No More Us for You

by David Hernandez

  The phone rang at the front desk and Bridget, a half hour late to work, was now there to pick it up on the first ring. Moments later she slammed the phone back down. The museum had been receiving crank calls and I was starting to wonder if it was the urine guy.

  “How long do you think before she comes back?” Richard asked.

  “Probably ten, fifteen minutes. She’s usually not gone long.”

  He dropped his blanket to the floor and rolled it up like a sleeping bag. “You don’t mind if I kick it here for a while, do you?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “Ms. Otto might mind, though.”

  “There’s a lot of things Janet minds, if you know what I mean.”

  At first I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Then it dawned on me: Something had happened between the two of them. My guess was they used to see each other, that Ms. Otto broke it off. Even the unplugged sign supported my theory.

  Richard sprawled on the museum floor, the rolled blanket wedged under his head. His fingers were woven together on his stomach like fat shoelaces. He scanned the ceiling above him, turning his head from side to side. “I love these pipes,” he said. “I wish I had them in my loft.”

  “Where do you live?” I asked.

  “Downtown. Not too far from here. Do you know where that Greek restaurant is, right there on Pine?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, it’s right across from there. They have the best stuffed grape leaves. Ask Janet.”

  “Okay,” I said even though I couldn’t imagine having a conversation with Ms. Otto in which I’d ask her who has the best stuffed grape leaves in town. I wasn’t even sure what they were. I was sure of one thing, though: Richard and Ms. Otto had definitely been together once. They have the best stuffed grape leaves. Ask Janet. What else could that possibly mean?

  Richard pulled his fingers apart and laid his hands at his sides so it looked like he was imitating the rag doll Jesus on the other side of the room.

  “So how long have you been a museum guard?”

  “About a week,” I said.

  “And all you have to do is sit there?”

  “Pretty much,” I said. “And make sure no one touches the work or gets too close.”

  He moved his hands behind his head as if he were about to do some sit-ups.

  “Some dude peed on the floor a week ago,” I said.

  “No shit?” Richard’s eyes lit up. “What happened?”

  “It was the weirdest thing,” I said. “This guy just walked in, unzipped, and started pissing like it was no big deal.”

  Richard laughed loudly, a booming sound that cannonballed from his throat. He clapped his hands once over his head. “Oh, man, that’s good.”

  “I think he was nuts.”

  Richard wiped his eyes. “Maybe he was a disgruntled artist.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Or one of Janet’s exes.”

  “Huh?”

  “Forget I said that.” He cleared his throat. “Where did he do it?”

  I pointed. “Right over there, about ten feet from the sand pile.”

  “That’s wild, man.”

  “My first day on the job, too.”

  “I’m Richard, by the way.”

  “I know who you are,” I said. “I’m Carlos.”

  “That’s my father’s name.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I just nodded.

  “You in school?”

  “Yeah. Millikan.”

  “Really? That’s where I went.” He sat up. “Say, does Ms. Howe still teach English there?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “She was pretty hot. My best friend was banging her for a while. Like Mary Kay Letourneau.”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “Some teacher who hooked up with one of her students and got pregnant. He was only thirteen or fourteen.”

  I opened my eyes wide.

  “I know,” he said. “You’ve got a girlfriend?”

  “I did until this afternoon,” I said. I placed my elbows on my knees and leaned forward. My throat felt tight again. I must’ve done something strange with my face because Richard sat up.

  “I’m sorry, man,” he said. “What happened?”

  “Long story,” I said, even though it wasn’t. The story was short and simple. It could’ve been a children’s book. Boy meets girl. Another boy meets girl. A taller boy, a more popular boy, a boy with dimples and perfect white teeth. A boy I couldn’t compete with.

  Richard stood up. “I hear you,” he said. “Whatever happened, you’ll get through it.”

  I didn’t want to say anything. I was afraid my voice would crack.

  “Eventually it’ll stop hurting.” With one finger he touched the neon sign—cautiously, again and again—as if he were pressing on a piano key.

  “Still too hot?” I asked.

  “Not really,” he said. “Want to help me take this down?”

  “Sure.”

  I got up from my post and took off my jacket and hung it over the chair. Richard unfolded the blanket across the museum floor so it lay directly under the sign. I stood on one end, Richard on the other.

  “Just lift it off the hooks,” he said. “Hold it by the frame, not the glass tubes.”

  “I don’t want to break it,” I said.

  “You won’t break it. Okay, on the count of three—”

  “Wait. Is it heavy?”

  “Not really.”

  I blew on my hands. Richard counted down to three. I held my breath and together we lifted the sign off the wall and turned it on its back, carefully placing it on top of the blanket.

  “There,” Richard said. “How easy was that?”

  “Piece of cake.”

  “Now help me take it to my car.”

  “Hold on a second,” I said. “I just realized something.”

  “What?”

  I squinted. “What if you’re not Richard Spurgeon?”

  He laughed.

  “And you’re some guy trying to steal his piece. Some disgruntled artist, like you said.”

  He continued to laugh.

  “Ms. Otto didn’t tell me what you look like. Or rather, what Richard Spurgeon looks like.”

  “Are you serious?”

  I crossed my arms.

  He reached into his back pocket and slipped out his wallet. It was brown leather and severely tattered like his shoes. He pulled out a business card and handed it to me:

  RICHARD SPURGEON

  MULTIMEDIA ARTIST

  555.439.2161

  “Okay, so you’re him,” I said. I held the card out for him.

  “Keep it. I’ve got a ton of those.”

  Richard folded the blanket over the sign on all four sides until it was completely covered. I rolled up my sleeves. We faced each other on opposite ends and bent our knees until we were sitting on the heels of our feet. Again, on the count of three, we lifted the sign. We headed toward the exit, Richard walking backward, looking over his shoulder.

  “I shouldn’t be doing this,” I told him. “I’m supposed to look after the pieces, not carry them.”

  “I really appreciate it,” he said.

  Once we were outside, I was reminded again that acres of trees were still burning. The whole city smelled like a giant ashtray.

  “When are they going to put that thing out?” Richard said.

  We headed toward the parking lot, my arms straining a bit from the weight of the sign, but I pretended it weighed nothing. Ash whirled silently across the blacktop. We had reached Richard’s car, a blue hatchback, when a speck of ash flew into my eye.

  “Shit, shit,” I said, blinking furiously.

  “You okay?”

  “I got ash in my eye.”

  “Hold on.” With one hand he fished for his keys in his pocket while the other held the teetering sign.

  “Hurry,” I pleaded. It felt like someone was scraping my eye with a toothpick.<
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  Richard opened the back door and maneuvered the sign in. Once my hands were free, I rubbed my right eye with a knuckle, trying to massage the ash out of it.

  “Sonofabitch,” I mumbled.

  A silver two-door pulled into the parking lot and a young couple stepped out. They held hands as they walked leisurely toward the pathway that curved around to the entrance of the museum.

  “I’ve got to get back,” I told Richard.

  “Carlos,” he said, “I owe you one, man.”

  We shook hands and I jogged quickly back to my post, rubbing my eye with the heel of my palm.

  The young couple meandered to the east wing of the museum, allowing me enough time to tape up the REMOVED FOR REPAIRS sign. I placed it right between the two metal hooks fastened to the wall. I rolled down my sleeves, slipped on my jacket, and sat back down on my chair before the couple entered the room. They split apart to view the pieces on their own—the woman walking clockwise around the museum, the man counterclockwise. I felt that tightening sensation in my throat again. Mira. How could she do it? How could she cheat on me? And how stupid was I to not even notice that something was wrong with the picture?

  The young man moved toward the sign on the wall, his hands behind his back as if he were cuffed. He tilted his head slightly to one side and moved closer, examining the silver hooks secured to the wall, then stepped back, taking in the whole thing. He scratched his chin and crossed his arms and tilted his head the other way.

  I didn’t know whether to laugh at his mistake or feel sorry for him.

  ISABEL

  I don’t believe in fate, but every now and then something would happen in my life and I’d start to wonder if someone was working behind the scenes, coaxing me toward a certain direction.

  One time, long before I met Gabriel, I was daydreaming in my room about Dustin Prewitt, thinking about his big brown eyes, how he tapped his bottom lip with the eraser-end of his pencil in geometry class when he was mulling over a problem, and then the phone rang and a man on the end of the line asked, Is Dustin there? Now what were the chances of that happening? So naturally I thought we were meant for each other, Dustin and I, even though we hadn’t had a real conversation up to that point. Once, I’d asked him if the pencil sharpener was broken and he’d said yes.

  But then, a couple weeks later, I found out that Dustin was gay, so I went back to not believing in fate again.

  Another time I lost my favorite earrings, these silver sunflowers that I bought on 2nd Street, and practically ransacked my room looking for them. I checked my purse, my jewelry box, the nightstand, my backpack, under my bed, all four drawers of my dresser, even behind my dresser, the pockets of anything with pockets hanging inside the closet, my purse and jewelry box again. Nothing. Come on, Is, Heidi yelled from the foyer. The movie starts at five. And, wouldn’t you know it, while we were in line to get our tickets, the girl in front of us was wearing those same exact sunflower earrings. Yellow topaz, silver petals. I stood there in awe, looking at the earrings, and had this weird sensation that my entire life had already been lived.

  Then there is the time I’m going to tell you about now.

  Heidi picked me up on Saturday afternoon in her red Volkswagen Beetle and we headed toward the museum where Vanessa worked. I could tell Heidi didn’t want to go. It was all there in the way she changed lanes, how she leaned forward and then fell back in her seat.

  We were on Ocean Boulevard—driving and stopping, driving and stopping—with the fancy houses on our right and the sun-dazzled Pacific on our left. Heidi honked, huffed, sighed.

  “What’s with all this damn traffic?” she said.

  “Can you imagine living here?” I was looking out the passenger window at a house with a perfect manicured lawn. It had a three-tiered fountain, a giant bay window, and a balcony on the second floor with two wicker chairs pointed at the ocean.

  “When I’m older, this is where I want to live.” Heidi readjusted her rearview mirror. “With my husband,” she added.

  “Who’s it going to be this week?” I asked.

  “Matt Hawkins. Obviously.”

  “Ick,” I said.

  On the sidewalk, a large black dog was pulling a girl with his leash like a motorboat towing a water skier.

  “We’d have three or four children, me and Matt,” Heidi said.

  “Yeah, and they’d all have colossal foreheads.”

  “Ah, that’s mean,” Heidi said, chuckling.

  We were both sort of laughing and then we fell silent for a while.

  And then Gabriel’s face came to my mind, his dark brown eyes and olivey skin, the little curved scar above his eyebrow where he’d hit his head against a low-hanging ladder in the garage. I was on the phone with him when it happened, I heard the banging and the cell hitting the concrete and a scream leaping out of his mouth. I wondered what sort of sounds he made when his car hopped the curb, if he cursed or yelled when he crashed through the fence and rolled into the canal.

  We drove by the last extravagant house with an ocean view and came upon old apartment buildings and newly painted condos. There were beach towels folded over balcony railings, potted ferns and barbecue grills. An old man in a wifebeater, smoking a cigar, watching the waves.

  Another traffic light turned red before we could roll through it and Heidi hit the brakes.

  “Where did she say the museum was?” she asked.

  “On Alamitos. I know where it’s at.”

  “I bet you do,” she mumbled.

  I looked at Heidi. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Heidi turned to me and then back to the car in front of her. “You just know where everything’s at,” she said. “I’m always getting lost, that’s all.”

  I could always tell when Heidi was lying. Her eyebrows would bounce up on her forehead and her movements would become exaggerated. “This traffic is killing me,” she said.

  “We’ll just stop by for a few minutes, say hello, then go to Shoreline, okay?”

  The light turned green and we lurched forward. “Okay,” she said. “Damn, I need to get some gas.”

  Two blocks later Heidi pulled into a Shell station. While she was filling up, I went inside the mini-mart to get some bottled water. I opened the fridge’s sliding door, shivered, grabbed two Evians, and went to the register.

  There were a few people ahead of me in line: a barefoot man with a six-pack of Coors, an old man in a trucker hat, and a woman with a bag of cashews and People magazine.

  I looked out the window and saw Heidi sliding a squeegee across the windshield of her car, wiping the rubber blade with a brown paper towel after each pass. I don’t know why, but I felt sad watching her do that. If she had a boyfriend, I imagined that’s one of the things he would’ve done for her.

  While the old man paid for his cigarettes, I looked at the wire rack by the counter. It was full of various bagged nuts, beef jerky, and licorice. Soon as I saw the braided Red Vines licorice through the plastic window, I had a craving. My mouth watered at the thought of chewing one, my teeth sinking into that rubbery sweetness.

  The line moved forward and the woman placed her People magazine and cashews on the counter. Then she pulled the last bag of Red Vines from the rack. “These too,” she said.

  Heidi was tightening the gas cap by the time I got back to the car. I twisted open one of the bottles and took a big swallow. I tried not to think of the Red Vines, which only made me think about them more—a long, braided, chewy, sweet, red rope swinging behind my eyes.

  Heidi climbed in and stretched the seat belt across her chest. “Did you tell Vanessa that we were coming for sure?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  Heidi started the car.

  “We don’t have to stay long,” I assured her. “It’ll be fun.”

  “Museums aren’t fun, Is.”

  “It’s not like we’re going to look around. We’ll just hang out with Vanessa for a while and then leave.”

 
“Five minutes.”

  “Why’re you so cranky?”

  Heidi eased the car forward. “Where do I go?”

  “Turn right here when you can,” I said. “This is Alamitos.”

  Heidi punched the gas and swerved into the street before the approaching cars could pass her.

  “Easy,” I said, bracing myself on the door handle.

  As long as I’d known Heidi, she was always a careless driver. The last time I looked at the “Risk of Death” chart and saw the lifetime odds for dying in a motor vehicle (One in 84), I pictured Heidi in her Volkswagen Beetle. It was people like her who made that number what it was.

  Six blocks later and we were pulling into the parking lot of the Long Beach Contemporary Museum. The white building had clean lines and blue-tinted windows that reflected the buildings on the other side of the street. The concrete pathway to the front entrance snaked through the greenest grass I’d ever seen. In the middle of the lawn was a silver sculpture arcing into the sky. It looked like a whalebone covered in tinfoil.

  “What’s that supposed to be?” Heidi asked.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “I mean, really.”

  The glass doors opened and I saw Vanessa talking on the phone behind the curved counter of the front desk. She smiled and raised her finger.

  “I’m sorry, but we don’t offer field trips at this time…. Yes, I’m sure…” Vanessa rolled her eyes. “She’s not in her office at the moment…. Okay, let me put you through.” Vanessa pressed a couple buttons and then set the receiver down. “What a condescending jerk,” she said, shaking her head.

  “I would’ve just hung up,” Heidi said.

  “Well, I can’t do that here. Unless it’s a crank call.”

  “I don’t let anyone talk to me that way.”

  “I told you we’d stop by,” I said, wanting to change the subject.

  “I wish I could hang out with you guys,” she griped.

  “What time do you get off?”

  “Not until eight,” she said.

  Heidi swiped a finger across the counter as if she was checking for dust. “Bummer.”

  Vanessa leaned toward me. “He’s here,” she whispered. “Carlos.”

  “You’re too much,” I said, trying not to smile, and then I was checking out the museum, craning my neck and looking at the artwork. “How long have you worked here?” I asked her.