Bright Shiny Morning

by James Frey

  At the end of each day he buys dinner somewhere a burger shack a taco stand a pizza parlor. He picks up Maddie from the 99-cent store and they go back to the hotel and they take a shower together and they eat dinner at their table in the nude. He bought pizza tonight, and because of the cash he splurged and got extra cheese, extra sauce, pepperoni, mushrooms and onions, double extra cheese. They use paper towels as napkins. He speaks.

  I hope they never call back.

  She speaks.

  You think that’ll happen?

  I don’t know.

  You should give it back.

  I can’t do that.

  Why?

  If I tell them I took it they’ll fuck me up, probably kill me.

  Even if you’re giving it back?

  Yeah.

  Then why don’t we just take the money and go somewhere else?

  Where?

  Anywhere.

  Where do you want to go?

  Beverly Hills?

  It’s not that much money.

  I know, I was just kidding. But we could go to San Francisco or San Diego.

  If I just bolt they’ll figure out why. And they have clubs in cities all over the country.

  What about calling another that doesn’t like them.

  Like who?

  Call the Hells Angels.

  Dylan laughs.

  The Hells Angels?

  Yeah.

  I have no idea how to call the Hells Angels. If I did they wouldn’t talk to me. If for some reason they did talk to me, they’d laugh.

  Why?

  The Hells Angels are the Kings of the Biker World. They wouldn’t waste their time with these guys. These guys actually all wish they were Hells Angels.

  So what do you want to do?

  I don’t know. Maybe I should go to church and pray.

  Didn’t you do that through your entire childhood?

  Yeah.

  What’d it get you?

  A mean-ass father and a mother who left us.

  Maybe you should just stay here with me.

  He laughs.

  Yeah, you’re probably right.

  The phone rings. They look at each other, look at the phone, look back.

  Maddie speaks.

  You want to answer it?

  No.

  Did you give this number to anyone?

  No.

  They know where we live?

  I don’t know.

  Did you tell them?

  Probably.

  The phone’s still ringing. They look back at it. It rings, rings, rings. It stops. They look at it, wait for it to ring again. It doesn’t. They look back at each other. Maddie picks up another slice of the pizza pie, speaks.

  This pizza is good.

  Double extra cheese.

  And all sorts of other shit. Gotta love it.

  Maybe we should just spend all the dough on pizza.

  Twenty-three thousand bucks’ worth? We won’t be eating in the nude anymore, that’s for sure.

  We’ll need a bigger room and a bigger bed.

  And a truck instead of the bike.

  They both laugh. As Dylan reaches for another piece of the pizza pie, someone starts pounding on the door. They look back at each other.

  Pounding on the door. Stare at each other. Pounding. Maddie shakes her head. Pounding. Pounding. Pounding. Dylan stands he’s shaking again.

  Pounding on the door. He walks towards it. Pounding. Maddie watches him she’s biting her lip shaking her head she wants to hide somewhere anywhere but she can’t move pounding. Dylan stands in front of the door, looks back at Maddie there’s pounding on the door on the door on the door there’s pounding on the motherfucking door. Dylan speaks.

  Hello?

  In 1874, Judge Robert Widney builds a two-and-a-half-mile horse-drawn railcar line leading from his Hill Street neighborhood to Downtown Los Angeles. Within two years there are similar lines in Santa Monica, Pasadena, and San Bernardino, and six more lines leading through and around Downtown LA. In 1887 the Pico Street line is electrified. In 1894, the Los Angeles Consolidated Electric Railway Corporation is formed and begins buying the local horse-drawn rail lines and electrifying them.

  It also paints all the cars red and begins referring to itself as the Red Car Line. In 1898, the Southern Pacific Railroad buys the Los Angeles Consolidated Electric Railway Corporation. It also buys up large parcels of undeveloped land on the outskirts of Los Angeles. It rapidly and greatly expands the LA rail system into these areas and subsequently sells the land to developers. In 1901, Pacific Electric is spun off to run the Los Angeles Railway System. By 1914, it is the largest public rail system in the world, with more than 900 Red Cars on over 1,150 miles of track running into every populated area of Los Angeles County, and also into San Bernardino County and Orange County.

  Esperanza’s routine changes. Mrs. Campbell and Doug eat breakfast together every morning, so she doesn’t have to serve Mrs. Campbell breakfast in bed anymore. Doug also likes to make the morning coffee, so she’s also relieved of that duty. Because the morning service tended to be so awful, and Mrs. Campbell, before she had had her morning coffee, tended to be more abusive than she usually was, the change allows Esperanza to start her day in a calmer, easier and more peaceful fashion, which makes the rest of the day, regardless of how awful Mrs. Campbell may become, calmer, easier and more peaceful.

  Doug leaves every morning just after he and his mother finish their breakfast. He always wears a white oxford shirt, often put on over whatever T-shirt he’s stained at breakfast, and khaki pants and topsiders.

  He wears a blue nylon backpack stuffed with books that looks like the backpack Esperanza used in junior high school. He carries a brown leather briefcase stenciled with the letters DC—and he rides a small motorized scooter, which has a basket for the briefcase. She has no idea where he goes or what he does, and he usually returns after she’s gone.

  When he first arrived, she assumed he would be gone in a short period of time, but every day he seems more entrenched. His clothes, which were initially kept in his suitcase, are now kept in drawers. His pictures, which are of rockets and spaceships and satellites and orbiting stations, and which he kept spread out on a desk in his room, have been taped to the wall. His toothbrushes (for some reason he has six of them) are in a cup on the sink, his razor is in the medicine cabinet, his soap is in the shower.

  He does not appear to use deodorant.

  Though they never speak, Esperanza likes Doug. Sometimes during the morning, when she’s attending to his mother or walking through the kitchen on her way to some other part of the house, she catches him looking at her, occasionally he smiles, and though she doesn’t want to, and tries not to, she always smiles back. Though he never directly contradicts his mother, he often tells her she’s being silly or acting like a tyrant, and he constantly tells her that her political views are outdated and absurd (Mrs. Campbell likes the current president, Doug calls him a buffoon). While she was initially repulsed by his manners and eating habits, Esperanza now finds them amusing and endearing, thinking that he is the way he is because he doesn’t care how he eats or looks as long as it gets to his mouth, where he joyfully chews and swallows.

  And for someone as self-conscious as she is, his utter indifference to his appearance is refreshing. Every time she looks at her thighs she thinks about him and his stained shirts and the food on his hands and face and she tries to forget her own feelings about how she looks. It doesn’t help her much, doesn’t make her hate her thighs any less, but it does give her hope, it does give her some small bit of hope.

  At night when she’s home, after she’s studied and as she lies in bed before falling asleep, Esperanza thinks about Doug, wonders what he’s doing.

  He has a TV and a video game console in his room, Esperanza has heard Mrs. Campbell scold him for staying up late and playing his silly games, he laughs and says the universe needs saving and dragons need slaying and since someone has
to do it, it might as well be him. She imagines him sitting on the floor, a pizza or some potato chips on the floor next to him, staring at the TV with his controller in hand, saving the universe, slaying dragons, doing whatever it is he does, climbing into bed later with his food and a book, falling asleep with both spread out around him.

  It’s a day like any other day she wakes up gets ready takes the bus walks to the house enters through the back. She goes into the basement and changes into her uniform, she walks up the stairs to the kitchen and just before she steps through the door she takes a deep breath and prepares herself for whatever Mrs. Campbell’s latest bit of nastiness might be, she’s under the doorframe and Mrs. Campbell isn’t there, just Doug, sitting at the table drinking coffee and eating a cinnamon bun. He looks up at Esperanza and smiles and speaks.

  Hello, Esperanza.

  She nods, he speaks.

  It’s okay. You can talk to me. My mother isn’t here.

  Where is she?

  I’m not sure. She either went golfing in Palm Springs or to a spa in Laguna or to an equestrian event in Santa Barbara. I tune her out most of the time, so I don’t know what she said exactly.

  Esperanza smiles. Doug motions to another chair at the table.

  You want to sit?

  She does, but she’s still scared Mrs. Campbell will appear from behind the doorway.

  No thank you.

  Have some coffee with me.

  Esperanza glances at the door.

  No, thank you.

  Doug laughs.

  You’re worried this is some kind of test and she’s hiding behind the door and is going to jump out and scream at you if you agree to sit with me for a few minutes?

  Esperanza tries not to, but she smiles. Doug laughs.

  My mother is so fucked up. I mean, I love her and all, she is my mom and she bore me and raised me, but it’s fucked up that you’re so scared of her that you won’t sit here and have coffee with me.

  Esperanza shrugs. Doug speaks.

  She’s not here I promise.

  Esperanza smiles again, looks at the door, walks over to it and opens it and looks into the dining room and around the back of the door there is nothing there, no one there. She comes back around, Doug is smiling he speaks.

  That was a good one.

  Esperanza speaks.

  Thank you.

  You gonna sit now?

  Sure.

  She sits down across from him.

  You want some coffee?

  Sure.

  She starts to stand, he motions her back down.

  I’ll get it.

  He stands, steps over to the counter, grabs a cup and fills it with nice, black, steaming hot coffee.

  Milk or sugar?

  She shakes her head, he steps back to the table and hands her the cup and sits down. He speaks.

  I have an important question.

  She takes a sip of the nice, black, steaming hot coffee and looks up at him.

  How much of what I say do you understand?

  She smiles.

  I think you understand me, but I don’t really even know.

  She continues to smile.

  The last time I was home there was a girl working who spoke enough to be able to react to me, so I talked to her all the time, and then the guys who work in the garden, who speak English but pretend not to so they don’t have to deal with my mother, told me she didn’t understand anything I was saying. I felt like a total dick.

  Esperanza laughs, speaks. She uses her Mexican accent.

  I speak English. I understand everything you say.

  He smiles.

  Fantastic!

  You keep a secret?

  He nods.

  I’m Mr. Keep-A-Secret. Nobody can keep a secret like me.

  She speaks drops the Mexican accent, speaks without one. I’m American. I was born in Arizona and grew up in LA. I speak perfect English. The immigrant thing is an act to deal with your mom. She wouldn’t hire me if she thought I was legal.

  He laughs.

  Holy shit!

  Esperanza laughs. He continues to speak.

  That’s awesome. You’re getting one over on Old Lady Campbell. I gotta tell the guys outside, they’re gonna think it’s hilarious.

  They already know.

  He laughs harder. Esperanza speaks.

  You promised to keep it a secret.

  Doug speaks.

  I will. Don’t worry about that. I think it’s great. And it’ll make it easier for us to be friends. It gets shitty around here with just me and her. It’ll be cool to have a friend in the house with me.

  Esperanza smiles, takes a sip of her coffee.

  Yeah, it will.

  I can’t imagine it’s much fun working here?

  No, it’s not.

  Why do you do it?

  I need the money.

  There must be better jobs?

  The hours are regular, and not so bad. I don’t work weekends. I get paid in cash and I don’t pay any taxes. It could be worse.

  You seem smart.

  I think I am.

  Did you finish high school?

  With honors.

  Why didn’t you go to college?

  I got a scholarship, but something happened and I didn’t end up going.

  What happened?

  It’s a long story.

  I got nothing to do.

  I don’t really want to talk about it.

  Okay.

  What do you do?

  Research at Caltech.

  What kind of research?

  It’s sort of complicated.

  Try me.

  The field is quantum information science. We’re trying to apply the theoretical laws of quantum mechanics to the practical world of information systems. One of the questions my research group is focusing on is figuring out nature’s maximum computation power.

  Esperanza laughs, speaks.

  Sounds a bit beyond me.

  Doug laughs.

  It’s beyond me too. It’s beyond everyone I know. That’s why we’re working on it, so that it’s not beyond us anymore, which is ultimately the goal of any research or applied science. Making the unknowable, knowable.

  Sounds exciting.

  The possibilities are. Day-to-day it’s grueling.

  Grueling?

  Yeah.

  You want to try my job for a week or two?

  He laughs.

  Doing my mother’s laundry is beyond grueling. It’d be some form of torture for me, even going near whatever her undergarments are would probably send me into seizure.

  They both laugh. Esperanza stands.

  Been nice chatting with you, but I need to get to work.

  Doug nods, smiles.

  Me too.

  Thanks for the coffee.

  My pleasure.

  Guess I’ll see you tomorrow.

  My mom might still be away.

  Really?

  Yeah. Maybe we could do this again?

  She smiles.

  Maybe.

  He smiles. She turns and walks away, he watches her go. Just before she’s through the door he speaks.

  Buen día.

  She stops turns around and smiles again.

  You too.

  In 1900, Burton Green buys a large chunk of land located fifteen miles west of Los Angeles for oil exploration. After drilling hundreds of wells, none of which produce significant amounts of oil, he subdivides the land into five-acre building parcels and hires a landscape architect to design a town. His wife had spent time during her childhood in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, and the couple decide to name their new town Beverly Hills.

  Beatrice comes back two days later she’s so tweaked on meth that Old Man Joe can see her eyelids shaking. She asks for some food he finds her some day-old pizza she takes two bites and she’s done.

  He has three days of peace. He follows his normal routine he wakes before dawn and lies on the beach and watches the su
n rise and waits for answers nothing comes. He panhandles on the boardwalk and drinks the Chablis and eats day-old food and sleeps on the floor of his bathroom.

  She returns. It’s night he’s half-drunk and happy. She needs somewhere to sleep he lets her use the bathroom he stays outside next to a dumpster when he wakes up she’s gone.

  Two more days not a sign of her he’s sleeping on the third someone bangs on the door he wakes. He stands and asks who it is she says it’s me, I need help, it’s me. He opens the door and she’s standing there tweaked and shaking she looks scared and helpless, scared and alone. He speaks. What’s wrong?

  They’re after me.

  Who?

  I need to hide.

  Who’s after you?

  Please.

  She turns around looks down the street looks both ways turns back to him scared and helpless, scared and alone.