Pushcart 2026 L: Lou Mathews, “Desperate Times, Desperate Crimes” from New England Review #45.3

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Guy Fawkes said that, and so did Esmerelda, Gustavo’s daughter, when I went to visit him at the hospital. Gustavo is my landlord of seven years, owner of the place I landed once the scripts went un-optioned and the residuals dried up, an eight bungalow court on the fringe of Culver City. What Esmerelda actually said was, “I’m sorry, but we got to bump the rent.” I was the one who said the thing about desperate times. I can list a half-dozen reasons I shouldn’t like this story. I have no interest in any of the content: I’ve never read Charles Bukowski and don’t plan to; LA would be on any list of five places in the US I least want to visit; tales of Hollywood leave me cold; I’ve never seen or even heard of most of the films mentioned; the main character’s dismissal of teaching as a ‘crap job’ offends me; it’s a selection from a novel-in-stories, which means it’s part of a larger work and thus loses something as a standalone piece. But I…