Wrong City Read Free Page A

He
straightened up, popped the hood. Gestured for Vish to look closer. “At a
guess, though, I’d say this might be the problem.”
    A chaos of
smashed parts. It looked like someone had wielded a sledgehammer and bashed
everything, all that finely-tuned German engineering, into crushed bits. “Wow,”
Vish said. He looked at the man. “Who did that?”
    “Don’t know.”
He smiled. Very white teeth, shining in the darkness. His incisors were too
long, giving him the impression of fangs. “I probably deserved it, though.”
    He said it in
such a matter-of-fact way that Vish wasn’t sure he was joking. There was
something frightening about this level of destruction, that someone had directed
so much rage and fury toward him in this specific manner. Cars were an
extension of everyone’s personalities here in Los Angeles. In the eyes of many,
Vish’s lack of his own car marked him as somehow incomplete, less than a wholly
functioning human being. The attack on the car was an attack on the man.
    Vish glanced
around. The rustling in the bushes, the dark night, the empty road… “Do you
want me to call you a cab?”
    “A friend’s
picking me up. Thanks, though.” The man looked thoughtful, but not worried.
    All of a
sudden, Vish felt… not scared, exactly, but something in that area. The man
seemed defenseless, waiting by himself beside his ruined car with an
unidentified enemy somewhere out there. He hesitated, then made the offer. “I
could wait with you.”
    The man looked
at him, his expression blank, and for a moment Vish thought he’d said something
to offend him. Then he nodded. “Sure. If you wouldn’t mind. Thanks. I was
getting bored.” He slammed down the hood and boosted himself up onto it. “Grab
a seat.”
    Vish hesitated.
“I don’t want to destroy any fingerprints.”
    “Doesn’t
matter. Destroy away. I’m not going to report this.”
    Vish sat on the
hood next to him. The car looked clean—shiny and freshly waxed, in fact—and if
the man could trust his expensive suit to it, Vish didn’t need to fret too much
about getting his cheap work slacks dirty. “You really don’t know who did
this?”“I can think of a few possibilities. A lot of people don’t like me.”
    “I don’t know
who you are,” Vish said. “It seems like I should, but I don’t.”
    “No reason you
should. Our social circles probably haven’t overlapped much.” The man extended
a hand. “I’m Sparky.”
    “Vish.” They
shook.
    “Fish?” Sparky
asked. “Like… fish?” He made a little swimming motion with his hand.
    “Vish. With a
‘V’.”
    “Short for?”
Sparky’s expression was sharp, like it mattered.
    “Viswanathan.”
    Sparky smiled.
“I was hoping for Vicious. Or maybe Vishnu,” he said. “Viswanathan? Isn’t that
a last name?”
    “It’s my
mother’s maiden name. Actually, it’s my middle name, but I don’t like my given
name.”
    “Which is?”
    “Michael.”
    Sparky stared
at him as if he was trying to decide if Vish was making fun of him. It was an
expression Vish saw a lot. Then he shook his head.
    “So it’s been
established you’re not an actor. Proceeding on the assumption you’re not a
career caterer, either, I’m guessing you’re the other one.” Off Vish’s confused
look, he elaborated: “Writer.”
    “Ah. Yes. I am.
Trying to be one, at least.”
    “Screenplays?”
    “Yes. I’ve just
started, though. I’m not sure I have the hang of it yet.”
    “How long have
you been in L.A.?” Sparky asked.
    “A year,
almost. I moved out from New York. I was a contributing editor at an online
literary magazine, but it folded last year.”
    “So you moved
out here. To write screenplays.”
    Was there a
note of scorn in his tone, or was Vish overly sensitive on the issue? “Yeah,
pretty much. You’re in the entertainment industry?”
    “Here? Who
isn’t?” Sparky smiled. “I’m on the management end of things. Nothing terribly
glamorous.” He propped his