Girls Love Travis Walker (2 page)

Fully dressed, I leaned over her. Her eyes accused me at first, then softened as I kissed her.

"You're really awesome, you know that?" And I meant it. But this is what's weird about girls and guys. When I say,
you're awesome,
I mean
you're awesome.
But when a girl hears
you're awesome
, it's almost as if her girl’s brain transforms it into something totally different. Like
I'll call you tomorrow
.

The girl reached out a hand to me. "Stay."

"Naw, can't. Thanks for tonight, though." I headed for the exit.

I guessed I should have worded that better. The silence behind me could have frozen over a thousand indoor ice skating stadiums.

##

The next day in English class, my cell vibrated in the back pocket of my jeans. Seeing Benny Sandoval’s name in the display, I shot my hand up. “I need to use the bathroom.”

"Hey, Benny. Ms. Valenzuela over at Perdido High said you needed people."  I paced before the sinks and mirrors.

"Yes. You will work after school and weekends?"

I took a deep breath, knowing I was about to follow in the path of my loser father. "No. Full time." But only until I got us back on our feet. I would finish school for sure and make something of my life.

A silence. "My sister-in-law, she mostly send me boys in school who wish part-time work."

“Oh, really?” I injected a note of surprise. Hearing someone open the door, I slipped into a toilet stall. I leaned against the metal wall that was probably covered with germs from every known form of STD.

I was a quitter, a dropout. A nobody on the road to nowhere.

But what was I supposed to do? Live in our car with Mom?

"Is okay," Benny said. “I need full-time, too. Report here tomorrow morning.” He gave me an address in Santa Alicia, the next town over from mine. Nestled against the eastern foothills of Los Angeles, with mansions lodged in all its canyon crevices, Santa Alicia was the diamond to Perdido’s lump of coal. Santa Alicia was the lawyers, the big-money software guys, the filmmakers. Perdido was all the people who worked just as hard for ten times less, along with an unhealthy dose of life's losers.

And now, I was about to join the ranks of the losers.

I looked at the address I’d scribbled down. "Is this a home?"

“Yes. In Liberty Heights," Benny said, naming a fancy neighborhood in Santa Alicia. Liberty Heights was ten miles from my home on the map, but two galaxies away if you went by privilege and opportunity. "We will clear the brush from his hillside. Fire ordinance."

"Hey, Benny? Will I get paid on Friday? For the week’s work?" When he didn't answer, I added, "I got me a landlady situation."

"Yeah," he said. "Every Friday."

"Thanks, man." I hung up.

Yes.
I’d give Mrs. M as much as I could on Friday.

I just hoped it would be enough.

Cherry Lips

For four hours, our little crew toiled like prisoners on a steep hillside full of hellish, stinging grasses and clinging burrs and vines that grabbed at you indecently. Armed with chainsaws, our job was to make safe what LA’s fire inspectors had labeled a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone.

Besides me, the group included Tiny, a guy so stoned his eyes had pinwheels spinning in them like a TV cartoon character, and a tat-covered dude named Rammer, who’d called out "Come to Mama!" as he picked up his chainsaw. Then there was Brian, who Benny had put in charge when he left to check on his other crews, and who talked non-stop while somehow taking down more vegetation than the other three of us put together. They had all worked for Benny before.

By ten thirty, I’d already peeled off my t-shirt and sworn to myself I’d wear a hat tomorrow— as the sun broiled down, I could almost hear my hair sizzle. When Brian doused his shirt and draped it over his head, I did the same, water running in dirty rivulets down my chest and back.

“Show off,” Rammer said.

"Jeez, Walker, save it for the ladies and put your shirt on," Brian said.

I was used to comments like that. "You took yours off. And it’s hot out here!” Although I did work out to get my ripped body, for the most part, I’d gotten my looks in the great Roulette Wheel of Birth—along with a felon father and a mom who was slipping more and more into a coma of her own making.

"Eleven o'clock," Brian said. "We're done."

"What? Benny promised me eight hours of work today!"

"The next shift’s from three to seven," Tiny said. "We don't work during the hottest part of the day." He spat into the ground.

"You're kidding." I stared at him. I was expected to take a four hour lunch break in filthy clothes, then work until seven at night? “Where am I supposed to go like this? I stink!"

Brian shrugged. "I'm going home. You can stay here with Tiny and Rammer, if you like."

I decided to drive the thirty minutes each way to go home and shower, then spend the rest of my lunch hour looking for a second job in downtown Santa Alicia. With Mrs. M breathing her garlic fumes down my neck, I had to find paying work during those four-hour lunch breaks, and fast.

##

Around two o’clock, as I drove by the Santa Alicia Community Center, I noticed they had a pool. Maybe they’d have showers, too, where I could get clean before I went to another job. I pulled into their parking lot.

The Community Center was located in a city park with a playground, a fountain and benches. Posters announced regular events like a Monday Farmer’s Market, an artist’s fair every Wednesday, and bands playing on Fridays.

Sure enough, next to the pool was a building marked “Lockers/showers.”

Outside the Center, a dozen kids, maybe kindergarten age, sat at picnic tables in red t-shirts with the words "Safety After School." Some older girls worked with them on pipe cleaner projects. Their t-shirts matched those of the kids, except they were blue and carried the additional word "Counselor."

A dark-haired counselor was bending over a table helping some kids. Her tempting backside snapped me to attention.

"Excuse me?" I said.

The girl looked up. Although my mellow exterior never faltered, my girl-finding sensors went on full alert.

Her eyes were like dark fudge, her lips like the cherry on a sundae. As she straightened up to meet me, we locked glances and my charm reflex kicked in. It was automatic with me, particularly when confronted with a girl like this one, with a perfect ass and lips you wanted to bite.

"Hi, I'm Travis." I amped up the smileage to about 80% of full operating capacity. Warmly interested, but not overeager.

"Hi." She gave me a look that managed to say
you're hot
and
don't get your hopes up
at the same time. The look of a true ballbuster.

"Did you need some help?" she said.

As I explained what I was looking for, I assessed the challenge before me. Most girls, even ones like this, would have had that funny half-smile going, would be touching their hair, nodding at everything I said. This girl just listened, not even trying to make an impression on me.

"You need to speak to the Camp Director." She called out to a nearby counselor, who had her back to us, a girl with an amazing long river of platinum ponytail.

“Zo? Can you manage for a minute? I'll take him over to Bob's office."

“No problem.” The girl waved without turning around.

Now we were getting somewhere. She could have just pointed me in the right direction. Giving me a personal escort to my destination had to mean something, didn't it?

Yet she was just walking along, not saying a thing, while I worked for it. "What's your name?" I asked.

"Kat."

Kat.
What an awesome name, a name that put all kinds of ideas into your head. Kat was a girl who fought with you then gave you the greatest make-up sex of your life. A girl you laid down on her back and undressed little by little.

"What's your middle name?"

 She gave me a doubtful double take, then seemed to decide I probably wasn't a hack saw murderer.

"It's Destiny."

For a split second I thought she meant us. I gave her what had to be this idiotic, shit-eating grin, looking deep into her eyes, which returned only polite disinterest. That's when I realized she meant her middle name.

"Destiny? Is your middle name?"

"Yes." She honored me with a smirk. "My parents like it, anyway."

"What's your last name?"

"Do you ever stop?"

"No. Not until I know every single one of your names."

She lowered her eyelashes and raised them. "Two are enough for one day," she said and dropped me at the Director's office door. When I came out ten minutes later, my request for employment had been blown off, and the beautiful Kat Destiny had gone home.

Peeping Toms

Our crew of misfits spent the next morning hacking bushes back from a fence that protected a cheesy imitation of the Taj Mahal. Some pompous ass called this monstrosity his home. By eleven o'clock, as my sweat poured and blisters broke open on my hands, the idea of fire taking the place down didn't seem so bad to me.

Rammer stretched his back and jerked his head toward the hillside. "Lunch time! You guys want to go scouting?"

"I'll pass." Brian was going home to his hot shower and his wife.

"Yeah, sure." Tiny was already following Rammer up the steep slope. We were above a row of large homes, all fenced, and backed up to the hillside. The thing was, the hillside angled up so sharply that only a minute of climbing took you high enough to look right over the tops of all those fences.

This was some security system these people had. They obviously hadn't earned their millions through the use of their giant intellects.

Rammer gazed across the fence through a pair of binoculars. "Aw right!" he said to Tiny, staring through the binoculars. "She's there."

Was this what they did at lunch every day? Spy into people's homes?

Tiny grabbed for the binoculars but Rammer fought him off. “Come on, baby!” he urged in a low voice. “Take it off!”

I looked down into the yard. By a lounge chair stood a woman who was rocking a red bikini. But not for long. As she peeled the top off, her fake, over-sized breasts sprang out like two beach balls.

"Awesome!” Rammer could hardly contain himself.

“Lemme see!” Tiny launched himself at the binoculars, wrenching them away. But the woman had dived into the pool, obscuring their view for the moment.

I ignored a low-lying sense of depression that I was fated to work daily with these two apparent cases of brain death. “I’m leaving.”

“I missed it!” Tiny pulled a joint from his pocket.

I couldn't believe it. Benny lectured us every day about the danger of fire on these dry  hillsides, about how a spark from a chainsaw could set off a disaster if we weren’t careful. Smoking, needless to say, was forbidden.

"You remember what Benny said?" I tried to keep a mellow tone as Tiny took out a lighter and slung the joint into the corner of his mouth. “Dude. Be cool, okay?" I hooked my thumbs into my jeans pockets, slouching, coming across as laid-back when I really wanted to flatten him.

“Mind your own damn business,” Tiny said, his eyes turning narrow and almost yellow in color.

“If you incinerate half the county, it
is
my business.”

His mouth set in a tight line, Tiny slid the joint back into his shirt pocket. He caught Rammer's eye and shrugged, making me think those two had probably almost started many fires before in search of a high.

He wasn’t actually tiny, I couldn’t help but notice. Muscles bulged out of a stained undershirt, while his shaved head shone with sweat. I shifted my weight onto the balls of my feet, moving my shoulders around and stretching my fingers. In my current mood, I’d have welcomed a chance to kick the shit out of him.

“You had a good idea a minute ago,” he said. “Why don’t you just get the fuck outta here?”

“Oh, I plan to. But if I hear about any fire in these hills, I’ll report you for arson.”

While Tiny swore at me, I got in my car and drove away.

Over the Edge

Wondering how my life had sunk so low, I barreled the Chevy through Liberty Heights, making turns on instinct, following the path that some deep, buried part of my mind had chosen. I still had three god-forsaken hours of lunch left.

The Ridge Highway ran from Santa Alicia northeast through the mountains for about thirty miles. Gas prices being so high, I’d have to skip dinner tonight to pay for this drive, but I needed it. I attacked the curving, two-lane road with our car, hurtling into turns, wheels over the center line half the time, only pulling to the right when it was either that or a head-on collision.

I might have talked to myself, too, railing about landladies, deadbeats, and the prospect of living in a cardboard box. I was going way faster than the posted limits. Only a motorcyclist passed me, whipping by my side view mirror in a blur of orange shirt and vanishing before I even really saw him.

 Each turn in the road looked out at hillsides brown from the scorching heat of this last summer and autumn—mountains of tinder, waiting to ignite.

As I came around a hairpin turn, two cars, crumpled and sitting at weird angles, blocked the road in front of me. I smashed on the brakes. My car screeched to a stop, and I jumped out. Hands shaking, I pulled out my cell phone.

"There’s been an accident," I told the 911 operator. I gave her everything I knew about our location, then signed off and ran to help.

The alarm on one of the cars blared at full volume—the sort of piercing wail that would turn even the mellowest person homicidal within seconds. The car's dazed owner was sitting on its trunk, yelling into his cell phone. "Hello? I can't hear you! Hello? Hello?" It didn't seem to occur to him to move away from the noise, or maybe turn off the alarm.