“They didn’t approve your research idea for language acquisition in houseplants, when they respond to kind words versus unkind words?” Polly frowned. “I thought for sure that one would be a winner.”
That hadn’t actually been my topic, but when I’d mentioned it to Polly in sarcasm, she’d taken it as my actual suggestion. I’d let it lie.
“Not a winner. Maybe I’m just perpetually stuck at All But Dissertation.” They called it ABD; I called it unemployable in my field, which was why for the past six months I’d been acting as full-time nanny and housekeeper for the Third Worst Person Alive. “It’ll come to me. Soon, I’m sure. My parents are starting to get a little impatient with what they call my life choices.” I put up air quotes for that.
“Life choices.” Polly did a pair of withered air quotes as an echo. “Speaking of life choices, you’re right. We should go get some real food. Real food will help us think up better nefarious plans. Plus, maybe a topic for your dissertation will come to us.”
“Food inspiration. Huzzah!” I jumped up, ready to get away from the cheese puffs. Any packaging that read Jumbo Pak on the side had to be a red flag. Besides, we were on the California coast. There were a thousand great places to eat.
“Food inspiration. Double huzzah!” Polly grabbed her purse, too. “There’s a new seafood place that opened up in the train station. My parents told me about it.”
“Your parents know their seafood.” Admiral and Mrs. Pickering were definite foodies. “But the train station?”
“Or maybe it was the bus station.”
Bus station!
ACT II: Scene 3
On the Street [At the Bus Station] Where You Live
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA
Wherein our heroine and our hero meet at last, under less than sterile circumstances. In fact, the circumstances are deliciously dirty.
Polly started her car, and we pulled out into the hum of L.A. traffic. Much as I hated my job situation on San Nouveau, I did love the lack of traffic there, which was basically nil. An island with that few residents, plus rules like the statutes on Santa Catalina Island limiting the number of cars, made for the world’s most delightful driving. Just me and the open, winding, island view roads.
I chomped down on my nails while Polly dodged a semi-truck merging into our lane without a head check. Southern California driving was a lot more like a video game than anyone elsewhere could have imagined.
A few minutes later, we pulled up at the East Los Angeles bus station in all its glorious grime. It was definitely deliciously dirty, except this was as un-delicious a place as I could have imagined. I prayed she was mistaken in her location memory. We could get third-world germs at this particular abandoned rock pile.
“Uh, seriously?” I said, getting out of the car and clutching my purse to my chest. Maybe I should tuck it under my shirt for safekeeping.
“You know how they’re always giving grants for urban renewal.” Polly swung fearlessly along toward the massive edifice with the crumbling charm. “This eatery snagged one and really fixed it up inside.”
“But what about the outside?”
“Aw, pshaw. Mom compared it to food when you’re camping. The discomfort you endure going through the wilderness to get to the meal makes it taste all the better.”
Oddly, that made sense. I did like food cooked over a campfire. I wasn’t a ranching girl for nothing. But, as we crossed the parking lot and approached the building, it was even more a wilderness than I’d envisioned, including the smell: public urinal chic.
“My mom and dad really wouldn’t like my life choices if they knew those included hanging out at the bus station in East L.A.”
While I knew the city was doing what it could, this place looked a long way from a government grant away from any kind of renewal. And that smell!
“Don’t make eye contact with the panhandlers and you’ll be fine.” Polly blissfully ignored all the warning signs that basically read, Young Urban Professional Women Should Have Their Pepper Spray at the Ready. I slid my hand into my purse and felt around until my fingers grazed my cold metal canister.
“I hear the fillet of sole is incredible—breadcrumb crust, a lemon butter sauce, and…”
That girl. Having spent her life as the daughter of a commanding officer, it was like she went trilling along with this myth that nothing could ever hurt her.
I, on the other hand, grew up on the ranch in inland California, where daily life meant rattlesnakes and horses getting spooked by coyotes’ cries, bolting with the rider barely hanging on. Death was always a little nearer to me—and my instincts demanded I keep on the lookout.
Approaching the dilapidated bus station put me on high alert. I jumped and nearly pepper-sprayed a flock of pigeons that took sudden flight as we walked up with our heels clicking on the pavement.
I figure I’d better dial down my intensity.
We entered through revolving doors that were probably new in the 1930s, judging from the brass and iron. The floor was a patchwork of gorgeous California tile and the ceiling soared at least two stories high, lit by fixtures of iron and broad glass domes as if we’d walked onto a Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart film set.
Except for that stench. Just imagine all the bad bodily smells and combine them into a single overall scent and then bottle it. That’s what had been injected into the heating and cooling ducts here and was circulating all around and into our nostrils. I would have put a hankie to my nose if I’d brought one.
Long benches stretched in rows, like church pews. We had to cross in front of them to get to a neon sign flashing Fresh Fish! on the far side of the cavernous room.
“Hey, this might be the perfect place to find you-know-who.” Polly rubbed her hands together. “Look.”
She pointed, and asleep on the benches sprawled some of the more pathos-inducing forms of humanity I’d seen in a long time. People, and yet they almost looked like piles of old clothing: discarded, filthy, unkempt, needing mending in every sense of the word.
In an instant, I’d changed my mind about her whole scheme. My heart lurched in my chest. This would be wrong to do to someone, to use someone.
“I can’t do that, Polly. I’m just not sure this is a great idea.” Now that I’d seen what our idea was leading to in reality, I did more than balk; I mentally turned tail and ran. “Hey, though, listen. I’ve got a different idea. It’s brilliant, so hear me out. Maybe I could just create a fake online profile of someone instead. Dupe Monique-Noelle that way.”
“She’ll never fall for it.” Polly was surging on into the belly of the station, forging like a steam engine at full throttle.
“She might.” It was weak, both the idea and my retort. “We have some invented billionaire pretend to fall in love with her and then dump her. That would be so much easier.” It would be so much less risky for every reason—including the riskiness of the feelings of someone whose life choices or terrible circumstance led them here, to the bus station, and into a pile of threadbare cloth.
“I’ll say it again, she’d never fall for it. For one, she doesn’t know how to use a computer.”
I hated when Polly’s logic completely trumped mine.
“I just realized, I’m allergic to fish.”
“No, you’re not. Come on. We can conduct interviews after lunch. I’ll just do some scouting before we head into the restaurant.”
“Oh, okay, fine. But couldn’t we just get KFC instead?” Fried chicken was usually the perfect red herring that sent Polly’s nose sniffing in a different direction when I wanted to deflect her from a plan. She adored it. Even the kind that came frozen in the grocery store with a side of old yellow corn and plasti-mashed potatoes.
“Have you lost your nerve, or something?” She stopped and whirled around. She stood directly in front of me, nose to nose, her hands on her hips. I had to stop or I’d bump into her.
“Totally.”
“Eliza Galatea. How long have we been friends?”
“Forever. But that’s not the point.” While I tried to think of the point, and while Polly dropped her jaw to retort whatever point I eventually landed on, up walked someone in obvious distress, interrupting us, standing too close, looking completely sunburned, and smelling like burned rubber and hot asphalt and desperate need of a bath.
“Ladies, you wouldn’t happen to have a phone I could borrow, would you?”
Panhandlers had gone from asking for cash to asking for phones now. This really was the future we were living in, wasn’t it?
I stopped and processed his question a second. He sounded odd, not like the lapsed surfer-turned-to-drug-abuse he appeared to be. There was something definitely non-California about his accent, and I noticed it immediately—probably because of my linguistics education—but couldn’t place it, due to how husky and exhausted his voice had come out.
“Are you okay, sir?” I couldn’t help asking. He looked so forlorn.
“Actually, an international phone. That’s what I really need.” As he said the word need, I caught a glimpse of his teeth.
Okay, I might have a thing about teeth. An obsession, Polly calls it. A very good set of teeth can completely blind me to myriad other characteristics that would make a person otherwise unappealing.
And these teeth happened to be the best, most dazzling teeth I’d ever seen. My heart may have skipped a beat.
Maybe it was because they contrasted so starkly against his sunburnt face, or played so nicely off his extremely messy blond hair, but suddenly, I was entranced and ignoring everything else that I should be paying attention to—like the fact he was a homeless man who lived at the bus station and was asking to borrow, or possibly steal, my phone.
“I’ve got to get an international phone.” He said it again, and this time I picked apart the accent more. My mind was like one of those police phone traces when a hostage-taker called. Keep ’em on the line just a few more seconds—we’re pinpointing. He had to talk more for me to place it. Not American, not quite British. South African, maybe? Kiwi?
Polly, however, had me by the arm.
“I think I told you to ignore the…you know.” She glanced over a shoulder at him. “I don’t care how nice his teeth are.”
See? She knew me far too well.
“He seems like he’s in genuine distress. Let’s just see what—” We were talking about him as if he weren’t standing two paces from us. It was rude.
“Fine,” Polly said. “Since you can’t be trusted, Teeth Girl. But let me handle this.”
Polly definitely had the take-charge skills on hand, so I dialed down my protests and let her push me aside. Not like I had much choice, now that her Admiral Pickering’s Only Daughter persona had charged forth.
“Fine. So, I see you have nice teeth. Have you had orthodontic work done?”
That was not the first question I’d expected her to ask. Why do you need a phone? maybe. Or who are you trying to call? Not a dental question.
“I’m sorry?” His brows knit together. A weariness showed in the way his shoulders slumped. Desperation. It tugged at my heartstrings. I wanted to help him, but I had a normal phone, not what he was requesting. Sure, it dialed from L.A. to San Nouveau, which had city council meetings solely to discuss secession from the so-called oppressive U.S. government, but wishing so didn’t make them international per se.
Polly took him by the shoulders and spun him around. “Nice build. That, plus the teeth. You’ll do.”
“I’ll what?”
“He’ll what?” It hit me—she wasn’t wasting any time. Polly Pickering was picking our pigeon.
“Polly, this isn’t a good idea.”
“It’s a perfect idea—assuming he passes the background check. You said so yourself.”
I had said no such thing. Over the din and echo of the bus station, I heard the stomach rumbles of the homeless guy. They were even louder than the air brakes of the bus pulling up out front.
“So you do or don’t have an international phone I can use? Because I’m absolutely gutted without access to a phone.”
“What’s your name?”
“Henry.”
“Henry what?”
“Henry Lyon. But what’s that got to do with—oh, you want to know who you’d be lending your phone to. Makes sense.” He looked like he was going to pass out. It was pathetic, really, the way drugs and hard living ravaged a man’s whole body and psyche. Even a body with extremely nice teeth. And good shoulders, as Polly had pointed out.
“Do you have a job, Henry?”
This was going too far. I reached over and grabbed Polly’s arm, shushing her. What a question to gouge a desperate man’s dignity.
“I own the station.” He at least had a ready answer, even if it was invented, and thoroughly pointing to the crazy side of the dial. Poor guy thought he owned the bus station. My heart swelled up, threatening to spill out near my lower eyelashes as his hoarse voice went on. “I need to take care of the station. Things are piling up, surely. I need an international phone.” His anxiety may have been ratcheting up, but Polly brushed it aside.
“What are your plans for the next two weeks, Henry Lyon?”
Oh, dear me. I couldn’t let the bus station become home of the pigeon—our pigeon.
“No, Polly!” That was enough. I turned to Henry Lyon. “We’re here for dinner. Would you like something to eat? Our treat.”
Polly gave me the death stare.
I gave it right back, and through gritted teeth ground out, “My treat.”
***
Polly and I spent the few minutes between ordering and receiving our food whisper-arguing about whether this was a good idea. Henry Lyon had gone to the bathroom, much to the consternation of the hostess.
“He’s with us,” I’d said, implying that she’d better not kick him out. “Paying customer.” I pointed at their sign probably intended to ward off the bus station’s many hard luck cases. She still frowned back at me.
“It’s not right, Polly.”
“He’s perfect.” She flung her arm in the air like the drama coach she was. “You said find someone deliciously dirty. He is. And there’s an outside chance that beneath the dirt, he could actually be delicious.”
His straight, supernaturally white teeth popped into my mind. I shoved them aside.
“Please. He’s not well. He thinks he owns the bus station.”
“Whatever. He only has to be passably well—enough to fool your completely insane boss, speaking of unwell.”
“She’ll see through it. Takes one to know one, right?” This whole thing was starting to ache inside me. “He seems nice and sincere.”
“Which is the perfect bait and hook for Mo-No.”
She did have a point with that, but I had to keep my head.
“No, it’s the perfect reason not to throw him like bait to her shark-itude.”
The server brought our food, and the smells of fresh-cooked salmon on cedar plank, squeezed with both lemon and lime filled my head. It completely overpowered the bus station’s odors, and I realized I’d gotten pretty hungry while we waited.
But not as hungry as Henry Lyon looked.
Guilt slapped me. There were genuinely hungry people out here in the world, people who hadn’t maybe eaten a vegetable or a protein in days, and they were literally all around me. As a ranching family, we had a freezer full of meat year-round. I didn’t remember ever going more than one full day without food.
“This looks delicious.” Henry came and sat down across from me. “I’m starved.” It came out stahv’d, which somehow made me shiver. That accent!
“Go ahead.” I motioned for him to eat. “This is Polly, and I’m Eliza, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said, never taking his eyes off the food.
I had ordered for him the dish that looked like the most filling food the menu offered: sausages and mashed potatoes. If he was still hungry when he finished, I told myself I’d get him a second me
al, or even buy a gift certificate and hand it to him as we left. Since he owned the station, chances were he didn’t want to leave his kingdom, but living here, he would still need something to eat again soon.
“My last meal was dehydrated beef stroganoff,” Henry said between bites. “Not the best beef I’ve ever eaten, either. Not that I was in any position to complain.” He held his fork and knife backward, European style, but he was still able to move the food from plate to mouth much faster than Polly or I. In fact, I took a few bites—great food, her parents were absolutely right—but I couldn’t eat it all. When he cleaned his plate, I pushed the rest of mine over to Henry, who went after it without a break in food-shoveling rhythm.
“And by dehydrated,” he said, “I mean I didn’t even add the water. Didn’t have any clean water, so I left the food dry, but it was hard to choke down, believe me.”
“Where’d you get the dehydrated stroganoff?” Polly didn’t seem to worry about his dignity—still. He probably got it at a soup kitchen, as a handout for the people who lived on the streets.
“Bus driver. Shuttle bus. Canyon Feel the Love.”
Uh, I didn’t really want to answer that question.
“I didn’t know they had an airport shuttle out here.” Polly chewed merrily.
“Not airport. Tour.” Henry was so busy shoveling in bites that he could barely manage a two-word sentence.
None of his responses made complete sense. The filter he must see the world through, while it fascinated me, was too poignant. To me it was more than clear that at some point, possibly not too long ago, someone had cared deeply for him. No one with long-term neglect had teeth that straight, that white, that perfect. Call me the crazy one, but growing up on a ranch, the teeth were a main way my dad judged whether a horse was healthy or not.
Polly reached for a cheddar biscuit while causally dropping another Tactlessness Bomb.
“So, Henry Lyon, tell me. Do you use drugs?” She dipped her biscuit straight into the bowl of tartar sauce, took a bite and double dipped. “Illegal drugs, I mean, of course.”
My Fair Aussie: A Standalone Clean Romance (Millionaire Makeover Romance Book 3) Page 3