—Official campaign slogan, 1974
As she sat in the refrigerator-sized truck bay, Cara figured she’d simply hop out when the driver stopped to make his next delivery a few blocks away. But the truck kept moving, jolting her with every turn, until it merged onto what she assumed was the 110 Freeway. She braced herself as best she could, anchoring her body by pressing her feet against the far wall. With each mile, her breathing normalized further. Wherever they were headed, it was safer than where she’d been.
Then the truck came to a sudden stop.
When the door rolled open, Cara was briefly blinded by a flash of sunlight.
The driver jumped back in surprise. “Whoa! The fuck?”
“I’m so sorry!” She held up her hands to show him she wasn’t armed. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Which was a joke, because he was definitely not the type to startle easily. The hefty man had a thick, tattooed neck andmuscular arms. “What the hell are you doing in the back of my truck?”
“Joy riding?” she improvised.
“Um . . . no.”
Cara didn’t mean to smile but she couldn’t help it. The sheer, surreal ridiculousness of the whole situation—of her new reality—just caught up with her.
“You really shouldn’t leave your doors unlocked when you’re making deliveries,” she told him.
Shaking his head, he took a few steps back and pulled a phone out of a belt holster. She scooted out of the truck, hands still up and open.
“Please don’t call anyone,” she pleaded. “I didn’t take anything. Or drink anything, I swear.”
“Good for you.”
“Look, I’ll be honest with you. I just needed a ride away from Olvera Street as quickly as possible. My date was super scary.” Cara had lied more in the last week than she had her entire life and hated that she was getting so good at it. “We matched on Bumble and met for lunch, and it went really, really badly. When he started talking about his fascination with BDSM and suggested we go back to his dungeon, I told him I had to go to the bathroom and just ran out the back of the restaurant.”
The delivery driver lowered his phone, seeming to soften. “You know, you’re lucky I don’t carry a gun.”
“I really am so sorry I scared you.”
“Surprised me,” he clarified. “Don’t you have Uber or Lyft?”
“I just didn’t feel safe waiting for a rideshare. He could have come out and seen me.”
“Dating sucks.”
He appeared to be in his early thirties and wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, so he probably understood the minefield of online dating a lot better than she did. She had come up with thecover story about a bad date without thinking because it seemed plausible. After meeting Karl, she had been certain she would never date again.
The truck had stopped in front of a mom-and-pop tortilleria on a street that could have been anywhere in the city.
“Where are we, by the way?” she asked.
“South part of Boyle Heights. I’m headed back to the distribution center. Do you need me to call someone for you?”
“You’ve already been so helpful. I can’t thank you enough.”
Before he could respond—or follow—she ducked around the corner and disappeared.
FIFTY-FOUR
JORDAN
She was a quick study when it came to learning the Cumbia, but the LA bus schedule is a whole different dance.
—Federico Santos, Latin dance instructor, speaking to KTLA News
