Roommates

by Whitney Lyles

  Justine had mentioned that they each had their own parking space, but fitting The Mustard Mobile into her space only invited the opportunity for more disaster, so she parked next to the curb.

  “This isn’t North Park,” Carly said as she joined them.

  “I know. Tell Stan. He seems to think it is.”

  “Why don’t you just stay with me for the time being?” Carly offered.

  “In your studio? With Bella? I think it would be a little too cramped, but thanks.”

  Carly sighed. “I wish I wasn’t locked into my lease for another year. Otherwise, it would be you, me, and Bella in our own little beach bungalow. I’m going to start looking for a new place for you tonight. You can’t stay here.”

  Carly was perhaps the most reliable and efficient person she knew. She was the type of friend that Elise could call at three a.m. on a Tuesday night from a Mexican jail and ask for ten thousand dollars’ bail and a ride home. Not only would Carly cross the border, but she would probably show up with Gloria Allred and a tube of antibacterial hand lotion to kill all the germs from the jail. Not that Elise had ever been arrested. She just knew her best friend well, and was glad to be moving closer to her.

  She found the key stashed under the mat. It was in a little white envelope with a note attached. This would be the last time they would ever stash keys under the mats again. For crying out loud, people don’t leave keys under mats in City Heights.

  Hi Elise!

  Sorry I couldn’t be here to help you get settled. I wish I didn’t have to work, but I can’t wait to meet you later. Help yourself to anything.

  Justine

  God only knew what lay inside. At this point anything was possible. The blinds were drawn when she entered. Even though it was three o’clock in the afternoon, it appeared to be past dark. As she searched for a light switch, she inhaled the scent of stale cigarette smoke—the kind of smoke that seeps into the curtains and makes the wallpaper turn the same shade of yellow featured in “before” pictures for teeth whitening ads. She’d never lived with a smoker and hadn’t even thought to ask if Justine smoked when they’d spoken on the phone.

  In the dark, she fumbled for a light switch. “It reeks in here.”

  “I know,” Carly said. “But I’m sure you can set some regulations. She has to understand. Being a smoker myself, I know that we smokers have to be the accommodating ones.”

  She really began to consider staying with Carly until she flicked on a light switch. Illuminating the apartment cast a new light on Elise’s disappointment. Not only was the furniture nice, but the entire inside of their apartment looked renovated. Faux marble countertops in the kitchen. New beige carpet. Crown molding. Bella’s nose was practically glued to the carpet as she immediately began to sniff out her new surroundings.

  “I told you,” Stan said. “This place is on the rise. People are fixing up these little condos and turning them over.”

  She noticed two pairs of shoes by the front door, both very fashionable. A pointy pair of black heels, and a funky pair of retro-looking sneakers, brown with tan stripes on the sides.

  “I think we’re supposed to take our shoes off,” Elise said, slipping off her flip-flops.

  Carly slipped off her loafers. “Well, that’s a good sign. Obviously she’s clean.”

  That was an understatement. The Spanish tiled floors in the kitchen shined like brand-new copper pennies. There wasn’t a speck of dust or clutter to be found. Elise never knew what to do with old phone bills or scrap pieces of paper and ended up leaving them in little stacks next to her desk. She’d never thought it was possible to live a clutter-free life.

  She felt like a miner who had just stumbled upon the mother lode when she noticed pictures on the wall. “Look,” she whispered. “Pictures. We can see what she looks like!”

  Carly rubbed her hands together as she approached. “I’ve been curious.”

  Except for one tiny photo of her family, all of the pictures on the wall were what appeared to be Justine with her boyfriend. She was much prettier than Elise had imagined. Long auburn hair hung past her shoulders, and her pale skin looked as if it had never met with sunburn. Her green eyes were framed beneath two well-sculpted and dramatically arched eyebrows.

  “She’s pretty,” Carly whispered. “And apparently she really likes her boyfriend.”

  “I know. How many pictures of them do you think there are?” Elise’s voice was practically inaudible. Why they were whispering neither one knew.

  A couple of photos featured Jimmy alone. In one, he was playing his guitar in front of a stage full of people, his Rod Stewart haircut hanging over his ears and resting on his neck. There was another picture of him standing next to a Thanksgiving turkey looking as if he didn’t belong in the tie he was wearing. After assessing all the photos, the girls continued to inspect every room.

  A small bar separated the kitchen and living room, which meant that she could watch TV while cooking a meal. There was no flaky goop or crust gathered around the dispenser on the hand soap pump. Sure, Elise was clean. But her soap dispensers tended to resemble a runny nose.

  Furthermore, Justine had seemed welcome to sharing her place with Elise’s dog. But Elise knew how often Bella shed coarse little black and white dog hair. In fact, Elise had dozens covering the tank top and shorts she was wearing. What if Justine hated Bella?

  Her worries were squashed when she noticed the tiny laundry room attached to the kitchen. This was the most exciting aspect of moving in with Justine. No more hoarding quarters and digging in the trenches of couch cushions in search of spare change. Her days of hauling heavy laundry baskets and a good book to the Laundromat were over. Having a washer and dryer made her temporarily forget that her new neighbors probably sold drugs out of their condo.

  Small signs of Justine were revealed in the laundry room. A wool sweater laid flat on the dryer, size small. A pair of hoop earrings apparently fished out of a pocket and set on top of the washer. Her attention was distracted when she noticed Stan rummaging through the fridge.

  “Get out of there,” she said.

  He closed the refrigerator door. “I’m starving. We haven’t eaten since El Centro.”

  “I’m hungry, too. But Mom and Dad are going to be here in a little while, and we’re all going out to dinner.” It was time to give Stan something to do. “Why don’t we start unloading?”

  Outside, the scent of orange blossoms wafted through the path that led back to the truck, and she hadn’t realized how much she missed that fragrance. The sweet scent of the blossoming white flowers was California’s perfume in spring and early summer.

  Somewhere in the moving process Carly had vanished. Elise figured she was either still looking around or had gone outside to smoke.

  “Where do you want this?” Stan asked, holding her TV.

  “Just set it on top of the dresser. I wonder if I get cable in here.”

  Stan placed the TV on her dresser before screwing the cable cord into the wall. Once plugged in, he hit the Power button. “I think you only get local stations.” He scanned the channels, stopping occasionally to watch something.

  They peeked inside her closet and discovered that two of the shelves had come loose and looked as if they might fall from the wall if she placed anything on top of them. “I can fix those,” Stan said, running his hands over the wood.

  “You can?”

  “Of course.” He patted her on the back. “I brought some of my tools with me, so I’ll tighten those. Then you’ll have much more space in there for your stuff.”

  “Thanks.”

  Despite his jackass tendencies, he really could be nice when someone needed a favor. She knew he would fix them, even it meant staying until midnight. She remembered the time she had driven to San Diego two Christmases ago, and her car had broken down near Gila Bend. She was going to call for a tow truck and stay the night in a run-down motel in the truck stop town until someone could pick her up the next morning. Howev
er, Stan wouldn’t hear of it. He ditched the Coldplay concert he had tickets to and drove five hours to pick her up so she didn’t have to stay overnight in the middle of nowhere by herself.

  She decided to leave several boxes unpacked, and instead stacked them in her closet. She was getting ready to put her sheets on her mattress when she heard Carly’s voice.

  “Hey, check this out,” she called from somewhere in the apartment.

  Stan had begun setting up her desk, and she brushed past him as she followed Carly’s voice.

  She found her in Justine’s room. “You’ve gotta see this!”

  “What?” Elise was back to whispering. “We shouldn’t be in here.”

  “You know you were planning on peeking in here, too.”

  She had already peeked inside. She’d stolen a quick glance before an eerie feeling that Justine could enter at any moment sent her racing back to her half of the apartment. She knew what they were doing was wrong. Her conscience told her they were trespassing. However, she was also dying to see what Carly had found. Whatever it was would reveal something about the real Justine. Of course, her imagination immediately assumed it was something sexual or raunchy. She took a step forward, Bella at her heels.

  She looked around and noticed that the two bedrooms were exactly alike, spacious, and each with its own bathroom. Elise was amazed that someone had actually figured out a way to prevent that bumpy layer of sedimentation that forms at the end of the toothpaste tube. Maybe if Elise squeezed her paste the same way it wouldn’t look like a science project.

  It suddenly occurred to her what kind of pressure it was going to be living with Justine Viccars. Elise was going to have to be as clean as a Windex commercial if she didn’t want to be branded the slob. With her old roommates she was considered pretty clean, but with Justine she could be coined a disaster. No more leaving the occasional coffee mug in the sink or brushing crumbs onto the floor instead of sponging them off the counter. She was going to have to start making her bed every day.

  “Okay, come look at this.” Carly pulled her deeper into Justine’s world.

  “All right. Show me. Quick.”

  Carly pointed to a wall next to Justine’s bed. Elise looked at an eight-by-ten photo of Justine and Jimmy. Her arms were thrown over his neck, and he was holding her piggyback style. They were both laughing, and the wind blew Justine’s long hair away from her face. They looked like they were posing for a breath mint ad. For a moment Elise wondered why Carly had dragged her into Justine’s bedroom to show her this. They already knew Justine had a lot of pictures of her boyfriend. She had even spotted a few more in the kitchen. Then she looked at the picture hanging beneath it. The photos were exactly the same.

  “She has two of the same exact pictures hanging next to each other. Can someone please say obsessed?” Carly said.

  It was strange, but she had to pee, and visions of Justine popping up behind them while they discussed her bizarre choice in wall décor made her nervous. “Maybe she just really likes the picture.” She could hear Stan using his electric screwdriver in her bedroom. “I don’t know. Let’s get out of here.”

  “It’s so weird,” Carly said, not budging.

  The fine hair on the back of her neck sprang to life when she heard what sounded like the rough turn of a door handle. She listened to a swoosh of air enter the apartment as the front door opened. Holy shit, she was home, and they were in her room. She yanked Carly by the elbow back into the living room. “We were just trying to figure out whose room is whose,” Elise said.

  “That’s nice, honey,” her mother said, holding a large pot of flowers. “I thought your new roommate might like these.”

  Elise sighed. “Mom and Dad.” Stan must’ve given them directions.

  “Come give me a hug, Slugger,” her dad said. Still tingling from surprise, she fell into her father’s bearlike embrace. She could smell his spicy aftershave as he planted a kiss on her forehead.

  “Slugger! Slugger! Slugger!” He shouted so loud that she wondered if the neighbors might complain on the first day. And she really didn’t want everyone to know the nickname her father had given her when she gave Stan a black eye after he ripped her Ken doll’s head off when she was eight. She was twenty-seven years old now.

  Her father was wearing khaki shorts with a golf shirt tucked in. An outfit her mother undoubtedly picked out. If it were up to him, he’d be sporting penny loafers with no socks and the University of Arizona sweatsuit Elise had given him her freshman year of college. His fashion sense was as savvy as a two-year-old.

  The shorts and shirt her mother had selected did a good job covering his basketball-sized tummy. Her mother, however, had failed to find him a decent pair of shoes. Hal Sawyer had the kind of toes that made little kids run from swimming pools when he got in. They were an unnatural shade of yellow and as gnarled and exotic looking as something from Lord of the Rings.

  He moved his smothering hug to Carly. “It’s great to see my girls again!”

  “Did you see the Padres game last night, Mr. Sawyer?” Carly asked.

  “You bet. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. And you’re too damn old to be calling us Mr. and Mrs. Sawyer. We’re Hal and Marge now.”

  “Your roommate smokes?” her mother asked, opening windows. “That’s going to get old fast.”

  Her father shook his head. “It’s awful in here!” Again, the neighbors.

  Marge looked around the apartment the same way she had looked around Elise’s bedroom in seventh grade after she had plastered her walls with posters of Billy Idol. “Stan set this up?” her mother asked.

  Elise nodded.

  “What is wrong with him?” Marge wanted to know. Elise had actually been questioning her own judgment. She should’ve never trusted his suggestion. The atmosphere in his own apartment was similar to a camping trip. However, Stan had tons of friends, most of whom were fun-loving, good people. So she was still counting on Justine to be cool.

  A mixture of skepticism and disgust covered her mother’s face. “Well, at least it’s clean in here.” She released a cough, which to an untrained ear may have sounded real, but Elise knew better. “I don’t know how you’re going to be able to handle it.”

  “I’m sure if I ask her to smoke outside she will. It’s going to be fine.”

  “You know, Elise, when your father and I were driving into this area, we were very concerned. Just remember this isn’t like Del Mar or Tucson. Just a couple of blocks over we saw a homeless man pushing a shopping cart and digging through someone’s trash. Didn’t we, Hal?”

  Her father nodded. “Do you still have that pepper spray I gave you? And what about that flashlight? Do you keep that in your glove box?”

  Elise had no clue where the pepper spray was. He’d given it to her years ago, and to tell the truth, she’d been scared of the canister, afraid if she held it the wrong way, or if she placed it in an awkward angle in her purse, it was going to accidentally dislodge and go off in her face. “I don’t know where the spray is. But I think that flashlight is still in my glove box.” The batteries were probably dead by now, but she kept that to herself. “I’m not staying here long. Believe me, it’s just temporary.”

  “I have a great idea,” her father said as if he’d just found the master solution to all her problems. “Why don’t you move home?”

  While her mother’s face lit with joy, Elise wanted to ask, Why not just become a confirmed spinster? She didn’t want to discuss the issue any further. “Let me show you my room. It’s huge, and Justine had the carpets cleaned for me.”

  Her mother looked around the room. “Well, at least you’ll have your own private space. Maybe you can just keep to your room and block out that smoke.” She looked at Stan, who was still bent over the desk, his brows furrowed in concentration. “Hello, Stan. How was the ride over in the U-Move?”

  “Fine.” He reached for his screwdriver.

  “Stan crashed into the overhang at the Buzz Burge
r in Centro Mesa,” Carly said.

  “Oh please,” he said. “Did you have to bring that up?”

  “What?” Marge screeched. “Good grief. Is there damage?”

  “Not much to the U-Move, but who knows about the Buzz Burger. He took off too fast to tell.”

  Her mother threw her hand over her chest. “Oh my word. Did you hear that, Hal? Your son crashed into a Buzz Burger in Centro Mesa.”

  “Uh, that’s too bad.” Her father had returned to the living room, seized the remote control, and was in a world of his own as he watched a Padres game. He wouldn’t have cared if Stan had driven the U-Move through a police station. “Dammit!” he shouted as someone struck out.

  She turned back to Elise. “Will they sue?”

  “No,” Stan answered. “They’re not going to sue.”

  “Well, who is going to pay for all that damage?”

  “Stan is,” Elise said. Since he had recklessly decided to take his chances and rip through the drive-through like a raving maniac, he was going to be responsible for returning the U-Move and explaining the damage. Money owed was coming out of his pocket.

  They spent another hour organizing Elise’s room while her father watched a baseball game from the edge of the couch, shouting obscenities at the pitcher. Chances were Trevor Hoffman, star pitcher for the Padres, couldn’t hear Hal Sawyer, but all the neighboring streets in City Heights could.

  When they were finished unloading, Elise looked around. Compared to Justine’s nicely organized pale greens and creams, Elise’s room looked like an explosion of color from Thrift City. She’d always liked warm, bright colors, and her red sheets and comforter were mismatched and covered with patches of gold and pink. She hung a few pictures, just to make herself comfortable. A large oil print of a dramatically green cactus with huge yellow cactus flowers that she’d purchased in Arizona. Her ex-boyfriend, whom she’d dated all through college, was an artist and had painted her a watercolor of Bella lying on her plaid dog bed.