The Wonder Bread Summer: A Novel

by Jessica Anya Blau

  “It’s open and shut!” Bud said. He was shouting slightly. Allie wondered if he were drunk, too.

  “What’s the case?” Allie asked. She felt her tongue slipping up on the letter S. Normally she’d stop drinking at this point, or even far before this point, but this day had wound her nerves so tightly she needed the unraveling brought on by alcohol.

  Roger squealed and rocked back against his chair. The wheels slipped a little and Allie reached out, grabbed the board, and pulled Roger forward.

  “Open and shut! Open and shut!” Bud slammed a lazy fist on the table. His beer splashed onto his wrist. He lifted his arm and licked the beer off. Okay, Allie thought, definitely drunk. Kathy looked as sober as she had when Allie had picked her up.

  “Yeah, Bud said it was all a mix-up.” Kathy spoke as if she were intimate with the case. “And that Roger is no more a criminal than you or me. Or maybe just me.” Kathy looked at Allie and gave a little laugh.

  “What?” Allie said. She could feel beer in her ears. It was making the noise in the room wobbly.

  “I think you’ve done a little more criminal activity than I have.” Kathy squeaked out a tense laugh.

  Allie wasn’t sure if she were hearing correctly. Did Kathy think Allie was a criminal because she had smoked pot twice? Or was it because she had done the cocaine? Allie hadn’t even told her about the bag of stolen coke in the car, but certainly she couldn’t confess to that now.

  “I have?” Allie asked.

  “Let’s just say you’ve changed a lot since high school,” Kathy said, and she pushed her mouth into the closed-lip smile.

  “You’re committing a crime tonight!” Allie wished her words weren’t so mushed together. “You’re not twenty-one and you’re drinking!”

  “We didn’t get carded,” Kathy said.

  “You’re still committing a crime,” Allie said.

  “I’m just saying I’ve never deviated as far as you have,” Kathy said, and Allie knew then that the drift she was feeling from Kathy might be permanent.

  “What about Roger? Are you okay with what he did?” Allie turned to him. Roger’s head had dropped to one side and his eyes were shut. Was he actually sleeping?

  “Roger is not a criminal in the slightest!” Bud said with a spray of enthusiasm. “The girl looks thirty. I saw for myself.” He laughed. “She’s got stretch marks and everything hanging down.” Bud held his palms below his ribcage and lifted them up and down as if he were weighing something.

  “Who?” Allie asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “Roger’s case! The girl! It was all low and hanging!” Bud shut his eyes as he laughed.

  “Hanging boobs?” Allie felt as though popcorn was exploding in her head. She wanted to clear out her brain, eliminate this frustrating confusion.

  “Of course he’s not talking about boobs!” Kathy glared at Allie. Allie tried to roll her eyes.

  “Yeah, I am,” Bud said to Kathy, and he refilled everyone’s beer, even sleeping Roger’s. How many was that now? Allie had lost count long ago.

  “Wait, so what about the girl’s boobs?” Allie picked up her glass and sipped. She really wanted to stop but it felt like she was defying Kathy if she drank more.

  “She had these sad, droopy-eyed boobs,” Bud said. “I mean, there is no one who would ever think that she was only seventeen. Especially since she had an Alaska driver’s license that said she was twenty-four. And it’s not like Roger had ever gotten a girl from Alaska in one of his movies before! How the hell was he supposed to know what a real Alaska license looks like?”

  “Oh, did she need parental permission to be in his movie?” Kathy asked. “Or, like a mother on set, right? I would love to put my kids in movies! I mean, it would be so interesting to be on the set and see how everything works, but not to have to be in front of the camera and worry about having movie-star looks, you know what I mean?” She stared at Bud, then Allie. Allie figured Kathy wanted them to shout out that she did have movie-star looks, but she kept her mouth closed. She didn’t think Kathy deserved her support after insinuating that Allie was a criminal.

  “I don’t think you want your kids in one of Roger’s movies!” Bud laughed again and pulled Kathy into his shoulder as if he were going to give her a head noogie. He didn’t give the noogie but he did kiss her on the forehead. Roger woke up. He lifted his pointer in the air like a walrus lifting his nose, and trumpeted. Allie lifted her chin and trumpet-squealed with him.

  Kathy and Bud stared at Allie as if she’d just insulted Roger. “Will you please stop that,” Kathy said. Roger trumpeted more and more, panting with a smile between his efforts.

  “Fine,” Allie said, and then she turned to Bud. “Why wouldn’t you want your kid in Roger’s movies? I love Roger’s movies! Roger makes the best movies in the whole wide American world!” After trumpeting with Roger, feeding him his dinner and beer, and wiping up his mustache numerous times, Allie was feeling a protective affection for him.

  “You’ve seen Roger’s movies?” Bud was grinning so big Allie could see his fillings.

  “Maybe!” Allie said. “Name one.”

  “The Summer of Naked Sin Parties! The Year of Licking Dangerously! Star Whores!” Bud laughed, lifting his mug as if he were toasting each title.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Kathy asked. She was wearing her nervous line-grin again.

  “No, I’m not kidding!” Bud almost looked offended. “Roger makes porno movies.”

  Allie burst out laughing. “Seriously?!”

  Roger banged the pointer multiple times on YES, YES, YES, YES. Then he and Allie threw their heads back and trumpeted once together.

  “That’s disgusting,” Kathy said. She was leaning away from Bud, her eyes darting around but never landing on Allie. Allie felt a drunken, shameful joy in seeing Kathy’s straight and narrow ideals challenged by the upstanding lawyer boyfriend who they all now knew was defending a porno movie producer in a child porn case. Surely this was worse than smoking pot twice!

  “It’s not disgusting!” Bud said. “Those girls make a lot of money! And Roger treats them well!” They all looked at Roger. He tapped on the YES again. Kathy turned her head toward the wall. The waiter approached with the dessert menu.

  “I’ll order for all of us,” Bud said.

  “I don’t want dessert.” Kathy’s mouth appeared to be made from cardboard.

  “Well then three of those fried ice cream thing-a-ma-jigs,” Bud said to the waiter.

  “I’ll share mine with you,” Allie said to Kathy, and she reached her hand out across the table as if to tell her that even if she was a bitch, Allie was forever grateful for the friendship they’d had and was still on her side. Kathy leaned away from the extended hand.

  “And another pitcher of beer!” Bud said, and Roger squealed again.

  Allie was finding it difficult to wipe the fried tortilla with ice cream off Roger’s face. She wasn’t sure if he was shifting out of reach, or her hand was missing the target. It was like playing darts with a moving board.

  “How do you drive?” Allie asked.

  Roger tapped out D-R-I-V-.

  “You have a driver?” Allie asked.

  “Oh, Roger’s driver!” Bud said. He and Kathy had been tensely whispering to each other. “He said he’d be here with the van at eleven.”

  “It’s eleven ten.” Kathy scowled at her gold watch.

  “I love your watch,” Allie said.

  “You’ve seen it before,” Kathy said. “I got it for graduation.”

  “I know,” Allie said. She was just trying to warm things up between them. And she really did love that watch, although it forced her to recall how painful it had been to have dinner at the Sims Surf and Turf with Kathy’s parents after graduation while Allie’s father worked at the restaurant and her mother was out of the country. Since there had been no one to watch her get the diploma, Allie had skipped the ceremony, but Kathy had begged her to go to the dinner. After K
athy had opened the box with the watch, her mother handed Allie a wrapped present. It was a book about how to survive your first year of college. That weekend, Allie read the book straight through and then, later, found that college was nothing like the book anticipated it would be and none of the advice seemed pertinent. Certainly there were no chapters on what to do when you accidentally stole a bread bag full of cocaine.

  “You want to roll Roger out while I get this lovely little lady home?” Bud stood and tried to pull out Kathy’s chair for her, but Kathy didn’t budge. Bud pulled and pulled, as though he was attempting to move a stone sculpture.

  “I’ll drive your car,” Kathy said, and she finally stood. “You’re drunk.” She looked at Allie. “And you’re too drunk to drive, too.”

  “I don’t even know if I can walk!” Allie said. “I’ll get a ride with Roger.” Allie wasn’t sure where she’d go, but going with Roger seemed like a good place to start.

  Bud and Kathy walked ahead as Allie tried to push the wheelchair through the restaurant. There was greasy-looking carpet on the floor, which somehow made it hard for the wheels to move. Allie started and stopped several times. Then, just as she got some momentum going, she missed the door being held open by Bud and pushed Roger into the door frame. Roger squeal-laughed.

  “Smooth move.” Bud laughed.

  Allie pulled back and aimed for the doorway again. It felt as though she was trying to thread a needle, but she and Roger made it outside.

  Bud said a brief, sloppy good-bye and slipped into the BMW that Kathy had pulled up beside him. Kathy waved quickly out the window and Allie waved back. She wondered if that would be the last time they’d see each other. Then she wondered if she’d be sad about it tomorrow. Right now, she felt relieved.

  Allie looked around. “Where’s your van?” she asked Roger.

  Roger tapped out C-O-K-E.

  “Coke?” Allie asked. “You want a Coke?”

  Roger’s head flopped down hard on the NO.

  “Oh!” Allie said. “You want cocaine?” She figured anyone who made movies in Hollywood, no matter what the genre, did cocaine.

  Roger hit the YES, then spelled: I H-A-V-. Allie wondered if Bud wasn’t really as against drugs as Kathy thought. If Roger did coke so openly, he surely had offered it to Bud before. Although that didn’t necessarily mean Bud did it. Beth loved coke, and Allie had been best friends with her for almost two years before she tried it herself.

  “Don’t waste what you have,” Allie said. It seemed harmless to give just a little of the Wonder Bread coke away, and cruel to deny a guy in a wheelchair with a head pointer and an enchilada-stained mustache what was probably one of his few physical joys. She let go of the wheelchair and staggered to the Prelude. When she looked back at the wheelchair, it was rolling toward a parked car, but slowly enough that Allie didn’t worry. She retrieved the bread bag, locked the car, and returned to Roger, who had gently bounced into the parked car. Allie held the Wonder Bread bag against one of the wheelchair handles and her purse against the other handle as she pulled the wheelchair off the car it had hit and directed it to the sidewalk beside the driveway. The air was the perfect temperature, neither hot nor cold. If she weren’t so drunk, Allie thought she’d probably enjoy a ride in the Prelude with the moon roof fully open, the blur of smudgy gray night sky above her head.

  “You think your driver’s coming?” she asked Roger.

  Roger tapped YES.

  “Want coke while we wait?”

  Roger tapped YES, YES, YES.

  “Okay.” Allie rummaged into her purse and pulled out a Bic pen. She snapped off the cap and dug the pointed concave tip into the bag and pulled out a tiny pile. When she placed the cap under Roger’s nose, his head tilted and jerked and the contents spread into his mustache like powdered sugar.

  Roger knocked the pointer on the letter A.

  “Try again?” Allie asked, and Roger lifted his head and squealed. “How about this?” Allie shoveled her cupped palm into the bag then held the heap under Roger’s nose with the thought that maybe a twentieth of it would make it up his nostrils. Roger snuffled and rubbed into her like a dog rubbing into dead animals it finds in the woods. Allie remembered Mike licking her palm. It was a shame he turned out to be such an enormous jerk.

  The van pulled up while Roger was still nuzzling his whiskered walrus face into Allie’s hand. “Okay, finish up, our ride’s here.” Allie pushed Roger’s head up with her free hand. Roger had his tongue out, so she wiped her palm clean on it. She didn’t get the same erotic jolt as when Mike had done it.

  A Hispanic man in a gray cotton zip-front coat stepped out of the van. “Roger! How you doin’ tonight, sweetie?” He came over and collected Roger, rolling the chair toward the open sliding door of the van that had a silver ramp sticking out like a tongue.

  Allie held her wet palm out, looking at the driver, looking at Roger, trying to decide what to do. “Can I have a ride, too?” she finally asked.

  “Jump in!” The Hispanic man smiled at her and nodded his head toward the van. Allie blundered into the front seat and waited while the guy fastened Roger’s wheelchair into the back with seat belt–looking straps. “You in Roger’s movies?” he asked.

  “No, just a friend,” Allie said. The Wonder Bread bag was twisted shut and sitting on her lap like a small baby.

  “I’m Jorge,” the guy said, and winked. “Where you going?” He stepped through the van into the driver’s seat. Then slowly, as if he were driving a truck carrying glass panels, Jorge pulled out of the driveway and they cruised away.

  “Where are we going . . .” Allie’s brain felt impossibly heavy. She closed her eyes to give herself a minute to think and her head lolled forward. Allie jerked up, looked at Jorge, and smiled as if that would erase the embarrassment of almost passing out mid-conversation.

  “Well, Roger’s house isn’t far, so I’ll just drop him off first.” Jorge had a gentle face: soft and kind, with no sharp edges. His eyes were perfect circles. Allie wanted to touch his cheek, but even as drunk as she was, she knew she shouldn’t.

  Allie looked at the blur outside the window. They were in Beverly Hills now, driving past well-lit mansions, gates, driveways that had separate entrances and exits. Her gaze was fixed on a pink stucco house that looked like a Moroccan palace when a gasping, barking sort of sound erupted from the backseat. Before Allie could turn and look, Jorge had put the car in park and was pulling Roger out of his chair. The van was spinning, but Allie knew they were parked. She watched as Jorge straddled Roger’s chest and performed CPR on the floor of the van in front of the chair.

  “Pick up that radio, hold the side button, and tell them we’re at Alpine near Lomitas Ave. They need to call 911.” Jorge wasn’t yelling, although his voice was urgent and stiff.

  Allie picked up the small square speaker. She pushed the button on the side. “Uh, call 911,” she said, almost whispering. “We’re at Alpine and Lomitas and I think Roger’s having a heart attack.” There was a smokey wooziness in Allie’s head. She tried to remember how much coke had been in her palm when Roger had snuffled it up. How much did people usually do in one sitting? Jonas had taken about eight pinches of the bread-bag stuff. Was a palm-full more than eight pinches? Could a full palm of coke really have gone up Roger’s nose? Wasn’t most of it in his mustache? Allie’s heart thumped. Her eyes burned. She wanted to scream and cry in frustration. Everything she had done today had been wrong. Completely wrong! No wonder Kathy hated her.

  The ambulance was there. Allie hadn’t heard it, or maybe she had somewhere in the back of her panicked, drunken head. Two men in white jumpsuits were hovering over Roger with paddles on his chest.

  “Is he dead?” Allie’s voice quavered. Roger was flat on his back, his mouth open like a bird’s beak, his eyes staring straight up. He didn’t look like a quadriplegic. If it hadn’t been for the pointer jutting up from his forehead like a unicorn’s horn, Allie would have thought he was a normal middle-a
ged paunchy man. A snorer, for sure.

  “Not totally,” one of the paramedics said, and he jolted back as the paddles electrocuted Roger’s giant, bloated body.

  Allie righted herself in the front seat. Wai Po’s voice was in her head. DO NOT USE HATCHET TO REMOVE FLY FROM FRIEND’S FOREHEAD. Allie shut her eyes and fervently prayed that she hadn’t just killed Roger, hatcheted him with cocaine. She could barely finish the prayer words in her head when she dropped into a dead-drunk sleep.

  Chapter 5

  Allie opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling. It was white, or more gray, really, with a spiderweb-looking crack that radiated out from where a chip of plaster was missing. Once her mind caught up with her eyes, Allie sat up, alert, wary. Nothing was familiar.

  One side of the room had a Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends poster. The other side had a poster of Snoopy dancing with Woodstock. There were tiny stickers scattered on most of the walls: smiley faces, rainbows, dragons, more Spider-Man, and Strawberry Shortcake. Allie was in a stumpy bed with a red blanket and Fox and the Hound sheets. Next to her was a peeling plywood dresser covered with more stickers. On the other side of the dresser was another bed, with Strawberry Shortcake sheets. The room smelled like an elementary-school cafeteria: stale, crowded, sweaty, sour.

  There was a weight in Allie’s lap. She lifted the sheet, expecting to find a cat or maybe a rabbit. Instead she found the Wonder Bread bag, molded into a lumpy tube. Allie shook it so the coke fell to the bottom, untied the twisty, looked in, then shut the bag. All seemed normal.

  The dirty pink purse was also in bed beside her. Allie spread it open and found the keys with her lucky rabbit foot. She stroked the gummy fur and instantly felt calmer.