Dead Dreams (2 page)

“Mom, stop worrying,” I said.

“You’re asking me to stop being your mother, I hope you realize this.”

“I’ll find someone dependable by the end of the week, I promise.” No way I was going back to live at home. Not that I came from a bad home environment. But I had my reasons.

I had advertised on Craig’s List, despite my mother’s protests that only scum would answer “those kinds of ads.”

Perhaps there was some truth to Mother’s biases, but I wouldn’t exactly call Sarah McIntyre scum. If she was, what would that make me?

Sarah’s father had inherited the family “coal” money. Their ancestors had emigrated from Scotland (where else, with a name like McIntyre, right?) in the early 1800s and bought an entire mountain (I kid you not) in West Virginia. It was a one-hit wonder in that the mountain hid a coal fortune under it, and hence the McIntyre Coal Rights Company was born. This was the McIntyre claim to wealth, and also a source of remorse and guilt for Sarah, for supposedly dozens of miners working for them had lost their lives due to the business, most to lung cancer or black lung, as it was commonly called. Hazards of the occupation.

And then there were cave-ins, which presented another set of drama altogether, Sarah said.

I sat across from her, the coffee table between us, in the small living room during our first meeting. “So, that’s why you’re not on talking terms with your family? Because of abuses of the coal company? ” I asked.

We sipped hot cocoa and sat cross-legged in the crammed living room, which also doubled as the dining space. I’d never interviewed anyone before, although I’d read tips on the Internet.

“I just don’t want to be reminded anymore,” she said, twirling her dark ringlets round and round on her pointer finger.

“But, it’s not entirely your dad’s fault those people died of lung problems.”

“I guess, but I just want to get away, you understand? Anyway, I’m almost twenty-one now. That’s three years too late for moving out and establishing my own space.” She took tiny sips of the cocoa, both hands cupping the mug as if she were cold.

I walked to the thermostat and upped the temperature. A slight draft still stole in from a gap in the balcony sliding door I always kept open a crack to let the air circulate.

“So, your family’s okay with you living here? In California? In this apartment that’s probably smaller than your bathroom? With a stranger?”

“First off, it’s none of their business. Secondly, you and I won’t
stay
strangers.” Sarah flashed me a grin. “Besides, I’m tired of big houses with too many rooms to get lost in. And, have you lived in West Virginia?”

I shook my head. The farthest I’d been was Nevada when we went for our family annual ski vacation. “I heard it’s pretty.”

“If you like hot, humid summers and bitter cold winters. So, do I pass? As a roommate?”

She looked about at the ceiling. I wondered if she noticed the dark web in the corner and the lack of cornices and crown moldings. I was sure I smelled mold in the living room, too. But I wasn’t in a position to choose. Sarah was.

“As long as you’re not a psychopath and can pay rent.” I returned her a smile.

“I don’t know about the psychopath part….” She shrugged and displayed her white, evenly-spaced teeth. “But here’s my bank account.” She tossed me a navy blue booklet with gilded edges and with golden words “Bank of America” on the cover.

I fumbled as I caught it and was unsure what to do with the booklet. “Should I peek?”

“Go on.” She gestured, flicking her fingers at me as if I were a stray cat afraid to take a morsel of her offering. “No secrets. I can well afford to pay rent. And, I’m a stable individual.”

I flipped the first few pages and saw the numerous transactions in lumps my parents, who were by no means poor, would have gasped at. The last page registered the numbers: under deposits, $38,000. My eyes scanned the row of numbers and realized that the sum $38,000 came up every sixth of the month.

My mouth must have been open for she said, “You can stop gawking. It’s only my trust fund. It comes to me regardless of where I am, or where I stay. So, do I make the cut?”

I handed the bank book back. We discussed the house rules: no smoking; no drugs, and that included pot; no boyfriend sleepovers or wild parties, which was in my landlord’s lease clause; and Sarah was to hand me her share of the rent, a mere $800 a month, on the twenty-eighth of every month, since I was the main renter and she the sub-letter. She didn’t want anything down on paper—no checks, no contracts, and no way of tracing things back to her, she’d stressed a few times.

She fished in her Louis Vuitton and handed me a brown paper bag, the kind kids carry their bag lunches in. I peeked inside and took out a stash of what looked like a wad of papers bundled together with a rubber band. Her three-month share of the deposit, a total of twenty-four crisp hundred-dollar bills. They had that distinct new-bank-notes-smell that spoke of luxury.

I gulped down my hot chocolate. “Why all the secrecy?” I asked as I wrapped up the interview. I could understand not wanting parents breathing down her neck, but as long as they didn’t insist on posting a guard at the door, what was the harm of them knowing where she lived?

Sarah glanced about the room as if afraid the neighbors might have their ears pinned to the walls, listening. She leaned forward and, her face expressionless, said softly, “My parents are dead.”

Having deceased parents at such a young age could have explained Sarah’s odd behavior. I sat up straight, and the hair at the back of my neck prickled, not exactly knowing why. “I’m sorry.” I felt my already pale face drop several shades. Perhaps it was the thought of losing one’s parents socked

“Oh, don’t be,” she said, almost flippantly. “They’ve been dead awhile. They had me in their forties, and Dad died of cancer. Lung cancer. Too much smoking. Ironic, isn’t it? Mom just wilted after that and followed suit six months back.” She didn’t seem in the least bit affected.

“So, who is it you’re running from?”

“I just don’t want my brother to know where I live.”

I could already see the problems that could arise. My mom would, at this point, have waved a red flag and shouted, “There, Brie. Bad brother. Bad blood. Do you want to be dragged into this? Who knows what crimes the brother might have been involved in?” Of course, Mom would have been right, but I am my own person and I would like to think I could make sound decisions. Besides, something about Sarah intrigued me. It wasn’t just her transparency with me, or her globs of money, although I could see how it’d be fun to hang out with someone with her bounty and who didn’t seem caught up.

“So what’s with your brother? He’s jealous of your inheritance?”
And what about troublesome cousins?

“Not inheritance.” She rolled her eyes as if I’d made a ridiculous mistake and had said two plus two is five. “Trust fund. The inheritance kicks in only when I turn twenty-one, which is in a few weeks, and I keep a clean record—no arrests, no misdemeanors. Todd, my brother, receives his own funds. Same deal as me. Grandpa was fair that way. Anyway, my dad was Grandpa Luke’s only child from his first marriage. Both Todd and I get the inheritance from my dad’s estate at the same time, after
my
twenty-first birthday. Provided…”

She looked at me quizzically, almost sizing me up.

I found myself gripping the edge of the coffee table and leaned forward. “Provided?”

“Like I said, provided we never get into trouble, or make a nuisance of ourselves with the law. Grandpa was particular that way. He saw too many rich kids become a pain to society. So, my brother and I must show a clean slate. Prove we’re worthy of the inheritance.”

“I see.” I didn’t, really. Who did she have to prove this to? How many others had rejected Sarah’s apartment-sharing application based on her secrecy conditions and far-from-common background? But still, she had the dough and I was desperate to seal the deal, especially since two others who’d inquired about the apartment had sounded high, speaking with a melodic tone indicative of their “happy” state, and a third had never called back even after profusely promising to. I couldn’t afford a flaky roommate. Running to my parents to bail me out each time a housemate flaked out wasn’t an option and I didn’t make enough to bear the rent alone. Just as long as Sarah paid her share, and didn’t try to murder me in my sleep, that was all I expected out of this arrangement.

“What happens to the inheritance if one of you goofs up and breaks the law?” I asked.

“The one left standing will gain the other’s share. And, I can tell you, the sum would make Captain Cook rouse from his grave.” She made a spooky gesture with her arms, as if she were a ghost.

“And you’re staying away from your brother, because…?”

She drained the last of the cocoa and smacked her lips. “Because Todd’s waiting for me to slip up. Did I also mention that if one of us perishes, the other gains the inheritance, too?”

“I would’ve recalled that detail.” And what an incentive to do away with the other.

“So?” Her brown eyes widened, and she jerked her chin at me. “Am I acceptable? You won’t be sorry. You can keep the deposit now.”

At this point, I should have asked why
I
made the cut. Sarah could surely rent a place five times the size of this dump. Okay, the place wasn’t a dump, and the apartment was in a safe neighborhood in the woodsy town of Atherton, mostly mansions with large parcels in the most affluent part of the San Francisco Bay Area. Like most cities in the Northern California suburbs, Atherton deemed it good manners to apportion a corner of its ritzy acreage to middle-income dwellers—or as in my case, subterranean-income-level dwellers. My parents had insisted on a respectable neighborhood if their darling daughter had to succumb to apartment living. When the North Atherton Apartment came on the market, they’d insisted I apply. Never mind it was about a thousand dollars more than my budget allowed. But, I was on an agenda to prove something to myself, and to them, and I didn’t have a choice.

I studied Sarah as she raised her eyebrows. Maybe I was trying to find excuses to take her on. She looked sober. She had money. She seemed like a clean-cut, girl-next-door type, and except for her relations who she shouldn’t be blamed for, I couldn’t see a reason to refuse.

So, Sarah moved into that nine-hundred-square-foot, third-story apartment that very afternoon. She didn’t bring much furniture, just an antique-white twin bed with matching bedside table and dresser. She also had two hefty Louis Vuitton suitcases and two cartons, one measuring about four-by-four feet and another that was humongous and could have easily hidden a small elephant, especially the way it weighed. She refused my offers to help move it and struggled as she heaved and pushed it into her bedroom.

“Why not hire some professionals for this?” I asked as I got up to lend her a hand.
What’s the point of having gobs of money?
It was a good thing I had on my usual yoga pants—I vacillated between them and skinny jeans. Sarah, on the other hand, tottered on five-inch heels and wiggled in a super-tight mini-skirt.

She shook her head as if I’d proposed something preposterous. How had she even gotten it into her Jaguar, or gotten it from there and onto the dolly I’d borrowed from Mrs. Mott, my then-next door neighbor?

“The Jag’s backseat folds down,” she explained when I asked, as if this were common knowledge.

Her other three pieces of furniture arrived late in the evening via a white-glove delivery service. She gave each delivery man a hundred-dollar bill each, gratuity, she’d said. I should have insisted on helping with removing the cardboard cartons and gotten a tip, too. Later, I heard Sarah heaving and puffing through her closed door. I walked to it, and placed my ear by the door jamb, and wondered what secret she kept in that heavy carton.

Mother called that night to find out who I’d settled on for a new roommate. I never mentioned I’d just had one viable candidate, and I didn’t specify details, either—just that I’d found someone not on drugs. “Nor on pot.” Mother was specific about using the word “pot,” just in case some junkie, or worse, Libertarian, didn’t consider pot a type of drug.

“How can you decide so quickly to take her in?” Mother seemed disturbed and spoke with a shrill voice, as was her practice when she felt thus. “Did you even run a credit check?”