Plus One (12 page)

“Oh honey, does that hurt? Does that feel okay?”

Sylvie closed her eyes.

“No, Daddy,” she said, her voice husky. “That feels
fantastic
.”

Alex pulled the washcloth out of the bathwater and placed it in her hand. “Here, honey. You finish up.”

• • •

“I think it's probably a good idea for you to do Sylvie's bath from now on, okay?”

The notes call was done, the kids were down, and the two of them were plopped back on the sofa, Figgy with a Sudoku book and Alex half watching the Nature Channel.

Figgy snapped her puzzle book closed. “You can't give her a simple bath? I had to take that call—”

“No, Fig—not that. I'm just saying… it got weird with the washing up.”

“Weird how?”

Alex paused, unsure how to put it. “Girl loves her gi-gi soap.”

“Oh.” Figgy smiled, going back to her puzzle. “Can't blame her for that.”

Alex settled back and tried to concentrate on the screen. A dull throb pulsed from his neck; he'd tweaked it in the pool that afternoon. Huck had been excited to show him the zip line he'd strung up in the backyard—it extended from the upper branches of a cypress, over the patio, and to the pool. Huck had rigged it up so you could let go from the halfway point and splash down in the deep end. It was a good fifteen-foot drop. When Alex went to join the guys, Figgy had grabbed him by the wrist. “Don't you dare,” she said. “What happens if your timing is off?”

Alex shook her off and headed for the ladder. “I got this,” he said. He wasn't entirely convinced he did, but Huck had made the leap three times, and there was no way Alex was going to sit
back with Sam and the ladies while watching one magnificent synchronized drop after another.

And it
was
fun, at least the part where he scaled the tree trunk in his bare feet, grabbed onto the bar, and hoisted himself into position. Then he stepped off the branch and accelerated through the air, high over the women and children and letting out a squealing whoop as he released his grasp and fell, arms flapping, a safe distance away from the concrete lip of the pool. No problem. Perfecto. It would have been a complete success if Alex hadn't bent back
just
before touching down, bringing the flatness of his back level with the surface and producing a thunderous clap that echoed across the backyard.

“Oooooooo.”

When he surfaced, Huck and Sam and the ladies and kids were focused on him, fists balled in empathetic anguish.

“I'm okay,” he gargled, his back a mottled red under the surface. “Fine! Fine!”

Now he reached back and pressed down on a hard knot in the crux between his neck and back. The spot had the firmness of a baseball.

“I think I might have whiplash.”

“Oh, honey,” Figgy said. “That was quite the flop.”

She moved over and began rubbing. She immediately honed in on the spot. Alex closed his eyes and let out a moan. “God bless you.”

“You stupid, stupid man.”

“That would be me.”

Figgy kept working. He sighed and tried to isolate the tension and let it go. He reached over and gave her leg a tug. They were good, like this, alone together. Always were. It was when they separated and went out on their own—that's when he couldn't be sure.

He slouched forward and moaned. “Let's never leave this couch, okay?”

She patted his shoulder. “Could you believe that house? It was
so
done. Every inch. Done.”

Alex kept quiet, opening his eyes and focusing on the TV. The Australian star of
Wildman
was fashioning a fishhook and spear out of a piece of bamboo. It looked easy enough, but it was one of those things Alex knew he himself could never pull off. He could barely clear a clogged toilet. He felt a sudden wave of resentment for his mom. Weren't lesbians supposed to be good with tools and home maintenance? How come he got all the self-righteous touchy-feely baggage of a dyke mom and none of the
handiness
?

Figgy whispered in his ear. “Huck did an amazing job, didn't he?” Then, when he didn't respond: “Would you ever want to take on a big remodel like that?”

The house was amazing, obviously. And Huck was clearly impressive in the domestic department. But for reasons Alex couldn't quite explain, there was no way in hell he could acknowledge that out loud. “It was all just a little Pottery Barn for me.”

“Did you get a look inside that fridge?” Figgy continued. “Did you see the perfect symmetrical rows of Oranginas and Perriers? It was like the best minibar ever.”

“Exactly,” Alex said. “Like a hotel. You want to live in a hotel?”

“Did you see the icemaker?” she went on. “It made those little square cubes—just like a hotel. And that sauna? Katherine was going on and on about their
house manager
. Everything is handled by this lady in the guesthouse out back. Ukrainian. Klara someone. I'm supposed to email her about setting up a play date for Sam.”

“Their house manager handles play dates? When is Sam going over?”

“He's not,” Figgy said. “They're meeting up online. In that game that Sam plays with the igloos and penguins and whatever.”

“So Klara the Ukrainian house manager… is arranging a play date for our boys… on Club Penguin?”

“Yup.”

“Fuck me.”

Alex rubbed his eyes and felt a shudder roll through him, simultaneously overcome by a sludgy mix of revulsion and envy. All that
giving over
—to house managers and private schools and nannies… he knew on one hand that Katherine and Huck's life was objectively nice. More than nice: It was spacious and easy and cushioned in a way he'd never ever felt. At the same time, the way Huck and Katherine lived felt offensive—nauseating even. The punk in him felt sure that they were to be if not reviled, definitely belittled.

“We could get some help, too, you know,” Figgy said. “Someone to help with the kids and the house. Could be nice, right?”

Alex sat up and rubbed his face. He pictured himself interviewing applicants with a notepad and a jug of iced tea, holding court at the kitchen table with a procession of bright, attentive, eager young women. One might be Catholic, the eldest from a huge, happy family from the Midwest, looking for work while she pursued a teaching credential. Another might be grandmotherly and Jamaican, a career caretaker with references from here to Kingston. One might even be a guy. Alex was cool with a manny—he pictured a cheerful jock, a Kyle or a Tony, tossing perfect spiral football passes to Sam in the backyard as Sylvie looked on adoringly. Man, woman, old, young, white, black, brown—he was open! The point was, their nanny would be fully vetted, fairly compensated, and not in any way representative of the L.A. underclass that well-to-do families hired to do the work they were too lazy or spoiled to do themselves.

“Yeah, maybe,” he said. “I could call some agencies.”

“What about Rosa?” Figgy said. Rosa was the nice lady from El Salvador who came in once a week to clean the bathrooms and do laundry.

Alex made a face. “Actually, I was thinking more in terms of a professional.”

“A professional? Fancy.”

“Come on,” he said. “With everything going on right now, shouldn't we do this right? On the up and up? Rosa barely speaks English. The only time she ever babysat, she just turned on the TV and fed the kids crap. Do you know what I found in the trash? A container from Yoshinoya Beef Bowl. Do you have any idea what they put in Yoshinoya Beef Bowl?”

“Meat?”

“Hooves, maybe, but definitely no actual meat.”

“The kids
adore
Rosa,” Figgy said. “She's comforting. She's got those big, soft El Salvadoran arms. Don't you want to crawl up in those arms? Take a nap in them? Let them
enfold
you?”

“Not really, no.”

“She's perfect, then. Because no way am I going to leave you at home with some hot Australian with those ropy yoga arms. Besides, production is starting and I do
not
have time to find and train and get comfortable with a whole new person. I know Rosa. The kids know Rosa. Done.”

Alex started to protest, then stopped. Figgy had clearly made up her mind—she wanted Rosa, and he was in no real position to object. Not with production starting and his position at home still tenuous. She tapped him on the shoulder with her pen. “Besides, have you seen Rosa chop an onion? Senora has some serious knife skills. She can be your sous! Now that you're done with the day job, aren't you getting busy in the kitchen?”

Alex felt himself smile. He flashed on the look of ecstasy on Kate's upturned face as she chewed that cheese muffin. “Could be okay,” he said. “Anything to save the kids from more beef hooves.”

• • •

Rosa happily accepted the offer and started the following Monday, arriving early to pack the kids' lunches and get scrambled eggs
and toast on the table. Over the next few weeks, they fell into an uneasy new routine. The kids were, just as Figgy had said they would be, thrilled to have Rosa around. She snuck them candy and cleared their plates and made them pupusas. Alex, meanwhile, struggled to get the arrangement worked out. When he wasn't apologizing for dishes in the sink, he was hiding in the bathroom to stay out of her way. And as nice as it was having someone else around to pick up the laundry, it also made him nervous, having household tasks outsourced so early in his career as a domestic first responder.

More profoundly, having Rosa around meant they'd officially gone
bougie
, which for most of Alex's existence was one of the worst things you could say about anyone. Alex had thrown that word around a lot when he'd met Figgy, back when he was driving his $600 car and working as a legal temp and living with four housemates. On the weekends they'd walk around one of the nicer neighborhoods nearby, looking at all the big houses filled with families and flower arrangements and people whose lives seemed entirely alien.

At some point they started playing a game they called Come the Revolution. The L.A. riots were still fresh in everyone's minds, and Alex and his friends began fabricating detailed scenarios of exactly what they would do in the event of another one. Most of the neighbors, they agreed, would flee at the first sign of trouble. That would leave them the pick of whatever home struck their fancy.

One day Alex and two housemates hopped the wall of a Mediterranean mansion on the southern slopes of Griffith Park. It was gigantic and crumbling and apparently abandoned, one of the few properties owned by old-guard families who hadn't made deals with speculators flipping every halfway decent property in the neighborhood. This one was definitely decent—beneath the weather damage and creeping vines, the house had tall arched
windows, intricate iron grilles, and hand-painted tiles. The pool was halfway filled with rank yellow rainwater, and the yard was teeming with scrubby lavender bushes and towering eucalyptus trees.

He remembered smearing dirt from a window and peering into the living room, squinting at a darkened expanse of oak paneled walls. “Come the revolution,” he'd said, “this shit is
mine
.”

It was right around the time that he was breaking into neighbors' houses that he met Figgy. They hooked up at a softball game. Alex had never played sports as a kid, his teachers in Ojai discouraging games they viewed as warlike and adversarial. A few weeks after learning about a friendly Sunday softball game, he signed up. He loved how the outfielders would chant lines from
The Bad News Bears
:
We wanna kicker, not a sock-knitter. We wanna kicker, not a belly-itcher
.

In his first time at the plate, Alex managed to hit a grounder through the cargo-shorted legs of an animator at short. He took off, huffing and puffing and failing to suppress a girly squeal. Meanwhile the ball, which had been headed into a gap in center left, was stopped short by a bull terrier. Alex charged forward in a sweaty blur, his head swollen with visions of Davey Lopes charging around first. He sprinted toward second, and without any thought to the distance he needed to cover or the tenderness of his ankles or his utter inexperience in any team sport, he leaped forward and slid.

Which is where he met Figgy.

She was standing over him when the dirt plume settled, a sturdy girl with big boobs, hip cocked, wearing baggy shorts and a purple bowling shirt. A heavy tangle of curly hair was tied back with a pair of red lacquer chopsticks. She held the ball in one hand and looked down at him with a wry smile. Only then did he realize that he'd come to rest a good three feet away from the base, his left cleat bent inward at an unnatural angle.

“Ow,” she said.

“The dog! Interference!” he said. “Interference!”

“Infield dog rule,” she said, tapping the ball on his hip. “Ball is in play. You're out.”

“Uncool.” He scrunched his eyes shut, took a breath, and became aware of a sharp burst of pain radiating up from his ankle. “Oh shit. Ow!”

“Like I said—ow,” she said. “Your foot?”