A new list.
Income: Paycheck from Señor Spenser: $479.84
Outcome: BCBG’s broken while in Nordstrom: $188-ish.
Private Investigator-type lipstick—Chanel: $25
Private Investigator-type sunglasses—Armani: $150, more or less.
Thus, from my week-and-a-half of employment, discounting valuable experience gained at very first job, I am ahead by roughly…$100?
That’s not so bad, considering I was not only fired, but was instrumental in initiating a lawsuit. Impressive first effort, I’d say.
But I still need a job. Perhaps Sheila called. Perhaps anyone called. I pick up my phone to check the dial tone, because it’s possible the phone rang silently. The tone is straight and even. No voice mail. Not even from Carlos.
I know I should count my money to see precisely how much I don’t have, but am deeply afraid. I had $500, and then made $100, and haven’t been spending much due to constant bargain shopping at Super 9. Of course, there’s gas and orchids and the bottle of twelve-year-old port and the cartons of Godiva Chocolate Raspberry Truffle ice cream. But theoretically, I still have $500-ish.
I take a deep breath, and count—$312.
I take a hit of port, and a faceful of chocolate raspberry truffle, and something goes gurgle, guzz, gurg from the vicinity of the toilet, and I realize it is a sign. I am flushing my money down the toilet. I am tossing my life in the shitter. I am circling the drain. Out of money. Fired from job. Evicted from trolley. Flung condoms at ginger freak-head. Lust for Ga-Ga Gorgeous grifter. Am generally pathetic, ridiculous and slightly drunk.
But now is the time. It is time to grow up. I open my fridge-type unit, seeking some nutritious, grown-up food. There is none. I shopped far healthier for Louis than I do for myself. Granted, I spent a small fortune every time I entered a gourmet food store. But still, if I did it for him, I can do it for me…and on the cheap, too. I should have nationalized booty from Super 9—there was no other store detective to stop me. Sure, and I could dress in outfits from the Li’l Dowdy department.
At least I still have my car. It may look like Halloween, but I love my orange freak-car. I slide behind the wheel and turn the key. The engine purrs.
First stop is Super Ralph’s, Santa Barbara’s solution to hacienda-style grocery shopping. I will buy sensible, nutritious, low-fat food in bulk.
But inside, temptation surrounds me. Truffle oil calls my name in Aisle 3. Pickled asparagus ambushes me in Aisle 12. I am on the verge of kicking my good intentions in the teeth when I spot a forty-pound bag of rice on a bottom shelf. Price? $11.95. I am overwhelmed by a surge of sheer economy. Twelve bucks for forty el-bees of rice. My cupboard will never be empty again. Nourishment is only a cup of water away, and I’m sure to lose weight.
I wrestle the bag into my arms. Economical, but ungainly. I drag it to a checkout line. I inspect magazines while I wait, the rice growing steadily heavier in my arms. Definitely room for another O-type magazine. Maybe L should have a Frugality column. First month? Rice.
I really should have grabbed a cart. My arms are going dead and my shoulder screams in agony. I finally heave the bag onto the conveyor belt, feeling quite superior to the woman in front of me, who is buying frozen pizza, two packs of American cheese and a head of iceberg.
I pay my twelve bits, and heft the bag over a shoulder. It prickles my neck. It’s made of that brittle plastic-burlap that cattle feed comes in, and as I heft it a few grains of rice trickle from a slight gash. Must be careful not to spill rice all over my beautiful car.
I stumble towards the exit, hoping to find a cart. No cart. Doesn’t matter—I’m parked right out front.
As if unwilling to leave home, the bag attempts to wiggle from my arms the moment I am in the parking lot. I claw frantically at it, but gravity is the enemy, and I feel it eeling from my grasp as I shuffle forward.
I clutch anew, and for a lovely moment think I’m going to make it.
I don’t. The bag slips and smashes to the asphalt like an overripe melon. The gash widens and rice flows like water from the hole. Fucking ducky. I tussle with the burlap, trying to force the hole upward to stanch the flow. In a flash, I rip a larger opening.
“Shit!” Rice surrounds me in a two foot radius. I’m tempted to flee, but goddamn it I’m an adult now, and I don’t abandon sacks of rice in parking lots. Plus, I’m hungry. I grab the sack in a death-grip and heave. It flops and emits a new rivulet of rice. “Fuck you!” I shove the bag, earning dirty looks from several passersby. “I’ll kick your burlap ass.”
“Here, let me,” a man says. “Before someone reports a rice-beater.”
Louis Merrick. Merrick of the Coffee Condom Catastrophe. Way to make a good second impression. Third impression. Whatever. I’m just lucky that I’m not on my hands and knees, picking up individual grains.
“Merrick,” I say.
He effortlessly lifts the sack and starts toward my car. The bundle in his arms looks like an injured child he’s rescued from a burning building. He’s no Ga-Ga Gorgeous, but he can really manhandle a bag of recalcitrant grain. I am far more giddily gratified than I should be about rescued rice.
I open the trunk, and he lays his salvaged armload gently down.
“Safe and sound,” he says.
I consider saying, “My hero!” but ask him what he’s doing here instead. It comes out ungrateful.
“Uh—” he points to Ralph’s Super Hacienda. “Grocery shopping? I live down the street.”
“Oh, right. Right.” I look at him. His hair is still freaky, but it’s sort of mussed, and he looks a little tired, and I am definitely warm for him. “Thanks,” I say. “Really.”
“That’s a lot of rice.”
“I like rice. A lot.” Then I blurt the truth: “Plus it’s cheap. I lost my—I haven’t found a job.”
He looks politely embarrassed, before saying he’s glad he ran into me. “I wanted to apologize. About the other morning, with the, um…”
“The frolicking condoms.”
He laughs. “Somehow I feel responsible.”
I wave away his apology. “Nothing you could do. Turns out I’m the reincarnation of Calamity Jane. But thank you.”
“I did wonder, of course,” he says. “Why you carry enough rubbers to accommodate a regiment of sailors on shore leave.”
“They weren’t for accommodating sailors. Or anyone. Remember the crank calls? The kid was playing pranks on my apartment, too. Like tossing dead squirrels at me. So I got the condoms for water balloons, to peg the little juvie.”
His eyes widen in what could be amazement, amusement or abhorrence.
“What?” I say. I haven’t even told him the part about bombing Mr. Petrie.
He shakes his head.
“Well…Merrick…” It’s time to slink off with my rice. “It was nice—”
“Why do you call me Merrick?”
“I like it. Merrick. It’s a solid name.”
He doesn’t believe me, but I refuse to explain.
“What’s your last name?” he asks.
“Medina.”
“Should I call you that?”
“No, that would be weird.”
His eyes crinkle. “Then will you have dinner with me, Elle?”
I am not quite sure if he’s laughing at me. “When?” I ask suspiciously. “I’m sort of busy the next few weeks.”
“Tomorrow night?”
“Okay.”
He smiles. “Okay. I’ll pick you up at seven? Where do you live?”
“No!” Must not let him see where I live.
“No to seven?” he asks, “Or—”
“Why don’t we meet at the restaurant?”
“Because you’ll be late. How about we meet at Shika at six-thirty?”
I tell him okay.
“And is Italian good? I was thinking Bucatini’s, but they do more pasta than rice.”