This Is Where We Live (37 page)

“It kind of sounds like you’re looking for an excuse to avoid starting something new,” Esme says. “At least you have the
possibility
to figure all this out. I wish I could say the same thing.”

“You’re doing just fine,” Claudia tells Esme. “You’re a high-powered marketing executive.”

Fresh drinks arrive on the table. Esme drinks half of her beer before she answers. “Honestly? I hate my job. I hawk crappy kids’ movies for a living, convincing hard-working, possibly broke Americans to shell out twelve dollars for cynical, brainless, disposable crap that I wouldn’t ever watch myself. You know, last spring I was starting to think about quitting to try my hand at writing again? But there’s no chance of that now. I haven’t been able to save a dime. And I live in an overpriced condo that I bought just two months before the real estate market crashed, in a building that’s half-empty because the developers can’t sell the rest of the units. So I can’t move even if I wanted to. I’m stuck. You, however, are not.”

Claudia stares at Esme, noticing for the first time that her friend has gray hair sprouting in her part, a tiny crop of wrinkles nests along her cheekbones, and she looks like she’s gained a few pounds in her hips. Is it unhappiness or stress or is it just that Esme is starting to look her age? It seems too soon for them to be already heading toward bodily deterioration. “I’m sorry. You should have said something sooner.”

Esme shrugs. “It’s all anyone talks about anymore—how screwed they are. I’m tired of all the whinging. I’m lucky to have a job at all.”

Claudia thinks about Esme’s words.
You could do anything you want
. “So where do you propose I start with reimagining my life?” she asked.

“You need to do something drastic, right? Well, you could start by getting laid. Have cheap, tawdry sex with an attractive stranger. Get your mind off Jeremy.” Esme tilts her head in the direction of the men who sit a few feet away. “Him, for example. The guy in the plaid shirt with the beard. He’s been staring at you.”

“I think he’s wearing a wedding ring,”

“So are you.”

Claudia looks down at her hand. Esme and Claudia stare at the ring together. What is she
doing?
Jeremy is off with Aoki, God-knows-where; he has started an entirely new life with another woman and—judging by his lack of communication—doesn’t miss her in the least. And she is sitting here with Esme at the same bar she’s been to a hundred times, still wearing Jeremy’s ring as if it’s a talisman that will magically eradicate the events of the last few months, and spending her days wallowing in apathetic self-indictment.

She finds herself thinking of Dolores, moldering away amid her memories—widowed, probably dying from a painful disease, and helplessly counting down the moments until her home is taken away.
That
is real misery. Who is Claudia to feel sorry for herself?

She finishes her second gin and tonic. Then she tugs at the ring, wedging it over her knuckle and drawing it off her finger. “You’re right,” she says. “I need to do something drastic.” She gazes over at the men. They have registered Claudia and Esme’s interest and are now blatantly staring. The bearded man makes eye contact with Claudia and then looks coyly away. Hidden speakers in the bushes crackle as Billie Holiday serenades the customers with heroin-honeyed blues.

“I’ll give you five dollars if you go talk to them,” Esme whispers. “Ten if you go home with the beard.”

“Save your money,” Claudia says. “I’ll call you soon, OK?” She stands, tucking the ring in the pocket of her jeans. The three men watch Claudia as she picks her way between the chairs, heading directly toward their table. The bearded man smiles at her—the facial hair and plaid shirt combined with Converse high-tops give him the appearance of an urban lumberjack, someone who would be good at fixing broken doors and capturing dangerous spiders. This isn’t entirely unattractive. The man leans forward as she approaches, and his two friends sit back respectfully, giving him the floor. He isn’t wearing a wedding ring after all.

“Hey, there,” he says, as she sidles up beside him, and then the invitation in his face changes to an expression of bewilderment when he realizes that Claudia isn’t coming for him after all; she is passing their table entirely. The fairy lights tremble overhead, battered by wind and fog. Waitresses swivel their hips, dancing a dangerous flamenco between the tables, trays lifted aloft for a finishing flourish. The whirring propane heaters hum a sound track for her departure as Claudia makes for the exit.

The Chicken Kitchen where Mary Hernandez works is in outer Silver Lake, across from a trendy café that sells six-dollar cups of coffee. Claudia deposits her Jetta in the restaurant’s parking lot. Crime-deterring floodlights wash the concrete patch with sterile white light. In the shadowy recesses near the back of the lot, a dreadlocked homeless man rummages through a Dumpster. He removes an empty gallon jug from the bin and shakes it three times before depositing it gently atop the piles of garbage in his shopping cart.

The evening traffic is picking up, and roving packs of hipsters throng the street, weaving between an art gallery opening, a gourmet wine shop, and a French restaurant on the corner. There is a long line at the café, the yearning for exquisite artisinal caffeine managing to trump the realities of the new economy.

The Chicken Kitchen sits between a Salvation Army thrift store and a gay porn shop. She pushes the entrance to the restaurant open, still unsure what she is doing here.
Maybe I can help Dolores
, she thinks, as she heaves the swinging door open and feels a wall of air-conditioning numb her face.
Maybe Mary doesn’t even know what’s going on with her grandmother
. Her mind works through a half-baked math formula, in which the rescue of Dolores will somehow equate to her own personal salvation.

You need to do something drastic
.

Unlike the artfully lit yuppie palaces across the street, the Chicken Kitchen is illuminated by bare fluorescent tubes, which reflect off orange-painted walls and sanitized white tile. Neon signs advertise a bucket of flame-grilled chicken for $5.99, a sampler of BBQ wings for $2.99, party catering, everything
Fresh! Breezy! Meaty!
Overhead, metallic
HAPPY HOLIDAYS
streamers spin slowly in the draft from the air-conditioning unit. Young families sit in plastic booths, noshing on unidentifiable chicken parts that have been broken down and remolded into perfect spherical nuggets.

Claudia spots Mary at the end of the counter, manning a register. “Mary!” she calls softly, from her position at the end of the line. Mary turns to locate the voice, her face registering confusion, then pleasure, and then mild concern. She glances quickly behind her, where her manager—a middle-aged Middle Eastern man in tight orange polyester slacks—is lurking by the soft drink machine. Claudia waves. Mary smiles and waves back tentatively.

Claudia hesitates, considering the impulse that has driven her here. Surely Luz already knows about Dolores’s foreclosure. And how exactly is Claudia planning to offer support? She should have just gone home with the beard, a far more clear-cut response to Esme’s challenge. The longer Claudia stands there, the more muddled her intentions become, until finally the line before her has cleared and it is too late to dart back off into the evening.

Claudia steps up to Mary’s register. Mary’s braid is tucked up into a hair net that she wears underneath an orange Chicken Kitchen baseball cap. She is sweating slightly, under the band of the cap. A painful-looking pimple punctuates the tip of her nose. Mary offers up her diastemic grin, looking far too young to be working at a fast-food restaurant on a Monday night, and then turns to the boy working next to her.

“This is my film teacher, Mrs. Munger,” Mary tells him, in a low voice.

The boy nods, uninterested, and turns back to his customer.

“Not anymore,” Claudia corrects Mary.

Mary leans over the register until it presses into the top of her polo shirt.
My name is Maria!
reads her name tag, and Claudia wonders whether the anglicized
Mary
is for the benefit of the girl’s Ennis Gates classmates, another sign of her striving, or whether the
Maria
was a mistake on the manager’s part. “You know, I thought it was great that you told Penelope to go”—Mary glances behind her at her manager and mouths the words
fuck herself
. “I bet there are a lot of people who wished they’d said it first.”

“It still wasn’t appropriate,” Claudia says, growing uncomfortable. There is no possible way Mary could ever learn about her own small role in the Penelope debacle, she reassures herself. But it is more difficult to look at Mary’s guileless face than she’d expected it to be.

“Mr. Wilson is teaching the class now,” Mary says. “It’s really tedious. He keeps making us watch Spaghetti Westerns. I mean, I appreciate that those films contributed to the revitalization of the genre, but they’re so racist.”

“The Mexicans are always the bad guys,” Claudia agrees, feeling somehow responsible for this affront.

Mary nods. “And they’re not even played by real Mexicans.”

“You know, I never had a chance to write you that UCLA recommendation,” Claudia offers. “I’ve got more free time now, if you still need it.”

Mary gingerly touches the pimple on the end of her nose and then pulls her hand away. “Thanks,” she says, “but it’s too late. I got someone else to do it.” There is no bitterness in this, no accusation, just a statement of fact, but this doesn’t make Claudia feel any better.

Norteño
Christmas carols blast over the loudspeakers, the
oom-pa
of the accordion forcing cheer into the otherwise mundane proceedings of the chain restaurant.
Oom-pa oom-pa oom-pa!
The racket doesn’t make Claudia much want a chicken bucket; she can only imagine how the music would grate after an eight-hour shift. “How are you doing, Mary?” she asks, stalling.

Claudia is holding up the line. The manager wanders close, watching, and Mary lowers her head. “What can I get for you, ma’am?” she says loudly. Claudia looks up at the overhead menu, with its laminated pictures of suspiciously fake-looking chili-cheese fries, oozing shiny Day-Glo goo. “Crispy chicken sandwich,” she says.

“Would you like our manager’s special with that? Side of mashed potatoes, ninety-nine cents?” Mary’s face pinks over with embarrassment. Claudia understands her mortification, understands how separate this flame-grilled world is from Mary’s days at Ennis Gates, sees suddenly how hard Mary must work to maintain two simultaneous lives.
This was a bad idea
, she thinks.
Awkward for both of us
.

“You sold me.” Claudia smiles broadly to the hovering manager to reassure him that Mary is an exceptional saleswoman. The manager grunts and disappears into the back of the kitchen to scold the sweating teen managing the fryer.

“Sorry,” Mary whispers. “He’s kind of a fascist.”

“Why do you work here?” Claudia asks. “You should be working at a bookstore or a museum, something more intellectually challenging.”

Mary laughs, not happily. “Those jobs are all going to grad students these days,” she says. “But the pay here is really good, actually, and it’s easy work so I can focus more on my studies. Plus I’m writing a script; you know, based on my experiences here.” She steps away to collect Claudia’s meal and returns with a cardboard box. The sandwich nestled inside it has been sitting under a heat lamp for some time, and the crispy coating has ossified into a dried-out crust. Mary slides it over to her on a tray alongside a tub of glutinous mash. Claudia’s stomach turns.

“Can I get you anything else?” Mary asks, eyeing the line. “I’d love to talk, but—” She shrugs apologetically.

Overhead, tinsel Christmas presents twist in the draft. The dinner rush is gathering behind Claudia, impatient for their sixty-nine-cent drumsticks. “What’s happening to your grandmother?” Claudia asks quickly.

Mary stares at her, startled. “Mama Dolores? What do you mean?”

Already Claudia regrets having said anything. Under the fluorescent lights of the Chicken Kitchen it seems like a family matter that has nothing to do with her. Besides, Claudia doesn’t even
like
Dolores. Still, she perseveres, compelled by some force she doesn’t understand. “With her home?”

Behind Claudia, a man in carpenter’s overalls is clearing his throat to convey his dissatisfaction. Mary looks flustered. “She’s moving in with us,” she says. “I’m going to have to share my bedroom with her.”

The mental image that this news conjures up—the seventeen-year-old sharing a room with her smoking, wheezing, perpetually sour-faced grandmother—is unbearable. However hard it has already been for Mary, it is about to get a lot harder. “That’s awful,” she says, without thinking.

“I’ll survive.” Mary’s face tightens with cool determination.

For a brief moment, Claudia loses her breath. Instead of an insecure, hopelessly sincere sycophant, Claudia suddenly sees a focused teenager who plans to force her will on the world, despite the hurdles in her path.
Don’t flatter yourself—Mary never really needed you
, she realizes.
Someday, she will probably do all the things you haven’t
. The girl who stands before her, unconcernedly hawking chicken drumsticks as a matter of course—even using it as a “teachable moment” for a movie—would not be deterred by the setbacks that Claudia herself has suffered this year. Claudia is reminded of a younger, better version of herself, a Claudia she suddenly misses, a Claudia she only now realizes that she has lost.

“I’m sorry,” Claudia says. She isn’t sure whether she is apologizing for barging in on Mary’s world without an invitation, or for failing to take the time to get to know her, or for the unwritten recommendation, or for any of a number of unintended condescensions and personal failings.

Mary gazes at her with curious, mascara-fringed eyes. The pancake concealer she’s used to cover the acne on the end of her nose has caked into flakes of makeup that threaten to peel off. “Why are you sorry? It’s not your fault. It’s just the way things are.” She looks at the line and smiles at the next customer. “It was really nice to see you, Mrs. Munger. Thanks for visiting Chicken Kitchen.”