Anytime Soon (3 page)

She blew us a kiss as she disappeared out the door.

But then, peeking her head back in, she said, “And, Sophie? Do something with that hair, will you? You look like Carrot Top, for goodness sakes.”

“Hooker!” Sophie called after her, before Catie closed the door completely.

“Sophie!” I exclaimed.

“What?” she asked, shrugging her shoulders.

TWO

I
worked part-time in an interdisciplinary department at the University of California. My official title was Administrative Assistant of the School of Arts, Letters, and Sciences. But my job was basically to do whatever the faculty members asked me to do.

Most of the time, I liked my job. The hours were flexible, the pay was pretty good, and the work wasn't demanding, so I was able to focus on my college coursework.

One morning when I got to work, I found out the department had hired a young woman as extra help in the front office. Initially, it seemed like a good idea, until she started dogging me daily with questions and hadn't absorbed any of the training that I gave her. I was patient, though; in fact, I was patient and nice, even when she told me she couldn't focus on what I was saying because she had been partying the night before.

I didn't let her drive me crazy. Graduation was around the corner, and I had bigger things to focus on. I had recently decided not to go directly to grad school. I planned to work for a year and then start applying to programs. I wanted to get my own place and settle in before starting school again.

The day seemed to drag on with the new girl forgetting things and making the same mistakes over again. Late in the day, I decided to walk over to the accounting office to pick up my paycheck. I smiled to myself when I noticed that I had received an hourly increase.

The day just got a little better.

I took the long way back to the office. As I sat back at my desk, my phone rang. It was Catie.

“What up, Cow?” she said.

“You have great timing,” I said. “Guess what?”

“What?” she asked.

“I got a raise!”

“Wow,” she said. “I knew all those hard hours would pay off. What do you make now—three dollars an hour?”

“Excuse me, don't make fun. I make an honest living. Respect me.” I almost immediately regretted the comment. Catie's chosen profession was one that the average woman could never be proud of. Catie wasn't the average woman though. She managed her career—or her dates, rather—like she did everything else in her life: with spontaneity and chaos. I didn't ask her a lot of details about what she did. I just hoped and prayed every day that she would come around and decide to do something different with her life. She was a beautiful, smart girl. Why waste all of that?

Catie was quiet for a few seconds too long. Then she said, “I have the utmost respect for you, my dear.” The sincerity in her voice made me smile. “I called because I wanted to ask you about your school.”

“What about it?” I said.

“Do you know what it would take for me to get back in?”

“Not really,” I said, “but I can find out. Why do you need to know?”

“Because I'm thinking about going back to school,” she said, sounding exasperated with me.

A lump formed in my throat, and my eyes filled with tears. I couldn't say anything, so I just remained quiet.

“Call me when you finish crying,” she said. “Bye, crybaby!”

“I'm not crying.”

“Whatever, Ny. Get me the info, and call me tonight. I have a date at eight, but after that I'm free. Can you drive me?”

That's what she was really calling for.

I didn't like driving Catie on her “dates.” I didn't even like for her to go. In your wildest dreams, you just never think that one of your best friends will become a prostitute. We had some of the worst fights over her chosen profession, and I finally decided to stop fighting her about it. When she first started, I thought it was just a phase. I figured she was trying to find a way to deal with her parents' deaths. I wasn't happy with what she did, but she was my best friend and I loved her. Whenever she went out, she had this guy named Sam drive her. But when Sam got in a car accident a few months ago, Catie started having a hard time finding someone else to drive her to dates.

“Catie, what am I gonna do if something happens?” I asked.

“You're gonna help me, that's what you're gonna do,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“Help you how?”

“Trust me, if I need help, you'll figure out what to do.”

I knew better than to ask her any more questions over the phone.

“Okay,” I said hesitantly. “You want me to meet you at your house? I can be there by four-thirty.”

“I won't be ready until about six. I'm getting my highlights touched up today. Why don't you just meet me at Jazzie's?”

“Okay,” I agreed.

“Good. You need something done to that hair anyway!”

“I'll see you there,” I said.

“Good.” With that, Catie hung up on me for the billionth time. She never said goodbye.

So I called her back.

“Hello?”

“You didn't say ‘bye,'” I said.

“We don't say ‘bye' in my culture,” she said and hung up again.

I laughed to myself.

A moment later, Irwin Klein, the sociology professor, walked into the office with a big smile on his face. He was in his early forties, single, and very handsome. He looked like an older version of the actor Paul Walker. I liked him because he was always pleasant. No matter how crazy it got in the office, he smiled and stayed calm. He didn't have any children, but he had two dogs that he treated just like kids. Despite his good looks, it was obvious that his wardrobe was at the very bottom of his list of priorities. He wore the same jeans almost every day and the same shirt almost every other day. I once heard him tell someone on the phone that he owned one suit, which he had bought ten years before. He was nice to chat with, but I think he had a touch of adult attention-deficit disorder. Whenever he came to my desk to talk with me, he'd always pick something up and start fiddling with it.

The students were crazy about him. He had more student appointments than the other faculty members combined. Whenever I summarized his student evaluations, most of them were rave reviews.

“How are you today, Goode?” he asked as cheerfully as anyone possibly could.

“I'm fine, Professor. How are you?”

“I'm great. I just picked up my dogs from their annual physical.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Everything's fine, and they were on their best behavior. I'm gonna take them out for a long walk after work today.”

I smiled but went on with my work, not daring to ask any questions. If I showed an inkling of interest in those canines, he would have talked to me for twenty minutes. I didn't have even one minute to spare for dog talk—not today, anyway.

When he was gone, I cleared my inbox the best I could. I am generally a neat person, and my work space reflected it. I had everything in neat piles—one for responses I was waiting for from the professors, another for stuff that needed to be filed, and a third for callbacks I needed to make. Behind my desk, I kept a stack of things I didn't want to deal with and some stuff that needed to be signed and mailed out. I could work in clutter for a little while, but I started to lose my concentration if my work space stayed muddled for too long. I think I got that from Mom, who claimed to be allergic to clutter and mess. She liked everything neat and orderly. She dusted our blinds and wiped down the windowsills almost as often as most folks wash their dishes. I think she would have dusted the roof if she could have gotten up there. The fact that Mom and I were at least alike in that area gave me some comfort.

After three o'clock, the traffic in the office died down, so that was a good time to get work done. Professor Jeffrey Alexander had six phone messages waiting for him. When I put them in his mailbox, I realized he hadn't been in all day, so I sent him a short e-mail, telling him which things seemed urgent.

When I shut down my desk for the day at five, Professor Klein was still in his office, with his door closed, so I sent him a quick e-mail, telling him I was going.

I met Catie at Jazzie's, and the hair appointment took only two hours of my life. I didn't spend a moment of it waiting around. When it was time to leave, Catie paid for both of our fabulous hairdos and gave her hairdresser a tip.

Catie had extreme mood swings, maybe even multiple personalities. She could be happy and upbeat one minute, but down and depressed the next. When we pulled into the garage of the luxury, high-rise condominiums that Catie lived in, the attendant helped her out of the car. She didn't speak or thank the gentleman, or even look at him. That was certainly a clue that she was in one of her darker moods. I let myself out of the car and met her at the elevator. She lived on the thirtieth floor of her building.

Each floor past the twenty-fifth had its own key, so the elevator let us out directly into her condo. Without a word, she went straight to her bedroom and closed the door.

Catie's condo was really nice. It looked like it could be featured in a magazine. It originally had three bedrooms, but she had converted one into an office and another into a workout room. There were three bathrooms, a laundry room, a formal dining room, and a gourmet kitchen. The girl couldn't make noodles, but she still insisted on having a gourmet kitchen.

I sat on her brown leather couch, looking through her photo albums. She always had new pictures from the parties she went to. I was still impressed by some of the people she had met.

She finally walked out of the bedroom, wearing tight, red-leather pants, a red-sequined halter, and a short, red mink. She was holding her shoes in her hands, and when I saw how high the heels were, I knew why.

“How many inches are those shoes?”

“Six.”

A pair of silver drop earrings had taken the place of her diamond hoops, because she never wore her best jewelry to appointments. She smelled like flowers, had on too much blush, and was wearing way-too-long fake lashes.

“Ready?” she asked. Her expression was blank, but there was irritation in her voice.

We had fought about her work far too many times. She knew I thought she was letting all her potential go to waste.

I didn't want to go with her, but I didn't want to leave her stranded, either. Anything could happen to her. I loved Catie, but I hated what she did. I felt like she had given up. Somehow, she had convinced herself that no one cared about her—except her.

“Catie, you know you don't have to do this,” I said cautiously.

“Do what?”

“Live like this.”

She looked around her condo and spread her arms.

“Like a queen, you mean? I don't have to live like a queen?”

“Catie, you know what I mean. This is not you. You're too good for this,” I said, walking closer to her.

“You've always had it easy, Ny,” she said. “You don't know what survival is about.”

“Maybe I don't know what it's like to live in foster home after foster home. But I do know what it's like to care about someone. You have people who care about you,” I said. “This life is not for you.”

I knew for sure that Catie was not raised to live this kind of life, because I knew her parents. Catie originally came from Fresno, and moved to the Bay Area to live with foster parents when she was a little girl. She was biracial, but she would never tell us what the other race was.

She had been sexually abused and was moved in and out of foster homes until the Johnsons adopted her when she was seven. When Catie moved in with the Johnsons, she finally got some stability. The Johnsons lived a few houses down from us, across the street. They were nice people. Before Catie came around, Mrs. Johnson used to talk to Mom about having kids, but she couldn't get pregnant. Over the years, they had fostered more than a dozen kids. They got on a waiting list for an infant. While they were waiting, the lady at the adoption agency asked if they would consider foster parenting Catie for a few months. The Johnsons agreed to take her, and Mrs. Johnson told Mom they knew Catie was going to be their child from the moment they saw her—said that Catie was sent to them from God.

There was adjustment when Catie moved in. She had been abused and neglected so much that she didn't trust anybody. She also didn't like to clean, do homework, or go to church. The Johnsons had a hard time getting her to be respectful. They went to private counseling and church counseling, but Catie was defiant. Nevertheless, they were eternally patient.

Catie tested their boundaries to the fullest. She ran away from home one time when she was ten, and the Johnsons didn't know what to do. Finally, the police found Catie up north somewhere. She had apparently gotten on a Greyhound bus and was on her way to Reno. When they found her, she claimed that the Johnsons were trying to force religion on her.

The social services worker suggested to the Johnsons that it might be better if Catie was placed in another home. But her parents persuaded the worker to give them another chance. In an attempt to get Catie to settle down, they took privileges away from her and continued to make her go to church. Mom used to force me to go over and try to play with her, but Catie was downright mean. Whenever I said anything to her, she just sat there with her arms folded and stared me down without saying a word. Finally, I told Mom I wasn't going back, and I didn't. At least, not for a long time.

Eventually, Catie warmed up to Mrs. Johnson; but she still had issues with Mr. Johnson, as she seemed to have with all men at the time. The Johnsons were very patient, and Mr. Johnson was cautious in dealing with her. It took a while, and there were plenty of times when Mrs. Johnson came to our house in tears. Mom worried about them out loud. She didn't know if the Johnsons were tough enough to handle Catie. Her parents reasoned that she would be okay with prayer, love, and a churchgoing home. After eight or nine months, everything came together, and Catie became closer with Mr. Johnson than she was with Mrs. Johnson.