describing an evening in 90007
Two men paint a roof. The cumbia ricochets off the shiny white, this new coat startling next to the dust-encrusted taupe of its adjoining walls. This will cool the building, cheaply.
June unfurls, tightening the grip of the sun on this part of the world. The labour never stops, the sweat merely forms and evaporates with greater alacrity.
A person saunters past in long shorts, a mullet and a smattering of piercings. They pop on their Ray Bans while crossing the road, hips gently leaning to the music.
A boy empties an apartment into the local dumpster—mattress, drawers, unidentifiable bric-a-brac. His Tía stands on the stoop snapping her fingers.
On another evening, a man on a bicycle with plastic bags flailing about its handlebars will arrive, dive in and pick his wares.
A man in a tracksuit stumbles onto the road, clutching the velour blanket around him, inadvertently stomping to the beat. His name is Xavier.
Like birds surveying their territory, LAPD helicopters bring a cool breeze to the men on the roof.
The road is lined with pickup trucks, sedans, freshly washed SUVs, only to be pockmarked by dust and dew in the morning. A Porsche tears through the dusk sky.
‘Xavier’ comes from the name of a Basque missionary. A Romanticisation of the word for a castle or new home. Now the name is found sprouting up across the world: France, Spain,
Australia, Nicaragua, Cuba, Mexico, America, England…
Tonight, the Porsche will lay its head for the night a few roads over, glinting in the lamplight.
Tonight, the person with the shorts will walk past it with their friends, deriding the grandiosity.
Tonight, the men on the roof will sip ice cold Modelos, their lips seasoning the beer with salt, before they head out for another shift.
Tonight, Tía will walk out of her apartment for the last time, not stopping to say goodbye to the decades she’s left in there, dropping the key into her landlord’s letterbox.
And tonight, Xavier will look for a phone, or some cash, or an enclosed vessel in which to lay his head, trying one door after another. The sedans, the SUVs, all the same for his purpose.
The owner of the Porsche will burst out of his house, unwieldy in indignance, wielding a knife.
Xavier will look up to a blur of faces, a sharp light will hit his chest. He will feel what seems like a punch but the rupture will call attention to itself with three more blows.
Xavier will stumble through 90007 a final time, the night purpling around him.
His eyes will flicker shut and he will hear voices around him, that nasal teen drone, or the crickets melding into sirens or perhaps more cumbia from the taco truck down the block.
Vankshita Mishra is a filmmaker, writer, and curator based in L.A. and London. After completing a bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences (Physics and Chemistry) at Durham University, she worked freelance in film and publishing with Greenpeace UK. In 2022, Vankshita was selected for a Fulbright BAFTA Scholarship to pursue an MFA in Film Production at the University of Southern California. While pursuing her Master’s she has been awarded the BAFTA-Pigott Scholarship and an Alfred P. Sloan Writing Award.
