by Lee Nichols
“Everyone knows Monty. He owns half of Santa Barbara. My office is in one of his buildings. I’ve done some work for him.”
“He owns half of Santa Barbara and spends his days here?”
Merrick shrugs. “He’s a character. Once challenged Fess Parker to a fistfight.” He tells me the story, but I’m not really listening. I finish my beer and grab at his, but he pulls it out of my reach. I’m not proud; I pout until he buys me another.
By the time I finish my second, I’m slightly cross-eyed. Still vivacious and charming, though. I pause for breath, and Maya makes Merrick promise to drive me home.
“I’m not that drunk,” I say. And I’m not, really. Just nervous. “Walk me to my car. I’m parked two blocks away. By the time we get there, I’ll be fine.”
“Elle…” Maya warns.
“If I’m not okay by then, Merrick can drive me home.” Sheesh, the way I’ve been acting you’d think she’d be ready to see me die a fiery death.
Walking to the car, Merrick says something about Maya and me being good friends.
“Best friends. Ever since I beat up Ricky Parker in the seventh grade for calling her fat.” I trip on a crack in the sidewalk. Merrick catches me and holds me and I turn my face towards his neck. “You smell good.”
“You sure it’s not pizza you’re smelling?” he says with a smile, as we pass a pizza parlor.
“Oh, my food!” I pull away, panicked.
“It’s right here.” In his other hand. He really is lovely. An architect, too. And good with rice.
“I like you,” I declare, and nestle closer. He kisses me. A sweet light kiss. Delicious. We kiss some more and touch and walk and I’m dizzy when I say, “The car’s right there.”
Should I ask him to come home with me? I miss being held. I look up at him, try to block the glare from his freak-hair, and he says, “In that lot? With the locked gate?”
I turn. A chain is strung across the exit. “It was open when I parked there.”
He brushes his lips across my temple and whispers into my ear. “Let me take you home.”
“Yes, please.”
“You’re sure your house is back here?” he asks as we stumble through the garden.
“Of course I’m sure,” I snap. My ardor has cooled at the thought of his expression when he catches sight of the trolley.
He looks dubious. Then he sees it. “Is that a trolley?”
“A converted trolley.”
“I’ve never seen a trolley made into a home before.” He sounds more intrigued than disgusted. “It suits you.”
“Suits me how?”
He presses against me and kisses a trail down my neck. “It’s unique.” More kissing. “I like it.”
We’re going to have sex. Louis Merrick, architect and ginger freak-head, is the first other man I’ll have sex with in six years. Is this a bad idea? It could be pitiful rebound sex. It’s not like we’re moving into a relationship, but if we start with pitiful rebound sex, that’ll be the end for sure. On the other hand, I want sex.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“What don’t you know?” He runs his hand along my back, nibbles my earlobe.
“Um…” I say. “Mmmmm.”
He unzips my dress and pulls it away from my shoulders. I’m flushed with pleasure—part Merrick, part Chianti and part the knowledge that I’m wearing a La Perla bra. Matching panties, too. He twists one of my corkscrew curls around his finger. “How do you get it to curl like this?”
“It’s natural,” I whisper. Do I have clean sheets on the bed?
His hand glides over my breasts. My nipples harden. “Are these natural too?”
I arch my back in response, and my arms are around him, and I’m touching him everywhere, his arms, his back, his shoulders, his ass.
“Inside,” he says. “The key?”
Who cares about clean sheets? I fumble, lust-fogged, for my key, and hand it over. He fiddles with the lock as I keep touching him. He shoves the door open and flicks the light.
“There’s shit all over the floor,” he says.
“It’s not that messy,” I say, working my way toward his zipper.
He grabs my exploratory hand. “No. Literally.”
I pull away and step inside. “If that little juvie let the pugs—”
But that ain’t dog shit, Toto. I guess the gurgle, guzz, gurgle coming from the toilet, was, in fact, sending a message.
“Looks like your toilet overflowed,” Merrick says helpfully, from the safety of the doorstep.
There’s an inch of bilgey-water in the kitchen and bathroom areas. My first post-Louis date ends with me standing in a shit-trolley with my tits hanging out. All I need now is to slip and fall into the sewage—that will make my humiliation complete. The moment I think this, I clutch at the wall, to prevent the nightmare from happening.
“Whoa,” Merrick says. “Careful there.”
I suspect he’s trying not to laugh. “It’s not funny! My toilet—my toilet backed up.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” he says, and his lips tremble.
“Get out!” I shriek.
“Sorry.” He looks contrite. “Let me give you a hand cleaning up.”
“Go.” I say, clutching the wall, while trying to hunch back into my dress.
“Are you sure? I can—”
“Go!”
He goes. I stand frozen, stunned, surveying the horror. He returns a moment later, and I do not slip and fall in surprise.
“Doggie bag,” he explains, putting it on a counter. “I’ll call you.”
Sure. Who wouldn’t call a girl who lives in a septic tank?
Mr. Petrie answers my frantic knocking at 6:55 the next morning. He fixes the toilet as I sit outside and nibble at a carton of melon and ham.
He emerges an hour later. I fall over myself thanking and praising him, in the hopes that I’ll convince him to let me stay. I mean, the trolley is officially a shit-hole now, right? Who else will want to live here?
“So…no hard feelings?” I say, after ten minutes of gushing gratitude. “Over the water, um, the water balloony thing?” I explain that it was Eddie Munster’s fault, and Mr. Petrie ought to speak to his parents. “Though I haven’t seen the little bastard around in days.”
“The little bastard was here visiting his grandparents,” Mr. Petrie says. “He’s back in Bakersfield now, with his parents.”
“So no hard feelings?”
“Of course not,” he says.
I attempt, by sheer force of will, to make him say that, as far as that goes, I’m welcome to stay.
“As far as that goes,” he says. “With the plumbing and damage to the floor, you can kiss your security deposit goodbye.”
I gape.
“And I’ll tell my grandson you send your regards.”
Chapter 19
Call Sheila at Superior every morning for almost two weeks. By the third day, she stopped calling me “dear.”
I miss yet another handful of Carlos’s calls. I do not hear from Merrick, and am disappointed. Not only have I run out of non-rice food, but I’d been hoping he’d offer me the job as his assistant, if only out of pity. Maybe he’s worried I’ll stink up the office. Who wants Pig Pen as a receptionist?
Twelve days before I am evicted from trolley. Have not found a new apartment. Spent $75 to get my car out of the parking lot. Spent $120 on towels, to replace the ones I used to clean the Great Poop Debacle. In retrospect, should not have bought Egyptian cotton. The aqua is pretty, though, and cheap colors always fade and disappoint. I’ll have these towels forever.
In addition to new towels, I have $183.
I owe roughly $4,000 on credit cards, plus $1,500 on the IKEA card.
I ask Maya if I can stay with her and Brad when I get kicked out. She is nice about it, but not pleased.
I call my father. He doesn’t call back. I sometimes wonder if I moved in with Louis just so I’d have a male authority figure around the house
.
I call my mother. She does call back. She mentions the busboy job at the café next door again. I actually consider taking it, but I don’t, on the grounds that things cannot get worse. I have hit an all-time low. There is only one direction.
And, as if the universe is conspiring to prove me right, the phone rings.
“Eleanor Medina,” the sexy Latin voice says.
“This is she,” I say, breathlessly.
“This is Carlos Neruda.”
“Carlos,” I say.
“I saved all your messages,” he says. “Very charming—half the men in my office are in love with you.”
I felt bad that I kept missing him, so I’d left a few voice mails for him. Just because, you know. Just because. He’d usually call back to find me gone, so I’d leave a new one. Well, it wasn’t a big thing. Just three messages. Maybe four.
“Oh, well…” I say. “You’re a friend of Brad’s?”
“I’m sorry, Elle,” he says. “I’m not a friend of Brad’s. I am your worst nightmare.”
“Are you calling from Iowa?”
He laughs. “Can’t say that I am.”
“Then you’re my second-worst nightmare, at best.”
“You’re making this very difficult for me,” he says. “If you could be ruder, so I’d dislike you, that would help a good deal.”
“Ruder?”
He sighs. “Your credit is in the shits, Elle. Three credit card companies, which for some reason I can’t understand extended you credit in the first place, have given up hope of ever being paid. They turned you over to a collection agency. That means me.”
“Collection agency?” I squeak. “How’d you—how did you find me?”
“VW dealer. Where you applied for even more credit.’
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. From here on out, it’s you and me and a debt in the amount of $6,497.43.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Would you stop saying that? What do I have to do?”
“Do you have a job?” he asks.
“No.”
“Savings?”
“No.”
He asks a few more questions, and I keep saying “no.”
“Jesus, Elle,” he finally says. “What were you thinking?”
“I don’t know. My fiancé was going to pay the debts, once we got married, but—” And I tell him the whole story.
He’s a good listener. When I finish, he commiserates and says: “Well, I’m gonna need a good-faith payment. It’s that or the repo man, for your clothes and car. How much can you send?”
I calculate. “Twenty-five dollars?”
He chuckles in an entirely seductive Latin fashion, and even though I’m the butt of the joke, I’m thinking maybe I do want a Latino boyfriend. One who doesn’t know I wallow in sludge.
“At least four hundred,” he says.
“Four hundred! But I—”
“Let me tell you where to send the check.”
“No, no, Carlos, I can’t—”
He ignores me. I dutifully write the address and payment schedule on the back of a Rusty’s Pizza menu. He tells me how much he enjoyed speaking with me, and we hang up.
I stare out the window at Mrs. Petrie’s garden. Disappointing that Latin admirer is credit police. I perk up—at least he said nothing about my IKEA card.
Chapter 20
There’s a knock on the trolley door. Must be Maya, come to roust me from my latest crisis. I mentioned Carlos’s call to her last night, and for some reason, she considers this a problem. Actually, I agree. I hit an all-time low, and immediately go lower. The universe is conspiring, all right.
I shuffle to the door, my partially braided hair unraveling, my flying pig pajamas sagging. Maya, of course will be her usual, adorable, blond self. I open the door and a bouquet of white cala lilies floats in front of me. It swishes to the side, and Ga-Ga Gorgeous is there. Not Maya, but Joshua Franklin, the faux shoplifter. Mr. I-Get-Five-Grand-For-An-Afternoon-And-You-Get-Fired.
“Hey!” I say, my wrath making me articulate. “Hey!”
He smiles sheepishly, and looks—incredibly—even more attractive. “I suppose that means you remember me from Super 9?”
“Ga,” is all I manage. I pull up my pajama bottoms and smooth down my top. Why couldn’t I at least be in my cute kimono, my hair twisted back in chopsticks?
“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here. I got your address from Ross Investigations,” he says. “Well, my lawyer got it. He wanted to subpoena you, get a signed statement. I told him it was ridiculous to pester you…I’m so sorry about what happened.”
His hair is gorgeous. His nose is gorgeous. “I…well, that’s okay. I mean, I did get fired, but…that’s okay.”
He gestures with the flowers. “Well, that’s why I stopped by. To apologize and drop these off.”
“Oh! They’re gorgeous.”
“Honeysuckle,” he says, and all I want in life is to hear him say that word one more time.
“What?”
His forehead is gorgeous. His lips are gorgeous. “I got them at Honeysuckle. It’s this garden place downtown. It’s like your garden here—” he gestures behind himself, and all I want in life is to see him gesture like that one more time “—but in a shop.”
I blush and stammer, as he says goodbye, smiles gorgeously and leaves. The door shuts, and I am cut off from all the gorgeous in the world.
I rush to the mirror, to determine precisely how much of an awful mess I look. I look a tremendous earthquake of an awful mess. There’s a knock on the door.
It’s Ga-Ga, again, and all the gorgeous comes rushing back.
“I know this is—well, you have every right to be incredibly angry with me. And I know flowers hardly make it up to you. I don’t know if I can make it up—but I wondered…would you have dinner with me?”
I emit a noise not unlike a peep.
“No?” He shakes his head. “Of course not. I just—well, I wanted to ask.” He smiles bravely, his gorgeous eyes sad, and steps away.
“Wait,” I say.
He turns, hope radiating from his perfect features. “Tonight? At eight? Would that be okay?”
I glance at the alarm clock beside my bed. There are roughly six hours between now and the dinner hour. A little short on preparation time, but I can manage.
“Yes,” I say. “Tonight.”
We’re in his car—a brand new Audi—cruising along the shoreline toward the restaurant. Ga-Ga oozes sexuality. I ooze wild terror that I will fuck this up.
When I opened the trolley door for the date, he said how beautiful I was. Then he looked at my shoes and said: “Prada?”
I fell in love. They were Prada. It took me forty minutes to choose them. And he knew. He knew they were Prada. He is gorgeous man, inside and out.
Shoes come up again as we pass Shoreline Park, where we see a mother chasing her toddler through the park. She is young and chunky and wearing stiletto pumps.
“That’s a good way to break an ankle,” Ga-Ga says.
“Or at least snap a heel.”
“Is that what happened to those BCBGs on your counter?” he asks.
Be still my heart. He knows a pair of BCBGs. “The heel,” I say. “It broke. While I was running. In Nordstrom’s.”
He raises a gorgeous eyebrow, and the whole story comes tumbling out.
“You fell?” he says. “And they charged you a hundred and eighty-eight bucks for a pair of broken shoes?”
I nod, aware that he is disappointed in me, and am relieved when he pulls into a lot a half block from the beach.
The restaurant we are going to? Citronelle.
I didn’t even know there was a Citronelle in Santa Barbara. It must have opened while I was away. It’s located on the second floor of a hotel on Cabrillo Boulevard, with a view of East Beach and the ocean. I almost tell him I can’t eat there, memories of breakup with Louis will turn stomach, but
instead say, “Oh, Josh—I love Citronelle.”
“It’s Joshua, actually. Not Josh.”
I cringe and apologize. How pretentious for him to go by Joshua instead of Josh. It would be fine if he were gay, of course. But then he tells me the restaurant is owned by Meeshell Reesharrrd, in the same cheesy French accent I use, and I realize I’ve found my soul mate.
He orders champagne. He orders oysters. I love champagne and oysters, except for the bubbly and slimy bits.
“So, what do you do?” I ask. “I mean, other than—whatever.” Recalling the lawsuit, I flush a bright red.
He waves away my embarrassment. “I didn’t shoplift, Elle.”
“I know,” I say, too quickly.
“Do I look like I need the wrenches?”
He doesn’t. He looks like he needs nothing but me. “Well…”
“I know it must seem like I—”
“Set the whole thing up? To start a lawsuit?”
“It was my lawyer who insisted I sue. I’m in business. Honestly, if I needed the money, I’d have approached venture capitalists, not Super 9.”
Well, that sounds perfectly reasonable. “But I saw you.”
“You didn’t. You couldn’t have. Because I didn’t take anything. Are you sure you saw what you think you saw?”
And actually, I’m not. I mean, I was blinded by his beauty. I was saying “Ga-Ga.” Clearly, I was not in my right mind. I laughingly admit that I’m not entirely sure, and with that bit of awkwardness out of the way, we small-talk until dinner comes.
We have a lot in common. He recently moved to Santa Barbara. I recently returned to Santa Barbara. We both like long walks on the beach, sunsets, afternoon movies in the rain and…well, all sorts of things.
He gazes longingly into my eyes, swallows an oyster, and says, “Joshua loves oysters.”
“Pardon?”
“Oysters—I love them.”
“Oh! Yeah, me too.”
We finish the oysters and both order cobb salads. Then we both order strawberries and cream for dessert. Lots and lots in common.
Including the fact that neither of us can pay the bill.