Nick hasn’t said anything to Phoebe this morning. All he said last night was: “Why didn’t you run?” But he wasn’t standing at the door, poised to save them. He was half dressed, texting some girl from their bed.
Now he stands outside, shirtless, cleaning the pool. He has to work this morning.
“He’s a professional contact,” Phoebe says from the shade of the patio as Nick pulls the tarp tightly over the pool. “He is nothing more. It is not here we go again.”
Nick kneels over the far end of the pool. Then he stands, walks around the pool once, pulling on each of the tarp’s straps to ensure its stability. He stops a foot from her. Says nothing.
“Let’s not get into some long-drawn-out—”
He presses two fingers over her mouth, but too hard. She recoils, slaps his hand away. He laughs.
“Fuck you,” she says.
Protruding from the waistband of his shorts is the butt of a semiautomatic pistol. He could hold it up to his head or hers, even unloaded, scare her straight. She knows she looks like shit: limp hair, bloodshot eyes, and so thin.
“There’s something out there.” He waves his pistol at the distant hillside. “I can hear it at night. Kostya, too. He thinks it’s a mountain lion. I think he’s right. Go look. I dare you.” He walks inside the house, slides the door closed behind him.
32
If the open front door of the Pomona house weren’t white, the streaks of blood on it wouldn’t look as stark as they do. Nick rented the three-bedroom new-construction house to a Lithuanian family last week. The call came in on one of Nick’s burners, from the renter who had paid him three thousand so far for three months.
Now the man is bleeding and pale. A man and woman stand over him on the yellow lawn. The man standing up clutches something dark. The garage door is open. A pickup truck is idling with the driver’s-side door open. The object is a long blade that he is wiping clean against his jeans. The woman is fat and sweaty and holds an aluminum baseball bat in front of her, shaking it, repeating some phrase in Russian.
Nick could carry the unloaded pistol as he approaches but decides against it. They’re all agitated and sweating. The man on the ground is cursing back at the couple, clutching the bloody gash on his forearm.
The woman yells at Nick in Russian.
The bleeding man falls back, closes his eyes, exhausted.
The other man says something to the woman. She takes a wild swing at the man on the ground and connects, hard, with his chest. He cries out, balls up.
Nick grabs the bat, struggles with the woman, and the man with the blade waves the knife at Nick, spitting and cursing. Nick backs away without the bat, holds his hands up.
From his car, Nick calls Kostya, who doesn’t pick up. He tries his landline. A child answers. Tundra, the oldest, Nick thinks. His parents aren’t home.
“Tell me what they’re saying,” Nick instructs. He holds his cell in the direction of the cursing woman and man with the blade. He’s a few arm’s lengths from Nick but close enough for the kid to translate. It’s made clear to Nick: They want their house back.
Nick is ready to hang up. He knows what this is: The owners who left have come back, not quite ready to give up or with no place else to go. Either way, they want the people who Nick put in their house to leave.
“They called police. The police are coming.” It’s the kid. He’s still translating for Nick.
Nick turns to the wild Russian couple, holds up his hands. “We’re sorry. We’re sorry.” Nick is tapping his chest. “My mistake. Not his. My fault.”
The man and woman don’t move. Nick hears sirens. He drops his iPhone on the turf and, bending over for it, keeps his eyes locked on the couple.
Nick decides the renter will be fine. Police are on the way. He considers what they have: the burner number, which is untraceable to him; his first name, “Paul”; no address; no copies of the rental agreement. He doesn’t need this house. Nick has cleared, after trash-out and painting and lock-changing expenses, fifty-two thousand for all of his houses. He walks to his car, gets in, starts the ignition, and leaves.
• •
The message that appears on his iPhone, the screen smeared with the blood of his former tenant, is from Mallory: Want to get high?
Nick is on a freeway heading east to a drive-in theater he passed on the way here.
Is Arik there? he writes.
I’m not home
Where? Are you alone?
It makes a difference?
Of course
Then yes. I’m alone. On the beach.
And you want me to come get high with you?
That is my desire, yes.
Can I bring my wife?
Don’t fuck with me, mister.
I have blood on my iPhone. I may have witnessed a murder that I caused.
Sounds exciting. Come.
I’m not sure I can handle getting high right now. Want to see a movie?
I just want to put my head on your lap.
7:30 Mission Tiki in Montclair.
Yummy.
33
The houses surrounding the playground, a mile from Carousel Court, are all the same, exact replicas of Nick and Phoebe’s: Spanish-style new construction. On one of the many bank-owned signs someone tied a bouquet of white helium balloons with bleeding yellow heads and Xs for eyes. No one is playing in the yards. No fathers doing yard work or carrying groceries in from the minivan. No landscapers. It’s a hot Sunday morning and the cicadas are screaming.
Jackson cries out from the backseat, “Playground!” over and over. It’s too hot to be outside. But he starts to whimper, tears streaming down his cheeks, when Phoebe passes it. He wails. She’s gripping the wheel and shushing him and saying it’s too hot to be outside.
“Fine,” she says, taking him out of his car seat. “You’ll see.” She’ll stay at the playground for fifteen minutes until he can’t stand it anymore. It’s not just the heat. Phoebe hates this place as much as Nick does, but it’s the only one near them.
The equipment is all bright primary colors and the slides are wide and slick and the ground is blue rubber and the white wooden fencing that surrounds the perimeter was probably nice once but now is faded and splintered and an entire stretch is missing. No one bothered to plant any trees. The only shelter from the sun is a metal overhang behind two metal benches that sit side by side. A few women sit while the children burn. Unlike the playground with the pond and mallards and tall oaks and birches and blue herons along the Riverway, where she took Jackson nearly every day last summer, there is no water here, no trails or trees. The only birds she’s seen are black, grotesque, drifting overhead, circling. She’s not convinced one of them won’t swoop down, sink its claws into Jackson’s back, disappear with him.
Most of the women on the hot metal benches speak Russian and Spanish. Phoebe knows a couple of them by sight but not by name. Marina knows all of the Russian women, who sit in a bunch and smoke and sip sugary drinks and feed their skinny kids chewy Kopobka candy. Phoebe always ends up going home with a handful stuffed in her purse. There may have been Goldfish here once, but not anymore. Marina’s not here today and Phoebe’s relieved. She won’t have to stay, and can carry Jackson away screaming, and who cares?
The boys here today are much older than Jackson and play on a random patch of asphalt that looks like a half-finished basketball court. Someone amassed a huge pile of cicada shells on the edge. Two older boys in white T-shirts and baggy jeans are trying to set fire to it. They flick a lighter over and over. Curse each other. Phoebe shields her eyes, watches one of the two boys remove something from his pocket; the other ignites it, and they lay the flame on the pile of shells and watch them burn.
Other boys form a mosh pit and take turns sending each other through. It’s a game: The others prevent escape by any means. It’
s up to the boy getting pummeled to break through. If he falls, he’s out. Jackson thinks it’s funny.
The skinny monsters flail and shove so hard that Phoebe looks at Jackson, because if she watches the boys much longer, she’ll start to see the barren landscape fold in on itself, this patch of earth swallowing her and Jackson whole along with the rest of the debris. Massive electrical towers loom over everything from brown hills that separate them from the next ripple of homes. Phoebe rubs her temples. The headaches are from tension and the foolish decision (made Friday night when Nick found her passed out behind the wheel in the Explorer, engine idling, in front of the young neighbor’s house on Carousel Court) to radically wean herself off the benzos, cutting the dosage to nearly nothing just to prove she could. Or maybe it’s the electromagnetic waves from the towers generating the tingling down her spine, through her arms to her fingertips, until she’s shaking out her hands like some kind of madwoman. She could be walking down Sunset punching the exhaust-filled air or pushing a stroller through the vapors or letting a physician finger her until she cries. What’s the difference? She wants JW to bail her out again. It’s not about her. It’s another woman entirely, doing her bidding. She’ll make them the young, beautiful family they should have been.
She sends Nick a text: Not sure when we’ll be home.
She may go to the beach and spend the day. She may check them in for the night at the Beach House Inn or the cheaper one farther up the Strand. They’ll have their own little adventure. Pretend they live there. They’ll look for neighborhoods and houses they can rent near the beach, near Laguna, where she’ll soon work if she handles this the way she should.
Another message to Nick: Could be tomorrow. Don’t know.
There’s no reply.
With the entrance of a chubby Thai kid into the melee, Phoebe hears the sound of slapping skin and rising voices from the skinny monsters. The shoving becomes punching.
A thin boy with shaved red hair lands a closed fist to the temple of the Thai kid, sending him into the asphalt. One of the Russian mothers yells something from the bench but remains seated. The Thai kid doesn’t seem to have a mother here, rubs his head, slumped on the asphalt. Phoebe is ready to leave. The kid tries to stand, but another kid kicks him and the boys laugh as he falls again. Phoebe takes a step toward the boys but stops. “Enough!” she calls out instead.
A Russian mother snaps her fingers. Another stands. When the kid rises again, two boys shove him hard and he falls. They won’t let him up. That’s the game.
One of the boys stumbles backward into Phoebe, knocking her into Jackson, who falls from the slide onto the hard rubber surface below. The Russian boy who fell into her is laughing and within arm’s reach, so she swings her elbow, hard, crushing the bridge of his nose, spinning the boy face-first into the ground.
Jackson is on his back, stunned. His mouth opens and stays that way. He either can’t breathe or is crying so hard that no sound comes out. A dark pink swatch forms instantly on the left side of his face, where he hit the blue rubber surface. Phoebe clutches his little shoulders and shakes him lightly, trying to induce breathing, a sound.
Finally, it comes. A deep, piercing cry.
The Russian boy lies motionless on the ground.
No one else seems to have seen what she did. She leaves the playground.
• •
The side of Jackson’s face is red and he sucks cold apple juice from his sippy cup. His tears have dried and he seems fine, kicks his feet with excitement when Phoebe mentions the beach.
At the first red light, the AC on high, perspiration cooling on her neck and chest, a pulse of exhilaration courses through her as she taps out a text: I just left the playground
How was it?
The immediate response surprises her.
I knocked a Russian kid unconscious
Clarify
A wild kid too old for the playground hurt Jackson.
So he had it coming
He never saw it coming.
They never do. Did you truly knock a kid unconscious?
Phoebe sees the sign for Beach Cities, changes lanes without signaling, leaves one freeway for another.
When do I get an answer?
What’s so special about Laguna and California? I’ll be honest, that office isn’t where the real action is.
Don’t start being a bitch now, JWonderful. You gave me your word.
I’ve given you a whole lot more than that.
• •
And without a definitive answer, or specifics about the date and time for the interview with D&C in Laguna Beach that JW promised, Phoebe is no longer interested in spending a night on the beach with Jackson. She no longer wants to explore neighborhoods, check out rental properties. Instead she drives another mile or so along this gray freeway, exits, and continues along surface streets in what she thinks is El Segundo until she sees it: the forest-green marquee and all-caps white lettering. The parking lot is packed. She doesn’t care that she’ll have to carry Jackson across the hot asphalt, through the vapors, to Whole Foods. She starts making the list in her head: South African wine, a bottle of El Perro Verde red, cherimoya. She’ll linger in the wide, bountiful aisles, the cool air, the welcoming faces, and mist will cleanse fresh-cut kale, and time itself will stop.
34
It’s a hot Wednesday night in September. Phoebe watches footage leading all the local newscasts of wildfires in Topanga Canyon and Riverside. She looks for Serenos on the mostly red “Fire Zone” animation on-screen. They’re not in it yet. The story that follows the wildfires is about them: the countless families stranded in the Inland Empire. Reporters fan out across greater Los Angeles and walk nearly deserted streets dotted with abandoned new-construction homes.
Nick is climbing the wall. Jackson is laughing through his pacifier. The dog that Nick finally picked up, which they haven’t named, barks wildly at him on the wall. The barking only makes Jackson laugh harder, and his laughter is infectious, so Phoebe’s smiling, too.
“I can’t laugh and climb. I’ll fall.”
“Don’t fall, Daddy!” the little voice calls out.
“Yeah, don’t fall, Nickels.”
Phoebe’s staring at his calves: They’re muscular, tan, and hairless. She’s sipping her wine and rubbing Jackson’s head and realizing that she envies her husband’s calves. “You do have nice legs.”
“You know what’s funny?” Nick looks down at her, sweat dripping from his nose. “How little respect you have for me.”
“Could you still work with a broken leg? Probably not, right?”
“Do you appreciate anything?” He laughs. “Is there anything that satisfies you?”
“Jackson,” she says. “And sleeping in. But really just Jackson.”
He manages to ascend a bit higher.
“Is there something else? Was that a trick question?” she asks.
“This is the first home you’ve ever owned. Our first home. That means nothing?”
“Not really.”
“Whether or not you want to acknowledge it. It matters.”
Fall and get it over with, she thinks. Crack a femur, a trip to the ER, titanium screws and a cast and crutches. She’ll take care of them, all of it, again. She eyes the hard rubber rocks, the yellow, red, blue, and green to the top, the summit he’s never reached.
“Don’t go too high,” she says, and finishes her wine. “Stay right there in the middle. It’s what you’re used to.”
He’s nearly to the ceiling. He slips. Catches himself.
She spoons her cold cherimoya, sucks on the frozen ball of cotton candy–flavored fruit. A few weeks at home would force him to reengage the professional world, follow up with some of the production companies he reached out to before. Maybe some Emerson alumni searches in L.A., some networking. Get online. Get on track.
“Fall, Daddy, fall!” Jackson calls out. Soon both he and Phoebe are laughing and chanting. She finishes her fruit and picks up her son and walks upstairs and runs the bath, chanting in a hushed tone, “Fall, Daddy, fall, Daddy, fall, Daddy.”
35
The messages from JW come at midnight. It’s been three days. He sends three texts:
Lawrence De Bent
D&C
The one you talk to.
She’s sitting upright in the middle of the king-size bed. Nick sleeps downstairs. She responds: And?
He has your CV.
And?
He’s in Brussels
And?
Shall I spoon-feed it to you?
Like frozen cherimoya
I wish
And?
Set something up with his office.
And?
And I’ll see you next time.
Sorry we missed each other. But thank you. How are YOU?
You don’t want to know.
I do. Tell me one thing.
My son just got the boot from Dartmouth for cheating. My second wife is suing me for IIED. Don’t know what that is? I didn’t either. Am told by attorney it stands for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Are you serious? IIED?!
That was more than one.
Savor your days with a toddler. It only gets worse.
Will I get this? D&C in Laguna Beach.
Do you deserve it?
What happens when we see each other?
I already set you up. Not necessary, right? You got what you wanted.
Having nothing to do with that.
What then?
Oh lord, who even knows. I keep dreaming about your Boston office and the cold window against my face. What does that tell you?
I don’t know.
Do you want me to spoon-feed it to you?
• •
It’s morning and the tank is full and she’s on the freeway heading west with no major delays and the flow of traffic is like a flash flood. Her levels of Klonopin, Effexor, and Lexapro are all optimal and the surface streets get her to Wilshire and to the corridor in what feels like record time. She has eighteen new songs downloaded on her iPod and they’re on shuffle and each sounds better than the one before it and after two effortless stops inside Wilshire Memorial, her next appointment cancels, so she’s got time to kill.