Carousel Court (11 page)

She stared at the black ink on the face of the pale green check. Phoebe knew JW relished the fact that he could write her a check for a hundred thousand dollars without hesitation.

“I'm supposed to refuse this. That's the right thing to do.”

“Don't overthink it.”

“What am I supposed to say?”

“Take a trip. Sardinia, maybe?”

“This is”—she held out the check—“inappropriate.”

The 675-square-foot one-bedroom apartment with the pale blue carpet and cracked storm windows was the reason she considered it. Nick's desire to launch a film career of his own was the reason. Did she deceive Nick, betray his trust? Of course. Was she new to all of this and overwhelmed and young, entitled to a lapse in judgment without having to sacrifice her marriage?

“Don't tell me I earned it.”

“I'll write you recommendations. I'll make the necessary calls for any business school you want.” He finished his drink. He looked around the restaurant. He sighed, satisfied with himself. “This should change your life, Phoebe. If you're as smart as I think you are.”

The olive in her glass was a shredded, pulpy mess. She could feel the bits as she swallowed.

“And I'm sorry.”

She waited.

“For pushing you to stay. You're doing the right thing.”

“Am I?”

“You'll be fine. I'll find you something. But you're right. This thing between us—” He looked away. “It's no way to start a life with someone.”

In the cab on the way home, she removed a small pill case and swallowed a Percocet. She removed the check and stared at the unusually
large pale green rectangle before her, his signature illegible. She noticed the memo:
Because we don't all start from zero
.

• •

The message for Phoebe is from JW.

Just harvested my basil and pesto

He's resuming a conversation that he initiated with her years ago, when she was a twenty-four-year-old new hire. A decadent dialogue she thought she'd ended but willingly resumed. In his world, chocolate Labradors walk off-leash on residential streets. Town cars, not cabs. Warm almonds in the dish and two Range Rovers and the restored Alfa Romeo he's quietly proud of.

He details his casually elegant summer life in Maine. He's gardening. Harvesting bell peppers, basil, and tomatoes. They're hiking tomorrow, sailing if the weather holds. Phoebe doesn't ask who he means when he says “we,” assumes he means his current wife and maybe a kid or two.

So the wife's in wine country. Why not hop on a plane?

Why don't you? You were coming, remember? In days not weeks.

I'm here.

Where?

In the city. Come say hi.

• •

In the elevator of the medical office, she turns off her iPhone, some­thing she used to do before she ended things with JW. She did it not because she didn't want JW's messages or calls pouring in while she was sharing the couch with Nick, but because the suspense was a rush: powering it on, watching the screen, waiting for the vibration, the chime; an adolescent game with new technology. She'd outgrown it, she thought.

• •

Later that night, after washing and folding all of Jackson's clothes and pouring out milk from a gallon jug a day before the expiration date and printing out a list of positions from Monster.com that Nick can
apply for, she lies restless next to Jackson's crib and turns her iPhone back on.

No messages.

It occurs to her, watching the spinning, shadowy blades of the ceiling fan, that she could use a hundred-thousand-dollar check now more than ever.

She taps out a text to JW:
How long are you here?

He doesn't respond.

• •

The text that arrives nearly an hour later is just a link to a website for a place called Hotel Bamboo. Phoebe opens it. She scrolls through images of spare, clean suites accented with lush gardens and koi ponds, sunken bathtubs and open-air fire pits, set deep in the canyons of Los Angeles.

Then a message from him:
Zen Suite

She doesn't respond.

Come say hello. I leave Sunday.

JW is here and wants to see her, but on his terms. That's something Phoebe can't do. Not this time. She doesn't respond to his last few messages. She finds Hotel Bamboo on Google Maps. She opens another page she bookmarked on her iPhone. The link she sends to JW is for a financial analyst position in management with D&C in Laguna Beach.

They used to be a client of ours, right? Can you make this happen?

There's no response. She knows all too well that it could be an hour or a week before JW replies, if he replies at all. He could joke with her or take her seriously. He could toy, tease, and treat her like he used to: some young tough-acting thing who reminded him of his youth. Or he could take her at face value: a professional seeking advancement, playing angles, capitalizing on connections. How he sees her no longer matters, if it ever did. All that matters now is that he not take a month to respond.

13

I
t's morning. Nick is driving through predawn darkness. He's sore and he stinks even after rinsing off. The stench of garbage lines his dry nostrils. He has two initial assessments scheduled in Chino Hills and Tarzana next week.

Last night he drove a gloved fist through a plate-glass window. He took a sledgehammer to armoires and overpriced bed frames that couldn't fit in the Dumpsters in one piece—furniture people could use. He plugged in the yellow Dyson vacuum cleaner. It still worked. He carried it past the Dumpster, dropped it in the backseat of his Forester. The grandfather clock. No one wanted it. “Don't you people have grandmothers who would kill for something this ugly?” Nick called out, and when the members of the crew who could hear him all yelled, “Crush it!,” he swung the sledgehammer with such force that the clock exploded on contact, all splintered wood and glass. It used to be that some of the crew kept whatever was left behind, or sold it on Craigslist, but now there's no time. Too many houses to trash out, too many unwanted belongings. Their livelihood depends on working fast, doing away with the leftovers. Who has time to coordinate
with Salvation Army to haul this shit away? The men work for profit, not charity, so Dumpsters and landfills are the only solution. Nick destroyed everything he could and felt satisfaction in the moment. The best he could hope for last night, what he kept in mind as he worked—that jaw of hers and crushing things.

14

S
he picked Jackson up early today. She had no appointments after twelve and got home at one and spent an hour online instead of napping or doing laundry, still overly caffeinated and anxious from driving. She decided, instead of being alone, she'd walk three houses down and take Jackson from Mai for the rest of the day. Whole Foods had everything she needed. Now she's in the kitchen, marinating three lamb chops in a blue ceramic bowl. Nick will be home by seven. They'll have dinner as a family, she told him on the phone. “You're cooking dinner?” he said skeptically. “Are you planning to poison me?” She slices a lemon in half. She chops garlic cloves with a long knife and adds fresh rosemary. Over the Harry Connick Jr. on the Bose box, she narrates for Jackson while she works, sprinkles Cheerios on his tray. The tablespoon of butter and canola oil sizzle on high heat, splatter, so she lowers the setting and the next song comes on and Jackson cries out and Phoebe drops a few more Cheerios on his tray and through the kitchen window glimpses the orange light off the surface of the pool.

The bubbles of blood splatter and signal the inch-thick fillets are ready to flip.

Nick messages that he'll be home early. She texts back that it's good timing because dinner is ready.

She mixes the Whole Foods–prepared asparagus salad and heats garlic mashed potatoes. She places two bottles of wine, white and red, on the dining room table. He's home.

Nick eats slowly, picks at the meal. He eats around the chop. After finishing his potatoes, he's unsure what to eat next.

“What is it?” she asks.

The music still plays. He says that it's a nice touch, they should do it more, play music during their time at home together.

“You don't like the lamb?”

“It's fine.”

“Then why aren't you eating it?”

He hesitates, studies her plate. “Red meat makes me sick,” he says finally.

“Since when?”

“I don't know. Recently.”

“All red meat?”

“Can't eat it.”

“At all?”

“At all.”

“It was this or lobster ravioli. I wish you'd told me.”

“You could have asked.”

“Well, this is a huge fucking waste then,” she snaps.

15

T
he calls start the morning after he posts the signs. The houses Nick selected are from Boss's list of bank-owned properties that have been trashed out and sitting vacant the longest. The voices from the calls that pour in all have the same inflection: hushed, urgent, joyless. Nick adopts the same tone of voice as the physician who explained to Phoebe and Nick what would happen, what to expect, when Phoebe had an abortion just after college. Neither Nick nor the people calling want to be on the phone any longer than they have to be. So they cover the essentials: times and locations for meeting, first at the house, then, if they want it, a Starbucks or Panera for the contracts and cashier's checks and keys.

Nick figured out the logistics days ago. The signs needed to pop, the lettering clean and bold, the message simple. He chose burnt yellow with black letters and candy-apple red with white lettering. The two versions he came up with:

NEED HELP? NEED A HOME?

LOW RENT, NO QUESTIONS ASKED

And the other:

There IS a Way OUT

RENT: Month-to-Month

NO Questions Asked

The signs were laminated plastic and started at thirty dollars apiece but lasted for six months to a year, he was told by the middle-­aged black man behind the counter at Kinko's. Nick said thick paper, something durable, maybe laminated, asked about prices for twelve-by-eighteen and decided on a hundred, then changed his mind, ordered two hundred laminated plastic burnt yellow and red signs. Each sign had a phone number in stark black lettering with a 909 area code underneath the words. The numbers were different from each other and didn't belong to Nick, were disposable phones that he'd use to get started. With the stack in the passenger seat and a staple gun and clear packing tape, Nick spent two hours posting fifty of the signs on telephone poles and traffic lights at intersections. He circled a block, stopped at a red light, snapped a few pictures with his iPhone, decided the phone number was in fact large enough and the sign did pop, the white against red.

This morning he sits alone in a booth at a diner off the Foothill ­Freeway, staring out at traffic, waiting on new tenants—a young lesbian couple—for a house in Pomona. He's nervous. He orders only decaf and swallows one of Phoebe's Klonopins. He considers leaving. He can't rent a house he doesn't own. What is he even thinking? But when they appear, the couple looks as tired as the waitress refilling his coffee. And there's no turning back. He feels something bordering on sympathy for this couple: They wear their fear on their faces. He's putting them in a safer place, however temporary. He'll treat them well, offer help, be responsive to their needs. There's about a ten-­second silence filled with the sounds of some familiar pop song playing on a jukebox in another booth and Spanish coming from behind the counter as tables are bused and orders are called back to the kitchen.

The women perk up. They're thorough, ask so many questions:

Why a cashier's check?

Why couldn't you meet at the house again?

Why no pet deposit?

For the first time he fears getting caught. They're on to him.

“Do you guys want the house or not?” Nick says. “It's not complicated. If you have reservations, forget it. No hard feelings.” He removes a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet and places it on the table. “That should cover your tea.”

They stop him, ask him to wait for a moment. They glance at each other. The heavier of the two sighs audibly. They look exhausted. They sign and date the one-page rental agreement that covers the first six months and which neither party has any intention of following. Nick keeps both copies and they don't even notice. They hand Nick a cashier's check for twenty-four hundred dollars, which covers first and last (he waived the deposit). He slides the check back to them. “After you get your keys.”

16

A
ll the neighbors wear brave faces. No panic in their eyes. No tight grins or faraway looks or awkward gaps in conversation. The mood is pleasant, if not festive. Marina's daiquiris help. The only flaws in Kostya's backyard design: mismatched western red cedar planks haphazardly nailed to the pressure-treated pine fence that surrounds his backyard, giving it a cheap two-tone look, and the single string of white lights hung from the branches of a dried-up eucalyptus tree nearest the pool. “Fly Me to the Moon” drifts from speakers Phoebe can't see. JW used to play the Harry Connick Jr. version in his Boston office.

It's the first week of September. Back here, behind the biggest, nicest house on Carousel Court, the neighbors are celebrating the end of summer, though they all know the heat won't end anytime soon. And an orange tent on a front lawn with a loaded pump-action Mossberg within thirty-five feet of the children is less of a concern than it should be.

Phoebe closes her eyes against the sun. Propranolol kick-starts the Klonopin. She's noticed the difference lately, how quickly things slow down for her. Phoebe sips her daiquiri from a blue plastic cup, and when her eyes adjust to the light, she is further reassured by the sight
of Mai holding Jackson, sitting next to her husband. Nick sips his beer from a blue plastic cup next to Phoebe on a chaise longue, shirtless and tan, more muscular than he's ever been. And it's all from the job and climbing the living room wall, because he never did get a gym membership out here, too expensive.