Roommates

by Whitney Lyles

  Three thousand dollars? The mark was smaller than a door ding. “Well, lemme show you the place.”

  As they entered the house, Elise wondered if Delores would try to rip her off in some way.

  Once inside, Delores kicked off her platforms. “These damn shoes are so hard to walk around in.”

  “Have you considered wearing flats?”

  “Duh? I wanna look professional.”

  She looked at Elise’s clothing. “But I guess you wouldn’t know what that means.” Elise ignored her remark and reasoned that the poor girl’s mother had never taught her any manners.

  Up until this moment, Elise had always thought her home décor looked as if it was the epitome of hand-me-downs. However, looking at Delores’s living room made her feel as if her stuff was actually kind of nice. Delores’s furnishings looked like an organized garage sale. Beat-up corduroy couches with thick, seventies-style oak frames. A fake wood entertainment center that would’ve been fantastic in 1981, and a papasan chair that appeared dangerous sat on a stretch of dirty cream-colored shag carpet.

  “You gotta rug?” Delores asked.

  “No. Actually, I don’t.”

  “Damn. I need a roommate who has a rug. When my old dog lost control of his bladder he pissed all over the place. We need a rug to cover that shit up.” She pointed to a stain the size of a twin mattress.

  “How big was your dog?”

  She shrugged. “He was a Rottweiler. Maybe eighty, ninety pounds.”

  It wasn’t the furniture that bothered Elise. Over time, she knew they could buy better stuff. And things could always be spruced up with cute throw pillows and some sheets. It was more the choice of décor that Delores had hung on the walls that made her have doubts. A mirror with a Bud Light logo hung over an old Pac Man machine. A massive photo of dirt bikes flying over sand dunes occupied one wall, and an orangey-brown wall hanging made of carpet and featuring a shit-colored sunset over a barfy orange-looking beach was displayed near the entertainment center. What could she say? Get rid of all your art. I wanna hang something better up?

  And something smelled. Ripe. A pungent, sour odor. She looked around for trash, but despite Delores’s hideous style, the house was actually clean. Tidy, but outdated.

  “So how the hell did you get a last name like Sawyer?” Delores asked.

  “Uh . . . what do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s just like that book. Tom Sawyer. Don’t you get that a lot? Tom Sawyer. Elise Sawyer.”

  “Not really.” And what? ‘Ditson’ is a charming last name?

  Delores giggled. “I just think it’s kind of funny. Like your best friend could be Huck Finn.”

  Elise realized she wasn’t trying to be rude. She was just a complete idiot. In a strange way, Elise was really enjoying the whole encounter. Talking to this scam-pulling little case study was the most interesting thing she had seen in days, and it was taking her mind off all her problems.

  The kitchen was just as retro, with linoleum floors and Formica countertops. There was another wall hanging made of carpet and featuring a fruit basket with purple bananas and a variety of other things that resembled fruit but looked more like a science project gone bad. “Do you want an RC cola?” she asked, as she pulled one from the fridge.

  “No, thanks.”

  Elise realized that the odor was in the kitchen as well and wondered if some kind of sour mold grew in the walls.

  Upon entering the bathroom Elise reached for her cell phone. They needed to call the police. The place had been ransacked, literally turned upside down while Delores had been out selling vacuums. The medicine cabinet was open, and all its contents were scattered around the floor and over the countertop. A bottle of Tylenol floated in the toilet. Towels were ripped from the racks and strewn around the room like lifeless rags.

  The toilet paper had been unrolled and shredded into a million cushiony pieces.

  “Shit,” Delores mumbled. “Not again.”

  “Uh . . . what hap—” Elise was in midsentence when she felt the tickling sensation of something brushing against the back of her calves. “What the . . .” she turned around and looked into the eyes of something wild. The creature, resembling a raccoon, gazed up at her as if it were checking her out—as if Elise was the foreigner. It had long, menacing teeth and a snout that looked as if it could pick ants out of a crack in the tile.

  “Oh Ariel! You’ve scared Elise. And you’ve made a mess again.” The animal jumped on Delores’s shoulder. It was twice the size of Bella, and she wondered how on earth it managed to balance itself on Delores’s small frame.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “She’s my coatimundi. She usually doesn’t make messes like this, but sometimes she manages to escape her cage. Don’t you?” she said rubbing Ariel’s ears. “She can be a little monster sometimes.”

  “Does it live in the house?”

  “Well, yeah . . . Where else would it live? Do you like camping?”

  “Uh . . . I guess.”

  “Cool. I love camping.”

  The stench had followed them to the bathroom, and Elise suddenly felt a need to get the hell out of there. However, she had dropped her purse when Ariel had snuck up on her, and some of her stuff had fallen out. She reached down to grab her stuff, and the odor became stronger. It suddenly occurred to her: It was Delores’s feet.

  Within five minutes she had politely said good-bye and explained that she had several other roommates to interview before she could commit to anything, and not to count on her. As she drove home she wished more than ever that she did have other roommates lined up for interviews.

  25. Slow Down the Hoedown

  Upon her return from Delores’s, Megan thrust a plastic cup filled with something fruity into Elise’s hand. “We’re having a party for you!” she raised her voice over the music.

  “For me?” she said, looking at the crowd in her apartment. They all looked like they were going to a rodeo.

  “Yeah. Since you’re leaving and since you’ve been so sad lately we decided to have a hoedown.”

  She sensed they would’ve had the party regardless of her circumstances, but in a weird way she felt honored. She looked at the crowd in her house, all under twenty-three and no one she knew. But hey, at least she could get drunk. She was about to ask what she was drinking when her eyes caught on someone sitting on her couch. Sitting in the midst of several people Elise didn’t recognize was Billy the bank teller.

  “Elise!” Iris called. “Come play Asshole with us. I’m president.” Then she pointed to three people who sat next to her at the kitchen table. “You will all only refer to my roommate, Elise, as Princess Elise.” So far the party was off to a great start. She took her eyes away from Billy and headed to the table. A girl wearing a G-string strapped around her forehead dealt her a hand. “I’m the asshole,” she said as she looked at Elise with misery in her eyes.

  “Yes!” Iris’s voice boomed power over the table. “The asshole must deal cards and wear a lei made of Megan’s socks.”

  She hadn’t played Asshole in ages. From what she recalled it was a drinking game that was designed to create a democracy but really ended up creating a dictatorship. She knew she’d probably end up being the asshole the first round. She was tempted to skip the game and the whole party for that matter. She was seven or eight years older than most of the people at the table and had outgrown the humor in wearing leis made of dirty socks.

  It was supposedly her party, but Elise sensed no one else in the room was aware of this. If she went back to her room she would end up thinking about Max and Carly and Stan for the rest of the evening. She’d just sit by the phone waiting for Max to call and wondering how her best friend and brother had managed to lie and elude her for months on end. Getting drunk and being called Princess all night was a much better option. The first round of Asshole worked to her advantage. Everyone else had been drinking for at least two hours, and she had outwitted almost all of them, except
Iris, who was still president but going by “Queen Iris.” Elise was vice president. “I got accepted into a study abroad program for next spring,” Iris said. “I’m going to London.”

  “That’s exciting news,” Elise said.

  “Yeah, so you could stay here until February and sleep on the couch and then sublet my room when I’m gone,” she suggested.

  She couldn’t think of a worse plan. “Oh, that’s okay. Thanks, though. What are you going to do with Scrubbles while you’re away?”

  She looked at Elise blankly for a moment. “Oh yeah. Scrubbles. I don’t know. Either Megan will watch him or maybe he’ll go to the pound. I’m sure someone will adopt him.”

  “I need another drink,” Elise said as she excused herself from the table.

  “All right. But come back,” Iris called.

  She was pouring vodka into a glass when a cup slid in right next to hers.

  “What are you having?” he asked.

  “A vodka cranberry.” She looked at the sea green eyes that had motivated her to create a savings account and deposit spare change into her checking on a regular basis. His only participation in the hoedown was the cowboy hat he wore on his head, and quickly removed.

  “Great. Can you make me one, Elise?”

  He knew her name. She was always Ms. Sawyer at the bank, and now they were on a first-name basis. “Of course.”

  “You come into the bank quite a bit.”

  “Yes. That’s right. You’re Billy. Right?”

  “Yes. Did you ever straighten out that thing with your Nordstrom stock?”

  She lied. “Yeah. So how do you know Iris and Megan?”

  “I have summer school with Megan.”

  “Small world.” She wanted to suggest that he quit school and pursue something with entertainment. His looks were amazing, but she held her tongue.

  “Do you go to USD, too?”

  “Oh, no. I’m out of college. Have been for a while.” She felt herself falling off The Cliff of Babble again. “I’m actually just living here for three months. It’s temporary. I am a lot older and needed a place, and I mean, San Diego real estate is so out of control.”

  “Yeah. I know. I just bought an apartment.”

  It didn’t make her feel any better knowing that a college-aged bank teller was a step further in real estate than she was. She downed her vodka cranberry and began mixing another. “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Twenty-one. And you?” She remembered the scene in Vacation when Chevy Chase had reached the end of his rope with their whole trek to Wally World and had gone down to a seedy cocktail lounge where he met a much younger Christy Brinkley and ended up telling her all kinds of lies to impress her. She felt like she could easily model his character at the moment. But then she asked herself why she would lie. To impress this guy? He was just a hot bank teller. “I’m twenty-three.”

  She was on her third cocktail in twenty minutes and feeling fantastic when someone offered her a shot of Jägermeister. Why the hell not? she thought as she pounded the shot. Unless he got a hold of her driver’s license, she was on the right track.

  She ended up chatting with Billy for two hours, getting drunker as each minute passed. He seemed to be stone sober to her, but then everyone seemed sober to her when she was drinking.

  “So, can I see your book?” he asked.

  “Sure, why not?”

  He followed her to her room, and she showed him the book. “I don’t think I’ve ever read a whole novel unless I’ve had to for school,” he said as he quickly looked at the cover and set the book back on her desk.

  This should’ve been a total turnoff to her, but she was buzzed and kind of liked being Demi Moore. After all that she’d been through in the past week she was entitled to rob the cradle. She looked at her dog, who eyed her with scolding eyes, as if to say, “What the hell are you doing? This guy hasn’t even acknowledged me.”

  When she took her eyes away from Bella, Billy leaned toward her. He started to kiss her slowly. Maybe it was her feeling bold, but the kisses soon became strong and heated. She rubbed her hands over his shoulders while she kissed him back. She’d never felt such strong arms and shoulders, and expected them to feel as hard as they did—like a mannequin. Then, to her amazement, he just stripped down right there in front of her. No foreplay. No sensual unbuttoning. He just took all his clothes off. Not that he was a sight for sore eyes or anything. She just wasn’t expecting it. His penis was massive, and he had a six-pack. However, something about the whole situation made her want to leave her clothes on. Even in her drunken haze she felt as if he was too bold, as if he was used to just getting nude and getting action. As if seeing him nude were supposed to make her follow his lead and strip down, too.

  Bella’s head rested on her paws, and her face looked sad when Elise glanced at her. She suddenly wanted him to put his clothes back on. She thought of tactful ways to get rid of him, but nothing really came to mind, so she just came right out with it. “You know what? I don’t want to do this.”

  “Do what?” He sprawled out on her bed, and she wondered how he could feel so comfortable in the nude. He was better suited for one of her roommates.

  “I just don’t feel like hooking up with you. I’m sorry.” A small part of her didn’t want to make out with him because of Max. She missed him, and the thought of touching someone else, no matter how hot he was, just made her miss Max even more. But most of all, she just wasn’t into him. He’d never read a book. He’d stripped down totally nude as if Elise were supposed to go wild, and she didn’t want to be Demi. She wanted to be Elise.

  He shrugged as if he’d just been told she’d prefer pineapple juice over cranberry with her vodka. “Whatever. Do you mind if I crash in your bed though? Because my ride is drunk and I can’t drive and I just want to sleep somewhere.”

  “Sure. Whatever.” How was she ever going to be able to deposit checks again, knowing that she had seen him totally in the buck? She thought he’d put his clothes back on, but he slid under her covers, rolled over onto his left side, and said, “Good night.”

  She was feeling rather tired herself and really just wanted the whole night to be over with. She ended up asleep on top of the covers, fully clothed, even wearing shoes. Bella climbed in between them. She licked Elise’s face, then walked in a small circle before lying down right next to her. Her back felt warm against Elise’s, and she could hear her tiny doggy breaths. She wondered what Max was doing, if he was lying next to someone. If he’d even thought about her since their last conversation. Though her bed was full, she’d never felt more alone.

  26. Labor Day

  For the first time in Elise’s life she loved being awakened at the crack of dawn by a ringing phone. Every time she heard the sound of f her cell phone she plunged down a pathway of hope that it was Max on the other end. He’d apologize for waking her before explaining that he hadn’t slept in days and he couldn’t wait another minute to talk to her. He’d then invite her over, they’d make up over passionate kissing and embracing, and have splendid sex in his bed where they would remain entwined with one another for the rest of the day. She experienced fleeting fantasies such as these every time her phone rang.

  The dream ended as soon as she heard her mother’s voice. “I have wonderful news.”

  “What is it?” Elise said, unable to conceal the disappointment in her voice. It was seven a.m. Max was probably sound asleep and moving on with his life, and all she wanted to do was return to the deep and satisfying slumber she’d been in two minutes earlier.

  “Your sister is in labor.”

  She sat up and screeched. Lying next to her in bed was the bank teller. “Shit!”

  He rubbed the side of his head. “What time is it?”

  She remembered her mother. “I mean, really? Oh my God. That’s so exciting.”

  “Yes, I know. Her water broke at five o’clock this morning.”

  She flashed Billy a look before holding a finger to her
lips.

  “Your father and I are here at the hospital with Brice and Melissa, and we were wondering if you could come take Jeffrey.”

  Of course they were wondering if she would come take Jeffrey. By now the entire labor and delivery unit was probably wondering if someone could take him.

  “Yeah. Of course,” she said. This would give her an excuse to get Billy out of her bed. “I’ll be right over.”

  After she hung up, Billy slid from her bed. He was completely nude and had no shame about walking across her bedroom in broad daylight with his privates showing. She wondered why he was naked when she was fully clothed but then remembered everything that had occurred.

  When she arrived at the hospital, her parents were in the waiting room with Jeffrey. He wore purple knee-high socks with cartoon wolves on them, his cowboy boots, and a pair of swim trunks. He was entertaining the entire waiting room with a yo-yo. Her mother stopped smiling when she noticed Elise. “Humph. Here she is.”

  “Take me to the beach,” Jeffrey said as soon as he noticed Elise.

  “Oh. Sure. Maybe we can go later.”

  “No. Beach now.”

  Her mother laughed. “I told him Auntie Lise lives by the beach, and that’s all he’s been talking about.”

  Elise had visions of Jeffrey running ten yards ahead of her across the sand in his boots, heading into the Pacific Ocean during riptide, while she fought to catch up to him. She didn’t know how to break it to him, but the beach isn’t exactly how she imagined spending the day with him. Perhaps they’d rent some Disney movies or finger paint. “Do you like popcorn?” Elise said. “I was thinking we could make some microwave popcorn and watch One Hundred and One Dalmatians.” She thought the dog thing would appeal to him with his socks and all.

  However, rather than running to the hospital exit so they could get home to watch the movie, he suddenly turned British. “Condy. Condy at the beach.”

  “How ’bout we go see Mommy before you leave?” Grandma suggested before flashing another cold look Elise’s way.