A Postcard Would Be Nice

by Steph Campbell

  But she’s not. She smiles at them both and then back at me.

  “You can go ahead of me,” the man says to Paloma. His face is full of defeat, and I wonder why he’s even bothering to take this kid to a museum at all.

  “It’s okay, you go,” Paloma insists. The father gestures helplessly at his demon kid, and Paloma winks at him. “Hey, buddy, it’s your turn,” Paloma says to the spawn of Satan. She crouches down next to him on the floor, which is probably the bravest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, because this kid is pissed as hell. “You’d better get off the floor so these people don’t cut in front of you. This is your spot.”

  There isn’t exactly what I’d call a line now. More like a single person here and there to check their umbrella. But, like magic, the kid calms his screaming and crying and glances over his shoulder to take in the stern woman behind him. She looks like my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Guzetta. She had been rumored to take kids outside and spank them if they’d mouthed off. I don’t know if that rumor was true, but I definitely never looked at her sideways. The boy must get the vibe from her, too, because he promptly pulls himself up and stomps up to the counter while Paloma makes her way back to her spot beside the counter.

  She shoots me this secret smile, like we’re in this together, like we can figure things out if we have each other, and I want to believe that. More than anything I want that to be true.

  I’ve been so nervous to tell Paloma about Tarryn—not the whole truth, just the truth that everyone else at my school is talking about, which is basically that I’d hooked up with her. But I’ve been worried that Paloma’s too fragile in her own way. That Colm is right, and there’s more going on with her than I can see. But seeing her step up with this kid makes me realize that she isn’t going to crack. She’s kind and empathetic and strong.

  I take the coat from the man and pass a sticker down to the little guy who wants to know if this museum has dinosaurs. It doesn’t, but I’m not gonna be the dick who tells him that and causes another tantrum. So I pretend I don’t hear him and call up the next guest.

  By the time I check the woman’s umbrella, there are three more people in line.

  “I’m going to go and draw,” Paloma mouths to me. She slides her raincoat across the counter toward me, and I nod.

  “I’ll have this for you when you leave,” I say out loud as I watch her walk up the main staircase, waiting for the moment when she’ll pause near the top and look over her shoulder.

  She does, and it’s like I’ve won a goddamn award.

  Once I help the next few guests in line, I hang Paloma’s coat. It’s army green and has about a dozen pockets. I’m checking the second to last one when I find what I’m looking for. What I knew would be here.

  Greetings from Los Angeles!

  The message on the back isn’t in a different language, but it’s equally cryptic.

  29.

  Paloma is waiting outside her house with a small red cooler on her forearm when I pull up the next morning.

  I’ve got my windows down, even though it’s cool out. The sun is just starting to find its place in the sky and is warming me enough through the windshield to break the chill.

  “Let me get the door,” I lean over and say through the open passenger-side window. Paloma’s shorts are black with a pink stripe that matches the patches of cotton-candy-colored clouds in the sky.

  I pop my door open and round the car to open hers, but she’s too fast. Or too stubborn.

  “Morning!” she cries, shoving the cooler into the backseat.

  I spin the knob on the dash to turn down the music.

  “What is this?” Paloma asks, turning the volume back up.

  “‘Bad Town.’ It’s by Operation Ivy,” I say. I pull away from the curb, even though I don’t have a clue where we’re going. “It’s my favorite song.”

  “Favorite … as in all-time favorite?” Paloma asks. “’cause I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I could ever commit to a single, favorite song.”

  “That’s fair. Fine, it’s top five.”

  “Top five? What are the other four?” she asks.

  I stop at the end of her street and tip my head down so I can see her over my sunglasses.

  “Tell you what—you tell me where to drive, I’ll play you my top five on the way?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Paloma laughs. It’s tinny, and that surprises me. At first I didn’t take Paloma for the kind of girl to get nervous, and I never thought I’d be the guy who made her feel those shaky nerves, but that laugh sounded a hell of a lot like she was a little on edge. “I guess directions would help.”

  Paloma tells me to get on the freeway and that she’ll tell me when to exit, then plucks my iPhone from the cup holder and starts scrolling.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” she pauses, her index finger mid-tap as she asks.

  “Not at all,” I say.

  “Okay, so ‘Bad Town’ is on your top five, and you know one of my favorites is— embarrassingly—‘Uptown Funk.’”

  “Hey, don’t ever be embarrassed of the music that you love, Paloma. Different stuff speaks to different people and different parts of us,” I say. Then I readjust my hands on the steering wheel, feeling like maybe that was too deep for this early in the morning.

  Paloma smiles at me in an appreciative way that makes me feel like I didn’t just make an ass out of myself. I switch lanes and pass a couple of cars, suddenly excited to get wherever we’re going.

  “So we don’t need to replay those right now. But it’s your turn. What else is on your top five?”

  I tap on the dash, trying to narrow down the endless library of music I’ve got running through my head constantly. The songs I listen to or play when I’m pissed off, or the songs that get me inspired as hell to write my own stuff. The songs that I’d listened to before that night, while I’d sat in my room and tried to think of how to talk to Paloma, and the songs I’d listened to when I came home so damn happy that we had talked. There are also the songs I’d listened to those days that I hadn’t wanted to move from my bed, and had called in sick to work. Or when I’d ached to play music, but it had still felt wrong since I’d been dropped from the band.

  “You gonna play them?” I ask Paloma.

  “Yep. Hit me. What’s next?”

  “‘November Rain,’ Guns and Roses.”

  Paloma scrolls through the list without any sort of reaction, probably because she’s never heard the song. But when the music starts filtering through the speakers and Axl Rose’s gritty voice fills the car, she pulls one eyebrow down and stares at me.

  “Why is this on the list?” Her tone isn’t accusatory—just curious.

  “If you let it play all the way through, you’ll hear why.”

  So we sit through the orchestra-backed power ballad, windows down, music blaring as the 405 traffic crawls along.

  “That, that right there,” I say. “That guitar solo? Magic.”

  I allow myself a glance at Paloma out of the corner of my eye while I drive, and her eyes are closed. I wonder if the music reverberates through her like it does through me.

  When the song ends, she opens her eyes and starts scrolling through my phone again.

  “All right, let me switch out to my phone,” she says, pulling the white cord from the bottom of mine and plugging hers in its place. “This is number two. It’s equally as cheesy as my number one, but here you have it.”

  I recognize the song, from the first two notes. “I own this song too.”

  “No shit!” Paloma grabs my phone back and scrolls through. “You do! I underestimated you, Oliver. Didn’t think you’d have Mazzy Starr in your library. Nice.”

  Paloma softly sings the lyrics to “Fade into You,” and I want to ask why that song tops her list, but I don’t. If I don’t ask, I can pretend that maybe it’s for the same reason I bought the song too.

  Because it makes me think of her.

  Of how I’d spent months, years,
thinking about her and wanting there to be something more, and wondering how the hell I let it go so long without saying something, without her noticing me.

  We have to put the game on hold because Paloma is squealing, “Exit here! Exit here! Shit!” before we have the chance to share our next picks.

  We get off the freeway, and Paloma directs me until I’m familiar with where we are.

  “Griffith Observatory?” I ask.

  Paloma shakes her head. “Close, but no.”

  She leads me the rest of the way, and we park on the street in an older, upscale neighborhood.

  “You sure I’m not going to get towed?” I ask.

  Paloma reaches into the backseat and pops open the cooler, grabs two bottles of water, hands one to me, and then slams the ice chest closed. The condensation from the frigid bottle is dripping down my hand, making it impossible for me to not think about the last time Paloma handed me a bottle of water.

  Don’t do this, Oliver. Not today. It’s just water.

  “No, it’s fine, I park here every time I come,” she assures me.

  “So you bring lots of people here?” I joke. I’m also legitimately curious about who she spends time with, because I just like knowing things about her. And I’m not gonna lie— part of me wonders if she brought him...

  “Just Lex,” she says. “She’s my best friend. We hiked here almost every morning while I was prepping for life guard try-outs.”

  I can’t help but feel relieved when she doesn’t say that this is the spot where she and Martin used to come to have marathon make-out sessions, even if it’s not my place to be bothered by her having a past.

  Paloma shakes her head like she knows what I was thinking.

  “Anyway, let’s get moving before it gets too crowded.” She starts walking toward the park, and I follow.

  “So tell me something. Why don’t you drive?” I ask.

  “Over there,” Paloma says, pointing toward a wrought iron gate. “That’s the old L.A. Zoo. Have you been there?”

  I shake my head.

  “It’s pretty cool … we can go sometime. The old animal cages are still there, and you can walk through and have lunch and stuff—”

  “Excellent attempt at changing the subject, which only makes me more curious now. Why don’t you drive? Did you fail your test?” I ask, cracking a big, goofy smile so she knows I’m joking. “I’m book-smart as hell, but I failed my driving test the first time because I screwed up the hand signals.”

  That’s the short version of the story, the one that ends with a good punchline. The longer version doesn’t make nearly as good a story. Dad took me the first time. He’d taken the day off work on my sixteenth birthday, and had told me on the drive there about all of the meetings he’d cancelled and all of the people he’d pissed off by doing so. No pressure.

  The entire ride home from the test, we’d both been dead silent. I’d known I’d screwed up, and it took me two months to convince Dad I was ready for a retake. When I’d finally gotten the appointment date, he’d had Mom take me instead.

  “No, I didn’t fail, Oliver,” she says, rolling her eyes. We start up a trail, our steps long and brisk in the morning air. “I just, I sort of got into some trouble, and me getting my license was off the table.”

  I think, once again, about what Colm had said. But I let the thought float away quickly, because I’m hiding things, too.

  “So, what, it’s a secret?” I say, pushing the joke a little too far.

  Paloma stops mid-stride, and I nearly trip trying to fall back with her.

  “It’s not a secret. I screwed up. Some people do that once in a while,” she says.

  And it’s like a written confirmation that Colm was right. I shake my head, clearing the thought, because I don’t give a shit.

  “I didn’t mean anything by it,” I say, but Paloma has already started walking again.

  “Come on, we need to get to the top before it gets too hot out.”

  We clip along at a steady pace along the dusty trail, getting passed every so often by someone in serious workout gear, or a dog owner trying to keep pace with their dog. We have to slow down a little when we reach a dirt-covered staircase, though.

  “I’m coming,” I say, trying hard not to wheeze out the words.

  Paloma turns around and comes back down to the third step, the one I’m on.

  “You have way better lungs than me, I guess,” I say. It isn’t just the incline; it’s the hot morning sun beating down on us. Every part of me is sweating, even my elbows. “Go on ahead.”

  “The point is to do this together, Oliver. Besides, the trail splits a little ways up.”

  “I don’t want to hold you up,” I say.

  I can’t help but think of Thanksgiving Day get-togethers with my mom’s side of the family. How everyone looks forward to playing football in the yard while dinner is cooking. Except for me. Well, me and Dad. We both sit on the sidelines, talking about how Mom is doing, or my future. Physical activity was never really my bag, and I’ve always felt awkward because of that. Like no matter how good my grades were, or how rad the newest song I wrote was, none of that was going to mean as much to people as the fact that I didn’t know what a bawk ball was or the rules of hockey. Like, as a guy, those things, that knowledge, was more important than most anything.

  So the fact that I have to ask Paloma to slow down so I can keep up with her makes me want to curl up and die.

  “You’re not. I want to be there when you see the view for the first time.” She presses her full lips together and nods toward the dusty trail.

  We both start up the stairs, together this time, and the only disappointing thing now is I can’t see the way she looks in those tiny shorts in front of me.

  At the top of the steep staircase is the split Paloma mentioned.

  “Which way is best?” I ask in between the short, rapid gasps for breath. I bend at the waist and put my hands on my knees, trying to steady my breathing and maybe not die.

  “Well, they’re both going to lead to the same place; one is just steeper than the other. A little more difficult.”

  “Let’s do it!” I try to muster every bit of fake enthusiasm I have in me, like when my dad talks to me about the NASDAQ or some other crap I don’t understand at all.

  “The harder one?” Paloma asks.

  “Of course.”

  I’m going to die. I know it. I just hope when I collapse, it isn’t into one of the ten thousand piles of dog shit that litter this trail.

  Paloma scans my face and narrows her eyes before saying, “Okay,” in this voice that lets me know that she thinks I’m full of crap. And then she leads the way.

  “Do you do this a lot?” I ask, wondering if it’s possible for eyeballs to sweat. Because I think mine might be sweating.

  “What, drag innocent guys out into the hills to watch them suffer?”

  “So the answer is yes?” I ask, with a laugh. Laughing is bad. Laughing will cause collapse. “I mean hiking? You’ve never mentioned it before.”

  “I try to do it at least twice a month,” she says. I can’t help but feel surprised, or maybe even kind of cheated that I didn’t know that about her. Not that there’s any reason I should. There’s a ton I don’t know about Paloma Medina.

  Yet.

  “Wow, that’s excellent,” I say. It’s stupid. Hiking is stupid.

  “It feels good to have a goal, right? To be moving forward?”

  “Yeah,” I say. I know that’s a metaphor, but just the thought of moving forward another step makes me want to vomit. This hike will never end. Never. “Yeah, it does.”

  We come to another incline, and I try to focus on the part about goals, instead of thinking about the sore, blistered feet that I want to cut off, and dammit, it does feel a little better.

  I repeat Paloma’s mantra the rest of the way up, until the path opens, and in front of us is the entire city of Los Angeles. I’ve been to Griffith, I’ve seen the view, b
ut that doesn’t compare to what’s spread out in front of Paloma and me right now.

  “Whoa,” I say, staggering back a little. It isn’t just the physical exhaustion—it’s that, damn, it’s beautiful up here.

  “Right?” Paloma’s grin stretches wide across her face. “I knew you’d love it.”

  “This is incredible.”

  We make our way closer to the edge, and that’s where you can really appreciate the full panoramic scene. The actual city of downtown LA is incredible from up here, but it’s everything else that hooks me. It’s seeing the trails that lead up to the point where Paloma and I stand, filled with people, who, from this vantage point, look like an army of ants determined not to take their city—maybe even their existence— for granted.

  “How have I lived in L.A. my entire life and never been up here?” I wonder out loud.

  “Eh, I never came up until a couple of years ago,” she says as she inches closer to me.

  I stare at her for a long moment, hoping she can sense how thankful I am to be right here in this spot with her.

  “Over there is Griffith,” Paloma says, breaking our stare. “That’s Culver City, like you can see almost every neighborhood in L.A. from up here. How cool is that?”

  “So the museum must be that way.” I point into the distance.

  “Yeah.” Paloma nods. “And over there, can you see it through the clouds? There’s the ocean.”

  I squint through the morning haze, and I see the gray-blue outline of the body of water I’ve spent my life playing in. I’ve never been able to fully appreciate its scope before now.

  “I never expected it to be this amazing. This isn’t something I ever would’ve chosen to do, but wow. Just ... wow.”

  The side of her mouth quirks up into a small smile. “Isn’t that the deal with life? The only way you can know if you’re gonna like something, if something will make you happy, is to just throw yourself into it and see?”

  “Thank you for this,” I say. Because that’s all I can think to say.

  Even if it’s not remotely enough.

  30.