“All right. Fine.” He took a deep breath. “Well.” He paused to look in his rearview mirror.
“Speak, Stan.”
“Okay. Some people think she has a gift. I guess she’s kind of psychic, and she occasionally holds séances in the house.”
“What?”
“Yeah. I’ve actually been to one. It was weird.”
“You’re kidding?”
“No. She called in this spirit who went by Père. She said that meant father in French, so we were all trying to figure out if it was someone’s grandfather. He was killed in some war. I can’t remember which one.”
She wanted to believe he was kidding, but this description was far too detailed for Stan’s imagination. He didn’t know French. “You never told me this. I thought you said you had never been to her house.”
“Well, I forgot. Sorry.” He scratched the bridge of his nose and began to hum the Buzz Burger song.
“How can you forget something like this?”
“I don’t think she does it anymore. Jimmy mentioned something about it getting a little out of hand.”
Her visions of double dating and drinking caramel lattes together turned to scenes from The Exorcist. What if Justine was possessed by the devil, and Elise had to contact a priest?
“This is not something you just forget to mention.”
“Sorry.”
She looked at him: his baseball cap turned backward, his big blue eyes gazing at the highway as if it were no big deal that he had arranged for her to live with someone who called in the dead.
She remembered the time in middle school when he’d convinced her that their parents were adopting an African child named Diana Momsabu. According to Stan, she was eight years old, was good in math, and hoped to become a doctor one day. Her parents were waiting to surprise Elise with her new sister at Christmas. He had even provided a picture of a young African girl with a shy smile and a beaded necklace. The real story, which she’d gotten from her older sister Melissa, had been that her parents had attended a benefit dinner for children in Africa and had simply signed up to sponsor Diana Momsabu’s education.
She looked at him again. “You are such a liar.”
“I’m not lying.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t have even told you.”
“Yes. You should’ve told me. You should’ve told me when you gave me her phone number and told me what fun it would be to live with her.” It was going to be hard enough to start her life over in San Diego, and now she had this to worry about?
They passed a sign for Centro Mesa, and Stan broke into one of the loudest and most profound versions of the Buzz Burger song that for a moment she actually thought he should sing in their ads.
Despite her anger, seeing the red and yellow sign sent a little bolt of excitement through her veins. Not only was Buzz Burger her favorite fast-food restaurant, but it was also a sign that they had crossed the Arizona border. Buzz Burgers were only in California, and there was absolutely nothing like their secret sauce in Tucson. However, her excitement was fleeting. She was moving in with the type of person who inspired the spine-tingling tales that were told at sixth-grade camp.
She would’ve found it absolutely fascinating if Stan were the one moving in with a person like this, and might even consult with the roommate for a psychic reading every once in a while. However, she didn’t want to be the one whose living situation became an urban legend, and Elise wondered if ten, maybe twenty years from now her name would still be accurately included in the tales. Or would she become Lisa, maybe Ella—the girl who was murdered by Père.
“What are you going to have?” he asked as they pulled up to the microphone at the drive-through.
“What I’d really like is a screwdriver.”
“Huh?”
“Yes, a screwdriver. So I can screw your head on straight,” she said. “What the hell were you thinking, Stan? How could you do this to me?”
“Oh c’mon. It could be worse. Now tell me what you want.”
“I’ll have a number two combo with a Seven-Up,” she answered coldly.
“That’s the cheeseburger combo, right? I’m going to get the same thing.” He smiled as he pulled up to the menu board. “Two number two combos. One with a Seven-Up and one with a Coke.”
Elise reached for her wallet on the floor. When she sat up, there were still two more cars ahead of them. But what she saw made her freeze.
“Stan, I don’t think we can fit through there,” she said as she studied the overhang that created a small passage from the ordering board to the pickup window. A tin roof supported by long, metal poles created shady coverage for the passage. Perhaps it was provided to keep passengers cool while they waited for their food. From the top of the roof hung a sign that read 11’ Clearance. “Seriously. Stop the car. We’re not going to fit through there.”
“Hmmm,” he mumbled. “That is pretty tight.”
“Let’s just park and go in.”
“There is no way this thing is taller than eleven feet.”
“Stan, even from where I’m sitting it looks like we could scrape the roof. Let’s just park and go in.”
She put the strap of her camel-colored purse over her shoulder. He stuck his head out the window and looked to the rear. “How are we going to get out of here?” he wanted to know. “There’s like three cars behind us.”
Elise looked as well, and waved to Carly in the process. Not only were they trapped in a one-way ordering lane with curbs and landscape islands on either side of them, but another car had pulled in and there were now four cars behind them. She could hear the voice coming through the drive-through microphone. “Welcome to Buzz Burger. Would you like to try a strawberry shake today?”
“I don’t know how we can get out,” she said. “But I know we can’t make it through there.”
“Sure we can.”
He began to inch forward.
“No we can’t. You’re crazy.”
She caught a whiff of hamburgers and greasy fries. There was only one car ahead of them, and as soon as it pulled out of the drive-through it would be their turn to pass through the Buzz Burger tunnel. “Look. As soon as the car ahead of us leaves, I’ll walk up to the window and explain that we can’t . . .” Her voice trailed off when she realized they were moving. “Stan? What are you doing?” Instead of listening to her, he stepped on the gas pedal and proceeded to move forward. “You’re even crazier than I thought. We can’t fit though—”
To her surprise they barely slid under the clearance sign. In fact, it was so close that the truck stirred a slight breeze, causing the sign to blow back and forth on its squeaky hinges.
“Thank God,” she sighed, as they waited for the car ahead of them to leave.
“See? I knew we’d fit.” He smiled triumphantly before continuing. So, he’d been right about this, but if he thought he was off the hook for setting her up to live with a medium, he couldn’t be more wrong.
As Stan inched forward she thought of ways she could torture him. Perhaps she’d run ads in every San Diego newspaper for a thousand-dollar yacht with his phone number: Bankrupt. Must sell this luxury yacht for the bargain price of $1,000. Call Stan. She was imagining the incessant irritating calls he’d be plagued with morning, noon, and night when a jarring bang startled her. At first she thought there had been a car wreck in the parking lot. But one glance out her window indicated they were the wreck.
What followed next sounded like an explosion. Metal screeched as the truck scraped through the sides of the drive-through. They were so focused on the height of The Mustard Mobile that they’d completely overlooked the width. It sounded as if the world’s most powerful espresso maker was mixing up the truck. She looked out her window and watched as the passenger-side rearview mirror was ripped from its mount. She feared the doors would be gone if they ever made it out. In a state of excitement, Bella propped her paws on the window and yelped.
Rather than stopping at the pickup window for their food
and explaining the accident to the cashier, her brother gunned the gas pedal and peeled out of the Buzz Burger drive-through, taking what sounded like half the establishment with them. They bounced over the curb so hard that Elise thought she felt a lung in her throat.
“Stan! You’re not stopping? We have to stop!”
“No we don’t. No one saw us.”
“You just took out half the Buzz Burger! And what about Carly? She’s back there in the wreckage!”
She stuck her head out the window and caught a glimpse of her rearview mirror bouncing like a soccer ball over the pavement behind them. Carly tailed them in the bug. Thank God she was okay. From her angle, she could still make out the Buzz Burger. The steel poles that once supported the tunnel were as bent and crooked as elbows. Half the drive-through roof hung awkwardly, and the metal roof flapped over the poles like a gigantic steel flag. She didn’t get many other details because Stan fled from Centro Mesa wearing the same scary expression she’d seen on Robert De Niro during a car chase in Heat.
“Stan. Stop. The. Freaking. Car. The U-Move is in my name. I will be liable for a hit-and-run.”
He glanced at his sister. “Hit and run? Please. We didn’t hurt anyone. Buzz Burger won’t give a shit. They make millions of dollars every day. They won’t mind some broken metal roof. They can go to Home Depot today and replace that thing in an hour.”
Where he got this logic from she had no idea. She was about to further explain the damage they caused and the potential lawsuits when her cell phone rang.
“What the hell happened back there?” her best friend asked.
“Stan decided to tear through the eleven-foot drive-through roof. I told him the U-Move couldn’t fit, but he insisted on taking matters into his own hands. He won’t go back.”
“If it makes you feel any better,” Carly said, “I could still fit through the drive-through to follow you guys, so the wreckage can’t be that bad. They can probably still run the drive-through for the rest of the day. As long as somebody isn’t driving a big car they can squeeze through there.”
She imagined the bad karma they were racking up as the franchise lost business because trucks weren’t going to be able to order food. She clung to Bella as Stan sped onto the highway, dust and debris forming clouds outside their windows.
“Also,” Carly added. “You guys took off so fast. There is no way anyone could’ve taken your license number.” She began to laugh. “That was the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life. The rearview mirror bounced right off the side of The Mustard Mobile.”
Ha-ha.
She was stunned that her best friend was finding this as thrilling as her brother. Carly. She only wore two kinds of clothes. DKNY and Ann Taylor, and she’d been dressing this way since high school. While Elise had been experimenting with torn jeans and combat boots, Carly had always stuck to sensible loafers and sweater sets. She’d worn the same perfume, Chanel No. 5, since the seventh grade, and owned a clean and matching set of makeup brushes. She was a practical person, and here she was, willing to be an accessory to crime.
“I think it’s okay,” Carly said. “I don’t think they’re going to come after you. I’m starving, though. Can we stop in the next town for food?”
Elise imagined their descriptions being wired through the Middle of Nowhere police dispatch as they were speaking. Young male. Late twenties. Medium build. Blue eyes and brown hair. Female companion, mid-twenties. Petite build. Hazel eyes. Brown shoulder-length hair.
“No. We can’t stop until we get at least a hundred miles away. Then I’m driving. Stan isn’t allowed to drive anymore.”
She said good-bye to Carly and leaned back in her seat. She was starting her new life in San Diego as a fugitive.
2. A New Hood
The only good thing that had come out of the accident was that the rattling noise had gone away. Whatever Stan had done had apparently knocked something back into its place, and she had never appreciated silence more.
They’d stopped briefly in the dry, remote town of El Centro to assess the damage. “By the way,” Stan said as they pulled into the Carl’s Jr. parking lot. “I was just kidding about Justine. She’s not really psychic.”
“What?”
He lowered his eyes. “She’s not psychic. I made that up.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
He shook his head. “Why are you flipping out? I thought you’d appreciate the truth.”
“Thanks, Stan. Thanks for being a total asshole and completely traumatizing me for the past one hundred miles.”
“I’m sorry. I thought it would be funny.”
If he thought confessing was going to put her in a better mood, he was wrong. She knew what he was up to. She’d done the same thing. For example, in high school she told her parents she got an A in math right before revealing that she’d also received her first speeding ticket. He was trying to make her feel so relieved that she wouldn’t care about the damage he’d done.
After parking, they both circled around the truck.
“See! I told you!” he yelled, joining her at the tailgate. “You can’t even tell!”
It was partly true. The Mustard Mobile had been in crappy shape to begin with, and it was hard to tell which scratches were new. However, it was missing a mirror on the passenger’s side, and the mirror on the driver’s side dangled by a thick black cord. One hubcap was gone, and the right corner of the front bumper showcased a dent the size of a small banana.
Guilt nipped at her conscience as she wondered how the poor Buzz Burger was faring. In the Carl’s Jr. parking lot she promised God if she ever made it big as a mystery writer, she’d send them an anonymous cash donation.
They didn’t spend a ton of time surveying the damage. She’d been nervous that if they stopped for too long someone might recognize them, and she was anxious to get to her new neighborhood in North Park. This time, she took over the wheel.
Her last month in Arizona had been filled with daydreams of packing a beach bag and walking to the coast to edit her novel and soak up sun. She’d bodysurf and throw crumbs to the seagulls while getting a tan that would attract a brilliant and sun-kissed surfing boyfriend. These fantasies, however, came to a screeching halt when she realized that the rent near the ocean was not designed for struggling writers.
When Stan gave her Justine Viccar’s phone number in North Park, she investigated her options inland. North Park was one of the oldest areas of San Diego, and centrally located. She recalled charming little Craftsman-style houses, swanky coffee shops, and hip record stores that specialized in selling hard-to-find music. It was a haven for starving artists and one of the only places in San Diego that still had affordable rent. So her fantasy had switched to hanging out at coffee shops and meeting a hot vegetarian poet.
As she exited the freeway her palms became as damp as a moist kitchen sponge, and she kind of hoped Justine wasn’t home to shake her hand. She followed Stan’s directions and turned the U-Move down a one-way street, careful not to sideswipe any cars parked next to the curb. She began to feel nervous when she trucked past houses with bars soldered to windows and barbed wire framing yards. Where were all the little vegan restaurants? The meditation centers and indie record stores? Pit bulls were chained to trees.
Furthermore, it suddenly occurred to her that they weren’t in North Park. Wasn’t North Park west of the freeway? They were heading east into City Heights, North Park’s closest neighbor and a regular feature on the eleven o’clock news for its drive-by shootings and liquor store stickups. Billboards in City Heights encouraged saying no to drugs and provided specific locations for free HIV testing. In City Heights, the neighbors held gang initiations instead of welcome-to-the-neighborhood parties.
“Are you sure I didn’t make a wrong turn? We’re in City Heights, Stan.”
“City Heights. North Park. We’re right on the fringes of both. What difference does it make? It’s all the same.”
“What differe
nce does it make? In case you didn’t notice the hooker with gold teeth who just waved to you, this is not North Park.”
“Go right here,” he said, oblivious. “By the way, Arnold Schwarzenegger visited the area recently to talk about reforming education. Right here at the city hall in this neighborhood. Right in City Heights.”
What was his point?
“Stan, this is not North Park.”
“Well it’s so close. I’m telling you. This whole area is on the rise. You just don’t know because you’ve been out of the loop for so long. It’s a cool place to live.”
Cool if you owned a bulletproof vest. She was going to have to take karate lessons.
Stan directed her to pull into a sagging apartment complex. Orange paint peeled from the walls like shredded cheddar cheese. Bars covered most of the windows, and a mildewed couch that was missing every single cushion sat on the neighbor’s dead lawn. A rusty staircase wrapped around the front of the three-story building, and a couple of limp palm trees lined the entrance. A sign reading “Casa de Paradiso” was posted in front of the building. The “a” in Casa hung upside down by an old nail. Elise had taken French in high school, but she knew enough Spanish to understand that Casa de Paradiso meant “House of Paradise.” She wondered if whoever had named the building couldn’t figure out the Spanish word for squalor.
“This is it?”
Stan looked at the directions. “Yup.”
She wished Stan would tell her this was all one big joke, like the séance thing. He was just screwing with her, and her real house was across town in the cute Spanish-style complex that she had been dreaming about. But he wasn’t kidding. Casa de Paradiso was going to be her new home.
“Aren’t you going to park?” he asked.
She was still debating. Part of her wanted to open Stan’s door, shove him out of the truck, and speed back to Tucson.
This will only be temporary, she told herself. She was renting month to month. She could leave as soon as she found a new place.
Roommates Page 2