The Wonder Bread Summer: A Novel

by Jessica Anya Blau

  A warm flooding snaked through Allie’s arms into her center. Maybe her father did love her more than his restaurant. She shifted through the rest of the cards. All of them were photos taken at the restaurant by the staff. She put the cards back and returned to the couch. Frank was watching Hans eat his couscous.

  “So how do you know Jonas?” Allie asked.

  “He’s the little brother of my childhood friend Lionel.”

  “I remember Lionel!” Allie had always liked Lionel. He smiled and had brought Allie little gifts when he came to visit, things like ladybug pen and pencil sets, or necklaces with perfume lockets on them.

  “He lives in San Francisco now,” Frank said. “And I guarantee he’ll be spitting fire when he hears what his brother is really doing over there in that shop.”

  “So I guess Jonas recognized me from the Christmas card.” Allie was starting to put it all together.

  “I guess he did,” Frank conceded.

  “And then he did you a favor and hired me,” Allie said. She had never thought of herself as one of those girls whose fathers could call in favors on their behalf. Beth was one of those girls. She had told Allie that everything in her life was a series of favors paid to her father through her: the car she drove, the clothes she wore, the expensive haircuts she got when she was home in Nevada. Allie often wondered if Beth’s father was in the mob, but she had only asked once, when they were both drunk, and Beth had just laughed at the suggestion.

  “And after Jonas hired you he showed you his genitals,” Frank said, very matter-of-factly.

  “Yes,” Allie said, matching her tone to his.

  “And now I’m going to kill him.” Frank looked at Hans. Hans continued eating.

  “Dad,” Allie said. “What happened with Vice Versa?”

  “First of all, he wasn’t black, so you can readjust your racist thoughts on that.”

  “He is, too, black. I talked to him on the phone this morning.”

  “How do you know he’s black from his voice?” Hans said.

  “You can’t tell a black man’s voice?” Allie asked.

  “I’m afraid my daughter has fallen into some very small-minded thinking,” Frank said to Hans.

  “Dad, please! You sound like a black man.”

  “And do you sound like a black girl?”

  “No, but that’s because Mom’s Chinese plus I was always in schools with white kids.”

  “Your mother’s Chinese?” Hans asked.

  “Yeah, and her father is Jewish,” Allie said, and suddenly she realized why Jonas seemed to know this about her without her ever having told him.

  “Allie, Vice Versa is here,” Frank interrupted.

  “He’s here now?” Allie looked around the room. Could she have somehow missed seeing Jonas’s henchman? “When did he show up?”

  “Two days ago when you called me from that restaurant.”

  “Wait, so is that why you stopped answering the phone?”

  “In fact, it is.”

  “Have you just been hanging out with Vice Versa for two days?”

  “Allie, that man broke into my house at gunpoint. He was holding me hostage until about three hours ago, when I overtook him.”

  Hans nodded, as if he were impressed. “How’d you manage that?”

  “Swiftly and carefully,” Frank said.

  Allie’s insides felt swirly and confused. Had Beth and Rosie deliberately lied to her about Vice Versa being in Berkeley? Or was there more than one Vice Versa? Was it a team, a squad, an underground organization like Mossad? “So where are you hiding him?”

  Frank pointed to the ceiling, then stood and headed toward the stairs. Hans followed Frank, carrying his plate of food. Allie hurried behind.

  They entered the master bedroom. The only furniture was a king-size bed with white sheets and a green blanket. There was nothing on the walls and no curtains on the windows. The room was sunny and wide.

  “This is a great place, Dad,” Allie said.

  “Sublet. I’m getting it for half the market price.” Frank went to the double closet and opened the doors. Squatting on the carpeted closet floor was a duct-tape-bound man with straight, choppy black hair. He was batting his eyes and squealing behind his sealed mouth. He smelled of urine and there appeared to be a small puddle of wetness seeping out his blue jeans. Four white button-down shirts and four polo shirts hung above him. Beside the shirts were folded, pressed jeans and two pairs of dress slacks.

  “Vice Versa?” Allie asked. The squealing intensified. It sounded like the condor after it crashed into the Prelude.

  “That’s him,” Frank said. “And you can see that he’s not black. In fact, he’s Filipino.”

  Hans took a bite of couscous, then tipped his head down and inspected the bindings on Vice Versa. “Where’d you learn to do that so efficiently?” he asked.

  “ROTC,” Frank said.

  “Did he tell you about the stolen cocaine?” Allie asked.

  “I suppose he told me something like that,” Frank said. Allie was relieved she had confessed the truth.

  Allie, Frank, and Hans examined Vice Versa as if he were a museum artifact. Vice Versa continued squealing.

  “Wow, Dad. I can’t believe you have a hostage in your closet,” Allie said. This entire messed-up situation was getting curiouser and curiouser.

  “Admirable,” Hans said, and he sat on the bed and continued his meal.

  “Allie, take that tape off his mouth,” Frank said. “Let’s give him some air.”

  Vice Versa stopped squealing when Allie leaned over and untaped his mouth. He panted for a while, licked his lips, and then dropped his head as if resting. Allie turned to her father and saw that he had a gun out.

  “Is that Vice Versa’s gun?” Allie asked.

  “I only trust my own weapons,” Frank said.

  “Dad! Since when do you carry a gun?” This was even more startling than the Christmas card.

  “I have always owned a gun. I am a businessman. Businessmen need to be armed.” Frank’s voice was calm and firm.

  “I agree,” Hans said, cutting a piece of asparagus with his fork.

  “Allie,” Frank said, “go in your bedroom and get the gun that’s under your mattress. That’s Vice Versa’s gun.”

  “I have a bedroom?” Allie asked. “I’ve never been here before!”

  “Yes, you have a bedroom!” Frank said. “This is your home! Now go get the gun!”

  Allie walked down the hall past a white-tiled bathroom and into a yellow bedroom with a single bed with pretty floral sheets and a yellow blanket. She lifted up the mattress. Sure enough, there was a gun there.

  Allie returned to the master bedroom with the gun dangling from her first two fingers like a dirty diaper. Vice Versa sat up straight and watched her.

  “That’s your gun now,” Frank said. “Keep it in your purse.”

  “I don’t need a gun. I’ve got the lucky rabbit foot Wai Po gave me.” Allie wasn’t joking, but she smiled as if she were.

  Hans laughed. “I’ve got my St. Jude medallion,” he said. “And I’m still carrying a gun.”

  “Keep the gun, Allie,” Frank said firmly.

  “Are you sure this is really Vice Versa?” Allie asked.

  “Of course I’m Vice Versa! You dumb rabbit-foot-believing girl!” Vice Versa’s voice clanged like a fork against a tin pot. “What happened to your head? That thing’s fucking ugly!”

  “Please don’t use profanity in my home!” Frank boomed, and he shut the closet doors.

  Chapter 14

  Hans and Luis wanted to stuff Vice Versa in the trunk with Topher. Frank, Jorge, and Allie agreed that it would be inhumane to pack two grown men into one trunk with a dead condor. Besides, although they learned through Vice Versa that he had been sent to Los Angeles to retrieve the cocaine by any means necessary, he hadn’t, in fact, harmed any of them. Even Frank, who had been his prisoner for two nights. Vice Versa was sequestered in the locked va
n while they opened the trunk of the Prelude. The bird was laid out over Topher’s quaking body and examined, bald head to razor claw, by Frank.

  “And you’re saying it just crashed through your windshield?” Frank said.

  “Yeah,” Allie said. “I was sitting in traffic and it crashed.”

  “I can maybe see it going through the windshield if the car was moving. In that case you’d have the velocity of the car versus the velocity of the bird, which certainly would be enough force to break the windshield. But a stopped car?” He paused. “Well, maybe if it weighs enough.” Frank lifted the bird and bounced it up and down, assessing the weight. Then he placed it back on top of Topher and said, “I guess that thing’s at least twenty-five or thirty pounds. And if it were diving straight down from five hundred feet up, going fifty miles an hour, at thirty pounds, then, yeah, that would break your windshield. Amazing.” He looked at Topher, who was crouching and silent, and poked him in the shoulder.

  “He claims he lost the address for the guy with the coke,” Luis said.

  “I only met him a week ago,” Topher said.

  “You committed a crime with a guy you met last week?” Frank asked.

  “I just fucking moved here from Laguna Beach. He was like the first fucking friend I’ve made!”

  “Language, please!” Frank said.

  “I think he’s lying,” Allie said.

  “Are you actually dumb enough to lie so that you can protect some infantile surfer boy who had the nerve to steal a bag of already stolen cocaine from my temporarily imbecilic daughter?”

  “I got mostly As in school last semester,” Allie said, but no one seemed to hear. They were all peering down at Topher, whose dull eyes reminded Allie of a goat or a cow. He shook his head no.

  “No, you’re not lying?”

  “I swear, man! We plotted the whole thing at Tommy’s Burgers at, like, three in the morning. He gave me his address on a fucking index card. I mean who uses index cards? I thought it was in my pocket but—”

  “Enough!” Frank stepped back and slammed the trunk shut.

  Frank knew almost every street in every neighborhood in Los Angeles. So when Allie told him she had met Mike at the gas station across from the In-N-Out Burger with the palm tree that looked like it was bowing toward the ground, he knew exactly where they should go.

  Allie got in the driver’s seat of the Prelude, her father sat in front with his gun on his lap, and Hans sat in the back. Jorge and Luis were in the van, with Vice Versa.

  Allie had never driven with her father as a passenger before and was not prepared for the detailed instructions he gave her. Frank told her when to put on the blinker, when to change lanes, how fast to go, where to center herself in the lane, and how to turn hand over hand rather than keeping her hands in one place. By the time she pulled into the gas station, Allie was exhausted from the concentration it took to respond to each of her father’s directions. She pulled up against the fence that bordered the gas station, cut the engine, and leaned back in her seat.

  “Do you see him?” Frank asked.

  Allie looked out the back window. “No,” she said.

  “Go out and find him.” Frank nudged his chin toward Allie. There was a boom and the car shook as Topher jolted around in the trunk.

  Allie got out of the car just as the van pulled in beside them. Jorge was driving. “You find out where he is?” Jorge asked. The van bounced a bit and Allie leaned in and watched Luis push Vice Versa down to the floor.

  “We need to tie him to something,” Jorge said. “He’s been hurling himself all over like a bouncing ball.”

  “Tape him to the floor,” Allie said, and she laughed at the idea of a man being taped to the floor of a van. Then she shuddered and wondered if this experience was eroding her respect for humanity and life. “On second thought, don’t tape him to the floor!” she said, and she walked off, with her purse hiked up on her shoulder, in search of Mike’s friend Jimmy.

  Jimmy’s uncle, the owner of the gas station, was working. “Jimmy don’t work till tomorrow,” he said in a rich Southern accent. His front eyeteeth were missing and he was as bluish-white as skim milk. He was definitely not from California.

  “Do you have Jimmy’s phone number?” Allie asked. “I need to call him.” She burrowed into her purse for a scrap of paper, saw Vice Versa’s gun nestled there, and immediately yanked out her hand.

  “Who’re y’all again?” the uncle asked. His accent was so thick that at first Allie thought he had said whore.

  “I’m his girlfriend,” Allie lied smoothly in a way that she knew would have saddened Wai Po.

  The old man squinted at her. “If you’re his girlfriend, why don’t you have the number already?”

  “New girlfriend,” Allie improvised. “We started dating two days ago. I met him here.”

  “He didn’t give you that lump in the bean, did he?” The old man put his hand up above his eyebrow. Allie mirrored him and felt her forehead. She had forgotten about her bump in spite of the fact that each new person she saw seemed to mention it.

  “Oh, no!” she said. “I opened a jam-packed closet and something fell on me.”

  The old man seemed to accept her explanation. “Like in the cartoons,” he said.

  “Yeah, like in Bugs Bunny or something.”

  “Okay, well, come in the office and I’ll let you use the phone,” he said.

  Allie followed him inside. The office was the size of a phone booth and smelled like tobacco and gasoline. “I’ll dial,” the old man said, and he put his crooked white finger in the rotary and dialed as Allie held the phone. “Is it ringing?” he asked.

  “It’s ringing,” Allie said.

  “Good,” the man said, and he went outside, leaving Allie alone.

  Jimmy answered on the fifth ring.

  “Jimmy?” Allie said.

  “Katie?”

  “No, it’s Allie.”

  “Allie?” His voice sounded worried. Allie imagined him panicking over not remembering who Allie was.

  “I met you a couple days ago when I got gas but I didn’t have enough money to pay and so you called your friend Mike, who, uh . . .” Allie looked around. No one could hear her, yet she still felt uncomfortable mentioning cocaine on the phone.

  “Oh, yeah, I remember you! How’d you get my number?”

  “Your uncle.”

  “My uncle? Bart?”

  “I guess. The guy with the funny accent.”

  “Yeah, that’s Bart! He’s been in California for like thirty years. Can you believe he still talks like that?”

  “Not really,” Allie said. She looked out the window and saw her father standing next to the trunk of the Prelude. His face was as stern as a hammer. “Listen, can you tell me where I can find Mike? I was supposed to meet him here to give him some more of that stuff, you know, but he’s not here and he already gave me the money for it so I want to be sure to get it to him.”

  “Did you try his house?” Jimmy asked.

  “I lost the address,” Allie said.

  “He lives in that apartment building next to the In-N-Out,” Jimmy said, and Allie’s eyes immediately landed on the three-story, green stucco building. “But if he’s not there, check Zuma. I heard the waves were good today.”

  “But if he lives across the street, why did he drive over to meet me last time?” Allie asked. She couldn’t look away from the apartment building. She feared Mike would walk out any second.

  “He always drives over—he loves that truck.”

  “Which apartment is his?”

  “Across the street!”

  “No, what’s his apartment number?”

  “Oh, man, I don’t know. I’ve only been there once. Maybe second floor? Like I told you before, the guy parties a lot and I just don’t party.”

  “You study,” Allie said.

  “Yeah, for now. I study and work.”

  Allie stood by the car in front of her father, her back to
the apartment building.

  “Look behind me,” she whispered.

  “What?” Frank asked.

  “Behind me.” Allie was almost hissing. “Mike lives in that green stucco building.”

  “Why are you talking like that?”

  “Dad! What if he’s watching us?”

  “Well he certainly can’t hear us from there! Do you see how many cars are between us and that building? It would be like trying to hear over the Mississippi in a rain storm.”

  Hans and Luis approached Allie and Frank. “Well?” Hans said.

  “He lives in the green apartment building right there.” Frank nodded his head. Hans and Luis both turned and looked at the same moment, like synchronized dogs. Allie could see the twinness in them.

  “Let’s go,” Hans said, and he went to the van while Luis slipped into the backseat of the Prelude.

  It took four full minutes to pull onto the road and make a left turn into the driveway of Mike’s apartment building. Allie could see why he might drive over—it would be hard to dodge through the traffic and there wasn’t a crosswalk in sight.

  “Pull to the back of the building,” Frank said, and Allie obeyed.

  Mike’s truck wasn’t anywhere to be seen. “I’ll go knock on some doors and ask people if they know which apartment is Mike’s,” Allie said.

  “Absolutely not,” Frank said. “You will wait in the car.”

  “Dad, come on. No one’s going to open the door to any of you guys. People are afraid of men who come around apartments in the middle of the day.”

  “She’s right,” Luis said. “Our mother never opened the door if a man was on the other side.”

  Frank leaned back in his seat and thought for a moment. “Fine. But Luis goes with you. He has blond hair—people aren’t afraid of blond hair. Hans, Jorge, and I will be three steps behind you, hiding out.”

  “That’s fine.” Allie got out of the car and Luis walked with her. Hans and Jorge caught up with Frank and the three of them followed, just as Frank had said.