The Last Days of California: A Novel (18 page)

“That’s my son, Luke,” the woman said, lighting a cigarette. “Luke and I travel everywhere together, don’t we?” She leaned over the bed and produced an ashtray, set it on her stomach. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. She was magnetic, strangely beautiful, and had long strawberry blond hair. I imagined her at the beauty salon, having it highlighted, talking to people and laughing like she was just as good as anybody.

Luke stood there watching us, scratching his beard. His feet were planted shoulder-width apart.

“There’s a male and female in each,” Elise said, squatting to look in the cages. I knelt next to her.

“Did you know that mourning doves are monogamous?” the woman asked, waving her cigarette around. “They mate for life.”

“I love monogamous animals,” Elise said.

Luke laughed and my sister turned to look at him, her ponytail flying. He had the kind of eyes that couldn’t look at you straight on—they were always slightly to the left or right, as if you were standing next to yourself.

“How can you tell which are male and which are female?” I asked.

“You put two together and see if they try to kill each other,” the woman said. “That’s why I stack ’em like that—if the males even see each other, they go berserk. Beat their wings and puff out their chests.”

Elise stood and said, “Thanks for letting us look at them.”

“Let’s let ’em fly around,” the woman said.

“Maybe later?” my sister said. “We just got here and we have to unpack and stuff.”

“I trained them in the bathroom and now I can let ’em fly wherever. Even if I leave the door open, they don’t fly away. If I’m not feeling well, they land on my chest and look at me like,
Dodo, you okay in there, Dodo?
They’re very intuitive animals.”

“Maybe later,” Elise said.

“We’ll be here,” the woman said. “We’re not going anywhere, are we, Luke? We were just about to have a snack.”

Elise thanked her about fourteen more times and we went back to our room. I remembered my horoscope from a few days ago, how I was supposed to be asking questions and I’d hardly asked anybody anything. I should have asked the woman why she chose birds, or about the mating process—did the male and female always like each other, or was it a matter of trial and error? Or I could have asked where they were from, where they were going. It seemed silly that we were all moving around the world for no other reason than we could—cars and planes and boats taking people from one location to another as if we weren’t all going to die.

Elise stood at
the desk and flipped open the binder.

“How come you didn’t want to see them fly?” I asked.

“Because that guy was creeping me out,” she said. “Wasn’t he creeping you out?”

“Yeah.”

“He was a fucking creep.”

“Probably a parking garage whistler,” I said.

She picked up the phone and ordered a veggie burger with onion rings, a Diet Coke, and a piece of apple pie. If she hadn’t asked for the pie, I might have believed she’d actually spoken to someone. She never ate pie.

“You didn’t order anything,” I said.

“What I really want is a cheeseburger. Actually, I think it’s the baby who wants a cheeseburger.” She stood in front of the mirror and looked around to see if there was enough space to do her jumps. “I’m going to call room service for real in a minute. What’re you having?”

“Ice cream,” I said.

She did a herkie and then three more in quick succession; they seemed so effortless, so easy, it made me think I could do them.

“Have you ever noticed how skinny people get vanilla and fat people get chocolate? And
really
skinny people get strawberry. I should probably start ordering strawberry, then I’ll be skinny.”

“I don’t think it works that way,” she said.

“It would be a start,” I said. “It would be something.”

“And you’re not fat, you’re just a little plump.”

“I don’t want to be
plump
, that’s an awful word, don’t ever say that to me again.” I put my bag on the bed and started going through it. I missed the rest of my stuff. I missed our house, my bed. If we were at home, Elise and I would be outside on the trampoline. She’d insist I do a back handspring and spot me, taking her hands away at the last minute so she could tell me I’d done it on my own. The baby would already be a bad dream and I’d never mention it again, even when we were old, even if I was really pissed off.

She dialed room service and ordered a veggie burger and fries. “Strawberry?” she asked.

“A hot fudge sundae and a Diet Coke.”

“And two hot fudge sundaes and two Diet Cokes,” she said. She hung up and climbed into bed, spread out in the middle.

“You know how you said you never feel anything in church?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve been thinking about that.”

“And?”

“I don’t feel anything, either,” I said.

“What about when you were saved?”

I shook my head. “It never even occurred to me to think about whether I was feeling something, or if I believed or not. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“No,” she said. “I think you’re a kid.”

“I want to believe,” I said.

“I know you do.”

“Maybe I should talk to Brother Jessie.”

“Call him,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll talk to you.”

I took the Bible into the bathroom and sat on the cool tile, opened it and read: “. . .
many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people . . . the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.
” Did standing firm mean believing in the rapture or not believing in it? Was Marshall a false prophet or a man trying to instill faith? Everything had become confusing all of a sudden. Was Elise betraying me or was I betraying her? I went back into the room and climbed in bed next to her, closed my eyes and opened the Bible to a random page.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“ ‘
Jesus said to him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the sky have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head
.’ ”

Elise took the Bible, opened the drawer, and dropped it in. “We’re not playing Bible 8-Ball right now,” she said. She was watching the hotel’s station, jazzy music and a smooth-talking man telling us about the hotel’s amenities. We watched pretty women laugh with their mouths open wide, lightly touching the shoulders of their handsome men. We toured each of the restaurants—the Mexican cantina, the steakhouse, the burger stand, the Irish pub—before moving on to the casino floor. We learned how many slot machines there were, how many table games. Craps lessons were held every afternoon at two o’clock and the annual poker tournament was at the end of the month. We toured the hotel rooms and the pool with its outdoor bars, the gym and spa, and then we were back at the pretty laughing women. We watched it all the way through a second time.

After our third trip through the restaurants, I asked her how many times we were going to watch it.

“Forever,” she said.

“How come you’re not calling Dan? You’re not even Googling anything.”

“
Dan
? Who cares about Dan?”

“You do.”

“It’s not like I love him.”

“Why would you date someone you didn’t love?”

She looked at me like she couldn’t believe I’d asked that. “You’ll see,” she said ominously.

“I’m not going to ever be with someone I don’t love.”

“You will,” she said. “You won’t believe the things you’ll do.” She handed me the remote control and got out of bed, picked up her suitcase. “When the food comes, just sign your name, the tip’s already been added.” She closed the door to the bathroom.

I changed the channels. On
Wheel of Fortune,
three nervous college students in their big college sweatshirts took turns spinning the wheel. As usual, they weren’t attractive or charming and I wondered how they’d been selected. I hadn’t watched it in a long time, but quickly remembered how all of the puzzles seemed so obvious once they were revealed, how stupid it made me feel.

At the bonus round, there was a knock. I opened the door and the guy walked past me with a tray, asked where he should put it.

“The bed.” He set it down and handed me the bill in a black book and I added another three dollars on top of all the tips and fees that had already been figured. He let himself out and I sat on the bed. I dug a spoon into my sundae, the ice cream still solid.

I muted the TV to listen for Elise, and then turned it to Anderson Cooper to try and lure her out.

“Anderson’s talking about the Eurozone again,” I called.

“Fuck the Eurozone,” she called back.

A few minutes later, she came out of the bathroom with her hair in a towel and got in bed next to me. We ate our hot fudge sundaes and drank our Diet Cokes and then she cut her veggie burger in half and everything felt right and good.

Elise slingshotted a
pair of yellow bikini bottoms at me. She had at least eight swimsuits, which I considered an excessive number, but when you were beautiful you could insist on needing more, requiring more, and people would provide.

She put on her white one, the ruffles on top to make her chest look bigger. She hardly ever wore the white one because she didn’t want to get it dirty. She let her hair down and stood sideways in front of the mirror. There was a long pause while we assessed her stomach. She touched it, ran her hand over its smooth, flat surface. Her belly button was so deep you couldn’t see the bottom of it, but it was going to turn inside out.

“Do you know how many weeks?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

I took my swimsuit into the bathroom. It was still slightly damp; it felt awful, wedging it over my thighs.

We left all the lights and the TV on.

“Let’s take the stairs,” Elise said.

I didn’t feel like it, but I followed her to the stairwell. It wasn’t the kind that was meant for guests—concrete and gray, boxes of Urine Off advertising itself in neon yellow letters. We didn’t see anyone, but there were room service carts with trays of old food and housekeeping carts with stacks of freshly laundered towels.

“I’m not taking the stairs back up,” I said.

“You do what you want,” she said, “and I’ll do what I want.”

On the first floor, there was a table set up in the hallway that blocked the entrance to the pool, two guys sitting at it. They said we needed wristbands to get into the pool area, told us to write our names and room number in their book. They were brusque and mustached and important.

“I forget our room number,” Elise said. “Do you remember it?”

“No,” I said.

“You don’t know where you’re staying?” the older security guard asked, chuckling.

“We’re staying here,” Elise said. “We just checked in.” She found her room key in its little envelope and set it on the table and one of the guys wrote down the number. I held out my hand for the other guy to give me the wristband but he insisted on putting them on us. Then he stood and held the door.

“Jesus,” Elise said. “It’s like Fort-fucking-Knox.”

There were a lot of people milling about—couples and groups of boys and multicultural families, pretty girls like Elise taking drink orders. Old people. Babies. It was good to see so many of them. We walked to the far side of the pool and took off our dresses. After looking around to see who was looking at me—no one—I got out my phone and called Shannon. She picked up, sounding like she always sounded, slightly hoarse like she was still in bed.

Shannon and I had a very one-sided relationship—I asked her questions and she told me how bad things were, how they would never change. At the end of every conversation, she’d realize she had talked the entire time and say something like
Next time we’re going to talk about you,
though we never did, and I was mostly okay with it. Hearing her complain about her life made me feel better about my own
—
her life really
was
pretty shitty. But this time, when she asked how I was, I didn’t say fine and ask about her stepmom or the boy she liked who didn’t like her back. I told her about Gabe, relayed some of the sweeter things he’d said. I could tell she wasn’t happy about it. She said she was happy but she sounded very down and tried to steer the conversation back to herself. I told her he wanted to see me again and was trying to figure out a way to make that happen, that we were maybe in love. She said I should be careful—she didn’t want to see me get hurt.

“I’m not going to get hurt,” I said.

“I hope not,” she said. “I just know how excited you get.”

I didn’t like the way the conversation was going anymore. She was making me feel bad and I was tired of feeling bad. I was tired of relying on her unhappiness to make myself feel better. I wanted new friends, fun girls who laughed a lot and liked to do new things and go new places. Shannon and I always went to the same café where we sat in the same booth and ate the same sandwiches and my life was never going to be any different that way.

“That’s him on the other line now,” I said.

“It is?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re so lucky,” she said. “I wish I had a boy.”

“I’ll call you when I get home,” I said, and hung up.

Elise raised her eyebrows but didn’t say anything.

“You want to get in the pool?” I asked.

“Not right now, but Mom and Dad are over there if you want somebody to play with.”

They were in their swimsuits, the same ones they’d been wearing for the past decade. My mother’s was black with yellow flowers, so worn out it was nearly see-through. My father’s was navy blue with white stripes down the sides. It was their day at the pool, but the one time we were at a decent place all bets were off.

“Tell me something from Cosmo,” I said.

“Men like sex, no fatties,” she said. “It’s the same thing in every goddamn issue.”

I’d never heard her say “
goddamn
” before. I was shocked. I wanted to hear her say it again. I adjusted my swimsuit and walked to the pool’s edge, climbed onto the little shelf. Then I lowered myself in and breaststroked over to my parents. My mother was sitting on a step while my father stood in water up to his belly button. He was moving his arms around and looking about distractedly like people do when they’re peeing. I sat next to my mother.