It was dark when Jeffrey ventured out of his room and onto the second-floor balcony to make his way to the soda machine. He bought two bottles of Coke and tried to hold one of them in his armpit in order to unlock his door. The shock of the cold glass against his skin caused him to shiver and the bottle fell to the ground, smashing open on the concrete. The soda spread out, darkening the doorstep, and fizzled away. Jeffrey panicked and thought about cleaning it up, but then who would know it was his mess? He could slip back into his room and pretend he didn’t know anything about it. That’s what they had maids for anyway.
As he turned his key in the lock, another door opened and a teenage girl stepped out onto the balcony. She wore high-heeled sandals and had long blonde hair that fell straight down to her tits, strapped in a tube top. She would have been a knockout, but her nose was a little too odd and a little too long. She was a little too skinny and her collarbone stuck out below her shoulders like it was too big for her body. She walked toward Jeffrey and he stood there with his door cracked open, unable to move.
“Popped your pop, huh?” she said as she stepped over the tide of fizz.
Jeffrey stared after her. She’s another one, he thought.
She turned to go down the stairs to the parking lot, stepping carefully in her precarious shoes. As she disappeared down the stairwell, she raised her eyes and looked up at him through her long blonde bangs. Jeffrey felt the lips of his tightly controlled mouth begin to part as her head bounced down and out of view.
Jeffrey retreated into his room and gently closed the door. He waited there, crouched in the shadow, ear pressed to the dark blue wooden door. He was close enough to the wall so that no one would see him if they glanced in the window. They would think no one was home. Only the spilt soda marking his door could give him away. Jeffrey waited for a car to drive off with the blonde girl inside, but he didn’t hear anything. It was as if she had walked down the stairs and out of life.
The other conclusion Jeffrey came to was that she could be staying here as well. They could be neighbors.
Quietly, Jeffrey opened his door, tiptoed out onto the soda-stained cement, and looked over the railing. He couldn’t see anything directly underneath him, only the wash of light from the street-level walkway. He inched over to the stairwell where he could peer down through the slats in the steps. She was still there. She was sitting on the fence that separated the parking lot from the first-floor rooms. He looked directly down at the part in her hair, a line drawn down the center of her scalp with black roots poking through the blonde. She was smoking a cigarette and playing with her shoe. She lifted her leg halfway up to the railing and flapped her foot trying to loosen her sandal. Then she wiggled her foot back in place and tapped the toe of her shoe on the ground for good measure. She moved her legs with the laziness of someone lounging on the beach. Her days were long with nothing much to do but lie around.
Jeffrey wanted to walk down and strike up a conversation, but he decided to wait. She was almost too perfect like this. And besides, he thought, she probably doesn’t get that much time to herself. He left her there, dangling her legs, dreaming she had a pool in which to dip them, and he quietly returned to his room. He felt as though he had made a friend.
JEFFREY THOUGHT THE best way to see a movie was alone, during the day, during the week. He hated going at night when people went on dates. He hated the fact that people went to the movies not to watch, but to make out or get in the mood for sex. His brother once told him how a girl had let him stick his hand down her pants during a movie and how one time he and his buddies went to a porno film and the whole place was sticky and stained from guys jerking off in the seats. Jeffrey tried to show no reaction when his brother told him that kind of stuff. He knew that the whole point of those stories was to embarrass him and he didn’t want to give his brother the satisfaction. His brother won at everything else, why give him that as well?
Jeffrey enjoyed being alone in the large dark room. He liked the decaying grandeur of the old Hollywood Boulevard theaters—the Egyptian and the El Capitan. He shied away from Grauman’s Chinese across the street. Too many tourists. He didn’t like worrying about getting a good seat during the crowded weekends, sharing an armrest with some stranger, or sitting behind some girl flicking her hair over her seatback and into his space. He liked the comfort of emptiness around him, of no one bothering him, of no one looking at him funny.
On his way back to the Sunrise, Jeffrey stopped in a 7-Eleven and bought a pack of cigarettes. He didn’t smoke. It was all part of his plan. Later that night he kept the TV volume low and his window cracked. Finally, as midnight approached, he heard the door down the hall open and the familiar click-clack of high-heeled sandals. Jeffrey reached over and shut off the TV.
The sandals clicked down the stairs.
When the noise stopped, Jeffrey put on his jacket, with his cigarettes already placed in the pocket, and carefully opened the door.
He had it all planned out. He walked to the railing in front of his door. He rested his forearms on the metal bar and leaned out, pretending he was enjoying the night air, but really he was scanning the parking lot below. Once he was satisfied the coast was clear, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his pack of cigarettes. He smacked the package against the palm of his hand a couple times as he had seen his sister do. He wasn’t sure what purpose it served, but his sister always did it methodically with every new pack. Then he pulled out a single cigarette and stuck it in the corner of his mouth.
He went through the motions of his plan as if there were an audience watching him. I’m like Romeo on the balcony, he thought, remembering the awkward Shakespeare scenes they had to act out in high school English class. Then he remembered that it was Juliet on the balcony and Romeo down below. It was backward, but he thought it was okay.
He patted down his pockets pretending to look for a lighter. He purposefully didn’t buy one at the 7-Eleven, and he left the free matches on the counter. He thought it would be too over-the-top to say something out loud like “Oh no, I don’t seem to have a light.” Instead, he tried to act as natural as possible; he held the cigarette in place with his teeth and walked over to the stairs. He knew he should do this without pausing to look down. If anything, he should walk quickly.
As he approached the stairwell he couldn’t see for sure if she was there or not. He decided to continue according to plan, hoping that maybe she was still there but only slightly out of view.
He saw her when he got to the bottom of the stairs. She wasn’t leaning on the fence; she was sitting opposite the stairs on the ground with her knees bent up by her chest and her back to the wall. He could see her white underwear shining between her thighs because her skirt was so short. The tiny little patch of white cotton glowed in the dark. He felt a little strange looking down on her like that. He wished she would stand up.
She peered at him through the blonde hair hanging in her face.
“Hey, Pop,” she said.
Jeffrey was immobile. He forgot his lines. He finally managed to squeeze out a barely audible “Hi.” He was thankful that she was already smoking.
“Do you have a light?” he asked.
The girl crawled forward and pushed herself to her feet. When she stood up, she was taller than Jeffrey. It was the shoes.
She passed her cigarette to Jeffrey. Jeffrey had never done this before. He carefully held her burning end to his virgin cigarette and sucked in. Slowly, a little ring of black started to form and it began to smoke on its own. He didn’t want to give the cigarette back to her, the fiery stub with her lipstick print, but she dipped her fingers in and lifted it away from him. She took a puff on it for good measure, to reinforce the fact that it was hers.
Jeffrey didn’t know what to do next so he just said, “Thanks.” Lucky for him, the girl was bored.
“You staying here?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“You from outta town?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t look like an actor.”
“No. I’m a writer.”
“You write for the movies?”
“No, I’m working on a book. I’m also a . . . I write songs.”
“Oh yeah. You look like you could be a rock star.”
Jeffrey’s entire face began to beam. No one had ever said anything like that to him before. This girl was the one person in the entire universe who got him.
“Thanks.”
“Yeah, you look like you could be one of the Beatles.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’m not sure which one though.”
She sat back down on the ground and stretched her skinny legs out in front of her. The soles of her sandals almost reached Jeffrey’s toes. She tilted her head to the side and studied him for a moment.
“I wouldn’t say you look exactly like John Lennon, but you look like you could be a John Lennon type. Do you know what I mean?”
Jeffrey was melting in the dark under the motel’s neon Vacancy light.
“Thanks. He’s my idol.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah. I mean, he’s my songwriting idol. Or, was.”
“Yeah, I get it.”
Headlights passed over them as a car entered the parking lot. The girl got up and crushed her cigarette under the wood supporting her bare toes. Jeffrey was worried she might get away.
“Hey . . . do you . . . want to . . . go get a cup of coffee sometime?”
“That’s my friend who’s giving me a ride,” she said walking out into the black.
“My name’s Jeff.”
“Have a good night, Jeff.”
“I’m staying upstairs.”
“I know. See ya.”
She slipped into the car; her blonde hair was the only thing visible behind the glass.
Jeffrey couldn’t sleep that night. He stayed up waiting to hear if the car returned. He wasn’t sure if it did or it didn’t because he couldn’t be 100 percent sure he hadn’t fallen asleep for a few seconds here and there. He didn’t take a shower the next day and he didn’t flush the toilet. He didn’t do anything that would block out sounds from the parking lot. He told the maid who came by that he wasn’t feeling well and asked her not to clean his room. He spent the entire day listening.
That evening, as he continued to listen, he thought if for some strange reason he had missed her coming back, that she would surely scrape her sandals across the balcony the same way she had done the previous night. By this time, Jeffrey had moved a chair next to the window. He didn’t read. He sat there all evening catatonically listening. As the clock crept toward midnight, he wondered if it was him that was keeping her locked up. Maybe she was waiting to hear him before she would come out. He should’ve figured that out earlier.
He left his room and nervously walked down the stairs. The girl was nowhere to be seen. Jeffrey already had his excuse worked out. He headed over to the motel office where there was an automatic coffee machine. When he stepped inside, the two old ladies were watching Johnny Carson and practicing their needlecrafts. Jeffrey deposited his coins into the coffee machine and watched the paper cup forced down by a strong spray of brown water. He pulled the cup out from the compartment and quickly drank it. He put in a coin for another round and waited again for the spray to finish. With his second cup, he walked over to the ladies. He politely waited for a commercial break before getting their attention.
“Oh hello!” one of them said. She had sparkles on her face. They were constructing a Fourth of July display of glittery fireworks and knitted flags. A couple of modern-day Betsy Rosses. Was it July already, Jeffrey wondered? Or was the craftwork for Memorial Day at the end of the merry, merry month of May?
“I was wondering,” Jeffrey said putting his elbow on the counter the way men do in the movies when they are trying to project casualness, “have either of you seen that young blonde girl around today?”
“What girl?”
“Um, kinda thin, with long blonde hair and shoes that make her seem tall.”
“Oh no, I don’t know any girls like that.”
“I think she’s staying here.”
“Oh no, I don’t think we have any single girls staying here.”
“Except for us!” the other one chimed in.
“Are you sure? I’ve talked to her here a couple of times. It seemed like she was staying here.”
“She was probably visiting someone. A lot of people stay here when they are visiting someone in town. Maybe she was visiting someone who was visiting.”
Jeffrey nodded and started to back out of the office. He decided these two women were crazy.
“Hey, are you an actor?” the sparkled one called after him.
Jeffrey turned around, but didn’t say yes or no.
“They’re going to be shooting part of a TV show here next week. Could be an opportunity!”
Jeffrey was frightened of the old biddies. The blonde girl had disappeared and they hadn’t noticed. The same thing could happen to him. He could vanish and no one would notice. Completely vanish from the Earth, as though he were never here, as if he never mattered.
For some reason, Jeffrey thought about his father. His father was big on deadlines, he always had to buy or sell something by a certain date. Jeffrey thought maybe that’s what he needed. He needed a deadline. Either something was going to happen by a certain date or that was it. He’d have to kill himself. At least he could have some power that way, otherwise it would be a lifetime of not mattering and then the world would decide when his time was up. This way, even if Jeffrey didn’t matter, he could at least have some say in his own existence.
Jeffrey didn’t leave his room for a week. He called the pizza parlor across the street and convinced the guy that he had hurt his leg. He got the guy to bring a pizza over, even though they usually didn’t do deliveries. He did this for five days, ordering one large pizza a day, until the guy said, “Maybe you need a doctor instead of pizza.” The day after that, one of ladies knocked on his door and asked how much longer he would be staying. If he didn’t pay for last week, and in advance for each additional night, they were going to have to ask him to move on. Jeffrey tried to explain that he was sick. The woman nodded her head. She probably didn’t believe him. She’d probably heard it all before.
The blonde girl never came back.
Finally, the ladies came to his door with the big guy who did repairs around the joint. They were sorry, but Jeffrey would have to leave. They hoped he would pack up his things right away so they wouldn’t have to get the police involved. Jeffrey gathered his scattered clothes into his suitcase. He started to stack up the empty pizza boxes, but they said not to worry about that. He was just trying to be nice.
Jeffrey stood on the street outside the motel thinking that maybe the girl would show up at the last minute. A bus pulled over and opened its doors. Jeffrey shook his head at the driver. He would give her until the next bus came along and then that would be it. When the second bus came, a car pulled into the motel driveway. Jeffrey turned away from the bus so it wouldn’t stop. The car didn’t stop either. It was just using the parking lot to make a U-turn.
When the third bus came, Jeffrey climbed aboard and rode out to the airport. He called his parents collect from a pay phone and made up a story about being robbed on the street at gunpoint. They said they would call in a ticket and it would be waiting for him at the counter. In the men’s room, Jeffrey threw away all of his possessions except for his guitar and a few cassettes. He pushed the tape recorder into the metal trashcan, remembering that it too was supposed to have been stolen a few weeks ago. He left his empty suitcase in a toilet stall. He threw out his wallet and kept only the last of his money, his non-driver’s license, and his Dallas library card.
He stared at himself in the men’s room mirror. He looked pale and pasty, as though he had been living alone in a cave for many years.
THE ROA
D THROUGH THE FOREST
Tammy hardly saw any of the girls from school over the summer. Gretchen had gone to a gifted and talented day camp and wasn’t around much. Plus she had swim practice, she had gone to a beach house, and she had visited her grandparents. Gretchen seemed busier over the summer than she was during the school year. Tammy and Steffi would sometimes drag Hugh to the indoor pool at the public high school, but their mother and Nick said whoever was in charge of Hugh that day would have to stay with him in the baby pool. Tammy and Steffi would tell Hugh that he had to put on his swimsuit before they left because they couldn’t go with him into the boys’ changing room. In the summer they were left alone all day.
Tammy didn’t belong to any swim team or summer camp. She and Steffi were supposed to visit their dad at some point, but their mother said, “It hasn’t been decided yet.”
Gretchen finally called Tammy during the last week of summer vacation. She said she was having an end-of-summer swim party at the Promenade Swim Club, and did Tammy want to come? The Promenade was a private club. Gretchen was on the swim team there. Steffi went there a lot with Kirin. Kirin was also on the swim team. Tammy’s family didn’t belong to the Promenade.
Tammy wanted a new bathing suit. The strap on her old one had come off and was held together with a safety pin. Her mother didn’t want to buy Tammy a new suit because she said that summer was over now and she didn’t really need one. She said that if she bought Tammy a new suit now, she would just outgrow it by next summer. She didn’t want to spend money on two suits. “It’s not practical,” she said. “It’s a waste of money.” Tammy asked again and her mother said no. She said Tammy should just wear her old suit and they would get a new one next June. She said that if Tammy wanted a new suit so badly she could use her allowance to buy one.
Tammy decided that’s what she would do. She knew her mother didn’t think it was a good idea. That’s why her mother said it—so Tammy would tell her that she didn’t want to use her own money, and then her mother would say, well then, you’ll have to wait until next summer.
Calf Page 9