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lying about when they could be easily disproved. My browser hopped into map mode and pulled up the street view of the Divisadero clinic. I saw it had a huge Santa Muerte mural painted in front of three elaborate crosses on its wall and a dramatically shadowed numeral seventeen. The woman on the phone began making polite excuses to get off the line with me.
    “No, wait, please. I’m very interested in working there. Public health has always been a passion of mine.” Completely not borne out by my résumé or working experience, but hey. I shrank the map program and saw just how much farther south Divisadero was, and made an assumption about how much of a pay cut it would be. There couldn’t be that many other qualified nurses applying. I zoomed back in quickly. The mural on its side was huge, and her outstretched skeleton hand seemed to be beckoning me. “I can even interview today.” I crossed fingers on both my hands. Please, this time, just let me get what I want.
    She inhaled and exhaled loudly, and gave me a time two hours from now.
    “Thank you—public transportation? I have a car—if you say so. Okay. See you then.”
    I hung up the phone with her and paused to really think. Despite the fact that I’d slept normal hours last night, I wasn’t used to being up during the day. I was covered in dust and cat hair—and I’d just volunteered to be at an interview in two hours. But it was an idea. The mural seemed more stagnant than it had barely a minute ago; now that I wasn’t deluding myself, her outstretched hand was more pointing up the street than calling out to me. But still. Nothing said I actually had to take the job. I might as well see, right? And two hours was long enough for a shower and coffee.
    *   *   *
    After my shower I blow-dried my hair and got dressed in a just-past-the-knee skirt and a blousy summer-weather-appropriate top, hoping it would say interview but not mug me, and walked to the train station in the pre-noon sun. Today would be as hot and humid as every other day this summer had been, the sun breathing over Port Cavell’s shoulder like a stalker.
    While I felt confident that no one actually wanted to steal a Chevy from last century, the Divisadero clinic was more than a little into what I’d been trained to think of as the bad side of town. No wonder she’d suggested I take public transportation.
    *   *   *
    The fourth leg of the train ride was the longest. As the train snaked aboveground to where the fifth and sixth stations were, the entire population of the train rotated through the car, everyone but me. When we reached the sixth station, I got out alone.
    This was an open station, and just below it in the shelter the train platform provided was an open-air market of sorts. There were stands with fruit piled up, and ropes strung from side to side of the bottom of the pavilion, knotted off and lined with shirts. There was a cart with a grill and something good-smelling cooking on it. I took the next few steps down.
    The platform above provided some shade, and maybe the trains created a passing breeze. There were women pulling small children behind them. Smoke from the grill caught a crosswind and made me cough nervously. Everyone around me was speaking Spanish.
    People were looking at me, registering that I was there, that they didn’t know me, and then looking away. I didn’t feel I was in danger, but I did feel like an outsider. I got my bearings while trying not to turn my back completely on anyone. I’d been too paranoid for too long to let my guard down now. According to the map in my head, the clinic was two blocks up. I set off down the sidewalk while listening for footsteps behind me.
    The road was lined by the walls of run-down businesses, a few painted fresh white over graffiti. Others were turquoise and pale pink. There were some cars parked outside, though none that would have shamed my Chevy. The road itself could only questionably be called such, full