Roommates

A week went by, and he didn’t call. She called him endlessly, apologizing, but he didn’t pick up or return her phone calls. She grew more miserable with each passing day and eventually quit hounding him. Stan and Carly had both called her relentlessly. They’d even tried to stop by a couple times, but she had made Megan and Iris lie and say she was walking Bella.

She had no desire to speak with Carly or Stan or even her agent, for that matter. Even if her agent called with a million-dollar film deal, her heart would still be broken. Iris and Megan played the Ryan Adams Heartbreaker CD when they had friends over one night, and she had to leave to take Bella for a walk. She ended up sitting on the boardwalk with her dog, watching the sunset and thinking of the last time she had woken up next to Max, the way his chin was dark with whiskers from not shaving. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to look at another guitar or even listen to the mention of horse races without feeling pain in her chest.

It was clear—he was over her. Who could blame him? She tried to put herself in his shoes and had realized that she would probably be just as hurt and angry. He’d been around the world and back, and he didn’t need this kind of crap in his life. At times she wanted to excommunicate her brother for the rest of her life for dragging Max into their argument. But it was her own stupid fault. If she hadn’t cared so much about what her parents thought, she wouldn’t be in this situation.

She only had a few weeks with Iris and Megan, and then she had to start looking for a roommate, depressed or not. She scoured the ads, called people, and typically reached the same frustrating conclusion she had come to every time she had searched for a roommate. She finally saw one ad that surprisingly took pets and had affordable rent in a desirable location.

Beachfront Property in upper Pacific Beach. Looking for a female roommate. 2 huge rooms, each with own bath. Two parking spaces and plenty of storage space. Pets ok.

When she’d talked to Delores on the phone she seemed to have a good sense of humor, which was good, because Elise hadn’t seen humor in anything ever since Max had written her out of his life. They scheduled a meeting for the following day.

She followed Delores’s directions the next day, and was torn between sadness and joy to see that Carly just lived a few blocks over. Seeing Carly’s neighborhood made her miss her best friend.

She pulled up to a little house with white stucco walls and a red roof. The lawn was overgrown by several inches, and a small pile of cat litter stood in the middle of the driveway. So it needed a little TLC, but it was better than any other living situation she’d had since she’d returned to San Diego.

She kept an open mind as she walked up the driveway. A few weeds brushed over her calves as she continued down a path to the front door.

She searched for a doorbell and found an older model one. The tip of it was stuck at an awkward angle inside a little hole, as if the last person to ring it had pressed too hard. She tried dislodging it with her finger but frustratingly came within a hair of touching it. She knocked. No response. She banged and felt the side of her hand sting the harder she pounded. Still, no response.

She rummaged through her purse for something small to stick in the hole—the tip of a pen, perhaps tweezers. Just a week ago she’d seen both of these items in her bag, but now they were gone. She decided to try to squeeze her car key into the doorbell hole. But instead of producing a ring, small shards of glass shattered from the cavity. She hadn’t realized the doorbell was made of glass. She stared at the opening of the hole, trying to figure out ways she could fix it so Delores wouldn’t notice. How was she going to explain this? She hadn’t even met Delores Ditson and had already broken something.

It occurred to her that doorbells had live electricity running through them. If she stuck her pinky too far in there, she could shock the hell out of herself and die on the doorstep before she even saw the inside of the house. Then she’d never be able to live in Pacific Beach.

She debated turning around, running to her car, and forgetting that she’d ever come across Delores’s listing. But then she remembered her only other option at the moment was staying with her parents, which could land her a permanent residence at a mental institution. She felt the cool caress of an ocean breeze and the sound of seagulls cawing overhead, and she decided explaining the doorbell would be worth it. She could always just say it was already broken when she got here, act as if she were doing Delores a favor by informing her.

She was about to yell for Delores when what sounded like a tank approached the driveway. Covering her ears, she spun around. Over the weeds she saw a black truck that looked as if it had driven directly from a monster truck rally. Each wheel alone was bigger than Elise’s Volkswagen. The frame of the truck rested atop the massive tires like a little matchbox car. She imagined it in a monster truck rally commercial, tossing up mud and squashing Cadillacs like they were ants.

She waited for a guy with a mullet and a muscle shirt to pop out. Instead, a petite, muscular brunette with hair curlier than Little Orphan Annie jumped from the driver’s seat. She wore a miniskirt with a button-down pinstriped top and platform shoes with the thickest square heels Elise had ever seen. Even in her five-inch block shoes Elise was still taller.

“Right on. I’m Delores. Sorry I’m late. I’m selling Kirby vacuum cleaners, door to door. I just got the job, and man, does it suck! But you’ll never believe what just happened to me. Come check this out.”

“Just now when I was on the freeway, this dry cleaning delivery van was passing me, and somethin’ must’ve been loose on his trailer because a small part of his bumper flew off and hit my truck.” Strangely, she sounded very excited when she explained this to Elise. “Look. Right here.” She was smiling as she pointed out the tiniest, faintest dent in the history of automobile collisions. It was smaller than a door ding, and Elise had to squint to see it.

Elise shook her head. She wasn’t kidding. However, she was visibly aware of the gigantic lettering on the back window on the extra cab on her truck. “Move Over, Princess. The Queen Has Arrived.” was airbrushed on the glass. Not even a bumper sticker. Airbrushed. Each letter was painted in a sunset of pink, beginning from the top in hot pink and fading to light pink toward the bottom.

“Anyway,” Delores said. “I wrote down the number of the dry cleaners, called them right away on my cell phone, and told them I’d been hit by something off their tailgate. They told me to get an estimate and they’d cover it.” She grinned again. “And guess what?”

“My boyfriend happens to work at an auto body repair shop, so we’re going to estimate the damage to be worth about three grand.” She shrugged. “Value Dry Cleaners will never check.”

She looked at Elise’s clothing. “But I guess you wouldn’t know what that means.” Elise ignored her remark and reasoned that the poor girl’s mother had never taught her any manners.

Up until this moment, Elise had always thought her home décor looked as if it was the epitome of hand-me-downs. However, looking at Delores’s living room made her feel as if her stuff was actually kind of nice. Delores’s furnishings looked like an organized garage sale. Beat-up corduroy couches with thick, seventies-style oak frames. A fake wood entertainment center that would’ve been fantastic in 1981, and a papasan chair that appeared dangerous sat on a stretch of dirty cream-colored shag carpet.

“Damn. I need a roommate who has a rug. When my old dog lost control of his bladder he pissed all over the place. We need a rug to cover that shit up.” She pointed to a stain the size of a twin mattress.

It wasn’t the furniture that bothered Elise. Over time, she knew they could buy better stuff. And things could always be spruced up with cute throw pillows and some sheets. It was more the choice of décor that Delores had hung on the walls that made her have doubts. A mirror with a Bud Light logo hung over an old Pac Man machine. A massive photo of dirt bikes flying over sand dunes occupied one wall, and an orangey-brown wall hanging made of carpet and featuring a shit-colored sunset over a barfy orange-looking beach was displayed near the entertainment center. What could she say? Get rid of all your art. I wanna hang something better up?

And something smelled. Ripe. A pungent, sour odor. She looked around for trash, but despite Delores’s hideous style, the house was actually clean. Tidy, but outdated.

Elise realized she wasn’t trying to be rude. She was just a complete idiot. In a strange way, Elise was really enjoying the whole encounter. Talking to this scam-pulling little case study was the most interesting thing she had seen in days, and it was taking her mind off all her problems.

The kitchen was just as retro, with linoleum floors and Formica countertops. There was another wall hanging made of carpet and featuring a fruit basket with purple bananas and a variety of other things that resembled fruit but looked more like a science project gone bad. “Do you want an RC cola?” she asked, as she pulled one from the fridge.

Upon entering the bathroom Elise reached for her cell phone. They needed to call the police. The place had been ransacked, literally turned upside down while Delores had been out selling vacuums. The medicine cabinet was open, and all its contents were scattered around the floor and over the countertop. A bottle of Tylenol floated in the toilet. Towels were ripped from the racks and strewn around the room like lifeless rags.

“Uh . . . what hap—” Elise was in midsentence when she felt the tickling sensation of something brushing against the back of her calves. “What the . . .” she turned around and looked into the eyes of something wild. The creature, resembling a raccoon, gazed up at her as if it were checking her out—as if Elise was the foreigner. It had long, menacing teeth and a snout that looked as if it could pick ants out of a crack in the tile.

“Oh Ariel! You’ve scared Elise. And you’ve made a mess again.” The animal jumped on Delores’s shoulder. It was twice the size of Bella, and she wondered how on earth it managed to balance itself on Delores’s small frame.

“She’s my coatimundi. She usually doesn’t make messes like this, but sometimes she manages to escape her cage. Don’t you?” she said rubbing Ariel’s ears. “She can be a little monster sometimes.”

The stench had followed them to the bathroom, and Elise suddenly felt a need to get the hell out of there. However, she had dropped her purse when Ariel had snuck up on her, and some of her stuff had fallen out. She reached down to grab her stuff, and the odor became stronger. It suddenly occurred to her: It was Delores’s feet.

Within five minutes she had politely said good-bye and explained that she had several other roommates to interview before she could commit to anything, and not to count on her. As she drove home she wished more than ever that she did have other roommates lined up for interviews.