The Wonder Bread Summer: A Novel

by Jessica Anya Blau

  “Your license plate says CALL GIRL.”

  “It says CAL GIRL. Like California girl,” Allie said. Was Mike illiterate? He was so good-looking that it could make up for a lot of deficiencies, although maybe not illiteracy.

  “Is that for me?” Mike glanced at the coke on Allie’s lap.

  Allie nodded and lifted the magazine page by the two sides. “Here you go.” She moved it over to Mike, who started laughing.

  “Shit! Wait! Put it back on your lap.” Allie did as she was told. Mike ran around the car and got in the passenger side.

  “Hey,” Allie said, as he shut the door.

  “Where’s the magazine?”

  Allie pointed to the floor. Mike reached down, brought the magazine up, tore out two pages, ripped each page in half, then did some folding. “Do you have a spoon or something?”

  “No,” Allie said. “I wasn’t planning on selling coke. I came to pump gas but then realized I didn’t have any money with me.”

  “What about the price sheet?” Mike asked, and he grinned. Allie shrugged. Mike laughed, then reached over, scooped up some of the coke with his right hand and dropped it into one of the folded squares. In what looked to Allie to be fast motion, he folded the magazine around the coke into a tight little package, which he dropped into the breast pocket of his T-shirt. He did this three more times. Then he picked up the dusty page from Allie’s lap and licked it. Allie remembered the remnants she had dusted onto her jeans and regretted doing it. She could have gotten another lick.

  “This stuff is fucking unreal,” Mike said. “Where does your friend get it?”

  “I don’t know,” Allie said. “He’s in Berkeley. Or Oakland. Depending on what side of the street you’re on.”

  “Oakland. Fuck. I gotta spend some time in Oakland.” Mike paused, then looked over at her carefully. “So, if I go get some more cash, can you give me another three and a third grams just like this three and a third?”

  Ah. Clearly she had overestimated her coke measurements, Allie realized. Good to know. “Well,” she hedged, “yeah, but I’d have to stop off at my dad’s restaurant and get my scale so I can really measure it out, you know?”

  Mike smiled. “Okay. Cool.”

  “Okay then!” If Mike bought ten more grams, Allie calculated—real grams that she had weighed on her father’s food scale—then Jonas’s entire debt would be paid back.

  “I’ll follow you to the restaurant,” Mike said, and he stepped out of the car and stuck his hand up for Jimmy, who was approaching. They high-fived, then Mike added a little fist-punch in the air.

  Jimmy leaned in the window. “Can I get some money for the gas?” Allie could see he was a nicer guy than Mike, someone whose life was in order. He didn’t do coke. He was a student at UCLA. He worked hard all summer. If he had been Chinese, Wai Po would have approved of him.

  Allie handed out a hundred-dollar bill and Jimmy made change from the roll he had in his pocket, then ran off to help the orange Karmann Ghia that had just pulled up at the full-service pump.

  “You know, I’m kind of lost,” Allie said to Mike, out the window. “My dad’s restaurant is on Fairfax. Can I follow you there?”

  “You don’t know how to get to Fairfax from here?” Mike asked. “And you’re from here?”

  “Direction deficit,” Allie said. “I get lost in big buildings.” It was true.

  “I don’t believe you’re from here,” Mike said. He reminded Allie of Kathy Kruger’s older brother, who offhandedly and somewhat charmingly dismissed whatever Kathy and Allie did—the music they listened to, the teachers they liked, the shows they watched on TV. Growing up, Allie had felt so alone that she often wished she had an older brother to bump up against and give her trouble. Her life at home consisted only of her parents, who were never around, and Wai Po. When Wai Po died, her mother left to be the tambourine girl in Jet Blaster’s band, Mighty Zamboni. So, for most of her childhood, it was just Allie and Frank. And Frank never even asked about school and which teachers she liked.

  “What? No. I mean, yes,” Allie said. “I’m really from here.”

  “Yeah, right,” Mike said, and he rolled his eyes, like a girl. “Where exactly is the restaurant on Fairfax?”

  “Toward that street the museum is on. Toward the La Brea Tar Pits.”

  “Wilshire.”

  “Yeah, Wilshire, near the tar pits.”

  “The tar pits are on Wilshire. You don’t know Wilshire?” Now there was an edge of cruelty in Mike’s voice.

  Allie smiled reflexively. “No, I know Wilshire. I said Wilshire.”

  “You said where the tar pits are as if you didn’t know they were on Wilshire.”

  Allie imagined a wrench tightening a screw each time Mike spoke. It was as though he was ratcheting himself up into a clenched, angry fist. If he didn’t shut up soon, her attraction toward him would evaporate.

  “Well, I know they’re on Wilshire. So let’s go to Wilshire. Okay?” She smiled again.

  “Great.” Mike walked toward his red truck without looking back. A giant red toolbox spanned the width of the truck below the back window. Allie wondered if he were a carpenter or builder. Lately, she had been finding guys who worked with their hands sexy. Maybe it was a reaction to her broken heart; she was searching for the anti-Marc. Marc was all about ideas—his business plans, his MBA—and that certainly had done Allie no good.

  Prince played in the cassette player as Allie followed Mike. Allie turned up the music so she could dim her thoughts. She knew she should call Beth and let her know where she was with the car, but at this point Beth, in Berkeley, felt connected to Jonas and Vice Versa, and Allie was enjoying the freedom of being hidden in an entirely different city. Also, Allie was worried about how she would explain herself—her presence, the Prelude—to her father when she saw him. The last time they had talked, he had lectured her on the value of hard work. Frank worked seven days a week at the restaurant. Allie didn’t know anyone who worked harder than he did.

  Instead of deciding on what to say to Beth when she finally did call, or what to tell her father (or even how she would get the food scale out of the kitchen to weigh the coke!), Allie thought about making out with Mike.

  In high school, Allie had barely noticed boys. Kathy Kruger even asked her once if she was a lesbian. But then Marc came along and Allie discovered what it was like to have overwhelming feelings for someone. After Marc left, it was like she was ill, infected with a virus that gave her instantaneous unabashed desire that ran concurrent with her heartache. It was beyond reason, Allie knew, a hormonal-physiological impulse she couldn’t will away. Every moment with another body (and she only ever went as far as kissing) seemed to rub out Allie’s mental image of Marc, like a pencil drawing that was being slowly erased. And Mike, with his toolbox, surfer’s tan, Sex Wax T-shirt, and swooping blond hair, would be an ideal eraser as long as he didn’t get any meaner, any snappier, any more illiterate than he already was.

  Once they turned onto Fairfax Avenue, Mike pulled over and motioned for Allie to pass him. Allie followed the familiar stores and restaurants until she got to the parking lot for Hamburger Hostel, Frank’s place. It was empty. Allie looked at the clock on the dashboard. Eight forty. Was business even worse than Frank had intimated? The restaurant was usually packed by now—the old people would have eaten and gone and the first wave of teenagers, twenty-, and thirtysomethings would be filling the booths.

  Allie pulled up the emergency break and got out of the Prelude. She clicked the lock button, loving the feeling she got from doing so. It made her feel rich. Fancy.

  “Looks closed.” Mike stepped out of the truck. Allie was startled again by how good-looking he was. Like one of those guys in a surf movie: belly as flat and hard as a surfboard, hair as bright as the sun, arms made of dense rope.

  “Yeah, it’s weird.” Allie wandered toward the front door. The glass was tinted, so you couldn’t see in. Allie hated that—it reminded her of drug deale
rs with their tinted car windows. She blushed at the thought that, in a way, she was a drug dealer now.

  Mike tugged at the brass handle of the front door. It was locked. “You sure this is your dad’s place?”

  Allie felt a gurgly panic. Hamburger Hostel was her only stable point of reference. It was always there. Always open. Who was her father if not the man hovering over the employees at Hamburger Hostel? Was this why he had been totally unwilling to help her out financially? Did Frank need every penny he had in order to try to keep the restaurant open? Allie didn’t want to look at the locked door. It made her queasy, like viewing a dead body.

  “Your dad didn’t tell you the place went out of business?” Mike said. His eyes were narrowed, but he didn’t look suspicious. If anything, he looked bored.

  “No. This is a complete surprise,” Allie said, and she pulled the door again as if it would suddenly open.

  “Well, why don’t you just measure out the coke with your hands like you did last time?” Mike asked.

  “Let’s go to a pay phone. I’ll call my dad.” Allie wouldn’t let the transaction happen without a scale. She couldn’t afford to give away more coke than the value of what she was owed. Besides, she needed to make sure her father was okay, still walking, still with a beating heart. The only way Frank’s restaurant wouldn’t be open would be if he were physically unable to get there or in complete financial ruin.

  “Where’s your mom?” Mike asked. “Didn’t she tell you about the restaurant?”

  “My mom’s on the road with Mighty Zamboni. She’s the tambourine girl.” Allie started walking back toward the cars.

  Mike laughed, following her. “No way.”

  “Way,” Allie said. “She and Jet Blaster are a couple.”

  “I thought everyone from Mighty Zamboni was dead by now. Are you like a pathological liar?” The casual way Mike asked this made Allie wonder if he assumed lying to be a normal means of communication.

  “They’re still touring. None of them are dead.”

  Mike must have been as uninterested in Mighty Zamboni as Allie was, because he said, “My friends and I used to eat at your dad’s place all the time in high school.”

  “Oh yeah?!” Allie looked at Mike and tried to spin her head out of the shock of the closed restaurant.

  “Great fucking burgers.”

  “Yeah.” Frank had always been proud of the burgers.

  “Wait. This isn’t your dad’s place! The guy who owns this is some black dude. I remember seeing him at the cash register and checking on the tables all the time.”

  “That’s my dad.” Allie had never seen her father anywhere else within three hours of suppertime.

  Mike took Allie’s arm and turned her toward him. “You’re black?!”

  “Yeah. Half. Or a—” Allie was in the process of saying a quarter when Mike pulled her in and kissed her.

  “That’s so hot,” Mike said, when he pulled up for air.

  “It’s the first thing I’ve said that you’ve believed.” Allie laughed, then stopped laughing as Mike leaned into her and they went at it again. She could feel the four packs of coke pushing into her chest through Mike’s T-shirt. She could feel his bones and muscle obliterating the worry about her father and his restaurant. And, yes, okay, so maybe he was only kissing her because he thought she was black (which she was), but there was no reason to think about that now.

  Mike pulled off her again. “There’s a pay phone at Tambor’s. Wanna go there and call your dad for the scale?”

  Tambor’s was the deli down the street. Allie nodded.

  In Tambor’s, Mike walked with Allie to the alcove where the bathrooms and pay phones were. “I’m going to step into the men’s room and do a little toot,” he whispered. He backed into the door and winked before he disappeared into the bathroom.

  Allie dropped a dime into the coin slot and dialed the number for her father’s restaurant. The three harmonica-sounding notes of a misdial went off and then an echo-y, fuzzy recording said the number she had dialed was no longer in service. Allie felt hollow and sad, like she had just stumbled upon an obituary for a seldom-seen friend. Then she remembered the index card with her mother’s number on it. She hit 0 and placed a collect, person-to-person, call to the number.

  A voice that Allie imagined belonged to a white woman with a silk scarf knotted at her neck answered. After the operator asked if she’d accept the charges, the woman scoffed, “The queen’s not here,” and hung up. Allie was hit with a quick stab of rejection from the denied call, even though she didn’t even know whose voice was on the phone. She tried to brush it aside.

  Allie dropped another dime into the phone She tried 411 next. Her father changed apartments so often (always looking for the deals—free gym membership, free first-month’s rent, free utilities for three months) that Allie had never had his home number. Besides, he was rarely home.

  “There are seven Frank Dodgsons,” the operator said.

  “How about Franklin Lutwidge Dodgson,” Allie said. Her heartbeat ramped up.

  “I’m sorry,” the operator said. “I have Frank G. Dodgson.”

  “Can you try the first one and then stay on the line until we find the right one?”

  “It’s against the rules,” the operator said. “You’ll just have to pick one.”

  Mike came out of the bathroom, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand. “There’s no one in there,” he said, and he pulled Allie’s hips toward himself and started grinding into her.

  “I’ll try back later,” Allie said, to the operator, and she hung up the phone. She wanted to forget about her current status as an orphan. Mike could help with that.

  “Let’s go in the bathroom together,” Mike said, and he nipped the top of Allie’s ear.

  “The bathroom?” There was no way Allie would make out in a stall of the men’s restroom.

  “Yeah, go get some coke from your car.” Mike stuck his hand on Allie’s crotch, over her jeans, and started rubbing. Allie pawed his hand away. “I’ll rub it into your pussy,” Mike purred.

  Allie pulled her head back, shocked by the way he had used the word pussy. Even Marc, after months together, hadn’t used that word. “Kissing’s fine for me now,” she temporized.

  “What do you mean kissing’s fine? We can’t just spend the afternoon kissing.” Mike leaned forward and sucked on Allie’s earlobe. He was humming. “Do you have really dark nipples?” He reached for her breast. “That’s the thing I love about black girls, those really dark nipples. Like eating melted chocolate.”

  Allie blocked him with her forearm. Desire was fizzing away like spilled water on a hot sidewalk. “Well, my mom’s Chinese,” she answered, “and I’ve got a white grandfather on either side, so I’m not that dark.”

  Mike squared his shoulders and leaned into her. “Are you black or not?” He had dropped the soothing purr.

  Allie looked at Mike and wondered what was wrong with her that she had thought she was interested in him.

  Before she could say anything, Mike said, “You’re not fucking black and that’s not your dad who owned that restaurant. One fucking lie after another!” He took her head into his hands and whispered into her ear, “And I don’t know where you got this coke or how you plan on selling it without a scale and without knowing how to fold a simple envelope, but you know what? You sold me about six grams of coke. Not three! Dumb fucking not-black chick!” Mike released Allie’s head, patted his breast pocket, and walked away through the dining room.

  Allie stood for a moment, unsure of what her next move was. Then a flutter in her gut told her to get back to the car, back to the coke. She followed Mike out of the restaurant and down the sidewalk.

  When each of them was at their own car, Mike turned around and looked at Allie. “Give me the rest of your coke,” he said, and he took two steps to the Prelude and put his hand on the passenger-side door.

  “That was all I had,” Allie said. “The whole scale thing was made
up so I could hang out with you. I think you’re really, super cute.” A complete lie now that Mike seemed angry and ugly. (Allie couldn’t help but think how Wai Po would be disappointed in the number of lies that had been slipping out of Allie’s mouth as easily as the air she breathed.)

  “Lemme see. Open the car.” Mike’s eyes were prickly. He barely blinked.

  “Yeah, okay. Just a second.” Allie was shaking as she fit the key in the door. When she got in, she hit the button on the automatic lock, then stabbed the key into the ignition. Mike pounded on the glass as Allie jerked the car into reverse, trying to get the clutch and gas synchronized. Mike leaped at the car, and even though Allie saw him do it, the thunderclap his body made as it landed on the low roof of the Prelude startled her and she let out a raspy scream.

  Allie burst out of the parking lot and onto Fairfax Avenue. Mike’s legs hung cartoonishly down the side window. Just as she started to speed up, the legs disappeared. Allie watched through her rearview mirror as Mike landed solidly on both feet in the breakdown lane. He ran after the car for only a moment before stopping, throwing up his right fist, and cursing her with words she couldn’t hear. Allie pulled up close to the VW Bug in front of her, tailgating, and then quickly lost sight of Mike.

  Chapter 4

  Allie drove down Fairfax with her eyes continually flashing in the rearview mirror. She didn’t see any red trucks and she didn’t see police cars. Her hands had a palsied tremble and her heartbeat was so strong she thought she could hear it over Prince, whose voice was making the whole car feel like it was vibrating.

  When she hit Wilshire, Allie turned left. Wilshire ran into Beverly Hills, this much she knew. And Beverly Hills bumped against Westwood, she was almost certain. And Westwood was where Allie’s only and best friend in L.A., Kathy Kruger, lived.

  As a kid, Allie had gone to nine different schools in nine different parts of the city. She always made friends, but would lose touch with them within weeks of moving. No parent would brave the Los Angeles traffic to get a kid to another side of town, so once Allie was gone so were her friends. The most lasting friendship Allie had was with Kathy—they were in the same high school for half of junior year and all of senior year.