“Sorry,” Justin says. “This is just … a trip … Come on, come in the kitchen with me.”
She follows him into the kitchen, which smells faintly of cooked steak. She sits tentatively at a wooden table as Justin pours a Coke from a glass bottle into a mason jar and hands it to her.
“So you live in LA?”
“No, I … I live in Albuquerque … with my mom.” She pauses, checks his face for a sign. She thinks she catches a small grimace before he goes back to neutral. “I’m here with a friend. Visiting. I—I saw your ‘Some Dreamers’ video,” Angie goes on. “I recognized your name, and I—I just knew it was you. I loved it, so much. I mean, I really loved it.”
He smiles. “Thanks, kiddo.”
“So, what are you working on now?” Angie asks, wiping her sweaty palms on her pants, trying for a semblance of normalcy—as if they were just two people having a conversation.
“A bunch of different stuff. I’m editing a new Fly Boys video. And prepping for a feature I’m shooting this fall.”
“Oh, cool.”
“Yeah…” Justin trails off, and a sudden silence falls over them. “Sorry. I’m not sure what the protocol is here. I … Jesus. I wish I’d known about you sooner.”
“Me too,” Angie says quietly.
“What’s up with your mom?” Justin asks after a moment. “How is she?”
“Um. She’s okay.”
Angie reaches into her purse and pulls out her photograph of Marilyn and James at the beach. She offers it to Justin, hoping it will create a bridge to the answers she’s afraid to ask for.
“Oh my god. Wow. That’s a trip. I took that picture.”
“You did?”
“It was my twelfth birthday … Who could have imagined one day their daughter would be looking at it.” His eyes search Angie’s. “Marilyn was the one who got me into photography, back in the day. I haven’t seen her since … yeah. I was just a kid. So was she, I guess…”
“Justin?”
“Yeah?”
“So my dad—is he here? In LA too?”
“What?”
Angie begins to talk quickly. “I mean, I thought he’d died in a car accident, but my mom said you’d died too, so I thought—I mean, that if she’s lying about that, then my dad might also be alive, right?”
She stares down at her hands folded in her lap, not able to look at Justin.
“Oh, Angie. He’s not alive. He died before you were even born. I don’t think he ever knew … that he’d have a daughter.”
* * *
All at once Justin’s house feels like a stranger’s house—the cast-iron pan left unwashed on the stove, the dim smell of marijuana, the laughter from the other room, the Edison bulb dangling in a cage overhead. What is she doing? Why is she here? She looks at Justin, Justin who looks like her father, Justin who looks like her, and he looks like a stranger too.
“Sorry,” she whispers, afraid that if she speaks too loudly her voice will crack. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I—I have to go.” She gets up from the table.
“Angie, wait.” He follows her as she walks out of the room. “Let’s—do you want to talk about it?”
“No, no thanks.”
“But—how did you get here?”
“I drove. Sorry to bother you,” she mumbles.
She hurries down Justin’s stairs without looking back and steps into the thick night. As soon as her feet hit cement, she breaks into a run. She cannot get back in the car. She cannot go back to Miguel’s, cannot face Sam, not now. She runs in her ballet flats, scuffing them on the pavement. She runs blindly through the dark neighborhood streets, through the smells of blossoms and cigarettes, trash bins and barbecue, air heavy with distant ocean water. She runs over cracks in the cement pushed up by roots, through stop signs without stopping. She’d been so close; she’d come so far. She’d known, felt, that he was just around the corner. But at the end of the road, there was only the same fact that has been true for her entire life. He’s dead. LA is just a city, a single city on the planet earth, where her father died more than seventeen years ago. He’s one of one hundred and seven billion, Angie tells herself. He’s one of one hundred and seven billion dead humans. He’s dead, just like he’s been since I was born. We’re both just tiny drops in the ocean of humanity anyway, our earth is just a tiny planet in a vast solar system, our solar system just one of countless solar systems, our whole universe probably a single universe in an ocean of universes—
“Angie!” The deep voice comes from the black Mustang pulling toward the sidewalk just ahead of her. “Angie, slow down!”
Angie does not. She keeps running, past the car.
“Fuck! Angie!”
Angie does not want to see Justin, her dead dad’s brother. She cannot face the shame of the naïveté—a child’s—that led her to believe somehow she would find her ghost alive and walking through the City of Angels.
And then there are footsteps behind hers, and suddenly arms around her, grabbing her shoulders from behind, slowing her, strong arms.
Arms like a father’s.
As Justin holds her in his grip, the sob inside of her breaks loose at once.
“Okay, come here. Okay.” He pulls her into an embrace. It feels like being hugged by her dad. He lets her cry.
“Where did you learn to run like that, girl?” he asks eventually. “You are fucking fast.”
Angie looks up at him and, through her tears, she laughs.
“I wasn’t gonna meet my niece for the first time and let her just take off, but there was no chance I would have kept up with you on foot!”
“You shouldn’t smoke pot,” Angie says. “You’d be a better runner.”
Justin laughs. “Okay, I’m sorry you walked in on that. If I’d have known you were coming, obviously, I would have … done it differently. You shouldn’t smoke pot, you’re still a kid, but I happen to be an adult with a prescription. So.”
Angie raises her eyebrows at him.
“Listen, I don’t know about you, but after that chase scene I’m starving. Have you been to In-N-Out yet?”
“No.”
“Alright, let’s go. I may not be your father, but far as I can see I’m the closest thing around to a guardian, legal or not, so for now I’m in charge. And I guarantee the best medicine for you at the moment is a Double-Double.”
“Okay,” she says. “But only ’cause you’ve got a cool car.” Before he can open the door for her, she gets in.
Remembering her promise to her mom, Angie pulls out her phone. I’m safe, she types, and perhaps for the first time since she’s arrived in the city, she feels it could be true.
Angie sits in the passenger seat of Justin’s Mustang, parked outside of In-N-Out. The tray in her lap holds an order of Animal Fries (smothered in cheese, grilled onion, and sauce), a Neapolitan milk shake, and a Double-Double (double meat, double cheese), which she takes the last bite of.
“So, tell me about yourself,” Justin says as he starts in on a second burger. “What are you into?”
Angie shrugs. “I’m kinda boring.”
“No you’re not. Nobody’s boring. Everyone’s got a whole universe inside them.”
“Okay, um … I like running.”
This gets a laugh from Justin. “Clearly.”
“And soccer. And music. And … and I don’t know what I want to do with my life, and this is the first time I’ve ever been out of New Mexico.”
“And next year? What about college?”
“I don’t know.”
Justin raises his eyebrows. “You don’t sound too enthusiastic.”
“I guess it seems like it’s all kinda pointless anyway. There are more than seven billion people in the world. We walk around feeling like we’re so important, but we’re just this invisible fraction of humanity.”
“You think about that a lot?”
“Yeah,” Angie admits. “Anyway, even if you do know what you want to do with your life,
even if you manage to have some big dream, like my mom did, there’s no guarantee it’s gonna work out that way. I mean, she was supposed to become a photographer, but instead she had to became a waitress, then a banker.”
“And a mother,” Justin adds. “Don’t forget about that.”
“But maybe she’d be better off if she weren’t,” Angie blurts out.
“What do you mean?”
“I know I was a mistake. Nobody gets pregnant at seventeen on purpose. She’s always saying I’m her greatest joy—but maybe, if she’d never had me, she’d have other joys … Maybe if my dad hadn’t died, she wouldn’t have felt like she had to keep their baby.” Angie stares out the window. “Maybe if my dad had lived, I wouldn’t exist.”
Justin looks at her for a long moment. “Listen, you could argue all of us came into this world by chance. Maybe you’re right—maybe if James had lived, maybe you wouldn’t have been born. But at this moment, you’re here. You might be one of seven billion and counting, but so was he. So does that mean his life didn’t matter? Do you think it’s no thing that he died unfairly?”
“No. Of course I don’t think that.”
“But isn’t he only an invisible fraction of humanity?” Justin pushes.
Angie looks back at him. “Yeah, but…”
“It’s a question of perspective, isn’t it?”
“Right.” Angie pauses. “If you’re looking at the world all zoomed away—if you’re thinking about one of seven billion—he seems small. But up close, to the people who love him—his life was everything.”
Justin nods. “And we’ll never know what he might have done, how it might have impacted others…”
“Yeah,” Angie agrees, wondering now what she might do one day.
“Listen, it’s a good thing—an impressive thing, even—for a kid your age to be able to get outside of yourself, to see the bigger picture, but don’t lose the ability to look at things up close too. You find a lot of the important stuff in the details. The thing is to be able to have multiple points of view—to see both how small and how enormous our lives are. You got me?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m gonna be straight with you. I spent a lot of my time feeling like I could never be enough to make up for the life that James didn’t get to live. And I spent a lot of time furious that he’s gone. After fucking up and almost dropping out of high school—after all the drugs and the girls and whatever else I could use to numb myself out—the thing I’ve figured out along the way is that you can’t let yourself off the hook. There are some wounds that don’t close, and some losses that will never be okay. But you’ve got to let that be a force that drives you, not an excuse not to try. His life got taken, and mine didn’t. So how could I throw mine away?”
Angie looks at him. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah?”
“What happened to him?”
A pained expression passes over Justin’s face. “He didn’t die in a car accident. I don’t know why your mom lied to you, Angie, but that’s between you and her. You’ll have to talk to her about it—”
“But—” Angie feels a burst of flame licking at her chest.
“Hey,” Justin says. “Take a deep breath.”
“Why won’t you tell me the truth?”
“I am telling you the truth. The truth is that your mother lied. I’m mad about that too. I think she made a huge mistake, keeping you away. But the truth is also that I don’t know what it’s like to be a parent. The truth is that I don’t feel like it’s my place to step into that. The truth is that I’m sorry you had to grow up without your father, and I’m sorry that I didn’t get to be in your life sooner, and I’m sorry that there are parts of where you come from that you haven’t gotten to uncover yet—but you will, okay?”
Angie stares back at him.
“Okay?” he asks again.
“Okay.”
“I get the sense that you’re a kid who’s gotten used to hiding a lot of what you’re feeling, but if I’m gonna be your uncle, you have to promise to be real with me. I promise I’ll be real with you.”
“Okay.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“It’s alright to freak out if you need to, and you can be pissed at me for sure, but no more running away.”
“Alright. I promise.”
“I’m working at my studio downtown tomorrow, if you wanna come check it out.”
“I’d love to.”
Justin pulls out of the In-N-Out parking lot, scanning through music on his phone until the first notes of “DNA” begin. He looks over at Angie and smiles. Angie smiles back and puts her arm out the window, leans her head on the sill as the warm wind drifts over her … Looking up at the palm trees in the dark, she lets the thoughts drain from her mind, allowing the grief for her lost father to take up space, to shift inside of her, changing its shape.
When Angie gets back to Miguel’s the lights are out, the main room illuminated only by the faint glow of the ambient city. She finds Sam asleep on the floor beside the pullout. At the sound of her, his body shifts, but he says nothing. She takes off her sneakers and lies back on the bed, trying to keep her breath quiet, as if she could erase everything that had gone wrong between them with silence.
* * *
The next morning, Angie wakes to the sound of Miguel making breakfast. She sits up as Cherry appears in a nightshirt and boxers.
“Want some coffee?”
“I’m okay,” Angie answers uncertainly. “Where’s Sam?”
“He went for a run. Come outside with me.”
Angie stands at the edge of the little balcony as Cherry lights a cigarette. “Listen, Sam asked if you could stay at my place for the rest of the week. Which is fine with me.”
“He did?”
“Yeah. I think he needs … a little space. And it sounds like you do too. Maybe you’ve gotta just figure out your family stuff on your own. I think it’s not fair to drag him into it, unless you’re ready to be responsible.”
“Responsible?”
“He’s a good kid, Angie. He deserves someone who will take care of his heart, treat it like it matters. Like it’s one, whole, beating heart—a universe of its own.”
Before she can think how to respond, Angie’s phone buzzes with a text from Justin. Hey niece. You still want to come by the studio today? I can pick you up or you can meet me over there.
Angie looks back at Cherry, her red hair brilliant in the morning light, last night’s mascara smudged under her pale eyelids, and she feels her insides grip hold of themselves, as if she were balancing on a tightrope. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll stay at your place if that’s alright. Thank you for offering.”
“No problem.” Cherry extinguishes her half-smoked cigarette. “I’m mostly over here anyway, so you’ll have it to yourself. Sam said to tell you you can keep the car.”
Angie nods and takes Cherry’s key, which has a butterfly print on it. Inside, she gathers her belongings, and refuses the eggs that Miguel politely offers. She says goodbye, okay, thank you so much, and steps back into the morning sun, texting Justin on her way to the car. Yes, tell me where and I’ll meet you.
When she looks up, there’s Sam running up the sidewalk, his face reddened with sun, glistening with sweat. He sees her and slows, half a block away. She waves. He nods. They walk toward each other until there is no option but to cross paths.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.” Angie looks back at him, searching for an edge of familiarity, for a crack in the wall between them. But he’s as much a stranger to her as she is to herself right now. When did she become a person who ran away?
“I found him,” Angie blurts out. “I mean, we met.”
“Cool. You like him?” Sam asks, and Angie can hear the slightest softness creeping into his words.
“I do. A lot. My dad, though, he’s gone.”
Sam just nods. Angie stares off. Across the street a man se
lls fruit from a cart. A mother with gold hoop earrings buys mango on a stick for a little girl in a wagon. Something about her movements, her smile, remind Angie of her own mom.
“I’m gonna go in and shower,” Sam says. “Be careful, alright?”
“Okay. I will.”
“Later.”
As she watches Sam jog past her, up the block, she realizes, with a sinking regret, that she’s treated their relationship as if it were a room she could always walk into and out of. But the private world you live inside of with someone else—it’s a space you have to hold open. She feels as if she has so little strength left; she can’t keep the door from closing.
Her phone buzzes with a text from Justin: 984 Pico Blvd.
And so she steps forward, away from Sam, toward a version of family she doesn’t yet understand.
After checking the address Justin gave her twice, Angie parks in front of what looks like an old warehouse. But when she walks into the building, nervously tugging at her T-shirt, she sees it’s perfectly polished inside: high ceilings, skylights, white gallery walls displaying huge canvases with faces that have been scratched into thick paint.
“Can I help you?” the girl at the reception desk asks. She wears curly hair and a purple leotard and couldn’t be too much older than Angie.
“I’m here for Justin. Justin Bell? I’m his niece.” She likes the way the words sound in her mouth. I’m his niece.
The girl smiles. “Right. He said you were coming. I’ll let him know you’re here.” She gets up and disappears down a hall, her low heels clicking on the shiny concrete floors.
Angie moves to the wall to study the huge canvases.
“They’re dope, right?” Justin says when he comes up behind her.
“Yeah, they are.”
“A friend of mine from RISD did them. He and I and a few other dudes went in on this spot together. We all have offices here, but we also use it as a sorta museum space—we host readings and music and that kinda stuff.”