Girls Love Travis Walker (6 page)

“Maybe I should take you over to the Free Clinic.” 

As I said it, all the lights went out.

For a moment we both just sat there. At first, I thought it was a power outage in the neighborhood, or from an earthquake or something. But slowly, I realized that life was going on as normal outside. The sounds of traffic continued loud as ever. Light poured through the windows from neighboring apartments and sneaked under the front door from the lamps in the hallway.

 Only we were in the dark. Stuck in our own personal power outage.

Another long moment of silence, and then I lost it. “What the hell are you doing?” I shouted at my mother. “Lying in bed and letting the lights go out while I work my ass off!” 

In the dark, I heard her sniffling. “I’m sorry, honey.”

“You should be! Why didn’t you pay this bill? Or say something to me?”

Leaving her to cry in the bed, I felt my way out to the living room sofa, where I tried to go to sleep. I lay for a long time, getting more and more frightened. What would we do if we lost our home? Where would we go?

 Mom must have been thinking the same way, because her pale form appeared in the doorway of the living room. In the light coming in from outside, she pulled her robe tightly around her. “Please don’t be mad at me.”

I sighed. It wouldn’t do any good to make her feel bad. “It’s okay, Mom.”

“I’m really scared, Travis.”

So was I. Who was the kid here anyway, and who was supposed to be the grownup?  I felt like I did when I was six and would run and crawl into bed with her, because I was too scared to be alone. But I couldn’t do that anymore.

“Promise me something?”

“What?” I asked.

“Don’t let us lose this place. Please, Travis. We can’t lose this apartment.”

I sat up from the sofa. “I’m trying. Jeez, Mom, what do you want from me, blood?” I could hear my own voice, rough from fear and panic. “But you have to help!”

Her own panic seemed to flow off of her in waves. “No!
You
have to fix this, Travis. It’s your job to make this right.”

“
My
job? Dad screwed up our lives, you’re lying around doing nothing, and it’s my job to fix things?’

She stood, pale and tense, in the doorway. “You’re the man of the family now.” Her voice rose higher and higher. “We can’t end up on the streets or in some filthy shelter!”

She burst into tears. “Please, Travis?” She came to sit next to me and clutched my hand. Then her mood shifted. Her voice turned thin and strange and distant.

“I miss Freddie. Maybe we can bring him down here.”

“What’re you talking about?” My insides were twisting around, and my hand tightened on Mom’s, as if somehow I could pump calm and sanity into her through my fingertips.

Freddie was our dog back in Modesto. We’d left him with our neighbors, Jenny’s family, when we moved to Los Angeles.

“Do you think we could bring him down to LA?”

My voice quavered as I answered. “He’s fine where he is, Mom. Jenny told me. The Taylors have a big yard. They love him.”  Tears pricked at the back of my eyes. How could we could take care of a big dog when we couldn’t take care of ourselves?

She sat very still for a moment, then shook her head and looked at me wonderingly. “Why, of course.  You’re right.”

“C’mon,” I said. I stood, grabbed some sofa cushions and walked to the bedroom with her following me. I laid down a line of sofa cushions on the floor beside her bed, got onto them, and punched my pillow a few times to get it into place. Mom climbed back into bed and reached down her hand, which I took.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“You tell me.” 
Be a grown up again. Please.

A silence. “Remember my rose garden, Travis? In Modesto? I would pick big bunches of them and put them around the house.”

I did. I was a freshman then, and my biggest problem had been the long bus ride to school and back. A low roar started in my ears.

“I remember.” What had I expected her to say?
Sure, I’ll get out of bed! I’ll start job hunting tomorrow?

Slowly and carefully, she laid back down on the bed. “I need to go to sleep now.”

“That’s a good idea.”

Soon she fell asleep, holding my hand while I lay there, looking at the ceiling and thinking  about the deep, dark hole I’d fallen into and how I would never in a million years climb out.

##

It turned out that, to get our power back, we’d have to pay not only our past due bills, but a whopping penalty fee. “That’s why I never paid it,” Mom said.

I sighed, thinking if she’d been on top of this, we wouldn’t have owed the fee to begin with. “I can’t pay this right now either,” I said. “We’ll get too far behind on the rent.” 

She chewed on her lip. “But Travis, no light?”

“No hot water either.” We stared at each other, neither of us able to hide how scared we were.

“Hey, it’s better than losing the apartment, right? We’ll light candles. And take cold showers.” I tried to sound brave as I said it, even though my mind was shouting at her,
why don’t you do something? What’s wrong with you?

Three days’ notice. Three days’ notice.

I went to bed that night hearing the words over and over in my head.

Proposition

On break from work the next morning, I sat in the shade under a tree in my normal state of total filth. At least I had a jug of cold water. I poured some over my head, like an animal at a watering hole.

My cell rang. I couldn’t place the number.

“Travis? It’s Zoey again.”

“Oh. Hi.” I found myself straightening up and running a hand though my hair. Kat must have decided to see me. Awesome. Although I would have thought she’d call me herself.

“Kat asked you to call me?”

“Sorry. No.”

“So … you’re the one calling me then?” I asked cautiously. Girls called me all the time, but not usually the really straight-laced ones, like Zoey. My mind rapidly sorted through visions of her beautiful hair, little pink mouth, and what was most likely a slammin’ body under those big t-shirts.

“Good conclusion, Sherlock.”  Her voice held a smile. “You told Kat you wanted a job working over the lunch hour. Well, the Community Center just listed one. I thought you might be interested.”

“Really? What is it?” I couldn’t believe my luck. A possible job
and,
all of a sudden, the chance to see Kat again. Maybe she’d come on a temp assignment.

“We operate a soup kitchen from noon to two. The thing is, it’s a volunteer position. But you get a free lunch out of the deal.”

That was not gonna cut it. Although working for a free lunch was better than what I was doing now. I could see our empty kitchen cabinets, the few packets of Saltines lying there. And now, no power to run the oven or refrigerator. An idea came to me.

“How do I... would I have to interview?”

“No. I can get you a job on kitchen crew.”

“How?”

A beat. “Actually, I’m in charge of it now. I got promoted from the After School program.”

A smile started to creep across my face. “Oh, so you’d be, like, my boss?”

“Yes.” Her voice turned crisp and playful. “You’d have to do everything I said.”

“I dunno know, Zoey,” I drawled. “I’m not very obedient.”

“Oh, well, too bad then. You’ll have to accept one of your many other job offers.”

I hesitated. It totally sucked that I had to ask this question.

“Listen, I could take the job. But I can’t afford to work for free.”  I took a deep breath. “I’d be willing to work for food. Two lunches and two dinners a day. For me and my mother. And food on Friday for the weekend.”

She was silent for a long moment. Then she said, her voice lower and softer, “The Community Center gives food away to anyone who needs it. You don’t have to work for it, Travis.”

“Yes, I do! Those are my terms. I’ll work for the food.” I was glad this was over the phone, so she couldn’t see my burning red face. I wanted to throw the phone against one of these big boulders on the hill and watch it splinter apart.

“Done,” she said. “You’ve got a deal.”

“Oh, and another thing.” Why did this have to suck so much? I started to speak, then stopped.

“What?” She said it quietly.

“It’s just that, I have this job clearing brush in the morning. So, to be... well... I’d need to use the shower facility at the Center. You know, before I started work.”

“No problem.” She made it sound like every employee showed up dirty for work, asking to use the showers. “It’s a public facility, you know.”

“Still, thanks.”

“Monday through Friday. Start tomorrow.”

Tree Kicker

Zoey and I stood in the dining room at the community center, with its vinyl floor and green painted walls and disgusting swiss cheese ceilings. It helped that a radio played Spanish music, and that the staff, who seemed to know each other, all laughed and argued in a friendly way.

The thought of Kat floated through my head. I didn’t see her, though, and something told me that asking Zoey about her would not be a smooth move.

The Center dining room was open from nine to two. Zoey supervised both the morning volunteers, who did food prep, and the volunteers on my shift, which was lunch. We showed up at noon, helped with set-up for half an hour, served lunch from twelve thirty to one thirty, then spent a half hour on clean-up.

“It’s a small program these days,” Zoey said, “because the city had to cut back its funding. Budget constraints.”

I knew all about budget constraints. It figured cities had them too.

She handed me a big spoon and pointed me toward a tray of macaroni and cheese. “Whenever a food tray’s close to empty,” she said, “take it into the kitchen for a new one. You need to stay on top of that, because you’ll be doing all the tray running.”

“To what do I owe this honor?”

“I needed a heavy lifter. That’s why I called you.” Zoey smiled sweetly at me and patted my bicep.

“You obviously noticed my strong, muscular frame.” I smirked back at her.

“I noticed you were the only male within a hundred yards of this place, and you needed a job at the lunch hour.” 

It was true that I was the only guy she had. All the other volunteers were girls. I could feel myself enter flirting mode. For the first time in a while, I felt like I’d moved up in the world just a notch, rather than down. Instead of spending my four hour lunches on a hot, filthy hillside with Exhibits One and Two from the Dumb and Dumber Museum, I was freshly showered and working in air-conditioned comfort. And surrounded by women. A couple of them whispered to each other and smiled over at me.

I raised a diabolical eyebrow. “So you’re exploiting me?”

“Yep.” She sounded pleased with herself. Her gray eyes warmed with laughter and her little pink mouth curved up in a way that suddenly struck me as highly kissable.

“You’re pretty cute when you abuse your power.” 

Zoey’s face was hard to read. “I’m always cute, Travis.” She moved off, her ponytail swinging.

Damn. I had to give her props for getting in the last word. I stood between two girls at a serving table while a line of people walked in front of the table with their trays. I tried to keep my face from wrinkling at the smell of unwashed bodies. Most of the diners were street people with rough, reddened skin, weirdly layered assortments of clothes, and bags of belongings hanging off of every shoulder and elbow.

Guests
, Zoey had insisted we call them. We should refer to the weary, hardened people who came to us as our guests. “It’s just nicer that way,” she told the staff.

I spooned out some more mac ‘n cheese.

 During the busiest part of lunch, I mainly carried trays back and forth while two of the girls, Charlotte and Terra, served the food. I liked running trays so I didn’t have to talk to the guests.

Frankly, their dirty clothes and blank stares creeped me out. “Many are mentally ill,” Zoey had said. But many of them weren’t, and they had still lost everything. I couldn’t stand to see them there with nowhere to go at night, reduced to grubbing for free food.

Toward the end, I was back on the serving line. The mac ‘n cheese looked like Day Glo wallpaper paste. With lumps. I plopped a spoonful onto a lady’s plate.

“There you go,” I said, looking up. But my “Have a nice day” faded at the sight of her face, tortured into alligator skin by harsh sunshine and despair. The pale blue eyes, the eyes of a person who could have had a life, had no business being in that dark, leathery face. Her hands were roughened and bleeding in a few places, with horrible, split fingernails.

This would be my mother soon, if I didn’t keep it together for her and me. I kept spooning the food out automatically from the tray to the plates, over and over, except that I’d stopped looking up.

As soon as the lunch service ended, I threw down the spoon and bolted for the exit. Outside the center, in the shade of a tree in the park, I paced back and forth, shaking out my hands a few times, blowing out big lungfuls of air. Pain prickled behind my eyeballs.

I found myself studying the tree. I wanted to punch it, but it seemed like that would hurt, so I kicked it instead. I kicked it again, and then unleashed a hailstorm of hard kicks onto the tree with my heavy boots. It took my punishment without complaint.

 “Travis?” Zoey stood a few feet away, her face serious, her forehead crinkled. She had on this little sky blue dress that ended above her knees, and her pale blonde hair flowed back from her face and disappeared behind her shoulders.

I stopped kicking. “Sorry.” Embarrassed again, I bent over, pretending to be winded, leaning my hands on my knees to hide my face from her.

“Not as sorry as that tree.”

I looked up to see her eyes, full of kind humor, crinkle at the corners.

“Yeah, I did kinda kick the shit out of it, didn’t I?” I stood up, feeling disoriented.

 “You okay?”