Like a monument, Bentley had said. To hobos, Porsche had corrected her.
But it wasn’t just the homeless who loved the library, though arguably they loved it best. Out-of-work screenwriters, LSAT tutors, nearby office workers, civic-minded seniors, and a surprising number of wounded vets—by the sound of the wheelchairs turning and the crutches clacking—had taken a shine to the vast concrete cubes of artfully contemporary space. The place was almost a town hall, only one where nobody was interested in any kind of meeting.
Loose ends. Loose people. Loose ponytails, though mostly on the men. It was the beloved, scraggly center of a less beloved, scragglier universe, even if that universe did sometimes smell like old pee. In other words, it was the perfect place for Bentley’s own loose and scraggly purposes, whatever they might be during any Lost Time afternoon.
Bent didn’t know what her sister did with her own stolen minutes—and she didn’t even want to think about what she and Whitey were doing with them now. That was the whole point. Private meant private.
Bent only paused once on the way through the door when she noticed that the newspaper vending machine on the sidewalk was stacked with copies of a local alternative press—the Southland Weekly—with her face on the front cover, along with her stumbling entrance into last night’s club and a headline shouting LIKE A ROLLING ROYCE!
Oh, please. Not here.
She crouched in front of the vending machine, feeding in quarters until it opened wide enough that she could grab the entire stack—which she flung into the recycling bin as soon as she walked by. Not a single person in the building seemed to have one clue that, outside these walls, Bentley was famous—and she was determined to keep it that way.
First stop was the Bookmark Café, where she looked longingly at the sandwiches—not the wraps, which were, as far as Bentley was concerned, nothing but a cruel reminder of why bread was supposed to exist in the first place. But years of Mercedes’s voice in her head wouldn’t permit it. If it’s a carb, it’s not allowed, the voice threatened. Simple as that.
Even in my year of living dangerously, though?
Bentley smiled to herself and went in big—a latte and the most massive piece of chocolate cake she could find. For $3.99, it was four inches thick, striped with chocolate and vanilla icing, and probably four thousand calories.61 Fortunately, Mercedes had never even thought of mounting a tirade against cake. Why bother? Who in this family—who in this town—would dare eat cake?
“Someone’s hungry,” Shane—a library patio regular, maybe some kind of aspiring cartoonist—cracked as she carried the cake past him to her table.
“You know it.” Bent laughed. Just like (she hoped) a regular person would.
Thinking of her mother and how she would react to this debauchery made Bent force herself to finish every bite and lick every last chocolaty crumb. Because there, outside the café, in her little protected courtyard—her only company a man in a dirty USC sweatshirt and two sleeping bags, three gray-and-white pigeons, and a grove of Seuss-looking cactus palms—she was safe. Basking in the late-afternoon sun, a little high on sugar, sitting back and relaxing at her table, Bentley was in paradise.
Her second stop was just through the courtyard doors and up the staircase to the left. That was where she found the library’s upstairs bank of computers, the one right next to the reference desk. She thought of it as her Santa Monica office space—just like the other guys at the computers did. Even if they slept on the sidewalk instead of beneath Frette sheets. Though the smell of occupational sweat and dirt was a little pungent at first, Bentley loved it. She was actually sad when she got used to it after the first five minutes, and didn’t smell it anymore. She wanted to remember it—it was so different from the rest of her world.
Just like he was.
The guy’s name was Venice, or at least, that’s what she’d always called him, because of a worn black hoodie emblazoned with the words VENICE BEACH ROLLERS that he never seemed to take off. He was her favorite of the library computer station regulars, and also the youngest; he couldn’t be much older than she was, really. Bent wasn’t sure what his story was. Some days he looked like he might be homeless, but his skin was softer, less weatherworn than the others who hung around. Maybe he was just a surfer. He was hard to figure out, and she liked it that way.
Venice looked up from his computer terminal and smiled. His face was warm and brown and his eyes were sea-colored. His hair curled choppy and brown around his face, almost to his shoulders. It hid his eyes with thick clumps. On humid days, it practically stood straight up, almost an Afro. On regular days, it hung down off his head like the unwashed do of a really messed-up girl.
Yeah, Venice definitely cut his own hair.
He watched her as she sat down, carefully, so as not to disturb his ratty skateboard, his ratty backpack, or the broken tripod strapped to his back for no apparent reason. One day she’d find out the story there, but not anytime soon. He mostly only asked questions, as if he himself knew better than to answer any.
Now Bent smiled back at him as she put her earbuds in, awkward as ever, and waved. Was it insane to be crushing on someone so far removed from her own reality? So mysterious and, in his own weird way, unattainable?
She wondered this for a moment, then thought: yes, insane, maybe, but also so predictable, and so Bentley. She grabbed one end of her earbud cord and pulled her phone out of her bag, and a blue matchbook went flying onto the table in front of her.
Philippe’s. She remembered those matches and the boy at the Chateau Marmont.
Asa.
As if she could forget. When she looked at the matchbook, she could still see his face by the glow of the match’s light, which was why she kept them.
You need therapy. You have therapy. Okay, you need more therapy.
Asa had been equally mysterious and unavailable, equally elusive. Her dream man, like he’d stepped out of some high-budget Italian menswear commercial. He had said more in that one night than Venice said in a month, but what did she really know about either of them? And what could possibly happen with either?
Talk about fantasies.
Asa the dream man had never reached out. Never emailed, never called. Never found her on Twitter or Snapchat or Insta. Maybe you should have given him your name after all, she thought for the ten thousandth time.
On the other hand, Venice, her cute but grungy library pal, was Asa’s opposite in every way—and still, they weren’t exactly chatting up a storm. She doubted he even had a smartphone.
Bentley had achieved the yin and yang of pointless crushes. This time, she was officially out-Bentley-ing herself.
There’s a gripping story line for you, Mercedes.
She gave up and plugged into her phone.
Seconds after she had her earbuds secured, though, Venice reached over and pulled them out of her ears.
“Don’t hide from the world, Sweet B.” She couldn’t help but smile every time she heard the pet name he had given her. “Come be a part of it.”
“I’m here.” She dropped her phone back into her bag. “I didn’t know what to listen to anyway.”
“Well, listen to me,” he suggested. “Wednesdays at five, right? That’s our time. Best time of the week.”
“It’s a date,” she joked.
“Yeah, you wish. You’ll have to fight these ladies off first.” He grinned, gesturing to the rest of their computer table, where the other regulars, guys like Fox and Bulls Cap and the other guy whose name she always forgot, sat at terminals. She laughed.
Why did she feel so comfortable around him? Maybe it was because she had always felt like she had something in common with homeless people, just like she did stray animals, as weird as that sounded. Like them, she was missing a place to belong, or maybe just missing the kind of family that didn’t want anything from you. What did they call that? Unconditional love?
Don’t be so melodramatic. Bach loves you. Mercedes and Porsche do too, in their own
way. So maybe there was more to it than that. Maybe it was his ocean eyes. Not just the color of the water. The water on a sunny day.
Or maybe it was the way he had called her Sweet B on the first day they met, before he even knew her name. She had looked to her wrist and realized she was wearing her Tiffany’s bracelet engraved with a B, and couldn’t believe he had noticed a detail so small.
He was like that about everything; he rummaged through the world of visible detail within the building the way the other guys at the computer table rummaged through the Dumpsters outside it. He’d noticed when a cat was stuck in the patio tree, even though everyone else had just walked by. He’d noticed when it was Ivy in the Teen Department’s birthday, or when Robert at the Information desk had twisted his bad ankle again.
Most of all, he’d noticed her—the real Bentley, the secret one. Just as he was seeing her today. “Bad day?” he asked, looking her over now.
“You have no idea.” Bent dropped her head down to the table momentarily.
“Try me.”
“I can’t. It’s all too terrible.”
“Lemme see.” Venice pursed his lips. “Somebody stole all your stuff? You had to sleep outside in the rain? Didn’t make it to the shelter before they ran outta grub?” He shook his head. “Wow, your life blows.”
Bentley looked at him. “Yeah, you got it. How did you know?”
Venice laughed out loud. “Could be worse. At least your television pilot doesn’t suck as bad as Bookman’s here.” Bookman was his name for Josh, the reference librarian, who was also an aspiring screenwriter, like roughly half the population of the city.
As if on cue, a scrawny guy with a curly mop of red hair looked up from the next terminal. “Quiet. Ven-man.”
Try as he might, Josh was never all that funny. Even his supposedly funny hipster T-shirts weren’t that funny. (Today’s shirt had a picture of a library card made to look like an Amex card and captioned PRICELESS, and Bent was pretty sure that wasn’t even a joke.)
“This is a library,” Josh added.
Venice threw up his hands. “You kidding me? I thought this place was Disney Hall. Ah, day-um. I’m in the wrong place. Somebody call the conductor. Again.”
“And my pilot isn’t that bad,” Josh grumbled.
“Have you ever been to Disney Hall, Venice?” Bent was suspicious. Any little clue was something. She knew he was educated; he’d once told her Cicero was named after a chickpea and that the Romans had invented the snow cone. He also seemed to randomly know about sailing—but then, he did like watching historical documentaries on the library computers, so who knew? Aside from the documentaries, the only movies he ever talked about were Star Wars films. And when he found his way into any pocket money, the first thing he did was buy chocolate cake (her cake!) from the downstairs café for the whole computer table. (Sometimes even Josh.)
But that was most of what she knew, after a year of talking with him, sitting by him, walking up and down the stairs for coffee with him. A chickpea and a sailboat and Star Wars and a piece of cake. That was about all he’d let slip out, which seemed like a clue in and of itself, though to what, Bent couldn’t say.
Yet.
“Disney Hall? Me? Lots of times. For the opera. In my private box. Barbara of Seville.” Venice smirked. “Yeah, she’s hot. Barbara.”
“Barber,” Josh said, still not looking up.
“That’s what I said.” Venice smiled. “Ask my boy Josh, the librarian.”
He knows to make a Barber of Seville joke, she thought. Add that to the list.
Josh looked up from the reference desk, forgetting they weren’t supposed to be talking. “I’m not the librarian. I’m barely even a librarian. Technically, I’m only a part-time librarian. Mostly what I am is a screenwriter.”
“I know, I know.” Venice sighed. “You’ve told us. A few times.” He looked at Bentley. “I’ve been trying to help him, but he won’t let me. He’s really stuck.”
“It’s a thriller,” Josh said. “Tricky stuff.”
“Been sitting here next to screenwriters all year.” Venice shrugged. “Read more thrillers over more shoulders than you ever will.”
“He’s got a point,” Bentley said. “I always go to Venice with my plot problems.”
He grinned at her. “See? Even Sweet B agrees.”
Thirty seconds later, Josh was spilling the details of “DTLA”—his work in progress—and they were all three sharing one of Venice’s highly polished Pink Lady apples. (Library food rules notwithstanding, Venice was famous for his apple-polishing skills. “Just takes time,” Venice said, “not money. Not gear. Not even luck. Time, that’s all you need to polish an apple, and I got plenty of that.”) Now, the three of them stared up at Venice’s screen as they ate.
“What are you reading?” Josh asked him.
GOING OFF THE GRID, the headline read, flashing on the monitor in front of them. YOU CAN BE YOUR OWN MAN.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Venice said. “There’s tons of this garbage out there. You gotta make it real. People who have to live on the street know. You can’t just take off for south of the border and think you’re gonna get there. That’s like OJ Simpson taking off on the 405 with his trash in a bag.”
“He’s got a point,” Bent said, though she had never had to live on the street. (She’d read plenty about getaways, though. They were one of her spy-book subgenres.)
“Really?” Josh looked skeptical.
Venice shook his head. “A guy like that—OJ, sure, but your leading man, too—thinks he’s gonna drive to Mexico? He’s not going to make it past Legoland. That was some bad plan.”
So you know the opera and Legoland? Bent smiled to herself. It was more information than she usually got from him in a day. I should start keeping a notebook about him instead of my journal, she thought. “CLUES TO VENICE.” She’d fill one page a year.
Thinking of the notebook reminded her. She leaned over and fumbled in her bag until she pulled out a book. The Zombie Apocalypse Survival Guide. She held it out to Josh. “Venice’s right. Your character doesn’t seem like black ops. He doesn’t even seem like Black Widow. What’s his tool set? Read the chapter on all the things you can do with duct tape. You can make pretty much anything into a tool or a weapon with duct tape.”
Josh just looked at her. “Why do you know that?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Bent smiled.
“I do.” Venice shrugged. “You can make a prom dress out of duct tape. I saw it in the news.”
“See? Also typhoon pants,” Bent added.
“Or a kayak.” Venice nodded.
“A hammock.”
“A toolbox.”62
She smiled at Venice. “I see you’re well versed in zombie apocalypse survival. That’s good. I can’t defend this place alone.”
“I’ve got your back, Sweet B. You can trust me.”
“Oh really?”
He shrugged. “Well, as much as you can trust anyone in a zombie apocalypse.”
She pointed at him. “Exactly. See? That was a test, and you passed.” She looked at Josh. “First rule of a zombie apocalypse. No trusting.”
Josh took the book, shaking his head. “Duct tape,” he muttered, scribbling notes on his legal pad. “Typhoon pants.” He turned a page. “Trust.”
Venice nodded. “Duct tape. Batteries. Magnets. Some solid cable. An old radio that he can strip for parts. That’s more like it. Your dude’s on the run, he’s gotta prepare. He’s only got one shot. Gotta know how to lay low and move out slow. Gotta put in the hours before the 405. And if we’re talking about crossing a border, well, that’s a whole other conversation. In that case, he’s gonna need some friends.”
Bentley leaned in. “How come you know so much about this stuff, Venice?”
Venice shrugged. “How come you got a zombie survival guide in your fancy bag, Sweet B?”
“No reason,” she said.
“Me neither,” he said, star
ing at the screen. “Maybe a person just needs to know they have options, you know?” Then he smiled at her. “Options and duct tape.”
Bentley nodded, studying him. “Maybe they do.”
They caught each other’s eyes.
Then Venice leaned down and picked up Bentley’s bag. “Your time’s up, Sweet B. This is when you leave me.”
She looked at her watch. “Damn it.”
“Wednesdays at six. Worst time of the week,” Venice said, reaching up to smooth a rainbow-tipped curl behind her ear.
“The worst of the worst.” She felt herself blushing and took the bag from his hand. “See you next week?”
He nodded. “Like I said, it’s a date.”
She slung her bag over her shoulder and pushed past him.
“Hey, Sweet B—” Venice called out.
When she turned, he was right there behind her.
“Don’t forget your matches.” Venice pressed the worn blue book into her palm, letting his warm hand linger in hers until her cheeks were as shiny and pink as one of his famous apples.
PORSCHE EYES NEW PROJECT: COLLABORATION WITH WHITEBOYZ RECORDS IN THE WORKS?
AP: Beverly Hills, California
Via Celebcity.com
Could Lifespan reality celebrity Porsche Royce, currently filming season six of Rolling with the Royces, be the Whiteboyz record label’s newest recording artist?
Royce made headlines yesterday when she was seen entering the studio with T. Wilson White, the son of rock impresario Razz Jazzy White.
This is the second time White has been seen in the company of Porsche Royce in recent days. “Whitey,” as he is known to friends, is new on the music-industry scene.
Considered by some to be heir apparent to the Whiteboyz Record Label and entertainment empire, White has suddenly been appearing in the public eye. According to several knowledgeable sources, White is known to have been an important behind-the-scenes factor in the success of his father’s Whiteboyz label.
Should Royce in fact be venturing into collaboration with the music producer, it would mark her first foray back into the recording studio since her disastrous track “Drive Drive Drive,” which was panned by critics and fans alike.
Royce Rolls Page 13