Counting by 7s (19 page)

I
t isn't long before Dell's Ford swerves into the parking lot. He gets out of his car as if his hair is on fire.

I should be freaking out like Dell, but I find myself mimicking Pattie's attitude.

My edges are gone.

I'm sea glass.

If you look hard, you can see right through me.

There isn't much discussion.

Pattie and I get in Dell's car and we drive across town.

Ten minutes later we arrive at 257 Heptad Lane.

I look up at the apartment house. It appears to be a building constructed by a blind contractor who didn't use an architect.

The proportions of the place are all off, and not in a provocative way.

It looks like someone took an enormous box, painted it the color of serratia marcescens (which is a rod-shaped, pink bacterium that grows in showers) and cut holes in the sides.

I'm somehow not surprised that Dell Duke lives here.

We follow the counselor up a dark stairwell to the second floor, where he opens a door. He's mumbling now:

“I wasn't expecting company. I'm not prepared for visitors. I need to put a few things away . . .”

He then quickly shoots like a trained hamster through a crazy maze of stuff.

We hear a door shut in an unseen hallway.

I wonder what he needs to hide, because there is enough here in his living room that should mortify him.

Dell Duke is obviously one of those people who have issues throwing things away.

Maybe he doesn't have full-blown disposophobia, which is hoarding, but he's on the same playing field.

The Old Me would have taken a lot of pleasure in a firsthand look at such a complex emotional condition.

But not now.

Pattie and I stand in the entry and stare at the stacks of newspapers, magazines, and mail surrounding the discount lawn furniture, which I decide is the exact color of a white rabbit's eyes.

Pink with a drop of yellow mixed in.

The complete patio set—called “masculine salmon” on a manufacturer's tag sticking out from one of the cheap metal chairs—has cut distinct circles in the wall-to-wall carpeting.

I step deeper into the room so that Pattie can close the door, and I find myself next to an outdoor umbrella still encased in cloudy plastic.

It is propped against the wall.

I feel its sadness.

I trail behind Pattie down a narrow path to the kitchen.

Towers of sloppily rinsed microwave trays are on most of the counters. Off to the side, I see teetering columns of red disposable cups.

I realize that I have not had great exposure to other people's ways of living.

I had never seen the kind of garage setup that the Nguyens have going, and looking at this place, I understand that there are clearly whole lifestyles that have been kept from me.

Dell Duke is charting a different course.

If this is what he has in the open, I'm now curious to look in one of his closets.

Pattie must have the same thought, because she moves out of the kitchen, through the clutter of the living room, back to the tight hallway.

I follow.

But with some caution.

This looks like the kind of place where an unexpected exotic animal might appear—the illegal kind that people buy on a whim in the back rooms of pet stores, but then later set free in an alley because they can't control the razor-sharp claws or the eating demands.

The door to the first bedroom is closed but that doesn't stop Pattie from turning the knob and opening it.

We both now see Dell stuffing an oily-looking sleeping bag into a nylon sack.

But there are no dead bodies or anything.

At least not in plain sight.

It's just a super-messy room.

Comic books and magazines are strewn next to the bed, which doesn't have sheets or a mattress pad.

The necks of empty wine bottles poke out of a metal garbage can (the sort that should be outside) in the corner.

It only takes an instant for Pattie to find the handle on the closet door.

Dell shouts:

“No!”

But it's too late. Pattie has opened the louvered door to reveal a wall of underwear.

There are hundreds of them.

I used to enjoy estimating quantities, but not anymore. I know with certainty that in the past this would have really interested me.

Pattie steps back as Dell sputters:

“I'm . . . behind on the laundry!”

This is truly an understatement. Pattie looks from Dell to the underwear and then to me.

It seems obvious that there is no way that it could ever appear that Pattie and her kids live in this apartment.

But I'm wrong.

I'm not sure what flipped her switch, but maybe it's the size of the challenge.

We are back in Dell's dusty Ford now heading (under Pattie's direction) to the Salvation Army on Ming Street.

Minutes later we all stand at the front counter of the secondhand store.

Pattie has picked out a red Formica table with four nondescript dining chairs, a stuffed lemon-colored sofa, and a leather lounger that swivels in a complete circle.

She has the tags for a metal frame bunk bed with mattresses that appears to at one time have belonged to a military enthusiast. Worn
SEMPER FI
stickers cover most of the railings.

It isn't until Dell's credit card is out that he has the courage to ask:

“How are we going to get all this stuff back to my place?”

Pattie, without explanation, heads straight out the glass door to the sidewalk, leaving Dell to complete the transaction.

Dell and I find her standing outside at the curb next to a truck that says
WE HAUL
.

The two men who get out to help us are named Esteban and Luis. They have well-developed packing skills.

It doesn't take them long until they have all the furniture tied down into the back of the very worn-looking pickup.

Upon arrival at the Gardens of Glenwood, the two men carry everything up the flight of stairs to Dell's apartment without even breaking a sweat.

Pattie supervises.

Dell stays out of the way.

I'm the silent observer.

Now all we have to do is get rid of his junk.

Pattie thrusts a detailed list into Dell's hands and orders him to the market.

Once he is gone, she positions me with Luis and Esteban in a line where we form a human chain.

There are only four of us, but using this ancient means of transport, months of trash leaves the building.

Dell returns two hours later and most of his stuff is now in the building Dumpsters. He says it was his plan to take it to the recycling center.

But I know that he's lying.

He doesn't seem upset that we got rid of his things, so I guess he's not a hoarder.

He just has trouble with follow-through.

M
ai stayed after
school on Fridays to participate in a program for at-risk teens.

They didn't call them that, though. They called them “special enrichment students.”

But of course she knew.

Mai had read the pamphlet describing the funding for the project. It was on the desk of the Team Leader the day of the first meeting, so she wasn't really snooping or anything.

She was curious what they thought she was at risk for.

Once a week a dozen chosen kids met at the school library to discuss everything from setting your sights on college to the importance of getting your teeth cleaned.

Today a woman was talking about eating green vegetables and doing extracurricular activities to build a résumé.

When she finished, they were all given little tickets. At the end of the program they could turn them in for prizes or something. The Team Leader wasn't clear on that.

Mai loaded her backpack with new books from the school library and walked to the bus stop.

Most of the kids who weren't “at risk” had their own cars to drive home, or parents who picked them up.

So maybe, Mai thought, the risk part involved riding the city bus.

The bus shelter in front of the school had a flowerbed with the toughest roses in Bakersfield.

Or at least that's what Mai thought as she stared at the thorny bushes. One of the few things that Willow had said in the last month was that everything in life could be seen in a garden.

According to her, if a plant was in decent soil and had sun and enough water, a bud would at some point show up. It would start small and very green.

Sometimes bugs ate holes in the exterior of the bud, but if they didn't get too deep into the thing, it would bloom.

And the world would see the flower.

With time, the outer petals would start to wrinkle, beginning at the tips. The shape couldn't hold and the whole thing would open up big and then sloppy.

The rose was now more affected by the wind or the rain or even the hot sun.

The petals would finally just dry up, and break away, falling to the ground.

That left only a round bulb, which was the skull of the thing. And in time that would finally drop as well, returning to the soil.

There was as much of a lesson in that, Willow had explained, as in anything she had been told by anyone about life or death or the stages in between.

What was the rose before it was a rose?

It was the soil and the sky and the rain and the sun.

And where was the rose once it was gone?

It returned, Mai figured, back to the larger whole that surrounds us all.

No one ever picked up Quang-ha from school, so when Dell Duke's car screeched to a stop right at his feet, he was alarmed.

The smudged window slid down and Dell shouted:

“
Hey!
”

The boy could feel his whole body tense. You don't say “Hey” to someone named “Ha.”

And then Dell shouted:

“Get in! We're on a tight schedule!”

Quang-ha didn't budge.

“What's going on?”

Dell reached across and opened the car door.

“Ask your mother. She's running this scam.”

Dell didn't explain much; just that Pattie and Willow were at his apartment fixing it up to make it look like they lived there.

It all seemed pretty shady to Quang-ha.

But he called his mother on her cell and she told him to load up the cooking stuff from their garage.

He was supposed to take blankets and sheets and bathroom things too.

He was pretty sure it was the dumbest idea in the world, but he crossed the alley and took the sweaty counselor with him.

For over a month Quang-ha had been sleeping in the same room with a complete stranger. Maybe someone was finally going to do something about that.

Dell stood in the doorway of the garage and stared.

No wonder they had used his address! This place didn't even look legal.

Dell had assumed they lived in a house or at least a real apartment. So this was a shocker.

Where did the woman get all of her attitude?

After he and the Lone Wolf (who might actually be an Oddball) had placed a rice cooker, a bamboo steamer, a wok, half a dozen bowls, tongs, a collection of chopsticks, two meat cleavers, three cooking pots, and the bedding into Dell's trunk, they filled an old milk crate with food.

They then grabbed some stuff from the bathroom in the salon, and were back on the road.

It felt, to Quang-ha, like some kind of prison break.

By the time they swung into the dusty carport of the Gardens of Glenwood, he was even more on board with the whole plan. It seemed obvious that they were going around the law, or at least defying some rule or regulation.

And that was exciting.