The Wonder Bread Summer: A Novel

by Jessica Anya Blau

  The apartment building had exterior hallways with rickety iron rails. There were no people around. Allie and Luis stopped on 2B and knocked. No one answered. They moved down one more, to 2C, and knocked again. It wasn’t until they had gone halfway around the square and knocked on apartment 2K that they got lucky: a woman with blond hair that was matted into a nest on top of her head opened the door. She was about thirty years old, with a pink rabbit-looking nose, and was wearing ski boots, underwear, and a T-shirt with an iron-on teapot decal.

  “Hey!” she said, as if she and Allie knew each other.

  “Oh, sorry, I thought this was Mike’s place.” Allie couldn’t help but notice how easily the lies were now swimming out of her mouth. Was lying like having affairs? What difference did it make if you had one or seven—either way, you were an adulterer.

  “Surfer Mike or Musician Mike?”

  “Surfer Mike.”

  “Next door. Two L.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Sorry to bother you,” Allie said. “Thanks so much!”

  “Okay,” the woman said, and she shut the door.

  Luis motioned to Frank, Jorge, and Hans, who were peering in from around the corner. They jogged to catch up, Frank in front. Allie had never seen her father move so quickly. He seemed younger, livelier.

  The men separated, two on either side of the door. Allie knocked. There was no answer. Allie knocked and knocked and knocked.

  “Move aside,” Frank said.

  There was a loud, snapping crack, like a giant branch breaking off a tree, as Frank kicked down the door. Allie was starting to believe that there was nothing her father couldn’t do. Frank had disarmed Vice Versa, given her a gun for her purse, and guessed the final showcase value within $310. What was next?

  The group stood back and waited for something to charge out of the apartment. But nothing did. The woman in 2K didn’t even open her door.

  One by one, they filed in, Allie in the rear. The kitchen was at the back of the room, the living room in front, all of it open. An array of surfing magazines sat on a brown wooden coffee table in front of a long, green couch. There was an orange crochet throw blanket draped over one arm of the couch. Nothing hung on any wall, and the only thing on the kitchen counter was an un-bagged loaf of sliced white bread. The green shag rug in the living room appeared to have been vacuumed and the air smelled of Windex. Allie was surprised that someone with such a crusty, soiled interior would be so tidy.

  Hans and Luis explored a small hallway off to the left that led to what Allie assumed were the bedroom and bathroom. “All clear,” Hans shouted after a few seconds. He and his brother returned to the living room.

  Frank sat on the couch as Allie and Jorge searched in the living room, coat closet, and kitchen. It only took a few minutes to see that the coke was not there.

  Luis went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Allie stood beside him and looked at the contents: one Heineken, a roll of salami, two apples, and a small brick of extra-sharp cheddar. The shelves were so spotless they looked almost new.

  “Well, at least he’s clean,” Allie said.

  Luis opened the cupboard and grabbed a box of Ritz crackers. Allie took the box from him, pulled out a cracker and ate it.

  “Anyone want cheese and crackers?” Luis shouted out.

  “Is it domestic cheese?” Hans asked. He was on the couch next to Frank now.

  “Yes.” Luis rolled his eyes, then whispered to Allie, “He won’t eat domestic cheeses.”

  “I’ll have some,” Jorge said. He was standing in the middle of the living room, rotating as if something might suddenly appear through the broken front door.

  Luis sliced the cheddar and arranged Ritz crackers on a white plastic dinner plate. He took the plate to the living room and set it down on the coffee table. Allie pulled a middle slice from the loaf of bread on the counter.

  “This tastes like Wonder Bread,” she said, and she grabbed another piece, then sat on the couch between Hans and her father. Frank leaned forward and took a cracker and slice of cheese.

  “We’ve got to figure out what to do with our two hostages,” Frank said, before biting into his cracker.

  “Trade them for the coke?” Allie said.

  “We have to find the man with the coke to trade them for it,” Frank said.

  “I’d like to beat the shit out of that mouthy surfer,” Luis said.

  “Sweetheart, no violence, please,” Jorge said, and he took a cracker and some cheese from the plate.

  “Has anyone fed the hostages?” Hans asked.

  “They can go without food, but we do have to give them water,” Frank said.

  “Why don’t we water the hostages and leave them here while we go to Zuma beach and find Mike. His gas-station friend said that that’s his beach,” Allie said.

  “Would be safer than keeping them in the cars,” Jorge said. “If we got pulled over there could be big trouble.”

  “Yeah,” Luis said, “a Mexican with a taped-up Filipino in his van would not look good to the police.”

  “I think the black dude with the taped-up surfer in his trunk looks even worse,” Hans said.

  “I believe you’re right about that,” Frank said, and his shoulders lifted and fell as he took a deep breath.

  “Can we dump the bird here with them?” Allie asked. “The smell’s starting to seep toward the front seat.”

  “Of course,” Frank said, and he surprised Allie by patting her on the head.

  Allie went to Mike’s bedroom and yanked off the pilly green blanket that was tucked into his bed. She looked at the pale blue sheets, perfectly folded and cornered military-style at the ends of the bed. They were probably clean but there was a softness about them, a shininess, that made Allie think of the oils in Mike’s skin, his shedding hair, the beach tar that was probably stuck on the bottom of his feet. To touch these remnants of Mike felt the same to Allie as touching Mike himself. And after everything he’d done to her (dumping her in the restroom alcove at Tambor’s, holding her up at gunpoint, stealing the bag of coke), Allie did not want to touch Mike in any form.

  Allie reached down anyway, and pulled off the sheets as quickly as possible while keeping her head pulled back as if something sharp and evil would fly off of them. She wrapped the sheets in the blanket and carried the whole laundry-load-size ball into the living room. Frank was waiting by the broken door.

  “Should we get rid of our fingerprints?” Allie asked. “In case he calls the police?”

  “The advantage of dealing with dishonest, degenerate druggies,” Frank said, “is that you never have to worry about them calling the police. Now move along.” He put his hand on Allie’s back and escorted her, like a bodyguard, along the rickety rail.

  “Dad, what am I supposed to do with that gun you gave me?”

  “Nothing. I’ll teach you to use it as soon as we get a chance.”

  “What if it goes off and—”

  “Allie! Forget about it. At the moment it’s no more dangerous than your lucky rabbit foot.”

  Frank carried a jerking, jolting green-blanket-bound Vice Versa into the apartment, then into Mike’s closet, where he dropped him. Allie watched the tiny blanketed man gyrating below the three hanging wetsuits and the polyester pale-blue tuxedo Mike must have bought to wear to someone’s wedding.

  Hans and Luis together carried Topher, wrapped in the soft blue sheets, up to the apartment. Like Vice Versa, Topher was squirming.

  “Why don’t you put him under the couch?” Allie suggested.

  “It’s not a bad idea,” Jorge said. He went to one end of the couch, Allie went to the other, and they lifted it and moved it back a couple feet. Where the couch had been were dimes, pencils, a few Cheerios, and several floaty, cloud-like dust balls. Allie was somehow relieved to discover that Mike wasn’t clean enough to vacuum under the couch.

  Hans and Luis picked up either end of herky-jerky Topher and placed him on the dusty outline, then Allie and J
orge put the couch on top of him. Topher’s body was bulky. The couch teetered forward. Frank looked down and shook his head.

  “The bird!” Allie said, and she grabbed the throw blanket from the couch and ran down to the car. She opened the trunk and looked at the bird. It was stiff and boney, more like a contraption than an animal. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and then she wrapped the bird in the blanket and picked it up. It felt like a load of weighted, folded yardsticks—all angles, claws, and bones. The mucky, oceany smell reminded Allie of the six crates of rotten oysters once delivered to her father’s restaurant at the end of the night and left to ferment until morning. Allie was thirteen that year and happy to spend her Saturday morning hanging out with the kitchen crew as they tried to Lysol away the stink.

  Allie humped the heavy, jagged bird up the steps, where Hans was waiting for her, on the lookout. Back in the apartment, she placed the bird on the couch. She cranked out each wing. They opened like stiff shuttered doors on hinges. Allie tilted the bird’s bald head up, so that its hook-nose beak looked menacing and ready to hammer down on something. Then she stood back and admired it. “I wish I had a camera,” she said.

  “I saw a camera in the bedroom,” Hans said.

  “Really?!” Allie ran off to the bedroom. Sure enough, a camera was sitting with some coins on top of Mike’s plain wooden dresser. Allie grabbed it and returned to the bird. She clicked off four pictures, each one getting closer and closer to the bird’s scabby head.

  “Let me take a picture of you guys,” Allie said, and Hans and Luis each took a step in, toward Frank. Jorge stood beside Hans and threw his arm around him. Hans threw his arm around Frank, and then Luis did, too. Allie snapped a couple of shots.

  “Now you get in,” Hans said, and he stepped out of the lineup and took the camera from Allie while she slipped in beside Frank. She put her arm around her father and could feel the tension in his back. Hans shot off a couple of photos.

  “Now just Allie and her dad,” Hans said, and he waved one arm so Luis and Jorge would move away.

  “For goodness sakes,” Frank said. “Do we really have time for this?”

  “Come on, Dad,” Allie said. “One quick shot.”

  Allie and Frank put their arms around each other, the bird on the tilted couch behind them, while Hans stood poised in front of them with the camera. He fiddled with the focus, turning the wheel around the lens in, and then out, and then in again.

  “Let’s hurry this up,” Frank said.

  “Smile, Dad,” Allie said. “You can use this for the Christmas card next year.”

  Frank looked down at Allie and smiled just as Hans hit the button.

  Allie and Frank were alone in the Prelude, following Jorge and Luis in the van.

  They were on their way to Zuma beach, with a quick stopover at the hospital. Allie wanted to update Roger on their progress and Luis wanted to pick up the switchblade he had left tucked in the bag of Roger’s personal goods. Everyone agreed that with the crowds at Zuma, a switchblade would be much stealthier than a pistol. Hans had stayed behind in Mike’s apartment to guard the hostages and deal with Mike, were he to show up.

  “You know I saw Mom in Santa Barbara,” Allie said.

  “I know,” Frank said. “You told me. And that little turd showed you his private parts.”

  “Yeah, that’s right, I forgot I told you.” Allie wanted to laugh. She’d never heard her dad say “turd.”

  “How was your mom?” Frank looked out the window, as if he were checking out the scenery.

  “She seems to have married that turd.” Allie looked at her father, and he looked back for just a second before pointing at the road ahead of them.

  “Change to the left lane,” Frank said. “And put on your signal.”

  Allie did as she was told. There was silence in the Prelude for a minute, and then she said, “Dad, do you have nothing to say about the fact that Mom and that turd are married? I mean, you’re not even divorced.”

  “We aren’t divorced,” Frank agreed. “We were never married.”

  “You never got married? Why didn’t I know that?”

  “No reason for you to know it. We didn’t want you to feel ashamed,” Frank said.

  “I can’t believe I’m just finding this out now,” Allie said.

  “We assumed you’d eventually figure it out. Have you ever heard about a wedding or seen a wedding picture? Get in the center of the lane. You’re too close to the yellow line.”

  “Why didn’t you ever get married?” Allie asked.

  Frank took a deep breath, looked at Allie for a moment, then stared back out the window again. “Wai Po wouldn’t let your mother marry me. She didn’t like the blacks.”

  Allie could feel the conflicting truths shifting against each other like tectonic plates in her brain: Wai Po was a great woman, Wai Po was a racist. Allie felt older with this knowledge, saddened by it, but also enlightened. The pretend you are white instructions made even more sense now. “She always seemed to like me,” Allie said.

  “Oh yes, she loved you. She loved you more than she loved Penny.”

  “You don’t think she loved Mom?”

  “Your mother disappointed her. Wai Po gave up on her.”

  “Did Mom disappoint you?”

  “A long, long time ago,” Frank said. “But I’m over that now.”

  “So you don’t care that she’s married to the turd?”

  “Nah.” Frank smiled. “They deserve each other. Couple of twerps.”

  Chapter 15

  Allie stepped into the hospital room first, her father right behind her, Luis and Jorge behind Frank. Mike was sitting on the plastic mold-form chair next to Roger’s bed, his arm tucked behind Roger’s back as if he were almost holding him. Roger began trumpeting up and down, his pointer landing on the letter G. G for gun, Allie assumed.

  “You must be Mike,” Frank said, and Allie could feel the men positioning themselves around the room, circling in on Mike.

  “What are you doing here?” Allie asked.

  “Well, Lumpy, for one, I’m looking for my man Topher, who didn’t show up at my house when he was supposed to. And, two, I want the name and address for your source.”

  “My source?” Allie asked. She kept her eyes strong on Mike’s, as she could feel on the surface of her skin that her job now was to distract him long enough for someone to get to the gun that was being pressed into Roger’s back.

  “The coke, Lumpy. Where did you get that bag of coke?”

  “Oakland, I told you.”

  “I want a name and an address. I want more of that coke.” Mike’s head bounced with emphasis.

  “Don’t you want Topher?”

  “Do you have Topher? If you have him, I’ll take him. But first I want your source.”

  “Okay, fine,” Allie said, and she slouched on the end of Roger’s bed. Everyone was quiet around her. “Do you have a piece of paper where I can write it down?”

  Mike patted his left hand on his shorts, then looked toward his pocket for a slice of a second. And in that tiny moment, Frank dove on Mike, swiping him to the ground the way a bear might paw down a raccoon from a tree.

  All was silent as everyone took in the scene: Frank’s massive body completely covering a writhing Mike, Mike’s gun lying menacingly on the floor near his head, Luis with his pistol out pointing at Mike, Jorge guarding the door, Allie on the bed, and Roger trumpeting in the air.

  Allie called Beth’s house while Mike’s hands were being bound with the duct tape Jorge had retrieved from the van. His feet remained free so as not to draw any attention from the nurses or doctors.

  The phone was picked up on the first ring. “Hello?” It was Jonas. Allie was surprised by how much his voice rattled her interior. She hung up. “Jonas,” she said to the group.

  Roger tapped on the C, then A-L-L.

  “Call back?” Allie asked.

  “I’ll call back,” Frank said, and he hit the intercom button s
o he wouldn’t have to hold the receiver against his ear. Allie dialed.

  “Jonas,” Frank said, when Jonas answered the phone.

  “Who the fuck is this?” Jonas said.

  “It’s Frank Dodgson.” His voice was stern.

  “Frank!” Jonas sounded jovial, friendly. “How’s it goin’, man?”

  “Jonas, you didn’t pay my daughter for the hours she served hawking garments in your shop. Additionally, you showed her your genitalia when you were supposed to be showing her how to run a business.”

  “She was showing me her bits and I was showing her mine. It was tit for tat, get it?” Jonas started laughing. “TIT for—” The idea that her father might find out that what Jonas was saying was more or less true made Allie feel like her blood was made of nails.

  “Jonas, you are putting me in a mind to actually murder you,” Frank said calmly.

  “Yeah, yeah, you always were a thug, weren’t you, Frank? Running off to hard-core-nasty-badass college—” Jonas interrupted himself with laughter. “Where’s my man Vice Versa, anyway? Only took him, what? Five minutes to find you in L.A.!” Jonas laughed again.

  “Vice Versa is resting comfortably in an apartment next to an In-N-Out Burger,” Frank said.

  “Topher’s there, too,” Allie added, looking at Mike.

  “Are they in my apartment?” Mike asked and Luis waved the duct tape in front of his mouth. Mike rolled his eyes like he wasn’t afraid of anything, even a man in a sport coat holding duct tape. But he did shut up.

  “Now listen, Jonas,” Frank said. “We are bringing back your bag of cocaine. You will take the bag and you will never contact my daughter again.”

  “Why don’t you listen to me, Frank,” Jonas said. “I have Allie’s friend Beth with me, and if you aren’t here at Beth’s apartment with my coke in six hours, the girl will be dead. After I kill Beth, you have one more hour to show up here before I send my entire motherfucking fuck-you-up-army down there to kill your daughter. Then, if I still don’t have my bag of coke, you’re next. I don’t give a fuck if we grew up three blocks apart. And I don’t give a fuck if you and my brother were best friends. I SO don’t give a fuck that I’d even seek out that chinky-chink so-called wife of yours and kill her, too, just for the fun of it.”