Carousel Court (20 page)

One of the boys stumbles backward into Phoebe, knocking her into Jackson, who falls from the slide onto the hard rubber surface below. The Russian boy who fell into her is laughing and within arm's reach, so she swings her elbow, hard, crushing the bridge of his nose, spinning the boy face-first into the ground.

Jackson is on his back, stunned. His mouth opens and stays that way. He either can't breathe or is crying so hard that no sound comes out. A dark pink swatch forms instantly on the left side of his face, where he hit the blue rubber surface. Phoebe clutches his little shoulders and shakes him lightly, trying to induce breathing, a sound.

Finally, it comes. A deep, piercing cry.

The Russian boy lies motionless on the ground.

No one else seems to have seen what she did. She leaves the playground.

• •

The side of Jackson's face is red and he sucks cold apple juice from his sippy cup. His tears have dried and he seems fine, kicks his feet with excitement when Phoebe mentions the beach.

At the first red light, the AC on high, perspiration cooling on her neck and chest, a pulse of exhilaration courses through her as she taps out a text:
I just left the playground

How was it?

The immediate response surprises her.

I knocked a Russian kid unconscious

Clarify

A wild kid too old for the playground hurt Jackson.

So he had it coming

He never saw it coming.

They never do. Did you truly knock a kid unconscious?

Phoebe sees the sign for Beach Cities, changes lanes without signaling, leaves one freeway for another.

When do I get an answer?

What
's so special about Laguna and California? I'll be honest, that office isn't where the real action is.

Don't start being a bitch now, JWonderful. You gave me your word.

I've given you a whole lot more than that.

• •

And without a definitive answer, or specifics about the date and time for the interview with D&C in Laguna Beach that JW promised, Phoebe is no longer interested in spending a night on the beach with Jackson. She no longer wants to explore neighborhoods, check out rental properties. Instead she drives another mile or so along this gray freeway, exits, and continues along surface streets in what she thinks is El Segundo until she sees it: the forest-green marquee and all-caps white lettering. The parking lot is packed. She doesn't care that she'll have to carry Jackson across the hot asphalt, through the vapors, to Whole Foods. She starts making the list in her head: South African wine, a bottle of El Perro Verde red, cherimoya. She'll linger in the wide, bountiful aisles, the cool air, the welcoming faces, and mist will cleanse fresh-cut kale, and time itself will stop.

34

I
t's a hot Wednesday night in September. Phoebe watches footage leading all the local newscasts of wildfires in Topanga Canyon and Riverside. She looks for Serenos on the mostly red “Fire Zone” animation on-screen. They're not in it yet. The story that follows the wildfires is about them: the countless families stranded in the Inland Empire. Reporters fan out across greater Los Angeles and walk nearly deserted streets dotted with abandoned new-construction homes.

Nick is climbing the wall. Jackson is laughing through his pacifier. The dog that Nick finally picked up, which they haven't named, barks wildly at him on the wall. The barking only makes Jackson laugh harder, and his laughter is infectious, so Phoebe's smiling, too.

“I can't laugh and climb. I'll fall.”

“Don't fall, Daddy!” the little voice calls out.

“Yeah, don't fall, Nickels.”

Phoebe's staring at his calves: They're muscular, tan, and hairless. She's sipping her wine and rubbing Jackson's head and realizing that she envies her husband's calves. “You do have nice legs.”

“You know what's funny?” Nick looks down at her, sweat dripping from his nose. “How little respect you have for me.”

“Could you still work with a broken leg? Probably not, right?”

“Do you appreciate anything?” He laughs. “Is there anything that satisfies you?”

“Jackson,” she says. “And sleeping in. But really just Jackson.”

He manages to ascend a bit higher.

“Is there something else? Was that a trick question?” she asks.

“This
is
the first home you've ever owned. Our first home. That means nothing?”

“Not really.”

“Whether or not you want to acknowledge it. It matters.”

Fall and get it over with, she thinks. Crack a femur, a trip to the ER, titanium screws and a cast and crutches. She'll take care of them, all of it, again. She eyes the hard rubber rocks, the yellow, red, blue, and green to the top, the summit he's never reached.

“Don't go too high,” she says, and finishes her wine. “Stay right there in the middle. It's what you're used to.”

He's nearly to the ceiling. He slips. Catches himself.

She spoons her cold cherimoya, sucks on the frozen ball of cotton candy–flavored fruit. A few weeks at home would force him to reengage the professional world, follow up with some of the production companies he reached out to before. Maybe some Emerson alumni searches in L.A., some networking. Get online. Get on track.

“Fall, Daddy, fall!” Jackson calls out. Soon both he and Phoebe are laughing and chanting. She finishes her fruit and picks up her son and walks upstairs and runs the bath, chanting in a hushed tone, “Fall, Daddy, fall, Daddy, fall, Daddy.”

35

T
he messages from JW come at midnight. It's been three days. He sends three texts:

Lawrence De Bent

D&C

The one you talk to.

She's sitting upright in the middle of the king-size bed. Nick sleeps downstairs. She responds:
And?

He has your CV.

And?

He's in Brussels

And?

Shall I spoon-feed it to you?

Like frozen cherimoya

I wish

And?

Set something up with his office.

And?

And I'll see you next time.

Sorry we missed each other. But thank you. How are YOU?

You don't want to know.

I do. Tell me one thing.

My son just got the boot from Dartmouth for cheating. My second wife is suing me for IIED. Don't know what that is? I didn't either. Am told by attorney it stands for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Are you serious? IIED?!

That was more than one.

Savor your days with a toddler. It only gets worse.

Will I get this? D&C in Laguna Beach.

Do you deserve it?

What happens when we see each other?

I already set you up. Not necessary, right? You got what you wanted.

Having nothing to do with that.

What then?

Oh lord, who even knows. I keep dreaming about your Boston office and the cold window against my face. What does that tell you?

I don't know.

Do you want me to spoon-feed it to you?

• •

It's morning and the tank is full and she's on the freeway heading west with no major delays and the flow of traffic is like a flash flood. Her levels of Klonopin, Effexor, and Lexapro are all optimal and the surface streets get her to Wilshire and to the corridor in what feels like record time. She has eighteen new songs downloaded on her iPod and they're on shuffle and each sounds better than the one before it and after two effortless stops inside Wilshire Memorial, her next appointment cancels, so she's got time to kill.

She messages him:
Come see my working-class ass before it's firmly planted in the upper-middle class.

• •

The Coffee Bean is full, but everyone seems young and healthy and in a good mood, and she's wondering where the hell all these people live. It can't be Serenos. There are four men who all seem to look the same despite different color hair and varying heights and builds, and she
can't pinpoint it, but whatever it is must be an illusion: They can't be as beautiful, tan, and pulled together as they appear. She's at the glass door, and the aviator glasses and short skirt and tight blouse and black strappy Jimmy Choos from her Boston days give her the confidence to smile at the one in the group who gets the door for her, and his teeth are bright white and she laughs and asks him, “What the hell?”

He looks puzzled.

“Your teeth,” she says.

He's stopped in his tracks, still holding the door. He smells like a six-foot mimosa.

“They're insane,” she adds.

“Thanks.”

The business card he slips her reads
Interscope
and as she leaves the group of men, she feels their eyes on her, a familiar sensation, and decides then, on a wide, crowded sidewalk, gleaming towers and tall palms and fountains and buses and yellow sports cars and silver Maseratis racing on a nameless street, to text JW even though he didn't respond to the previous two. She Googles Lawrence De Bent. She Googles West Side Rentals and goes to their website and checks listings for rentals in Manhattan, Hermosa, and Laguna Beach. She rereads the last message from JW, the one he sent ten minutes ago. She lightly thumbs the screen. She knows how it was and this isn't that.

Remember I told you I felt like a teenager in the basement of my ex?? Well I didn't finish.

So finish,
she writes back.

Wanna fuck you like you're a teenager.

36

I
t's the first week of October. It's the hottest week since they arrived in June. The heat is unrelenting. For some reason, Kostya and Marina have Halloween decorations on their front lawn already: a family of zombies that appears frighteningly real at night. Nick and Phoebe are exhausted. It's midnight and they've each been up since six. Nick had a nosebleed an hour ago from the dry hot air. Phoebe is premenstrual and cramping. Nick keeps the bedroom door open, as much to listen for strange noises as to keep from suffocating.

“Spell it out, Phoebe. What do we have left?”

That's easy, she thinks. She adjusts the volume on the baby monitor she keeps bedside. What is left is Jackson. What's left with JW? An answer, yes or no: Will he produce for her? His third wife, Japanese, lonely, must spend as much time as Phoebe would wondering who he's texting or calling or Skyping, who's taking the gold elevator up to his hotel suite or boarding a flight with tickets he paid for to meet him in Maui or San Francisco. Between the lines of her text messages with JW is a stark reality. She needs him more than ever. What's left? Closing the sale with JW. What's confusing her is the rush of adrenaline that comes with each text he sends, the resulting agitation
and inability to sleep without copious amounts of pink and yellow benzodiazepines.

“I'll answer my own question,” Nick says as he leaves the room. “Nothing is left. And there's nothing inside of you. It took me ten years to see through you because I'm an idiot.”

Phoebe closes her eyes. She remains upright on the bed, legs crossed. She's nodding. She's waiting him out. She bites her upper lip. Another moment or two and the right words will ignite her. They don't come, though. Nick leaves the room, closes the door quietly behind him.

37

T
he rumors are all true, it turns out. Stories about a home invasion two blocks over by men with shaved heads from Tustin, tying up the Hamid family in the bonus room and stripping the house of everything—electronics, their two cars, all the granite and stainless steel appliances. They took the wife to the nearest ATM and made her withdraw the maximum. Brought her back to the house, lit it on fire, and left.

Saturday morning, in the predawn darkness, Nick watched from their bedroom window as a black Nissan Maxima with tinted windows and Nevada plates crept along Carousel Court, stopping at the edge of the young neighbor's yard. The car idled for twenty minutes before Nick walked outside, stood barefoot and shirtless in their driveway, a sweaty callused hand clutching a tire iron. He leaned back against Phoebe's Explorer and lit a cigarette, stared at Metzger's tent, hoping he was inside it, awake, ready. The car turned around, left.

On Monday, the lead story on KCAL was about a home invasion/double murder ten miles from Serenos in La Habra. The image on the screen that made Nick get up off the sectional and leave the house without explanation to walk next door to the young neighbor's house:
a black Nissan Maxima with tinted windows, Nevada plates. Next door, the house was dark inside. There was no car in the driveway. Nick pounded on the front door. Nothing. He walked around the side of the house and found the empty pool filled with charred remains: furniture, papers, books, dishware, clothes. A body could be buried in there and no one would ever know.

Nick is alone in the cool kitchen. It's four
A.M.
The house hums, electrical currents, the wind pressing against window frames, the central air flowing, keeping up with the demand for lower and lower temperatures. Nick sits on a leather barstool at the granite island, concentrates on the rhythm of his heart. Sticky beat, the physician called it when Nick went to the ER after working thirty-two hours straight last week, when he couldn't drive home, choking on his own breath, throat tightening. The Asian woman told him, “Sticky beat,” and added, “You're young. Relax. Enjoy your life.” The irregular heartbeat was simply stress, lack of sleep, nothing to worry about. Nick is bringing a third bottle of Dos Equis to his lips when his iPhone vibrates on the granite island. The message is from a number he doesn't recognize, a 919 area code:
scurrd yet?