“That seems so long ago. Where did you get that?”
“I stole it from your room at the hotel. You want it back?”
“No, you keep it.”
“Should we play poker one more time while we wait?”
“We don’t have time. Your bus is almost here.”
We held hands on the bench and sucked on candy for the last couple of minutes until the bus showed up. Julia gave me my ticket and walked me to the gate. Then she kissed me, but not on the lips. “I’m going to miss you,” she said. “Do you realize we’ve known each other for over two months? We met on the first day of summer. Thanks for everything, Joe. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” I said.
I stood in line with my book bag and gave my ticket to the driver, and then I climbed onto the bus and sat there while everybody else got on. The bus was already half full, and I was starting to feel sick already because it smelled so terrible in there. Someone sat down beside me with two screaming babies. Then I thought maybe I could have stopped all this if I had said or done something different. I pushed my way off the bus and ran back through the station to the parking lot, where Julia was cleaning out the trunk of Alvin’s car. She looked more beautiful than the last time I’d seen her. It was like she’d taken a shower and had a nap since she left me.
“Do you want to have lunch?” I said. “Before you drive away?”
Julia looked up at the sky, where a plane was flying overhead. She tossed her keys into the air and caught them. “I should really get going.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m supposed to have dinner with my dad.”
“Is he really a criminal?”
“You know he is.”
“Are you going to be a criminal too?”
Julia smiled. “We’ll see.”
“Will you hug me?”
“You’ll miss your bus.”
“But I need it.”
We hugged for a while next to Alvin’s car. When she pulled away, she pointed at my empty shoulder. “Where’s your book bag?”
“On the bus.”
“You’d better get back. It’s going to leave without you.”
“Please don’t remember me this way.”
“As what?”
“As being so sad.”
Julia laughed.
“Don’t worry. I promise only to remember the good times. Soon that’s all you’ll remember too.” She rattled the keys in her hand. “Okay, I’m getting in the car now.”
“Okay.”
She got into the car.
“I’m driving away now. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” I said. “Good-bye, Julia.”
“Good-bye, Joe.”
I watched her drive away, and then went back into the station. Julia had been right that I would miss my bus. One of the other drivers told me it had left three minutes ago. I’d lost my book bag and Houston’s jacket and everything. I didn’t really care about any of it, except for the picture of Julia.
I spent the whole night on that bench until another bus came in the morning. I got on the last empty seat and stayed on it for two days, next to a man who was heading to California to see his family. He took the bus across the country six times every year to see some children he had there. Later he spilled boiling coffee all over my legs.
We arrived in Los Angeles in the middle of the afternoon, and I spent the last of my money on a cab to Sherman Oaks. All the apartments looked the same as ever. I eventually remembered where Marcus lived—from the purple iron fence around the swimming pool—but when I stood outside his door and heard nothing but singing inside, I still wondered if I’d come to the right place.
It was excellent singing, but it was also completely different from how Ms. Delancey sang. Ms. Delancey’s singing made you want to cry, but this singing sort of made it easier to breathe. I wouldn’t have minded standing there and listening to it all day long, but I knew it was probably illegal. When I rang the doorbell, the singing stopped and this girl opened the door in flip-flops. She had on this snappy orange tank top, and her black hair was all shiny and loose. As soon as I saw her I remembered Marcus didn’t live here anymore. He’d gone off to play basketball in China and would never take care of me again.
The girl had a movie script in her hand. She looked at me, waiting.
“I love your singing,” I said. “Are you an actress?”
She nodded and smiled. It wasn’t a very friendly smile, but I can’t blame her. I was just this strange person who’d knocked on her door.
“I’m Marcus’s brother,” I said.
“Who?”
“The guy who used to rent this place.”
“Oh, Marcus. Right. And you’re his brother. What was your name again?”
“Joe.”
“That’s right. He mentioned you. He came by and left something for you, in case you ever stopped by. Hold on a second.”
She left the door open while she disappeared into the apartment, back toward where my old bedroom used to be. I could see that all the furniture was different, and in different places. The walls were lighter too. If I didn’t already know I’d lived there, I never would have recognized it. She came back with this little box, tied up with black string.
“You’ll see there’s a note in there too.”
“Do you mind reading it for me?”
“Are you serious?”
“I’d really appreciate it. I can’t read just now.”
She untaped the yellow note and looked it over.
“You sure you want me to read this?”
“Please.”
“It says that Marcus still hasn’t forgiven you, and that you should only call if it’s absolutely necessary. Otherwise he simply doesn’t have the energy.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“And there’s a phone number.”
“Will you write down your number too?”
“Why?”
“I could call you sometime. I could call you on my phone. Will you at least give me your name? You’ve known mine for a while already.”
She laughed. I’d made her laugh.
“Sheryl,” she said, and then she went off and got a pen and wrote her name and number on the yellow paper next to Marcus’s little note.
When she closed the door I thought, I made her laugh. On my way out of the building, I passed the dumpster where Marcus had thrown away all my clothes one time. Now it was filled with bags of disgusting trash and a couple of broken chairs, and this ironing board. I took off my suit jacket and threw it in the dumpster. I threw my dress shirt in there too, so I was just in a T-shirt now. I only kept my pants on because I didn’t have any other pants.
I wandered down to the McDonald’s on Ventura Boulevard, but Francisco wasn’t there. I sort of recognized the manager from before, and I explained who I was looking for.
“We called him Pancho here,” he said.
“Did he finally kiss her?”
“Kiss who?”
“Carmen. She was always cooking in the back.”
“Oh, Carm?” He blushed a little. “I think he probably did. They got married and went to live with his family in San Juan. That’s where Pancho’s mom is from. They have a baby on the way already.”
“That’s such good news,” I said. “I mean it really is. That’s such an awesome piece of news. He must have really kissed her then.”
“Listen, would you like to order something?”
“I’m going to order one cheeseburger,” I said. “And one chicken sandwich.”
“Anything else?”
“Just let me get some money from an ATM. I’ll be right back. I can’t believe he kissed her!”
I ran out of the restaurant, still excited. But when I tried to take some money from an ATM, I found out I couldn’t do this anymore. I remembered that Marcus had predicted this also, that before I knew it all my money would be gone. I tried a few more times, then pressed random buttons until the machine swallowed my
card.
The sun was setting as I wandered over to the park where I used to play basketball. Somebody had recently paved all the courts and repainted all the lines; and all the nets were brand new too, but nobody was there. The tennis courts and baseball fields were empty. Nobody was playing sports that afternoon. Everyone was somewhere else. The sky was empty too. I sat down on a bench next to the court, and soon Alvin came out of the trees beside the baseball fields. He was, by this time, maybe four or five years old. He had these chubby little legs, and his hair was even lighter back then, and his head had a rounder shape now. His eyes were so healthy and clear. He had some caramel smeared on his cheeks and this big red ball stuffed in his pocket.
“Do you have any more caramel?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “I’m saving my last piece until just before dinner.”
Then he took the red ball out of his pocket and sort of threw it at the ground.
“Throw this ball for me, Joe. Just throw it as far as you can.”
I threw the ball onto the baseball diamond. He ran over and brought it back to me proudly. “Come on, throw it farther,” he said.
“I killed Houston,” I told him.
“Houston? Who’s Houston?” Alvin started to laugh.
“How can you not remember?” I knew Alvin just wanted me to throw the ball again, but I had the feeling this might be my last chance to ask him. I started yelling at him, “Hello! Hello, Alvin! Where are you?! I want to talk to you!”
He stopped laughing and got himself together, and then he started acting more like the age he was when he died.
“How strange,” he said. “At thirteen I was less interesting than I remembered. Now I am more interesting. But it’s harder to remember things I haven’t done yet.”
“You ran away to Tennessee, remember? Then you came back. We were going to go sailing.”
“Ah, yes,” said Alvin. “It’s all coming back.”
“I couldn’t ever do that.”
“Do what?”
“Leave Julia. I don’t understand how you did it.”
He flickered a little bit, and held the ball out toward me. “Come on, throw it again.”
“How could you leave her?”
“Throw it.”
“I want to know.”
“Oh, shoot,” he said. “Her tummy was so soft in the morning. But I realized that she still belonged to her family, and I didn’t want to live around a bunch of gangsters all my life.”
“I would,” I said. “I wouldn’t care, as long as they were nice to me.”
“I figured that a sailing trip around the world was a place that nobody would find her. But when she didn’t go for it, I realized that she never would.”
“And so you came and asked me.”
“That’s right.”
“Then why did Houston follow you?”
“I don’t think he wanted to take any chances,” said Alvin. “Also I’d stolen a few hundred thousand dollars from him, so he probably wanted it back.”
“You stole that bag of money?”
“Of course I stole it. Where did you think I got it?”
“How should I know? Maybe you earned it.”
Alvin laughed.
“God bless you, Joe. Storing dirty money was the whole point of that hotel. Did you ever wonder how they stayed in business, when there were never any guests?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t.”
“It actually seemed funny when I stole it,” said Alvin. “I liked to imagine Houston in the basement, finding the suitcase missing, calling up old Bill Manning and sweating all over the phone. When they realized it was me, I thought they might even be amused. At the time I did not think this prank would cause my life to end in murder. But there I proved to be extremely wrong. I suppose I will have to chalk it all up to experience.”
Alvin climbed up on the bench and raised his little arms dramatically above his head. “Let this serve as an important lesson to us all,” he shouted. “The powerful and ruthless are not generally amused by humorous pranks of this kind.” He climbed back down off the bench. “Is Julia beautiful? I know I used to think she was, but by the end I couldn’t see her well enough to tell.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“Today I jumped the wall around the kiddie playground. I’m four. Do you remember that we used to switch names at this age?”
“I think so.”
Alvin stuck out his chest, and he was a four-year-old again. “Throw the ball again, Joe.”
This time I threw the ball a little farther, all the way into this little clump of trees behind home plate. Alvin tore after it. It was too dark to see him racing around in the trees, but I could hear him shrieking. When he came back he was completely happy and his face was red. He was too young to get tired from running.
“That was awesome,” he said. “Throw it farther.”
“I can’t understand what I did wrong,” I said. “Nothing worked out the way it was supposed to.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Losing a girl isn’t the end of the world. It only changes your whole life.”
“Did I already tell you I killed Houston?”
“Just throw the ball again, Joey. Throw it even farther this time.”
“All right. But hug me first.”
Alvin climbed up on me and put his little arms around my back. He smelled like caramels. I felt his tiny freezing body and his little heart thumping away.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll throw it now.”
He nodded. “Just throw it as far as you possibly can.”
He gave me the ball and I threw it as hard as I could, much farther this time, far into the trees. Alvin squealed and sprinted off across the baseball diamond. Then he disappeared into the trees, and I never saw him again.
Life is so full of impossible things that I can’t understand. I sat down on the bench next to the basketball court. Everything was starting to get dark. The courts were empty, and the sky was empty too. Two kids showed up with a basketball and practiced dunking in the light from the tennis courts. Neither one could jump up high enough to dunk, so they just hung on the string with their fingers. Once they tore down all the nets, they got bored and left.
I felt like playing, but I didn’t have a ball.
Fall was coming soon. It was already cooler in the valley than when I’d left. I wandered over to Ventura Boulevard, where everybody was driving around beeping like crazy. I walked for maybe twenty blocks; then I sat down in the marble doorway of a bank, where some hot air was pouring out of this Chinese restaurant next door.
I still had the package Marcus had left for me, and I figured it was time to open it, since I had nothing else to do. There was a little vase in there, painted like the ocean. I guess Marcus had decided to leave me Alvin’s ashes. I looked at the yellow card again—at Marcus’s handwriting, and then the note the girl left me. I stared hard at her name. I tried to read it. Sheryl. I was sure that I really did read it, even if I was partly remembering it too.
I closed my eyes. The wind blew over me and sort of crushed me into the ground, and as I fell asleep I thought about the bus, and Marcus’s apartment, and that singing I’d heard. Throwing my jacket in the dumpster. Carmen pregnant. Seeing Alvin one last time. I knew things would never be the same for me, and I also knew there was a lesson here; but I was too tired to learn it now. The air was so warm, and that day I’d done one of the very best things. I’d met a girl who was really beautiful, and then I’d made her laugh.
When I woke up, the air was cooling off because the Chinese restaurant was closing. But the street was still extremely bright and full of cars and people, children, and couples holding hands. Farther down the block, a man in this filthy canvas jacket was sitting on the sidewalk in a plastic folding chair, selling these very sparkly watches out of a briefcase on his lap. I couldn’t afford to buy anything anymore, but those watches looked pretty, and so I went over to look at them.
ACKNOWLED
GMENTS
The author would like to thank Anne Heltzel, Butler and Lois Lampson, Andrew Leeds, Gideon Lewis-Krauss, Jim Rutman, Ben Schrank, and Tobias Wolff for their help and support over the years.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This One Time With Julia Page 16