Girls Love Travis Walker (15 page)

Paper Blizzard

 “Hey, man.” Benny approached me as I arrived at the day’s worksite. “Thought I’d let you know you’re doing a good job for me.”

“Thanks. You giving me a raise?” I was tired already, and the day was just starting. I slapped on the baseball cap I wore to keep the sun off.

Benny threw back his head and laughed. “Travis, man, you crack me up, you really do.”  He recovered himself. “Maria wants to talk to you.”

“I’ll give her a ring,” I said, figuring I’d do it one of these days.

“No. I mean Maria
wants to talk to you
.”  He held out his cell phone, and there she was on his display, holding for me.

She was hollering before I even said hello. “Travis, why haven’t you called me? We need to talk about how you’re going to finish high school!”

I leveled with her. “I can’t go back to school. I have to work full-time, and I’ve missed too much class to make it up.”
And we’re about to get evicted, and something’s really wrong with my mother.

“Then you will take the GED,” she informed me. “I’m going to mail you some materials, so you can register and begin preparing.”

“Okay. Thanks, Ms. Val.”  Easier to just say yes than to argue with her.

She was right, of course. But when and where was I supposed to do this? I’d be like Abe Lincoln, working late into the night by candlelight. In my new home beneath an underpass.

##

Mrs. M corralled me as I came in the building. I’d managed to avoid her the last three days, but she must have been waiting for me this time.

“T’avis! I need mo’ money!”

“I’ll have it for you Friday.” I knew I sounded curt, but shit. She knew when I got paid. She knew I came to her every Friday with every penny I could spare and more. She knew I was killing myself to pay her, so why didn’t she lay off me?

“How much you will give F’iday?”

“Same as usual, Mrs. M.” Now I just sounded tired. I felt tired. I wanted to go lie in Zoey’s arms.

“I need mo’!”

“I’ll do my best.”

“T’avis, I wait long time….”

“I said I’ll do my best!”  I pushed past her to the elevator, then seeing the usual “Out of Order” sign, headed for the stairs and took them two steps at a time. A sick feeling burned in my stomach.

Mom was asleep, as usual. The only light shone in through the windows from streetlamps, and the place was scary cold. I took my icy shower in the dark, shivering, then rustled through the dufflebag that served as my closet to find a sweatshirt and sweatpants.

Wrapped in a blanket, I lay on the sofa thinking of long platinum hair and gray eyes and a low musical voice. I wondered if my life would ever be any good. I thought of Zoey in her little home and could almost feel her in my arms. Sleep wouldn’t come.

Finally I got up and, by flashlight, found a piece of lined notebook paper. Sitting at our little table, light coming in the window from outside, I folded it into neat strips and tore it carefully along the folds. I did the same with a couple of more pieces of paper.

During the next hour, I took each strip and wrote something on it in my neatest printing, then folded it into a one-inch square. I put the squares into a clean envelope from the trash, one that had previously held a utility bill.

Then I went to sleep.

##

Over the next few days, I bombarded Zoey with a blizzard of small folded squares of paper. I sneaked up behind her and slipped them into her hand. I hid them in the outer section of her purse, in the pocket of her hoodie, inside her gym bag. I attached them to the papers in her clipboard. I even got the others to help me. Terra, Hilda, Johnnie, and even Charlotte, all went to bat for me, presenting Zoey with squares of paper, saying “This is from Travis.”

The strips said things like:

 I miss you.

I want you.

You’re beautiful.

Give me a second chance.

You’re driving me crazy.

Go out with me.

“Travis likes Zoey!” Hilda chanted, clapping her hands.

“He does not!” Zoey’s cheeks flamed.

“Come on, Zoey!”  Charlotte hissed at her. “He’s
dreamy!
What are you waiting for?”

What
was
she waiting for? For three days she ignored me. Finally, she pulled me aside as lunch was ending. She wore these little cut-offs that ended just below her ass. Did she know how cute her ass was and how tempting her thighs were, ending the way they did in that sweet V at the top? If she wanted me to leave her alone, she shouldn’t walk around like that. In shorts, for God’s sake.

“Why me?” she asked. “You can get plenty of other girls. Do you just want an unbroken record of wins? Is that it?”

“I like you.”  I said it without the cocky self-confidence, the you-know-you-love-me bravado. “I want to be with you.” I took her arm and started off on our usual walk through the park, pulling her along with me.

“I’m not ready to date. It’s too soon,” she said.

“So you did break up with him?”  When she nodded, I controlled myself from whooping with joy. We reached the little fountain and stopped to sit on its edge, the sound of tinkling water behind us.

“Don’t flatter yourself that it was on account of you. It was a long time coming.” She fastened her gaze on a far off tree, as if she was memorizing every leaf, but I could see a smile trying to burst its way out.

“It was a long time coming, but it just happened to come along when I did.” The cockiness was back.

She frowned at me, although the smile still lurked in the background. “You don’t help your own case when you act like a butt.”

I calmed down. “Okay, you’re right.” 

Today they had a band playing in the park, kind of a Dixieland jazz group. We got up and walked in the direction of the music.

After a minute, she said, “It’s not technically a break-up. It’s more of a … vacation.”

“From each other?”

“Just to take a break, you know, and see if this is really what we want.”

We arrived where the musicians were playing. They weren’t entirely together or on key—at least, I didn’t think so. A whole crowd of people was standing or occupying the nearby benches, listening, while a few courageous people danced.

“So then, you’re going to need to date other people for a while, right?  To have a basis for comparison.”

She laughed. “You think of everything, don’t you, Travis?”

“Not
everything
,” I said modestly. “But seriously, I’m helping you out here. How else will you know whether Josh is right for you? You
need
to go out with me.”

Her eyes sparkled, but she gave an elaborate shrug. “I’ll go out with other guys!”

I motioned to indicate the sizzling hunk of manhood standing beside her. “And let all this go to waste?”

Her laugh rang out as the banjo player plucked bravely away at his solo.

I reached out and took her hand. “Go out with me. On Saturday?”

She made me wait a few beats. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll go out with you, Travis.”

“Great!” I tasted victory and happiness in the same moment. “I’ll see you tomorrow, and we can talk about what we want to do.”

In the parking lot, I opened her car door for her and watched as she drove off, while immediately my problem unfolded before my eyes. What would we do on this date? A quick inventory of my pocket reminded me of the one dollar there.

Light sweat broke out on my forehead. Anything that cost money was out. Restaurants, movies, plays, museums, arcades, sporting events, amusement parks, concerts—all out. What else was there?

I started my car. We could go for a walk. Fighting back shame at having so little to offer her, I decided we’d drive up into the hills and take one of the many hiking trails where you could see amazing canyon and city views, and even all the way to the ocean.

 I left the Community Center parking lot behind a slick new Mercedes, a glaring contrast to my old heap. I reminded myself that even if I didn’t have a good job or the money to take Zoey places, I did know how to romance a girl. And I’d never been hotter for any girl than I was for Zoey. I wanted our first kiss to rock her world.

Star

 Fire raged through Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, gobbling up huge tracts of raw land and destroying homes. The Santa Ana winds did their part, screaming through the streets at night, downing power lines and tearing signs off buildings. The winds were an equal opportunity destroyer, rattling the old windows in a warehouse in Perdido until they shattered and sending a loose deck umbrella through a sheet of plate glass in a Liberty Heights living room.

Many of the fires were further north, in Ventura, but the Santa Alicia mountains were under a fire warning, as was most of Los Angeles. On Saturday morning, we were lucky to have class at all. They seemed to be in between fires. Garret was still out on sick leave, so Perkins stepped into his place. He stood before us in the training yard, holding a chain saw.

He was neat and groomed as usual, but his face looked gray and dark circles had formed under his eyes. All that stress and responsibility would be hard, I thought, but it would also be awesome to be so important, so needed.

“Anybody here ever used one of these?” he asked, pointing to the saw.

I put up one finger, trying to keep a low profile. Bad enough being the obvious favorite of the battalion chief, but knowing it was all built on lies and likely to blow up in my face made it a million times worse

Perkins counted the hands that went up. “A few of you, I see. Good! Today we’re going to learn a basic skill for use at a fire scene. Who knows,” he looked around at the kids seated on the ground, “one of the first things the firefighter does upon arriving at a burning building?”

Andy Adams raised his hand. By now, he was seriously chasing me for the spot of number one student in the class. “Cut a hole in the roof! To ventilate.”

“Right! So we’re all going to give it a shot today.” Perkins got us up on our feet and led us to sections of plywood that lay elevated on blocks in the training yard.

The class was pretty used to me by now, so when it took me only five minutes to rev up the saw and slash out a four by four foot hole in my sample roof, triumphantly kicking the cut-out square through with the heel of my boot, they just groaned and rolled their eyes. Most of them were still figuring out how to hold the saw.

“Outstanding!” Perkins barked. “Now that’s the way it’s done!”

“I use one of these every day at work,” I explained, exhilarated by the sheer awesomeness of being good at something and praised for it.

I was still feeling good when I got home that afternoon and picked up the mail. Most of it was Past Due notices, but today there was a large envelope from Perdido High School. At first I thought I was in trouble, but it turned out to be the stuff from Ms. Val about the GED.

If I had a GED I could take the firefighter’s exam. I sat down next to a window and read Ms. Val’s materials by the daylight coming in. If I went to a different donation center, I could sell blood again. With that money and part of the rent, I could pay for the test prep books and registration fee, study for the test, and take it in January.

Then, I’d be done with this high school bullshit once and for all, and I could become a firefighter. And have a real job that I liked and that paid decent money. It seemed like a good plan.

The room was getting dark as the sun set. I found a pen and, working by flashlight, began to fill out the forms.

First Date

As I drove the two miles from my home to Zoey’s, the crumbling apartment buildings and dying lawns of my neighborhood gave way to little, modest houses with fresh paint and flower gardens. At her address, the grass looked super green and the house looked extra blue to me, but maybe it was just because I had a date with Zoey. I took the exterior stairs two at a time to reach her room above the garage.

She opened the door. “Hi.”

Damn. She looked great in cut-offs and a white t-shirt that showed off her body without trying too hard. Thighs I wanted to kiss and breasts that begged for my undivided attention. But no, I would take her hiking.

“Hi.” I stepped into her home. “So this is the crib, huh?”

Her gray eyes zapped me with a jolt of electricity.

“Yeah. You can tour the whole place from where you’re standing.” 

One corner held a kitchenette, another a small table, and a third a big bed with a quilt. A door led to a tiny bathroom, the only other room.

Simple and uncluttered, with white walls and green plants and a big, soft- looking rug.

“Nice place.” A lump entered my throat. It felt safe and comfortable here. “Ready to go?”

She brought along her windbreaker, since the day was cool—finally, after weeks of unseasonal heat. “I thought we’d go to the Ridge,” I said. The state park there was full of hiking trails.

At the Ridge, the winds had blown away any smoke or fire smell, and the mountains stood crisply outlined against a blue sky. Zoey and I started off on a well-marked trail, she ahead of me, walking slowly so we could talk. Feeling like a kid again, I jumped up to hit a leaf on a branch hanging across the trail.

“You must not have gone to Perdido Elementary,” she said over her shoulder to me. “Or I’d have known you.”

“I didn’t. Before LA, I lived in Modesto, and before that… let’s see. Bakersfield, Portland, Boise, and some town in Ohio when I was little.”

“Wow. Is your Dad in the military?”

No, he’s in the penitentiary.
“No, but his work kept us moving around.”

“He’s not living with you, is he?”

Damn her good memory and listening skills. She obviously remembered me saying I needed food for just myself and my mother.

“He’s up north right now.”
Soledad Prison, to be exact.

“And your mom?”