Carousel Court (10 page)

3. Week or 10 days, change locks, post on CL, put up signs with disposable cell #

Nick as landlord. He hasn't slept, and the headache he thought would fade with caffeine hasn't, and is, if anything, worse. Through the haze in his mind, a notion burns through: Maybe there is something approaching salvation to be found in all these dead houses.

11

T
he hose outside still works and Nick rinses himself off in the front yard. They all take turns. It's almost six. They've been here for eight hours. A silver lowrider filled with young men approaches, slows as it passes the house. Arik and Nick are shirtless, dripping, staring it down. Sean walks into the street like he's ready to start something. The car keeps moving. Nick feels a surge of adrenaline. The car is gone. Sean returns to the group, and whatever danger they may have been in seems to have passed, and despite Sean taking a piss on the lawn Nick realizes that he loves these guys, wants to hang out. He'll get Greg's cell. They can go out, watch the Pacquiao fight. Arik can bring Mallory and some of her friends.

Everyone wants to get home. Boss has cold Coronas for them. The stench from inside is stuck to the lining of Nick's nostrils, reaching down the back of his throat. It's six
A.M.
and the men are drinking beer on an ugly street in Rialto.

The Hondurans make off with a leaf blower and an armful of clothes. Boss is standing in the middle of the lawn, making notes on his handheld. He's got a couple of properties farther inland for Nick to assess. Boss needs a minute of his time.

“I need you on Angel Duty.” He keeps making notes on his handheld and, without looking up, continues, “Have a couple of nights coming up. I'll shoot you the addresses, get you the keys.”

What this means is Nick will spend a night or two alone in a refurbished house to discourage anyone from trying to break in. The Guardian Angel keeps the lights on and the house secure so the bank can hand it off to the new owner without squatters pissing on freshly painted walls or cooking meth in the kitchen. Nick will do it because the pay is double. Though Angel Duty means he'll spend the night alone in an empty property, there's not much Nick will say no to these days.

Arik's watching Nick and Boss and inching closer. Sean sits on the porch, wearing a floppy safari hat he found inside and finishing his beer; he chucks the bottle toward the Dumpster and it shatters and Nick turns to him and he's leering at Nick. Arik moves closer to Nick and Boss, stands inches behind them. Sean walks past and says something to Arik that Nick can't make out, then mounts his motorcycle and revs the engine. They all watch as Sean glances over his shoulder, spits, then peels out, pulling the front wheel up off the street as he goes.

Boss gets in his white Lexus and leans out the window, hands an envelope to Nick, and tells him, “Thursday. Get me word that night. We're scheduled for Saturday morning.”

Inside the envelope: two sets of numbered house keys, the address of each house on a corresponding index card. Also in the envelope: two tickets to Thursday night's Angels game.

Arik grabs the envelope then removes his iPhone and enters the addresses to the houses. Nick looks at the cards.

Arik laughs. “I got this house, dude.”

“I don't think so.”

“Have you been to Tarzana? You don't want this one. There won't be anything in there anyway.”

Nick's search engine is slow, but he enters “Tarzana” on his handheld and waits.

“Meet me there.”

“Pick me up,” Arik says.

Nick reads about Tarzana: It's in the San Fernando Valley and, according to Wikipedia, is a wealthy community with average home values assessed at nine hundred thousand dollars. Nick realizes this property is a gift from Boss, a home stocked with goodies.

“Don't go there first,” Nick warns him. The house is a four-­bedroom with a three-car garage.

“You have the keys to the castle,” Arik says, and shrugs.

Nick stares at his green eyes and wide forehead and bleached-blond crew cut and acne: He's a kid. He's alien to Nick. He's the offspring of some adults who found themselves in a soulless tract of ranch houses forty miles from Los Angeles. He may as well be an Eskimo. Somehow they speak the same language. Nick wonders: Was he this adrift when he was Arik's age? Nick produced a radio show at Emerson College when he was nineteen, carried a full course load, and a work-study job at the dining hall on the weekends. Nick was considering NPR, online journalism, something edgier. Phoebe at nineteen was enlisting the help of third-year Harvard law students to file suit against her mother's former employer for gender discrimination when DuPont fired her for insubordination. (Some workers were inadvertently exposed to hazardous materials in her plant, and she wouldn't let it go.)

Nick and Phoebe at nineteen weren't setting the world on fire, but, unlike Arik, something burned inside them. Arik's got this grin on his face that fades into a faraway gaze. Something occurs to him and his focus returns. “Will you give me the tickets, at least?” Arik says. “You're not going to use them.”

Nick hands him the Angels tickets.

• •

After dropping Arik off, Nick makes two calls. The first is to Jaime, one of the Honduran brothers, who gives Nick the number of the guy who took the black dog from the house the other night. When he calls the number, he gets voice mail, leaves a message, then sends a text explaining that he's willing to pay for the dog and to please give a call back.

The windows are down and warm air rushes through the car as Nick plugs in and cues the Black Keys on his iPod and “My Mind Is
Ramblin' ” comes from the speakers. Nick is turning over numbers in his mind.

In a Starbucks not far from Serenos, he sips a double espresso, makes notes on his iPhone. Six houses. That's what he decides. He'll rent six houses to six families. He'll collect the first month's rent from each family and a deposit of one month's rent. He'll rent each house month-to-month for a minimum of a thousand each. He'll earn twelve thousand from six houses in addition to the monthly rent for as long as each occupant stays. Some will leave without warning, so whatever he collects in rent is a bonus. Six houses will be twelve thousand dollars. Double that and he'll have twenty-four. Can he handle twelve houses? If he can push it to twelve houses, for three months each, he'll be bringing in close to fifty thousand dollars in cash.

He scans the contacts in his iPhone, finds the name he needs. “Yes. Mai? Hi. This is Nick Maguire. Nick and Phoebe and Jackson from down the street on Carousel Court. Yes. Thank you.”

He's up and sticking a finger in his ear and pushing the warm glass door open and stepping outside into the wind and heat. Nick saw Mai pushing an orange double stroller onto Carousel Court yesterday afternoon, one of the seats empty, and stopped the car and introduced himself. They'd always said hello in passing and waved, and she'd smiled at Jackson. He asked her now about rates and availability, whether the empty seat in the Graco is available. He's pacing the wide concrete walkway, smiling and nodding as he speaks, as though Mai is there in front of him. And he's grinning because the call goes well and she's available. She can start immediately.

He's still smiling when he's back inside the Starbucks, because with this move they can finally stop waking Jackson up in the dark and carrying him half-asleep to the car, dropping him off alone at Bouncin' Babies. Phoebe can sleep an extra hour in the morning. Neither of them will have to rush to day care to pick him up. And Phoebe can talk to someone about her meds, because Nick can't be the only one telling her she's playing with fire.

A moment later, a call comes that Nick was hoping for. The man who took the abandoned dog home the other night is returning Nick's call, responding to the message. Nick offers him fifty dollars for it. The
man says seventy-five. Nick will call or text to arrange a pickup in the next week or so. It's falling into place, Nick thinks.

Twelve houses. Spread out across Los Angeles, San Bernardino, maybe the Valley, wherever Boss has properties lined up. Unlike the cicada shells littering the dry grass, the houses have just enough meat on the bone to attract the scavengers and jackals and birds of prey. He exhales. He surveys the Starbucks. Sunlight floods the place. A Latino kid in a Celtics jersey holds the door for a young mother pushing a yellow Bugaboo double stroller. The babies wear blue sandals and red sunglasses. Everything pops: the colors, the people, the thick warm aroma of coffee, the bright sunlight, the steady wind, and the trees shaking, bending in it.

12

T
he sticker on the back of the white Cutlass Ciera reads:
Ask Me About My AK-47.
Phoebe is stuck in stop-and-start traffic, midmorning on the 110. They have $2,998 in savings. There will be no Serenos Montessori for Jackson. There will be no nanny. No help at all, is all Phoebe can think. The Discover is their only working credit card. She's swallowing her second dose of Klonopin with Propranolol and Effexor kickers. Listening to her favorite Blondfire track as the first warm wave washes over her from the inside out, she is making a mental list for Whole Foods: sun-dried tomatoes, butternut squash, and the cherimoya she slices in half, freezes, then feeds like sorbet to Jackson. A series of texts flood her iPhone, breaks the spell. But not one is from JW. They're all from her regional GSK manager, because her quarterly sales numbers are in.

Got your first #s: not encouraging

Why aren't they ordering from you? Thought you were the star back east, Phoebe?

Ask yourself: what am I not doing out here that I could be doing?

Bottom third in volume this quarter

From diamond status to bottom third not good.

News flash: simply showing up for appt's isn't enough, Phoebe. Do what you know how to do and get them back up ;) SHOW THEM how badly you need them

When her handheld finally stops vibrating, she responds:
@ gym firming up ass.

I know you're up to this.

You remind me of my last DM back east

How's that?

Better left unsaid

Is yours a job you can afford to lose?

Phoebe stands at the reception desk in a cold, shimmering medical office that's all glass and polished chrome edges, the samples in a small black case she pulls behind her. The girl behind the counter is taking calls and wearing too much foundation. It's caked on, concealing a breakout on her cheekbones. She's likely a temp, Phoebe thinks. Just starting out. Her fingernails are manicured and her handheld is open to a social networking app she keeps checking even though the calls are pouring in. She's not long for this job. And yet Phoebe can't shake the urge to trade places with her: to be twenty-­six, untethered, apparently unconcerned about stability, marital, financial, or emotional. Phoebe grabs a lollipop from a crystal dish and pops it in her mouth and recalls exactly where she was when she was twenty-six.

Her iPhone vibrates.

• •

When she was twenty-six, Phoebe was stabbing an olive in an untouched dirty martini with a silver pick in a warmly lit restaurant across the table from the managing partner of the firm she was leaving. JW was ordering another and trying to convince her to stay, while Nick was at home with his blown-out knee, keeping it elevated, waiting for Phoebe to get home and the Percocet to kick in.

“This is a career-track position you're walking away from.”

“Not without an MBA.”

“I don't want you to leave.”

“I can't handle it.”

There was no nobility in ending an affair. It was simply stanching the bleeding. She'd sat in her cubicle untwisting paper clips at the end of too many workdays, waiting for JW to summon her to his office. She'd walked to the gym after and showered there, then sat on the T, always in the rear by the window, the rocking of the streetcar somehow soothing. She'd stared at the television screen next to Nick, who'd be asleep on the couch, their bodies idling in the flickering glow of their darkened apartment. There was no recovering from this. She was doing permanent damage. Sound sleep came only after Nick's surgery, when she found his Percocet.

Meanwhile, in the hushed corner of a dimly lit restaurant, JW was telling her there was something special inside her. He said it was something he needed to be around.

“We all have someone like that at work,” he said. She was that person for him. He offered to increase her salary. He told her she could have an office of her own. He promised he wouldn't call her cell or text or expect anything.

She didn't care if any of it was true. She couldn't start a life with Nick like this.

JW made her a proposition. One without expectations or obligations. It was something he was returning to, a question she'd posed when she first started that he wanted to answer.

“I'm paraphrasing, but something along the lines of ‘How do these assholes do it?' Right? You asked me about your colleagues, the twenty-­five-year-old white boys who were all your age but somehow selling off condos, financing their first million-dollar homes. What
was
their fucking secret?” He held up four fingers, kept the middle one down. He said his father had lost a finger. He said his father also had a mouth full of cancer from chewing tobacco for the three decades he'd spent on his knees splicing copper wires and refilling Freon tanks.

JW described a quiet, hardworking, big-hearted father who would have made his sons whole when he died, left them equity. And before that, had he had the means, he would have paid JW's first mortgage so that when he sold, he could have used the cash to buy the
million-dollar house. JW said his own father would have leveraged his relationships to get his sons started. That was how it worked. Not complicated, he said. “Now I have it and I'm using it. Like he would have. And like I will for my own family.” He removed a checkbook and wrote something, tore it free, and placed it within arm's reach on the white tablecloth. “Your leg up.” He leaned back in his chair, finished off his drink.