Autumn in the City of Angels (7 page)

I asked my dad later what he put in his dad’s pocket.  “A letter,” he said.  “Telling him what a good dad he was, and that I’d always try to be as good to you as he was to me.”  My dad wasn’t crying or even tearing up when he told me this, so I also tried not to cry.

“You all right?” Ben’s voice tore me from the memory.  I nodded and drifted into the living room.  I found a shelf of DVDs and only half-heartedly looked through the titles.  I traced my fingertip against the cases and pulled one out, pretending to look at the front.  I guess I didn’t want Ben to realize how much the idea of dead bodies scared me.  The only thing he knew about me was that I’d survived by myself for the past two and a half months.  I liked the idea of looking tough in someone else’s eyes.

Of course, I wasn’t tough.  I was anything but.  “It’s all in the eyes,” I heard my mother saying to me, “you may not be able to control your true emotions boiling inside you, but you
can
control your body, and your eyes are the key.  Control your eyes, and you’ll fool everyone.”

A voice at my side made me jump.  It was Ben.  I gritted my teeth.  So much for being tough.

“Sorry.  I didn’t mean to scare you.”  He apologized.  “I just was asking if you needed anything you’d like to look for.”

“Um... just food, right now.  I’m running pretty low.  Water, too.”

“You can look through what Rissi and I have and take what you need.  And hey, we’re neighbors, so you know, maybe we can be friends or something.”  Ben gave a lopsided half smile, and he adjusted his glasses.

I chucked and said, “Of course.”

“That’s a great movie,” he said, indicated the DVD I held.

I looked down at it and realized I was holding
A New Hope
, the very first
Star Wars
movie.  I must have picked it up unconsciously.  I grinned and said, “I grew up watching these with my dad.”

He laughed and said, “Me too.  Empire’s my favorite.  Irving Kershner was a genius.”

“Totally!” I exclaimed and laughed.  “Maybe we could have a
Star Wars
marathon one night.”

“That would be awesome,” he agreed and tapped the case in my hands.  “You should take it.”

I smiled at him, and he strode back into the hallway, calling Rissi’s name.  I stared down at the DVD then slid it back onto the shelf.  It felt wrong taking something that wasn’t essential for me to live another day.  This movie had been purchased by someone who might still be in this apartment, concealed behind one of the closed doors Rissi knew not to open.

Over the next several months we became a team.  I worked with Ben and Rissi to find supplies and organize us so life resembled something relatively ordinary.  We entertained each other and tried to forget the violence we saw happening in the streets below.

I asked Ben and Rissi to move in with me only one week after meeting the siblings, when Rissi showed me the hiding place in her apartment for when the “bad people came.”  It was another grate in the wall, just like one in the office.

“When the bad people come?”  I’d asked Ben while we were busy sorting through bottles of cough syrup and other medications we’d accumulated.

He looked up at me with his eyebrows raised.  “This is a huge building, Autumn.  Over three hundred units. That’s a big draw, aside from the fact this place was pretty expensive.  Karl’s raiders have stuck to the first five floors or so, but they’ve wandered up higher before.  That’s why Rissi has her hiding spots.”

I immediately saw how safe and separated I was.  How much extra space I had.  How well it would work to have us all in one, big, safe spot.

They moved in that very day.  Ben’s face turned cherry red behind his glasses when I suggested it.  But his embarrassment disappeared when Rissi exploded into exclamations about a never-ending slumber party.

I decided to let Rissi have my room.  I knew she’d like the brightly striped comforter and yellow bean bag chair. I even found some of my childhood toys and put them on shelves around the room.  I moved my clothes, books, journals and music into my parent’s room, where I would sleep from now on.

I took a deep breath as I turned to look at my old bedroom once more before Ben and Rissi arrived with their things.  I crossed the room and plucked a frame off my windowsill.  It contained a picture of me when I was ten, sandwiched between my parents on a ride at the small amusement park at the end of the Santa Monica Pier.  I was sticking my tongue out at the camera, and my parents were kissing above me.  My dad was clad in his standard green college sweatshirt and jeans, and my mother’s vibrant red curly hair was blowing in the sea breeze.  I felt the familiar ache in my stomach as I looked at my parents’ faces.  The flush on my mother’s cheeks.  How my dad’s large hand rested on my shoulder, even as he kissed my mother.

I touched the glass where his hand touched my shoulder and allowed myself five seconds of self-pity, and then I raised my head and closed the door to my old bedroom.

Ben moved into my dad’s office, where there was a pullout couch.  I cleared off the desk for him to use, not looking at the papers and blueprints I tucked away in boxes.  I actually felt a bit better after the desk was clean, and I’d moved a few more framed pictures of my family to my new bedroom.

Ben and Rissi both seemed very impressed with the apartment, especially the rooftop terrace.  “You can see practically the whole city from up here!”  Ben exclaimed when he saw it and immediately climbed onto the orange cushioned ottoman, picked up my binoculars and pressed them against his glasses.  “Wow, this is great!”

I was pleased to have the company.

Together, we worked on our systems of bathing, washing clothes and dishes, gathering and organizing supplies, and cooking.  I became proficient in the kitchen after finding a gold mine of cookbooks on one of our scouts through the apartments below.  Baking and cooking with the barest of ingredients became a game to me, and items like bread and pasta appeared on the table again for meals.  Ben was incredibly smart and constantly rigging up new gadgets.  His latest was the shower.  He cut the bottom out of an empty Sparkletts’ jug and attached the nozzle from a watering can to the neck with duct tape.  He hung it upside down over the bathtub using a mesh bag we’d found full of soccer balls.  Aside from not being able to control the temperature, it was perfect.

I discovered Ben to be a bottomless source of information.  He was like a living, breathing Google search engine.  One evening, I turned on a lamp to read a book to Rissi and commented about how lucky we were to still have power from the Hoover Dam. To my surprise, Ben launched into a lecture on the reservoir and turbines and the dam’s history that would have rivaled any of my high school teachers’ lessons.  Rissi only rolled her eyes and began to read the book herself while I politely tried to pay attention to her brother.

On the nights I didn’t read with Rissi, we’d plan evenings of entertainment for one another.  It was nice having something to look forward to.  Ben and I took turns choosing movies we grew up with.  Rissi would dramatically roll her eyes when we began quoting our favorite scenes, which reminded me of my best friend Sarah, even down to her chestnut hair.

Once in a while, though, I caught Ben watching me.  I usually pretended not to notice and casually moved out of his line of sight.  It bothered me to think he might be developing feelings for me, and I felt guilty because I couldn’t return them.  Ben was a great guy, loyal, steady and intelligent... and I totally wasn’t attracted to him in any way.

It wasn’t long before I found myself picking up my iPod again to resume my project of listening to every album three times.  I gave it up the first few months Ben and Rissi were here, but with Ben’s extra attention lately, I found myself retreating to my room or the terrace more often to listen to music, getting lost in the melodies and pulsing percussion.  If I limited our idle time together, it might help dissolve his feelings.

In my moments of solitude, however, my own emotions got the better of me, and I daydreamed about the boy who saved me from The Front.  I had no idea what made me continue to have dreams about him.  His prolonged absence sat like a lump in my throat, and I wondered what kept him from coming for me.

I found comfort beside the lemon tree on the roof at night.  Something about the promise of blossoming citrus fruit soothed my frayed thoughts and seemed to help me regain focus.  I stared up at the deep black sky and picked out a single bright star to concentrate on.  I imagined a little planet orbiting it, and on that planet was another girl like me.  On her planet, there was no plague.  Her parents were asleep in the next room.  Tomorrow she would go to school and see her friends and teachers, turn in homework, come home and walk the dog.  I ached to believe there was still a place untouched by the Crimson Fever. It gave me hope to believe such a place existed.

One similar evening, four months after Ben and Rissi moved in, I was listening to my iPod in my room.  The weather had been insanely hot and dry, even for September, and the Santa Ana winds were merciless.  This year, it was as if they were trying to blow away what was left of the human race.  I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, Ben was shaking me awake.  I slipped off my headphones and looked at the clock.  A quarter after midnight.

“What’s wrong?”  I asked.

“Nothing.  Well, not right now anyway.  You should see this.”

Ben led the way up to the terrace, and I immediately smelled the smoke.  I cleared the top steps and paused, staring, my heart sinking.  Glowing patches of orange spread across the Santa Monica Mountains to the north.  The hills divided the Westside from the San Fernando Valley.  The Hollywood Hills to the northeast, peppered with their extravagant homes and tangled roads, were awash with flames as well, the smoke blotting out the sky.

I covered my mouth and nose with my hands, trying to get a clean, deep breath.  Even though the fires were still about ten miles away, the wind was blowing toward us, causing the ash to drift down on the terrace.  A sudden hot gust of wind drove the ash into a drift against the glass wall.

The giant plumes of smoke hid the few stars that had begun to be visible as the city fell into disrepair and lights burned out.  There used to be far too many lights in Los Angeles to make out any stars at all.  In fact, the sky never got completely black; it only darkened to a light shade of lavender.  Now the stars were gone again.

“It’s like snow in your hair,” Ben said, as he pulled a lock of hair over my shoulder.  I was too mesmerized by the distant fires to respond.  I stepped away from him and toward the north-facing balcony.

“How did there get to be so many so fast?” I wondered aloud.  Then it occurred to me, “I guess there’s no one left to control any of the wildfires anymore.  I suppose this whole area used to be desert.  It’s like the earth is reclaiming Los Angeles.”

Ben came closer to me and rested a hand on my shoulder.  “We’ll be all right.  There’s too much cement between us and the base of those mountains.  Nothing for the flames to feed on.  They won’t come this far south.”

I sighed and looked sadly across the city, paralyzed by its emptiness and powerless to stop the greedy flames burning through its heart.  “I supposed mudslides will be next.  And they’ll be bad too.”  Mudslides were just another of the seasons in Los Angeles.  During the fall, wildfires burned away vegetation that clung to hillsides, leaving them bare.  When the rainy season started after the New Year, there was nothing to hold the earth together, so great slabs of mud broke away and slid down the hills like brown, slimy avalanches, crashing through houses and burying roads.

“Don’t be afraid,” Ben said quietly, and his hand closed around mine.  But instead of comfort, I felt anger.  Probably because I’d been silently letting fear settle in my chest.  I thought I was doing a good job hiding it, but he’d just called my bluff.

“I’m not afraid!”  I shot at him. I couldn’t think of anything to follow that, so I pulled my hand out of his and started across the terrace to go back downstairs and inside.

Before I reached the door, I heard his steps behind me.  He grabbed my arm and spun me around.  One of his arms snaked around my waist and pulled me against him.  I gasped and pushed my hands against his chest, but he held me too tightly, and his face loomed in front of me.  His dark eyebrows furrowed behind his glasses, and he looked as if he were trying to see into me.

“Don’t be so difficult.  I’m just trying to help.”  He paused.  “I guess... I just want to... to comfort you.  Why won’t you let me?”  His face inched closer.  His fingertips touched my cheek.  I didn’t move, unsure and feeling panicked.  My heart thumped painfully in my chest.

When his lips touched mine, something rebelled inside me, and I suddenly hated that he wasn’t the boy from the alley.  Where was he?  Why hadn’t he come for me?  Why wasn’t he the boy giving me my first kiss?  Anger coursed through my arms, and I pushed him away.

Surprised, he let go of me.  He looked different to me suddenly, younger than me, even though his birthday was a month before mine.  We stood three feet apart in our pajamas in the drifting ash and hot gusting wind, before I turned slowly and descended the stairs.

Once inside, I walked quickly to my bedroom and shut the door behind me.  I stood huddled against the door for a moment, a fist pressed hard against my mouth.  What had come over him?  Why did he kiss me?  What made him think he could do something like that?  He had ruined everything.  It would be awkward now.  There would be this silent grotesque elephant in the room with us when we tried to go about our days, clearing apartments and surviving.

My eyes stung with dryness, and my heart still beat too fast.  Adrenaline pumped through my veins.  I felt like running.  I heard a door click shut, and I quietly opened my door a crack.  Ben moved through the dark living room.  He paused in the weak moonlight coming through the window and pulled off his glasses, cleaning them on his shirt briefly before going into my dad’s office.  His door clicked shut and no light appeared on the floor under the crack.  I stared at the darkness for a moment before shutting my own door.

My fingernails dug into my palms as thoughts barreled through my head.  He better not be wallowing in self-pity.  How dare he wreck the simplicity of our three-member family?

The smoke clinging to my pajamas burned my nostrils, and I ripped them off suddenly, threw them into a corner, and stood there in my underwear and tank top, shaking.  I crossed the room to my mother’s stand-alone wardrobe.  I opened the door and let the smell of her wash over me.  I kept everything in here just as she’d left it and moved my own clothing into the walk-in closet.  I loved having this one unspoiled part of her left just for me.  I leaned forward, slipped my face in between the hanging silks and chiffons.  Her scent was warm and possessive.  If my idea of home had a smell, this would be it.

Home.  Mother.  Oh God, please.  My face crumpled, and my knees gave out.  I pitched forward into her hanging clothes, grabbing at her blouses and dresses, smelling of gardenias and dusk.  I fell to the closet floor, pulling some with me.  I toppled amongst her shoes; stinging eyes squeezed shut, mouth frozen open in a silent “O.”  They were out there somewhere, their lifeless bodies, still and cold, and they would never be coming home again.  I curled my legs inside the wardrobe and pulled the door closed, shutting myself away with her memory.