Roommates

Glorious D. Every time she left the building she passed him. From what she could tell, he hung out in the driveway all day. Sometimes it was just him. Sometimes he was with his mom’s Chihuahua. His raps were pretty good and were probably the only thing she liked about Casa de Paradiso.

“Hey, Glorious D! How are you?”

He sported a blue and gold oversized Chargers blazer and a matching baseball cap perched sideways on his head. His gold necklace glimmered in the sun. “Cool. Whatch you been up to?”

She almost blurted out that she had been searching for a new place to live all morning but then remembered that he might include this detail in his next rap to Justine. “Just working on the novel. Now I’m off to baby-sit.”

The smile dropped from his face like an ice cube when she said the part about baby-sitting. “Man, that sucks. I baby-sat my cousin once, and it was boring as shit. Then the kid bit me.”

“Oh.” Well, my nephew is not like that, she wanted to say. He is the cutest child on the planet.

“But hey. Check this out. I made up a new rap. About you.”

So far, he hadn’t rapped about anything but her.

He began to nod his head. “She’s a killa writin’ a thrilla. Typin’ so fast. She gotta make it last. Right to the end. She makes a new trend. Nice girl hangin.’ Hangin’ in da hood. Takin’ her pimp ride does her some good.” He always became animated, throwing both arms to the side as he rhymed, moving his body with each beat. “That’s all I got right now. But I’ll get more for ya later.”

Her bug was far from pimp, and a lot closer to clunker, but nevertheless she loved his rap. “Thanks, Glorious D. That was the best I’ve heard yet.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. That was really great. I loved it.”

A boyish smile spread across his face. “Cool.”

As she drove to her sister’s place in Poway she sang Glorious D’s little tune. No one had ever made up songs or raps or even poems about her, and she really enjoyed it.

Her sister lived in a nice neighborhood in Poway, consisting primarily of families with friendly Labrador retrievers and swing sets in the backyard. Elise felt slightly nostalgic as she passed her high school and turned down her sister’s street.

When she pulled up to their home, she noticed Jeffrey riding his tricycle in circles in the driveway. He wore a helmet, and his chubby hands held on tight to the handlebars. Perhaps she was biased, but she really thought he was the cutest child she had ever seen. Blond ringlets and large blue eyes. His cheeks were a bit chubby, but it only added to his adorable features.

“Hi, Jeffrey,” she called as she closed her car door. Instead of jumping from his trike, calling out, “Aunt Lise,” and running to her open arms, he slammed on his brakes and turned his helmeted head in her direction. Lips pursed, he gave her one long stare before turning his back and pedaling away.

“I brought you something,” she cheerfully called after him. He sped up and pedaled toward his mother, who waved from the garage.

“He’s just being shy,” Melissa yelled. She held one hand over her stomach. Though she had just entered the second trimester of her pregnancy, she was already starting to show. Melissa was tiny like Elise. Her little legs looked like she was holding a large egg above them. She was dressed in light pink cropped pants and a matching maternity top with a collar and buttons down the front. Shortly after giving birth to Jeffrey, Melissa had hacked her long, layered hair and shaped it into something maternal. It was the kind of hairdo that screamed, I drive a minivan and fold laundry in front of Dr. Phil. Frankly, Elise thought she looked older, and she had always secretly wondered why having children made women feel like they needed to look as if they were constantly equipped with a Ziploc of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish and a packet of wipes. Did bringing a life into the world mean that you could no longer be cool? When she had kids, she was keeping her hair long and wearing faded Levi’s. She’d be the cool, hip mom, like Madonna or Kate Hudson.

Jeffrey stood with his hands on his hips, eyeing her as she approached. He was wearing orange and black velour shorts that looked about ten sizes too small for him, cowboy boots, and a T-shirt with the state of Colorado on the front. “Cool outfit,” Elise said.

“He’s really into dressing himself these days. There’s nothing I can do. And besides, I want him to make his own decisions.”

She gave Melissa what was supposed to be a hug but turned out to be a clasping of forearms because of her protruding belly. Then she knelt down in front of Jeffrey and handed him the coloring books and crayons she’d purchased for him.

“Hey, bud,” Elise said. “I brought you something.”

“Ohhh, wooow,” Melissa said in a baby voice. “Look at those. You’re going to have fun with Auntie Lise today, aren’t you?”

He looked up at his mother. “I wanna go with you.”

Melissa laughed. “No, sweetie, you’re going to stay here. With Aunt Lise.” Elise hadn’t expected him to love her right off the bat. They’d only met a handful of times in his short life. But she did want to click with him. She imagined by the end of the day he’d be begging his parents to have her back. They’d have so much fun together, he’d be asking about Aunt Lise nonstop for weeks to come.

“So, let me show you where everything is.” Melissa picked the child up, and Elise followed them inside. “Things should be easy,” she explained. “I’ll show you where all the diapers are, and what toys he likes to play with. We have movies, and he’ll probably take a two-hour nap around one.” Elise immediately heard the sound of a vacuum roaring when they entered the house. “Oh, and Lupe is here today cleaning. I’ll introduce you to her.”

She was sort of annoyed to learn that Lupe was there. She wanted the house to herself, the freedom to see what kind of food they had in their kitchen cabinets without Lupe watching her.

Every time Elise visited her sister she longed to have her own spacious home with new Pergo floors and throw pillows that matched. Her sister’s house felt like a home, a place where people felt secure in their lives and didn’t worry where the hell they would be five months from now. It was a place where you could curl up with a blanket in front of the fireplace during the winter or suck on a Popsicle while resting your feet on an ottoman in the summer. She hated to torment herself with daydreams, but she couldn’t resist wondering if she would ever have a place like this. At this point, she’d take the house without the husband and kid. She just wanted some sense of stability.

“All right. Well, I’m going to head to South Coast Plaza for the afternoon, so I’ll see you in about seven hours.”

“Seven hours?” Elise said, startled. “I mean, seven hours. That’s fine. I just didn’t realize you were driving so far.” South Coast Plaza was over an hour away.

“Well, I need to do some shopping, and you know . . . it is the best mall around.” They followed her to her minivan. “We’ll have to catch up on everything when I get back. I still haven’t heard about your new place.”

They waved to Melissa until she was out of the driveway.

“Well,” Elise said as soon as the garage door had closed behind them. “Would you like to color? Or maybe you could show me some toys that you like? Why don’t we take your helmet off?”

He released a whiny grunt when Elise reached for his helmet. “Leave on!” he screamed before kicking her in the shin and running inside.

“Okay, fine.”

She followed him to his bedroom and found the cleaning lady in there, vacuuming. Her shoulder-length curly hair and high bangs were crunchy with gel. The bottom half of her body appeared long and skinny in her stretchy jeans, but she was clearly an apple in terms of shape. Her tummy stuck out like a pouch, and she had huge boobs and soft, round cheeks. Gold rings decorated every single finger except her thumb, and she wore a gold chain with a charm reading “Ramon” hanging from it. She stepped on a pedal sticking from the vaccum cleaner with her L.A. Gear high-tops, and the room became silent. “Hola,” she said in a heavy Spanish accent. “What your name?”

“Elise. And you?”

“Eleeze. I’m Lupe. You speak Spanish?”

“No. I actually took French in high school.”

She laughed. “Why you take French when Mexico so close?”

“I don’t know. It was a stupid mistake. I guess I wanted to be sophisticated and thought that speaking French was going to do that for me.”

She threw her head back and laughed as she fluffed a pillow. She noticed Jeffrey standing with his arms folded over his chest and an evil stare fixed in his eyes. Why he had taken such an instant animosity to Aunt Lise she had no idea.

“Qué pasa, Heffrey? Why you stand in the corner for Mrs. Eleeze?”

Elise took a step toward her nephew and smiled. “Heff—I mean Jeffrey. Why don’t you show me your favorite toy?”

With that suggestion, he began to scamper away. For a moment Elise thought she had sparked something fun. He was running for his toy, and they would play and be great pals before Melissa returned from shopping. However, he didn’t stop at his closet or toy chest but rather sped toward the bedroom door. Elise chased after him, but he was too fast and slammed the door behind him, barely missing her fingers. Though his actions were very abrupt, it seemed like slow motion as Elise listened to the sound of a dead bolt sliding in the doorframe and clicking shut. He had locked them in. She turned the door handle, hoping for a miracle, and it didn’t budge. “Jeffrey,” she said gaily, as if nothing were wrong. “Open the door, you silly goose.”

“No,” he squeaked. “You locked.”

“Please, Jeffrey. I want to show you a magic trick.” She didn’t know any magic, but he wouldn’t find that out until after he opened the door.

Lupe moved toward the door. “Heffrey! Why you do this to Mrs. Eleeze, Heffrey? Open the door, Heffrey. Now, you Heffrey. Open that door.”

Elise listened to the little pitter-patter of tiny feet trailing down the hall until his footsteps became so distant she could no longer hear him. Naturally, visions of her nephew playing with matches while holding a steak knife between his teeth popped into her head. However, there was no time to panic. She needed to get out of there. She was actually more irritated with Melissa and Brice. One, they had let him turn out this way. And two, who in the hell put locks on their toddler’s bedroom door?

“This eese bad,” Lupe muttered.

“No shit. Do you have a cell phone?” No sooner had Elise asked the question did she hear the sound of the “Mexican Hat Dance” from behind the closed door. Lupe did have a cell phone. One with a very lively ring, actually. And it was in the other room. Elise could see her own cell phone sitting on the dashboard of her car, useless in a time of need.

“Eye yi yi,” Lupe breathed. “We have to break window. They have pool in backyard. What if he jump in pool?”

This was only getting worse. “Let’s see if we can pop the screen.” It was the only alternative, and luckily they were on the first floor of the house. She just prayed there was a way back into the house from the outside. She watched as Lupe pried the screen off with her long acrylic nails that were painted fuchsia with tiny little blue flowers airbrushed on the tips. After popping the screen, Elise looked down. Even though they were on the first floor, the window wasn’t exactly close to the ground. It was going to be a jump. She slid through the open frame and felt her knees jolt as she landed on her feet. She ran to the front door. Relief washed through her veins when the handle turned.

“Jeffrey,” she called. “Where are you?” She heard something and stopped to listen so she could pinpoint exactly where it was coming from. She listened to a succession of quick scratching sounds and suddenly imagined Jeffrey jumping on the bed while sharpening a steak knife. She followed the noise upstairs and found her nephew. The crayons that she had brought over were scattered around his cowboy boots. He didn’t bother to look up at her as he scribbled all over his parents’ bedroom door with a brown crayon. “Jeffrey, holy—” She stopped herself. “What are you doing?”

As she pried the crayon from his sticky hand, she wondered why he had picked brown. There was lavender and red in there. She was wondering how she was going to explain this to her sister when the “Mexican Hat Dance” came to life again.

“All right. Come here,” she said as she stuffed him under her arm like a pillow and shuffled downstairs to free Lupe. “Want to go to zoo!” he yelled.

She held on to him while she unlocked the bedroom door and released Lupe. “Heffrey, qué pasa? You be bad boy today.”

Instead of admitting his faults, he ignored Lupe, turned to Elise, and began to whine “peener” over and over again.

“I’m sorry I don’t know what peener is,” she said, starting to feel helpless. “Do you have to go to the bathroom?”

“No! Peener! Peener. Peener now!” He slammed a cowboy boot against the tile.

She looked at Lupe. “No ask me.” Lupe shook her head before reaching for some furniture polish.

“Can you point to what peener is?” Elise asked him. “Why don’t you show me?”

“Peeeeeener!”

“Is it a toy?” She picked up a stuffed dinosaur and held it out.

He pushed the toy away before stomping his left boot. “Peeeeeenerrrrr!”

She started to feel like a terrible aunt who was not privvy to the language of Jeffrey. “Is it food?”

“Want peener!”

“All right. I’m calling your mother.” Melissa didn’t answer the phone, and Elise wondered if she had secretly packed a suitcase before leaving.

She tried her own mother. Grandma knew the meaning and origin of every word in the language of Jeffrey. Grandma wasn’t home either, so she tried Stan. He’d spent more time with him than Elise had.

“Yeah,” he answered after the first ring.

“What is peener?”

“Huh?”

“I’m baby-sitting Jeffrey, and he’s stomping his feet and demanding peener. Help me.”

“Oh. Peener. It’s a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Where have you been?”

“Sorry, I had no idea.”

“Here. Put him on. I want to say hi.”

“Jeffrey,” she said sweetly. “Guess what? I figured out what peener is, and Uncle Stan wants to talk to you.” She expected him to kick the phone from her hand, but instead his eyes lit up as he greedily snatched the receiver. A pang of jealousy nipped her when Jeffrey giggled into the receiver and even said “I love you” to Uncle Tan. When he was finished talking, he kicked Elise in the shin before dropping the cordless on the floor and demanding “pru.” What the hell was pru? She wondered while touching her throbbing leg. At least she’d figured out peener. Maybe that would distract him. She quickly made peener, cut it into four cute squares, and delivered it to him on a plastic plate with Pinocchio on it.

She expected delight from him and was surprised when he shoved the plate away and began to cry. “Jeffrey,” she said quietly. “Please stop crying.” She tried to pick him up, but he only screamed louder and began to flail his arms and legs.

What the hell had she done? She would’ve paid money to know. “Jeffrey, please tell me what’s wrong.”

“Go away!” he screamed through his tears.

When the phone rang she prayed it was her mother, offering to come baby-sit, or Melissa telling her that she’d changed her mind and was headed home. It was for Lupe.

“Lupe, the phone is for you.”

She explained that her cell phone was getting bad reception before speaking in rapid Spanish to the caller.

Jeffrey was still wailing when the sound of cleated feet came in from the foyer. Who could be wearing cleats through her sister’s house? Did Lupe invite a friend over? No. It was Melissa’s husband, Brice. “Hey,” he said in his golf shoes. “I just came home to get my golf clubs out of the garage, and I heard Jeffrey crying. What’s wrong with him?” He picked up his son and looked to Elise for an explanation.

“I have no idea what is wrong. He asked for peener. I gave him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and now he’s upset. I don’t know.”

Jeffrey’s face looked like a prune with teeth, and by the way he was crying you would’ve thought that Elise had run his hand over with a tractor. Brice glanced at the sandwich. “Oh,” he said, as if the problem were so simple that only an idiot wouldn’t have figured it out by now. “He likes his sandwiches cut in triangles. That’s usually how Melissa does it.”

“Oh,” she said, wondering what other minor details were important to this young dictator.

“You can just throw that one out,” Brice said. “Start over.”

She started over, thinking optimistically about how nap time was just a half hour away. After Brice left for his golf game, Jeffrey pooped in his diaper, then refused to have it changed. He hid under the pool table for twenty minutes and then tried to persuade Elise to open one of Melissa’s gifts that had arrived early in the mail for her shower. Elise couldn’t help but wonder what had possessed them to bring another child into the world, and then felt bad. They were her family, and she had heard about the terrible twos. Perhaps her nephew was just going through a phase.

He finally fell asleep in front of Finding Nemo. She spent thirty minutes scrubbing the brown crayon off the bedroom door with one of Lupe’s sponges. Then she decided to go make her own sandwich. She found Lupe in the kitchen, scooping mint chocolate-chip ice cream into a bowl.

“So, you have boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Why not? You muy bonita. You need boyfriend.”

Elise looked at her necklace. “Is Ramon your boyfriend?”

“Husband. Where you live?”

“City Heights.”

“Díos mio. Why you live there?”

Even the cleaning lady lived in a better neighborhood. “It’s a long story. But I’m leaving soon.”

“Where you wanna live? I bet you wanna live in a neighborhood like these? Huh?” She smiled. “Me, too. I also want to drive four runner. Silver one.” Elise spent the next two hours listening to Lupe gossip about all the neighbors she worked for, including a very well-known newscaster who lived two doors down from Melissa and Brice. “She cheap. I ask for five dollar raise because she so picky, and you know what she tell me? No. She say I can’t have five dollar more, and you know what she want? She want me to scrub all her vases with a toothbrush. Don’t say nothing though,” she said as she helped herself to a beer.

Toward the end of the afternoon Elise was debating becoming the mysterious aunt who sent birthday cards stuffed with a twenty but never made too many appearances. The kid was a terror in miniature cowboy boots, and having quality time with him wasn’t worth getting kicked in the teeth.

With only an hour left of baby-sitting, he managed to hide the cordless phone. While she was scouring the kitchen for it, he came up to her and tapped her on the leg.

She looked down at his dimples and marveled at how cute yet bad he was. The thought of what he held behind his back terrified her. His little arms were locked behind his waist, and she immediately realized that he could be armed with a snail or a giant-sized booger that he was waiting to assault her with.

“What do you have there?” She took two steps back.

His grin became even bigger. She debated calling in Lupe for backup. “Jeffrey, what is behind your back?”

Slowly, he revealed his hands. He held a tiny gold frame that he had clearly taken from some mantel in the house when she had been searching for the phone. She looked closely at the picture and thought she might actually have to fight back a tear. Inside the frame was a little photo of Elise holding an infant Jeffrey at his first Christmas. “I love you, Aunt Lise,” he said as he lifted his arms toward her. She wanted to melt.

As she picked him up, the phone rang. She followed the sound to the freezer, then found the phone hidden inside a package of waffles. It was Melissa, calling to say she’d be home in an hour.

“How is everything going?”

Jeffrey rested his head on her shoulder.

“Fine. Everything is fine.”

As she drove to her apartment she could hear the leftover pizza in her fridge calling her name. She’d ordered it the night before, and there were three slices of mushroom and pepperoni left, and she planned on eating each one. After eating, she’d take a long, hot bath, curl up on the couch, and watch Trading Spaces.

Glorious D wasn’t around, and she wondered if perhaps he had gotten a record deal. Light glared from their windows, and she felt a flicker of irritation as she approached the front door. She knew she wasn’t perfect, but the house was lit up like the president of the electricity company’s wet dream, and no one was home.

What she faced when she opened the front door was so surprising that a little wasted energy instantly became the least of her concerns. Behind a cloud of cigarette smoke sat a man. Frozen, she stood in the doorframe. Had she entered the wrong apartment? Quickly, her eyes darted over the room. Those were her shoes sitting next to the front door. She felt a physical urge to run screaming for her life. Who was this lanky stranger sprawled out on their couch, feet resting on the coffee table? His toenails were long. Good God, he had Bella.

“Hey. How’s it goin’?” Suddenly, it occurred to her. It was Chee Chee Cheechers. She’d been passing dozens of pictures of him for three weeks and wondered how his face had managed to escape her subconscious. His mug shot should’ve been permanently etched in her memory by now. However, he was much skinnier than the photos, and his hair was longer. He still styled the early seventies ’do, but it was less Rod Stewart and a little more Carol Brady. He looked as if he hadn’t shaved in days.

“You must be Elise!” He stood, and she was surprised by how tall he was. “I’m Justine’s boyfriend, Jimmy!” He grabbed her hand, gripped it hard, and shook it like a drumstick. The rumors really were true. Musicians, no matter how weird or unattractive they were, could get gorgeous girls. This wasn’t how she had pictured the love of Justine’s life.

“Uh, yeah. Yes. I just didn’t recognize you from the pictures. But now I do. Uh-huh.” She tried not to sound flustered. But she never expected to find this pale rock-star version of Ichabod Crane sitting on their couch.

“You look different from your pictures, too.” This was disturbing for two reasons. One, after seven hours of baby-sitting Rosemary’s Baby, she looked like hell. Two, the only pictures of Elise were in her room, which meant that he must’ve ventured in there.

“I’ve heard so much about you,” he said. “Justine loves you. I gotta tell ya, her last roommate was a real bitch.”

“I’ve heard so much about you, too,” she said, wondering how he had gotten in. “I thought you were in L.A., recording your album.”

“Oh yeah, man. I was. Thank God it’s over now.” He shook his head and released a chuckle. “We finished up early. It was getting old, and we were getting sick of each other, so we decided to cram and just power it. I decided to surprise Justine.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Man, I couldn’t wait to get out of there.” He motioned to the couch. “Hey, have a seat. Grab a beer.”

“Thanks. But I’m actually really hungry. I think I’m going to grab something to eat.” Still flustered, she headed to the kitchen. “Where’s Justine?” she asked over her shoulder.

“At work. She’ll be home around midnight. She has to close, and there is an acoustic guitar show at the coffee shop tonight. She wants me to go, but I’m just too tired.”

Her eyes darted over the shelves in the fridge as she searched for her pizza. She moved a milk carton and peeked behind a loaf of bread, but her search for the pizza turned up nothing.

She found her empty pizza box sitting on the countertop next to the trash can. A greasy paper towel rested nearby with a shriveled piece of half-eaten crust on top. Justine and her guests were welcome to Elise’s food. She wasn’t Scrooge. However, she did mind if they ate the last piece of her pizza.

She was imagining what Jimmy would look like with an empty cardboard pizza box smashed over his head when she heard the sound of a beer cracking open.

“Sure you don’t want a beer?” he called.

At this point, she could really use one. “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

He reached into the twelve-pack, which rested by his feet. “Here. Catch.” As fluid as an Olympic disc thrower, he tossed the beer in her direction. Instead of landing in her hands, the silver bullet soared past her and into a framed photo of Justine and Jimmy. The picture shot off the wall like a Frisbee, nearly swiping Elise’s cheek. The beer whizzed into the wall like a cannonball, ripping through the plaster and creating a hole as ugly and large as a rotten cantaloupe.

“Shit!” Jimmy yelled as the frame crashed next to Elise’s feet, spraying bits of glass over the carpet. He leapt over the back of the couch. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine. It didn’t hit me,” she said, touching her face. She glanced at the wall. “Good God,” she breathed. “How are we going to fix that?”

Drywall and plaster drifted from the hollow like snowflakes. She peeked inside the cavity and could see the Coors Light can resting in a little grave between a pink cushion of insulation and chapped drywall on the floor. A layer of cold moisture glistened off its rim.

“Look at the size of that hole!” Jimmy exclaimed. “Justine is gonna wig.”

Their landlord’s reaction had actually been the one she feared most. Common sense told her that having a hole in the wall was one of the worst things imaginable in the world of deposit refunds. In fact, it was probably a close second to spilling red nail polish on the carpet. “I have no idea how to fix something like that.”

“Oh. It’s just drywall. It can’t be that hard. Maybe we can just put the frame back over it for now, and no one will notice.”

“I don’t think we should do that,” Elise said. “The weight from the frame could create an even larger hole.”

They both glanced at the frame on the floor. It was in a million pieces, and their sappy smiles were forever embossed with a ring from where the beer can had struck. “Damn. That was a cool picture,” Jimmy said, surveying their now alienlike facial expressions.

She felt like mentioning that Justine probably had several other copies of the same print stashed away somewhere, but kept that to herself.

She looked at his bare feet next to the glass. “Let me grab the vacuum.” As she headed to the laundry room, she prayed he knew a good handyman. She could only imagine how much their landlord would deduct from the deposit.

“Dammit,” he muttered. “I thought my aim was perfect. I can’t believe the size of that hole.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, man.”

“Let me see that,” he said, taking the vacuum from her hands. “I’ll clean it up.”

That was good, because she was still starving. She needed to eat something so she could rationally figure out how they were going to repair the giant trench that now occupied their wall.

When she opened the refrigerator, she couldn’t remember what she was looking for. Oh yes, food. Her mind was still reeling with shock from the way her day was turning out. First Jeffrey. Now Jimmy. In addition to having horrible aim, he wasn’t supposed to be here. How had he gotten in? Justine must’ve been here when he arrived.

There were all kinds of pastas—macaroni, rigatoni, penne—but no sauce. She found cucumbers, broccoli, and carrots. However, her search turned up no lettuce. What was a salad without lettuce? Peanut butter with no bread. Tuna with no mayo. Her quest for food was worse than searching for a new roommate, and eventually she decided to invent some kind of pasta-vegetable concoction with a butter-garlic sauce. It took her a an hour to make, and she ended up overdoing it with the garlic. She ate her mediocre meal at the counter while Jimmy watched Jackass on MTV.

She wondered how long he planned to watch television. She wasn’t in the mood to watch a group of deranged skaters crash golf carts and sample delicacies like goldfish all night.

The phone rang, and she snatched it up. Carly. “Hey. I just wanted to call for your advice. I’m going out with Marcus tonight. Should I wear my black sweater with the bell sleeves, or the red angora V-neck?”

“Have you talked to him yet?”

“No. I can’t get the nerve. But maybe tonight.”

Elise had kept up with her end of the deal. “You said you were going to talk to him before our double date tomorrow.”

“I am, but you know how it is. I haven’t found the right opportunity. It’s not like I can just bring it up at the copy machine in the office. So which sweater?”

“The red angora.”

Jimmy tossed his head back and howled with laughter at something he’d seen on television.

“Who’s there?” Carly asked. “I hear a man in the background. Is it the guy with the tattoos? Is he there?!”

She slipped into her room and closed the door behind her. “No. It’s Jimmy. Justine’s boyfriend.” She explained how she had come home to find him on their couch.

“Where the hell is Justine?”

“Work. She won’t be home until midnight.”

“She just left him there for you to find?”

“Apparently.”

“That is so wrong.” Carly’s voice burned. “You don’t just leave your boyfriend with your roommate and let him do whatever the hell he wants in the apartment. You need to get out of that place. But listen, Marcus is going to be here in two minutes. I gotta run. I can’t wait till tomorrow night! We’ll talk more about it tomorrow.”

After she said good-bye to Carly, she took the phone back in the kitchen.

“Oh hey,” Jimmy said. “I almost forgot. Your mom called. And uh . . .” He thought for a moment. “Carol called, too.”

Carol? Who the hell was Carol? She racked her brain, trying to remember anyone named Carol. Then it occurred to her. “You mean Cheryl? Cheryl Adams?”

“Oh yeah. Cheryl Adams. That’s right.”

He’d talked to Cheryl? Cheryl Adams was her agent. She was business, and one of the main people responsible for making sure she had food on her table. She was about to ask if there was a message from her when the phone rang again. This time it was her mother.

“What’s going on over there?” she asked, worried. “Who answered the phone when I called?”

She returned to her room. “It’s Justine’s boyfriend.”

“He answers your phone?”

“I guess so.” Elise gave her mother the same information she’d relayed to Carly.

“Is he on drugs?”

“Not that I know of.”

“How long is he staying there?”

An excellent question. “I don’t know. I think he has a place of his own somewhere in San Diego. I’m sure he’s just visiting.”

“Well, listen. Your father is bringing you a new can of pepper spray this weekend. Okay?”

After saying good-bye, she flopped face-forward onto her bed. What next? She wondered. A Tyrannosaurus rex could come tearing through her front window, and she wouldn’t be surprised at this point. She allowed herself five minutes to wallow in a miserable yet totally inviting pit of frustration and self-pity over her move to San Diego. For a moment she lounged in a place where she felt completely sorry for herself and wondered why she ever left Tucson. When her five minutes had expired, she told herself the following:

You can move.

At least Justine is clean.

Best of all, there is a double date to look forward to.

And there is Max.

There is hope.

She scanned the local stations in her room, and she found nothing of interest on TV. She decided to take a bath, knowing she was probably missing a good episode of Trading Spaces, but not having the nerve to ask Jimmy to change the channel. While she soaked, she could hear Jimmy’s laughter burning through her bedroom walls.