No More Us for You (5 page)

I don't believe in fate, but every now and then something would happen in my life and I'd start to wonder if someone was working behind the scenes, coaxing me toward a certain direction.

One time, long before I met Gabriel, I was daydreaming in my room about Dustin Prewitt, thinking about his big brown eyes, how he tapped his bottom lip with the eraser-end of his pencil in geometry class when he was mulling over a problem, and then the phone rang and a man on the end of the line asked,
Is Dustin there?
Now
what were the chances of
that
happening? So naturally I thought we were meant for each other, Dustin and I, even though we hadn't had a real conversation up to that point. Once, I'd asked him if the pencil sharpener was broken and he'd said
yes
.

But then, a couple weeks later, I found out that Dustin was gay, so I went back to not believing in fate again.

Another time I lost my favorite earrings, these silver sunflowers that I bought on 2nd Street, and practically ransacked my room looking for them. I checked my purse, my jewelry box, the nightstand, my backpack, under my bed, all four drawers of my dresser, even behind my dresser, the pockets of anything with pockets hanging inside the closet, my purse and jewelry box again. Nothing.
Come on, Is
, Heidi yelled from the foyer.
The movie starts at five
. And, wouldn't you know it, while we were in line to get our tickets, the girl in front of us was wearing those same
exact
sunflower earrings. Yellow topaz, silver petals. I stood there in awe, looking at the earrings, and had this weird sensation that my entire life had already been lived.

Then there is the time I'm going to tell you about now.

Heidi picked me up on Saturday afternoon in her red Volkswagen Beetle and we headed toward the museum where Vanessa worked. I could tell Heidi didn't want to go. It was all there in the way she changed lanes, how she leaned forward and then fell back in her seat.

We were on Ocean Boulevard—driving and stopping, driving and stopping—with the fancy houses on our right and the sun-dazzled Pacific on our left. Heidi honked, huffed, sighed.

“What's with all this damn traffic?” she said.

“Can you imagine living here?” I was looking out the passenger window at a house with a perfect manicured lawn. It had a three-tiered fountain, a giant bay window, and a balcony on the second floor with two wicker chairs pointed at the ocean.

“When I'm older, this is where I want to live.” Heidi readjusted her rearview mirror. “With my husband,” she added.

“Who's it going to be this week?” I asked.

“Matt Hawkins. Obviously.”

“Ick,” I said.

On the sidewalk, a large black dog was pulling a girl with his leash like a motorboat towing a water skier.

“We'd have three or four children, me and Matt,” Heidi said.

“Yeah, and they'd all have colossal foreheads.”

“Ah, that's
mean
,” Heidi said, chuckling.

We were both sort of laughing and then we fell silent for a while.

And then Gabriel's face came to my mind, his dark brown eyes and olivey skin, the little curved scar above his eyebrow where he'd hit his head against a low-hanging ladder in the garage. I was on the phone with him when it happened, I heard the banging and the cell hitting the concrete and a scream leaping out of his mouth. I wondered what sort of sounds he made when his car hopped the curb, if he cursed or yelled when he crashed through the fence and rolled into the canal.

We drove by the last extravagant house with an ocean view and came upon old apartment buildings and newly painted condos. There were beach towels folded over
balcony railings, potted ferns and barbecue grills. An old man in a wifebeater, smoking a cigar, watching the waves.

Another traffic light turned red before we could roll through it and Heidi hit the brakes.

“Where did she say the museum was?” she asked.

“On Alamitos. I know where it's at.”

“I bet you do,” she mumbled.

I looked at Heidi. “What's that supposed to mean?”

Heidi turned to me and then back to the car in front of her. “You just know where everything's at,” she said. “I'm always getting lost, that's all.”

I could always tell when Heidi was lying. Her eyebrows would bounce up on her forehead and her movements would become exaggerated. “This traffic is killing me,” she said.

“We'll just stop by for a few minutes, say hello, then go to Shoreline, okay?”

The light turned green and we lurched forward. “Okay,” she said. “Damn, I need to get some gas.”

Two blocks later Heidi pulled into a Shell station. While she was filling up, I went inside the mini-mart to get some bottled water. I opened the fridge's sliding door, shivered, grabbed two Evians, and went to the register.

There were a few people ahead of me in line: a barefoot man with a six-pack of Coors, an old man in a trucker hat, and a woman with a bag of cashews and
People
magazine.

I looked out the window and saw Heidi sliding a squeegee across the windshield of her car, wiping the rubber blade with a brown paper towel after each pass. I don't know why, but I felt sad watching her do that. If she had a boyfriend, I imagined that's one of the things he would've done for her.

While the old man paid for his cigarettes, I looked at the wire rack by the counter. It was full of various bagged nuts, beef jerky, and licorice. Soon as I saw the braided Red Vines licorice through the plastic window, I had a craving. My mouth watered at the thought of chewing one, my teeth sinking into that rubbery sweetness.

The line moved forward and the woman placed her
People
magazine and cashews on the counter. Then she pulled the last bag of Red Vines from the rack. “These too,” she said.

Heidi was tightening the gas cap by the time I got back to the car. I twisted open one of the bottles and took a big swallow. I tried not to think of the Red Vines, which only made me think about them more—a long, braided, chewy, sweet, red rope swinging behind my eyes.

Heidi climbed in and stretched the seat belt across her chest. “Did you tell Vanessa that we were coming for sure?”

“Yes, I did.”

Heidi started the car.

“We don't have to stay long,” I assured her. “It'll be fun.”

“Museums aren't fun, Is.”

“It's not like we're going to look around. We'll just hang out with Vanessa for a while and then leave.”

“
Five
minutes.”

“Why're you so cranky?”

Heidi eased the car forward. “Where do I go?”

“Turn right here when you can,” I said. “This is Alamitos.”

Heidi punched the gas and swerved into the street before the approaching cars could pass her.

“Easy,”
I said, bracing myself on the door handle.

As long as I'd known Heidi, she was always a careless driver. The last time I looked at the “Risk of Death” chart and saw the lifetime odds for dying in a motor vehicle (One in 84), I pictured Heidi in her Volkswagen Beetle. It was people like her who made that number what it was.

Six blocks later and we were pulling into the parking lot of the Long Beach Contemporary Museum. The white building had clean lines and blue-tinted windows that reflected the buildings on the other side of the street. The concrete pathway to the front entrance snaked through the greenest grass I'd ever seen. In the middle of the lawn was a silver sculpture arcing into the sky. It looked like a whalebone covered in tinfoil.

“What's that supposed to be?” Heidi asked.

“I don't know,” I admitted.

“I mean,
really
.”

The glass doors opened and I saw Vanessa talking on the phone behind the curved counter of the front desk. She smiled and raised her finger.

“I'm sorry, but we don't offer field trips at this time…. Yes, I'm sure…” Vanessa rolled her eyes. “She's not in her office at the moment…. Okay, let me put you through.” Vanessa pressed a couple buttons and then set the receiver down. “What a condescending
jerk
,” she said, shaking her head.

“I would've just hung up,” Heidi said.

“Well, I can't do that here. Unless it's a crank call.”

“I don't let anyone talk to me that way.”

“I told you we'd stop by,” I said, wanting to change the subject.

“I wish I could hang out with you guys,” she griped.

“What time do you get off?”

“Not until eight,” she said.

Heidi swiped a finger across the counter as if she was checking for dust. “Bummer.”

Vanessa leaned toward me. “He's here,” she whispered. “Carlos.”

“You're too much,” I said, trying not to smile, and then I was checking out the museum, craning my neck and looking at the artwork. “How long have you worked here?” I asked her.

“Not long. About two months.”

Heidi raised a closed fist to her mouth and yawned with great exaggeration like a mime at a kid's birthday party.

The phone rang. “Go ahead and check out the exhibit,” Vanessa said before picking up. “Long Beach Contemporary Museum,” she said in this sophisticated voice.

I turned to Heidi. “Come on.”

Heidi had this I'm-so-bored-already-I-could-slit-my-wrists look on her face as she pushed away from the counter and followed behind me.

The first thing we checked out was this huge rag doll wearing a pair of ratty-looking boxing gloves. His eyes were two Xs, his brown hair was made of yarn. The artist
had painted a row of red dots across the forehead.

“Is that supposed to be Jesus?” Heidi asked.

“Looks like him to me.”

“If my dad saw that, he'd freak out.”

“Mine would probably laugh.”

There was a large painting hanging on the wall covered with black paint. Heidi pointed and said, “
That
's art?”

“I guess so. We
are
in an art museum.”

“Give me a break.”

“There's actually names on it,” a voice said from the corner. I turned around. It was the museum guard, a boy about my age wearing a blue suit. His hair was short and wavy brown, his skin the color of butterscotch. I thought he was kind of cute and wondered if he was Carlos, the boy Vanessa wanted me to meet. He motioned toward the painting. “I thought it was just a black canvas too until I looked at it up close the other day.”

Heidi and I both walked over to the painting and leaned in. It was true. The names sat on top of the canvas like black lily pads on a black pond.

“Oh yeah, now I see them,” Heidi said. “Sergeant Lee…Butler.”

“They're overlapping,” I said. “Captain…Gary Eckhart.”

“Benjamin…Ed…something.”

“Lance Corporal…Adam…”

“Captain John…Martinez.”

“Staff…Sergeant Maurice…” The last name was illegible, tangled with another's first name.

“Why did he make the names so hard to read?” Heidi wanted to know.

“He probably did it on purpose,” I said.

“But
why
?”

I shrugged. “I don't know.”

The painting reminded me of my father's electric typewriter that I used to play with when I was a kid. I'd run my fingers over the keys, press my palms down again and again, and the typewriter would pop like caps. When I'd reach the bottom of the page, I'd feed the paper back in and do the same thing—
Pop pop pop!
—typing right over the letters.

It didn't take me long to figure out who all these names painted on the canvas were, what war they all died in, which faraway country. It was another cause of death that was excluded in the “Risk of Death” chart. I figured War was somewhere between Airplanes (747 annual deaths) and Drowning in bathtub (402). But I was just guessing. It could have been more than that for all I knew. That's the impression I got from the painting, anyway.

“Look, a woman.” Heidi's finger hovered inches from the canvas. “Sergeant Monique Brown.”

“Please, don't touch,” the boy said.

Heidi turned around and scowled. “I'm
not
,” she snapped.

“Don't you two go to Millikan?” he asked us.

I turned around and faced him. “Yeah.”

“I thought you guys looked familiar.”

“Where do you hang out?” I asked.

“The bleachers by the basketball courts. Sometimes the fences near the quad.”

Once I realized this was Carlos, I started to wonder
if Vanessa had told him about me, if she'd mentioned Gabriel at all. Also, what was it about Carlos that made her think we'd be a good match? I wasn't ready for a boyfriend yet, let alone start dating again.

“Wait,” Heidi said. “Aren't you friends with Jeffrey McKenzie?”

He smirked. “I call him Snake.”

Heidi nodded. “I know who you are now. I mean, I don't know your name or anything.”

“Carlos.”

“I'm Heidi. And this is Isabel.”

I waved at Carlos and smiled. He was definitely cute.

“Isabel,” he said slowly.

I smiled again and pulled some of my hair behind my ear.

“Call her ‘Is' for short,” Heidi said.

“Isabel's better,” Carlos said.

I could feel myself blushing a little.

Vanessa walked into the room all bouncy, her hair swaying at her shoulders. “The phone just won't stop
ringing
.”

“Are these your friends?” Carlos asked.

“They sure are.” Vanessa stood at my side and gave me this little, goofy hug. “He's cute, right?” she whispered into my ear.

I shushed her.

“Oh my God, that's
hilarious
,” Heidi said. She was pointing at a pink neon sign on the wall that said
NO MORE COITUS FOR YOU
in this swirly font.