bracing her fingers on his arm.

A deep rumble was building inside me, an underground quake. Let her enjoy herself, and she would, ignorant—until she found out.

“Surprised by your luck?” I asked.

She hardly looked at me out of the corner of her eye.

“My turn was coming.”

“In what sense?”

“I radiate that vibe. My reward had to arrive.”

“With vibes like yours,” the man said, “I’m shocked fate hasn’t caught up with you already. But most men wonder if they have any right to approach you. They delayed the karma you deserve.”

She nodded, giving him a conspiratorial look. “Anyone who comes near me knows I’ve got love to give and receive. That’s what we’re born for, to share love in every way.”

“You do that often?” I asked. “Share the love?”

She glanced at me as if gauging whether she’d accept a proposition. “Whenever I can.”

“Does it ever cause you any trouble?”

“Some of them get too attached, become possessive. But that whole ‘ownership’ thing ended a couple of decades ago.”

“I mean, have you ever met someone who wanted more than just making love—who wanted to kill you?”

She forced a shaky smile. She shifted from wanting to ignore an inappropriate comment to wondering what my intentions were. The man’s stare pricked my temple like a dagger point.

“You sound like my dad,” she said. “That kind of thing doesn’t happen. Nobody would want to hurt me—I’m nice to everyone.”

“And if it does happen? Are you going to hug your attacker till he stops?”

She offered me her profile and gathered her silky hair in one fist. “It’s a sunny afternoon at the beach. I don’t get why you’d think about that.”

“Bad vibes, man,” said the man, as though giving me advice.

“You get what you put out,” the woman added.

She looked at me like a child. If I were shorter, she would have bent down and rested her hands on her knees. “Is that how you think because they sent you to the army? You returned, though. Rejoice! You’re safe now. Nothing to fear, right?”

“Everyone assumes I fought in the war. Maybe I did, and I forgot.”

“Classic stress, so they say. Just take a deep breath, relax your face. That sort of thing has a solution. God invented marijuana. Get some strong weed and it’ll wash away your dark thoughts like a flood. If you want, I can introduce you to a couple of people.”

“Weed ramps up my paranoia.”

She slipped a hand under her hair to scratch the back of her neck. “I’m not sure if you’re messing with me.”

“Crowds would gather around you at parties,” the man said to me.

I avoided looking at him. “I don’t go to parties.”

He inhaled deeply and held his breath. “In any case, my friend, I’m afraid you interrupted us.”

He slipped an arm around the woman. She returned the gesture while shining that radiant smile.

“Sweetheart,” the man said, “back to the important stuff. Do you live near Venice?”

“Close enough.”

“Keep going the way you were headed, and in ten minutes you’ll reach my studio. 1313 Main Street, on the corner of Horizon Ave. Ring a bell?”

“Near the school.”

“Barely worth a taxi. 1313 Main Street. Sadly, I forgot my cards at home—slipped the mind of this pro. Will you remember?”

“I can handle that. 1313, corner with Horizon Ave.”

“Will you swing by tomorrow at five in the afternoon, looking at least as gorgeous as you do now?”

“Five, you say?”

“Or whenever you prefer.”

She laughed. “Tomorrow at five.”

“I’ll let you get back to it. Bet your friends are waiting for you to brighten their day.”

She lifted herself onto her toes to kiss his cheek, but it happened right as he shot me a blank look, so instead she swayed in a little dance back toward the sand. She turned to wave goodbye with a broad smile and a flutter of her hand. Her hair rippled like a dream.

I forced myself to tear my eyes away. The man studied me, expressionless. As he walked off, he flapped a hand at me as though shooing a stray dog.

Author’s note: I wrote this novella about ten years ago. It’s contained in my self-published book in Spanish titled Los reinos de brea. Written during my Serious Period, when I was sure that if I wrote in such a way, I would eventually get published. Newsflash: tough luck. If you’ve read my stuff, you know that I’m a silly bastard, that my tales usually devolve into deranged nonsense, but there’s none of that in this story or the other five I’ll probably end up translating. This protagonist is one bitter hardass. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the story, and if you don’t, well… I don’t know, go munch on rocks or something, will you?