I decided to take stock of the whole city, starting out in downtown, in San Pedro Square, and spiraling outward to the suburbs that pushed against the hills. In the city center I counted the towering skyscrapers, the sidewalks lined with palms, the streets dead-empty. I passed the adobe house, then the Mystery House, then the Discovery Museum, then St. Leo’s: an approximate timeline of the valley’s progress. I passed the Gurdwara Sahib, which sprawled bulbously between two Catholic churches. I passed under a billboard that told me that all of my problems could be solved with a little bit of J E S U S, the Vietnamese letters underneath, directly across from the billboard announcing the drones that would deliver marijuana instantly, right to my door! I passed that stretch of road on Skyport Drive that I’d know even sleeping, the way the asphalt grinds under the wheels. I passed Japantown and Little Italy and Little Portugal and Little Saigon—all the Littles. I passed the Victorians in all their pastels. I passed Communications Hill, where the public high schoolers drink until their parents, laboring at nearby corporations, come home. I passed the industrial parks crammed full of startups; I passed the sprawling campuses of eBay and PayPal and I passed the endless suburbia that pressed up against the trailheads and then pushed through the sandy foothills and piney forests to reach the rest of the bay.

I knew where the clinic because once a year, the boys at the Catholic school would erect thousands of paper gravestones on their grand lawn, to mark the countless and untimely deaths of American infants. I drove by the clinic very slow. I could see lawn chairs and posters with photos of something mutilated and vaguely resembling lasagna. Signs with Bible verses. All in English, which struck me as strange, because this was a place where everything was translated at least once, usually to Spanish, and sometimes also Vietnamese. 

On my way home, finally, I passed the four churches on my street: one Assyrian, one Episcopalian, one Methodist, one Catholic. I sat in my driveway for a minute. An empty car scrolled past, a camera strapped to its roof. I waved. It got dark very early this time of year, and while I couldn’t see any stars I could begin to see the thick swathe of satellites blinking overhead. I thought of all the bodies in all the places I had passed.

about the author

Megan Ritchie has been published in Denver Quarterly, Southern Indiana Review, Pinch, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Miami.