As I headed up the walkway to the door, I heard Jake’s dog barking his head off. Actually, he sounded like he wanted to rip mine off. Visions of some adorable puppy vanished in two seconds.
“Max!” I heard Lila yell from behind the door. “For God’s sake!”
I figured it might be better if I didn’t just walk in. If Max thought I was an intruder, he might tear my leg off like I was the turkey and this was Thanksgiving. Jake was still in the car on his phone, so I rang the bell. The dog went insane.
“Knock it off, you idiot!” Lila shouted. When she opened the door, she had the dog by the collar. Or rather, the dog had her by the hand. He had the golden brown and black coat of a German shepherd, and his teeth were bared, and his toes slid and skittered along on the marble entry like the most furious novice ice-skater you’ve ever seen in your life.
“Niiiiice puppy,” I crooned.
“Jesus!” Lila was using every muscle in her body to hold him back.
But then Jake came up the walk, tucking his phone into his pocket, and before my very eyes, the dog transformed into an entirely different animal, the loving little angel in sweet reunion with his master. His limbs were his own again. He wound and bumped through Jake’s legs as Jake kept walking, ignoring him. I actually felt kind of sorry for the dog—insulted by Lila, snubbed by Jake. He was like the bad kid that acted out in class because no one paid attention to him.
Jake kissed Lila’s neck. “We’re back,” he said. But now Lila was doing the ignoring. The kiss was like a bee she swatted away.
“Hey, guy.” I scruffed the dog’s scary head and patted his large, intimidating body. “You’re a beautiful boy,” I told him. This was too much love too fast, because then he jumped up excitedly and we were staring at each other, eye to eye. I gave him a big shove down. In two seconds, I had dog hair all over me, but I didn’t mind.
“Don’t I get a hello?” Lila said. “Baby! I am so glad to see you. Come here.”
I hugged her. She smelled like Lila—the gentleness of orange blossoms, the aggressiveness of spice. Of course she looked beautiful, in her white capris and a sleeveless navy top, her hair up in a stylish messy bun. Her wrist was wrapped in an Ace bandage. Lila was always getting injured or sick. Twisted ankles, broken fingers, mysterious stomach maladies. Little amber pill bottles lined her bathroom sink.
“What happened to your arm?”
“Damn dog pulled me right to the ground when the UPS man came. I’m sure it’s a sprain. Baby, I missed you! Get in here.”
Inside, the terra-cotta floors opened to a large staircase, which curved upward, like the inside of a seashell. The kitchen and the dining room were on the main level, and so was the centerpiece of the house, a large living room done all in white—white rugs, white furniture, white pillows. Lila called it the White Room, for reasons that should now be obvious. The entire back of the room was glass—windows that looked out onto the Pacific, and glass doors that opened to the patio, which perched scenically over the cliff. From there, an orange stucco staircase wound like a maze down to China Beach.
Lila told me she’d gotten a great deal renting the place, but this was hard to imagine. How could the word deal even sit in the same sentence with that house? That view. It took your breath away. Literally, like a sock in the stomach. Even when I knew what to expect, I walked in that day and wow. There it all was—the sea and the Marin Headlands, laid out like nature’s most valuable work of art. And the Golden Gate Bridge, too, right there, looking close enough to touch. It shocked me, how beautiful that view was. It pulled me toward it. I went to the glass and looked out.
“You want lunch? I ordered all your favorites. Beecher’s mac and cheese? Those lovely tomato basil paninis?” Beecher’s mac and cheese was my favorite when I was six, and the tomato basil paninis were her favorite, but I didn’t care. I was happy she’d thought of me.
“Sounds awesome. I’ll just put my stuff away.”
I should probably mention that Lila used to have a chef, but not anymore. She also had a driver and a personal assistant, in addition to her agent, Lee Miles, and her manager, Sean James. After Rainmaker lost so much money, though, and the pilot about the young dancer wasn’t picked up, Lila was mostly doing commercials for companies in Europe. So she was down to a house cleaner who came in once a week, and we just ordered food in, or we’d go out.
“Oh, sure. Get settled. Make yourself at home.”
Jake—he was the one who was making himself at home. I heard him toss his keys onto the long white counter in the kitchen, and then I heard the opening and shutting of a cupboard. There was the sound of rattling in a drawer, then a few moments later, the pop of a wine bottle opening. I actually heard the liquid glug as it went in the glass. It was pretty obvious that I’d stressed him out.
I carried my pack upstairs. On the second floor, there was Lila’s huge bedroom and bath that looked out over the sea, as well as a media room, and a guest room with a view of the front garden. Up another flight was my room. Also, a second guest room and a workout space, which had a bunch of weights and equipment no one used. My room was smaller than Lila’s, but it had the same view. I was the only one on the entire floor.
Up there, it was a little echoey, and I suddenly felt the kind of alone I did when I was the last one left in the dorm before vacation. I opened all the drawers of my dresser to see everything again. I got reacquainted with my stuff. Jeans! I remember you. Oh, right—those shorts and T-shirts and dresses.
And on my pillow was that stupid doll. It used to belong to Edwina’s grandmother, the aforementioned baby who was carried from the burning building after the earthquake. Lila always put it there after I left. I hated it. The staring eyes scared me. I kept telling her that, but Lila loved dolls. I took it and tossed it under the bed in the guest room and I shut the door. I hoped it wouldn’t haunt me from there, same as in R. W. Wright’s Glass Eyes.
In my double-sink bathroom, with the stylish, retro octagon tile, I checked out all the cabinets. Hey, my old lotion from last time! There was the same half bottle of shampoo from my Christmas visit. Also, that enormous and stinky pine-scented candle Lila had set out as a holiday decoration. I stuck it under the sink.
The floor creaked, and I jumped. It was silly to be so jittery, but the rooms felt hollow, and cold, too, even in June, probably because no one had been upstairs in months. It was just Max, though, standing in the doorway. I was glad to see him. The house was stunning and beautiful, but it was old, and houses have stories, and I wondered what the walls knew. That stupid doll probably didn’t help.
“Hey,” I said. “Come on.” I patted the bed, and he galumphed up. He curled his giant self into a doughnut. A very large doughnut. He was going to get hair everywhere and Lila would kill me, but I liked him there. I liked his warm body and the fact of his beating heart. The sea was so many gorgeous shades of blue outside those windows, but I was already feeling windswept.
My dream of some exciting, life-changing summer was floating away fast, like a piece of trash snatched by an outgoing wave. And if it weren’t for that large doughnut dog, I’d be as lonely as I always was at Lila’s. I remembered it then, that loneliness. Like my clothes and my old lotion, it was another thing I had to get reacquainted with.