Hancock Park (14 page)

“Y
ou live
here
?” Taylor said in a tone of what sounded like disgust. Her nose was wrinkled up as she grabbed her reusable water bottle and tote bag from the passenger side of her car.

She had approached me in the parking lot that morning and reminded me that I'd invited her over to our new apartment. This was supposed to be our first week living there, but because Mom had been so eager to move, we had now been at Doheny Park for a few weeks already.

“Yeah,” I'd said, not wanting to uninvite her, and feeling guilty about making fun of her earlier that week.

“What's wrong with living here?” I asked defensively now, as we got ready to leave our cars in the large circular driveway. Aside from the fact that everything was still in boxes and the hip new director across the hall who had decided to gut his apartment always had a team of workers shuffling in and out, everything was basically fine. But who was Taylor to judge?

“Nothing,” she said quickly. “Nothing's wrong with living here.” Even so, I could see her spine straighten, and she gripped her water bottle tightly. I pulled my skirt down a little and lifted my laptop case out of the car.

I very quickly found out what the problem was. For Taylor, I mean. When we entered the lobby, there were two men in workout clothes sitting on one of the couches. One of the men was tall, thin, and Hispanic. The other was a little shorter and a little pudgier, and had a head of curly blond hair. The blond one locked eyes with Taylor, who suddenly said, “Let's go. Now.” She dashed toward the wall of elevators, her long sweater flapping behind her.

“Taylor?”

“Bruce.” Taylor turned around slowly and spoke flatly.

“Lucas, it's Taylor! Taylor, what are you doing here?” The blond man stood up and took a step toward Taylor. I immediately saw the resemblance.

“Is that…” I began. Then I saw the pain in Taylor's face and stopped. And then I saw Lucas put his arm around Bruce, and I finally understood.

“I'm here with my friend Becky.” Taylor stayed at a
distance and pushed the
UP
button on the elevator control panel. “She lives here, too.”

The elevator opened. A man in a maroon suit emerged from behind the concierge desk and held the door open. “Mr. Tremaine?” he said. “I've just heard back from maintenance. The steam room is open now, so feel free to go on up.” I could almost see a green tinge appearing in Taylor's face.

Later, in my new room, we lay on the floor researching the social stigmas against AIDS orphans in Africa. “I didn't know,” I ventured.

She gave me a confused look at first, not understanding what I was talking about. But then she got it. “Yeah, I mean, I'm not trying to keep it a secret or anything.” Taylor said, doodling a tree on a legal pad. “He's only been out for a month.”

I tried to think of something appropriate to say.

“It's not a secret or anything,” she went on. “But do you think you could…not tell people about it? Girls talk. I don't want the new buzz at school to be about this. Especially not the you-know-who. I mean, I know they're your friends, but…” She trailed off.

I nodded. The Trinity
were
my friends, and because of that, I knew what gossips they could be. “Of course not.”

My words from earlier that week rushed back at me, biting me in the ass.
She thinks we're actually friends.

Pushing those thoughts away, I turned my head toward Taylor and opened my mouth into what I hoped was a
sympathetic smile. “What are friends for, right?” Her eyes were glassy. A cliché just wasn't going to cut it. “Besides, every family has its own shit to deal with.”

I tried to laugh, but there wasn't really anything to laugh about.

A
aron and I were sitting in the back of an almost-empty movie theater in Westwood on our three-week anniversary, seeing the nine o'clock showing of a new animated movie. He bought the tickets, and we made out for almost the entire two hours.

“Aaron,” I whispered. My breathing came in bursts as I tried to draw myself away from him. “What are we?”

Everyone at school believed that I had a new boyfriend. Except me.

Aaron sat back in his chair and looked me in the eye. His hair stuck up and his cheeks were flushed. He smiled and I shivered a little. “All I know is that you're my
girlfriend, and I love you.”

So
not what I was expecting.

“Thanks.” I said, immediately realizing that this was the wrong response. “I mean,” I gripped the handle of the armrest to my right, the one farthest from Aaron. “I really appreciate it—that you feel that way.” I grimaced. Why did I sound like an awkward forty-year-old?

I leaned in to kiss him before he could ask if I felt the same way.

 

For a fleeting moment, I found myself feeling nervous about Aaron's proclamation of love, but that feeling quickly went away. The idea that someone loved me—liked me, even—was overwhelming. Even my parents, who I knew loved me, sometimes got so busy that they didn't call to check in or show up for dinner. Not Aaron. Aaron called when he said he would and texted me daily. And I called and texted back. He made me feel special.

The night after he told me he loved me, Aaron opened our phone conversation by saying, “So, I'm on Facebook right now, and you know the thing where you say who you're in a relationship with? I don't know, but I was just updating my profile, and…”

“Put me down!” I tried to sound casual and not too eager, but my heart was racing. Saying he loved me was one thing, but changing a Facebook relationship status meant that this relationship was
really
official. That Aaron
was proud of me and wanted me to be listed at the top of his profile page.

“Okay, cool.”

“So, see you Friday?” I stretched my legs out in front of me.

“Can't wait.”

“Me either,” I half whispered before ending the call and picking up my book.

When my parents told me they were getting divorced, I was convinced that I would never be happy again.

But all of a sudden, I wasn't sad anymore. Some of that might have been my new medications—I'd even stopped realphabetizing my books every day—but I thought that most of it had to do with Aaron. I certainly wasn't happy because of my parents, since they were just as crazy as ever. And my newfound popularity was definitely great, but it only increased my anxieties. I had started spending an extra half hour in the morning getting ready, worried that if my uniform wasn't just right, if my hair was frizzy, or if a zit was showing, the Trinity would remember that I, Becky Miller, wasn't actually cool. No, it had to be Aaron. Because whenever I thought about Aaron, my stomach fluttered, and I realized that I must be cool enough because cooler-than-cool Aaron Winters liked me—had chosen me.

And then, because nobody was there to tell me that I was being immature, I tossed
Heart of Darkness
aside for a
moment, stood up on my floral-print sheets, and jumped up and down, the coils squeaking and my head almost touching the ceiling, until I finally fell back on the pillows, smiling with exhaustion and, dare I say it, happiness.

193

I
t is a myth that it never rains in Los Angeles, because it does.

But it wasn't supposed to rain inside.

Mom had an HWPC meeting one Sunday morning, and as all the women gathered in the living room, talking over one another in attempts to get a word in edgewise, I pulled the blankets over my head, hoping to get another hour or two of sleep. I might have gone out to the living room to listen in on the meeting, except that it was only nine in the morning and I really couldn't get my mind around the idea of getting out of bed, much less putting on clothes.

It was hard to get back to sleep, though. The women
talked loudly. I overheard Laura Turner introducing my mom to someone, and throughout the course of the conversation, I realized that the “someone” was Courtney's stepmother, Marisa, who had come along to the meeting with Laura and was “so excited to meet Becky's mother!” But Courtney didn't really like Marisa, so I felt no need to hop out of bed, put on my game face, and go say hello. Instead I tucked a pillow over my head and tried to get some sleep.

Two hours later, I was standing on the balcony, staring through the glass door at my bedroom, my hands on my Mickey Mouse pajama–clad hips. I had woken up when a drop of water landed on my forehead. Sitting straight up in my twin bed, I'd stared at the ceiling. Suddenly, water had plopped onto the pillow to my left, leaving a dark, circular mark. Then there had been another drop, right on top of my head. “Mom! It's…raining,” I'd called out, still sitting upright and unnerved in bed.

I'd had no idea what time it was, but I'd figured that the HWPC meeting must have been over because the apartment was quiet.

“No it's not; don't be silly. Look, it's a beautiful day out!” Mom had responded from the living room.

And then, as if on cue, a steady splash of water had come streaming down from the ceiling onto my bright white carpet and trickled along the wall closest to my bathroom. “Mom! I think you should come see this.”

“Mommy, what's going on?” Jack's voice had rung out.

I had curled into a ball at the top of my bed. The carpet was soaking up the water that had fallen from above, but then there was more, trickling down the pale yellow corner walls of my bedroom and falling in steady “plinks” into a growing puddle in the center of the room.

“Mom! I'm sitting on the toilet and I'm scared to get up! And since when does it rain inside? Is this water? It's all over the bathroom, Mom!” a frantic Jack shouted. Then, “Shit, Mom! It's raining pee!”

I heard Mom's heels clicking as she passed my bedroom and stopped at the entrance to her bathroom suite. “Oh, great,” Mom sighed. “Becky, if you thought that it was raining in your room, you should check this out. Jack, come out of there! I have to call the super to get him to turn the water off!”

The espadrilles that I had worn the previous day were sitting by my bed, so even though they weren't very practical, I had put them on and ventured toward the hallway. Mom was right; her bathroom was completely flooded; the carpets were soggy, paint was coming off the molding, and there was water dripping down in several different places.

“Jack, come out of the bathroom. It's not
that
scary. And it's not pee. The building manager should be here any second.”

Jack had showed up behind me wearing boxer shorts, a T-shirt, and a look of disbelief.

“It's not wet in the living room, so why don't you two go sit in there while we wait for the manager to come and
turn off the water valve. I'll go try to find some buckets to put down.”

Ten minutes later, the doorbell rang. As Mom went to answer it, she'd turned to Jack and me and said, “This is when you're glad you live in a full-service building.”

Yes, unless you happened to be standing there looking like a complete fool in flannel pajamas and espadrilles.

A man dressed in a gray suit was standing at the front door.

“Ms. Miller, I think that we have identified the problem,” the man said, holding a walkie-talkie to his ear. We believe that a pipe has burst in the bathroom of the apartment above yours.”

“Bathroom?” Jack squealed, jumping up. “Mom, I told you!”

“It's just water…right?”

“Just water, yes.”

“So how do we get it to stop? Is there a water valve or something?”

The building manager secured the walkie-talkie at his hip using the clip. “Unfortunately, Ms. Miller, only our super knows where the water control valve is, and…he's not in right now.”

Doheny Park prided itself on having a twenty-four-hour live-in super. Who, I guess, just wasn't living-in at the moment.

For the next few hours, several more employees entered our apartment, and a building-wide search for the water
valve ensued. It was a futile search, and the whole time, water continued to drip into our apartment, where we hoped it was landing only in the buckets and mixing bowls that had been placed on the floor. By the time the super got back (he claimed he'd been visiting his sick mother and had forgotten to turn on his cell) and the water was shut off, plenty of damage had been done. Walls and floors were wet, soggy carpets needed to be torn up, and wires were hanging everywhere—the apartment looked like a disaster zone.

Mom sent us to Dad's house that night. She said that by the time we came back to her, everything would be figured out. I didn't want to leave her. In its current state, the apartment was not somewhere that one would want to live in, especially alone. But Mom insisted, claiming that her bedroom hadn't really been harmed, so she should be fine for a day or two. She could use the bathroom in the building's gym, she assured us.

I lay in my bed at my dad's house that night, unable to get to sleep. I had to sleep; I had school the next day. But I couldn't close my eyes for long enough to give in to the powers of REM. I got out of bed and reorganized my books by page count, thickest to thinnest, trying to ignore the feeling that this had happened because things had been going well for me, that after my several-week high, this was the inevitable fall.

I
was in math when Mrs. Donnelly's assistant interrupted the class. “Excuse me, I have a note for Becky Miller,” she said. She handed me a folded piece of Whitbread stationery.

“What's the note about?” Alissa leaned over and whispered.

I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders. I smiled nervously up at the teacher and unfolded the sheet of paper.

It read:

 

I've been fighting with the insurance company about where we're moving to. Talked with Laura, and we've got it
settled. Get what you want from the apartment and meet me at the Four Seasons after school.

 

I assumed she meant Laura Turner, who was well known as a vicious attorney.

“I think,” I whispered to Alissa, “I might be moving into the Four Seasons.”

I waited to gauge her response. “Cool,” she said. “Caroline Parkman's living there right now, too. What did you get for number 27?” She spoke as if living in the Four Seasons was the most normal thing in the world.

Perfectly normal chaos.

Jack, I realized when I got back to Doheny Park that day, hadn't received a note from Mom; I guess I was responsible for giving him the news. “Why should I believe you? As far as I know, you're just randomly saying that we're going to move out of our apartment and into the fucking Four Seasons?” he asked, sliding his finger around his iPod dial to pump up the volume. But he did believe me, it seemed, because he grabbed a suitcase from the hall closet and began to stuff it with hats and video games.

Walking into my bedroom, or what remained of it, I couldn't figure out what to pack. Was I
moving
to the Four Seasons? Was this a
vacation
? We had two big suitcases stored on the top shelf of the hall closet, and these might have been plenty for both of us, except that when I tried to add books and Jack tried to stuff in his Xbox 360, we ran out of room. So, cramming whatever wouldn't fit
in the suitcases into tote bags and backpacks, we created a pile in the front hall, right behind the huge industrial vacuums that had been brought in as part of the failed cleanup process.

An hour later, I felt fairly confident in saying that walking into the Beverly Hills Four Seasons in my school uniform, carrying backpacks and duffel bags and dragging along a Game Boy–playing little brother, was not one of my classiest moments.

Oh, yeah, and while I was explaining who I was to the concierge, Jack, who was wearing a sweatshirt with “J-Zizzy” emblazoned across the front—a step up from his Halloween costume—was chatting it up with Jay-Z, who was standing behind us in line. “Dude, I like your sweatshirt,” I heard Jay-Z say.

I told the woman standing at the desk that I was there to check in, and no, I wasn't Kathy Miller, but I was her daughter, and she would be there later.

“Ah, yes, your mother's assistant called earlier today and said that you would be coming. If you would just give Horatio your bags, he'll bring them up to your rooms for you. Eliza will show you the way.”

The two-bedroom suite overlooked the hotel's circular entranceway and Doheny Drive. Sitting on top of the coffee table were bowls of M&M'S and champagne. There was a master bedroom with a king-sized bed and heavy drapes. and connected to that was a living room that had a pullout sofa, a refrigerator, a small dining table, and a
coffee table. The room next door had two twin beds and a marble-top desk with a large television armoire to the right. Jack and I had to share a room? We hadn't done that since, well, never.

Mom came home that afternoon carrying a tote bag full of clothes on one shoulder and a cream-colored suit over the other. She was talking on a cell phone propped up only by her shoulder. “My apartment is currently an unacceptable living situation, and you are required to provide me and my children with comparable arrangements. Yes, I have already moved out. Well, there are other families from my children's schools currently living at the Beverly Hills Hotel because of mold, so I have made the decision, based on legal counsel, to move to a hotel that is of a comparable living situation to Doheny Park. I've moved to the Four Seasons.” Mom took a breath and sat down on the couch, smiling hello. “So you'll pay for our living and food expenses until the apartment becomes inhabitable. Thank you. Good-bye.” She clicked the phone shut.

“Did they agree?” I asked Mom, sitting down next to her on the couch.

“I certainly hope so.”

They did agree, in the end. They, the insurance agency, would pay for our exorbitantly expensive two-bedroom suite and for every meal, no matter what or how much we ordered.

I had never really considered the possibility of living in a hotel. After all, why would I? Hotels weren't places
that people lived, normally. Well, except for Eloise, who I had definitely enjoyed reading about when I was younger. And Caroline Parkman, too, apparently. But Caroline Parkman was a too-cool-for-school senior who I barely knew. And Eloise was six. She lived in the Plaza, and the book never showed how she might have to remember to order her breakfast the night before or put away her books and papers because otherwise the maid would hide them somewhere.