Looking for Karma at the Eden Cafe

Available June, 2010

Chapter One excerpt
If Rob's truck hadn’t broken down, Karma might have ended up back home in Los Angeles the way she’d planned. Instead, a half-mile outside the one-street town of Eden, the patched together Chevy half-ton had a coughing fit, hacking and groaning until the engine shuddered one last time and died.

The truck rolled to a stop at the side of the road. Half asleep, Karma raised her head a few inches off the seatback, barely lifting her eyelids to watch Rob pump the gas pedal and turn the ignition key. Nothing happened.

“Son of bitch.” Rob pounded the insignia in the center of the steering wheel. After seven months of living with Rob, Karma had learned to keep her mouth shut at moments like this. She kept still, faking sleep.

Rob leaned his shoulder against the driver’s side door until it squealed open. When he jumped out, the truck bounced up and down like a small boat lost on a stormy sea. Stomping to the front of the truck, Rob fiddled around with the catch on the hood, his curses floating back to Karma in a series of hisses and grunts. Finally the hood popped open and the front windows of the truck filled with a close-up view of pale green metal, pimpled with rust.

Safely hidden from Rob’s view, Karma sat up and adjusted the rear view mirror to vertical, frowning at the narrow reflection. Her eyes were puffy and her long brown hair was a tangled mess, a bird’s nest. The bright afternoon sunlight made her face look pale and sickly, giving her skin a yellow tone instead of its usual light olive. The back of her shirt was damp against the car seat. She was getting too old for this suitcase life, sleeping in cars, on floors, always moving on to the next place, keeping her life small and contained so it could be rolled up and packed tight when it was time to move on.

They'd left Spokane at midnight. Rob drove, fueled by pills and coffee, refusing Karma's offer to share turns at the wheel. This time they were headed for Los Angeles. Karma tried not to think about what was in the canvas bags tucked behind the driver’s seat. Because of those bags, they’d be traveling at night on two-lane highways, avoiding daytime, avoiding main roads as much as possible, avoiding the possibility of cops and getting busted.

This would be the last time. She’d made Rob promise. When they got to L.A. Karma hoped she could borrow some money from her mom, enough maybe to rent a small apartment until they could find work. Karma thought about the best way to ask her mother for the loan. Probably the threat of sharing the small house with Karma and Rob would be enough.

She leaned back in the passenger seat, planted her size ten hiking boots on the dashboard and dozed off again, dreaming about a little L.A bungalow, maybe in Silverlake or one of the canyons, until Rob leaned into the cab, shook her awake and told her the bad news.

"It's useless," Rob said. "I can’t fix it. The crankshaft is cracked." His mouth was pinched with frustration and his face seemed all angles and shadows.

"What're we going to do?"

Rob shrugged. "Start walking.” He pulled the seat forward and yanked at the metal wall hiding the khaki green bags. In one fluid motion he pulled the bags out, tossed them over one shoulder like a sailor with a duffel bag and slammed the truck shut. Without waiting for Karma, he started down the road.

© Ellen Davidson Levine
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