In Case of Emergency (35 page)

My watch says it’s 1716.

I swivel my pounding head, spot a gallon container of water in the
backseat and the signs of the intersection directly behind us. We’re on Orange Drive at Jefferson Boulevard. Tugging the container of water into my lap with both hands, I drink as if from a bowling ball.

Pressing the back of my skull into the headrest, I massage the jagged imprint in my thigh, created from sleeping on top of my keys. Time for inventory. I have my clothes, my keys, my flip-flops, my phone. I’m missing my wallet. My car is parked at station. I have to take a piss.

Another pull from the water jug. “Pep.” I tug hard on his sleeve, my voice cracking the silence. His loud breathing is the only response: sharp sucks of air followed by lengthy exhales. “Pep, I want to go home.”

He doesn’t stir. I stare at him, realizing that instead of saying “home” I said “hospital.”

61

I decide to walk to Ryan’s house in Culver City. It’s not too far from here. Even if he’s not home I know where he keeps the spare key.

I set off, thinking of nothing, my head curiously empty. I stop at the Kenneth Hahn Family Clinic on Jefferson Boulevard and ask to use their bathroom. As I push open the door of the women’s restroom, I eye the familiar stick figure, clothed in a white triangle, the dark blue circle behind her creating a reverse silhouette. The light inside comes on automatically, illuminating a rusted and dripping sink, a spotted mirror, and an unassuming toilet.

It’s after I flush and wash my hands that I notice the sign taped above the mirror, its slanted font and bright red border:

IN CASE OF EMERGENCY,

PLEASE ASK THE FRONT DESK

FOR SANITARY NAPKINS

I read the sign several times, my lips barely moving.

I remember my father carrying me home after a party one night, how I’d pretended to be asleep in the backseat—despite my mother nudging me and saying, “Piper, sweetie, it’s time to wake up,” and despite how through barely cracked lids I could see Ryan rolling his eyes—because I had wanted to feel my father’s careful hands lift my weight into his arms and carry me up the stairs to my room. When she tucked me in, Mom would always ask if there was anything else I wanted to tell her. She was the only person who listened to even my most ridiculous thoughts without laughing or changing the subject or making me feel bad or getting annoyed, and I can’t remember what I would tell her, I only remember how it felt. When she left I ran away. My red-eyed father found me a few blocks from our house with my thumb stuck out, wearing a pink backpack stuffed with cheese sandwiches and Ryan’s faded dinosaur pajamas. I remember how brazen it felt, how right. Trying to make it all the way to Colorado.

And I remember Ayla, the real one, the living one, how from the first day I saw her I knew I wouldn’t be able to do anything but fall in love with her.

So, yes, Kenneth Hahn Family Clinic on Jefferson Boulevard, pretty please and yes, I would like a tampon. Because if that doesn’t solve it, I suppose nothing will.

62

For the first time in weeks I know exactly where I’m going and why. It’s a long way, and no one walks in LA—especially not this far—but when it hits me how right this is, nothing else makes sense.

At first I move as if I’m flying, not bothering to pace myself, eyes open, vision unclouded. Reality is intoxicating, every moment a seduction. Greedily I drink in the cozy cracked-asphalt streets of the Crenshaw
District, the beige houses, the rumble of the 10 freeway, the low-slung sun casting a pink glow, blending green yards and gray walkways.

My phone says it will take about two hours. The blinking blue button an eternal
You are here
. My own car is too far to retrieve, and although I consider calling Ryan or Marla, or even my father, and asking someone to drive me, I shake off the desire. There’s only one person I want to talk to. She’s seven miles away.

It goes like this: take Harcourt Avenue north, because it will take you under the 10 freeway, then turn right on Washington Boulevard, left on Crenshaw, right on Wilshire, left on Vermont, and finally a little zigzag, a little lightning-bolt dance, under the 101 freeway and up the hills into Silver Lake. You will get there, knock on the door, and tell her you’re very sorry, because you are sorry; you will tell her you missed her, and of course that’s true, and then she will take you back—she’ll wrap her strong arms around you, and…

A tiny speck scurries by on the sidewalk. I stoop down to look and it grows still. Smaller than the face of Abe Lincoln on a penny, it pulls its dark red legs close to its bell-shaped body and waits for the shadow leaning over it to lift. It’s no use. Hiding is such temporary shelter.

To pass the time, I count parked Honda Civics. Fire hydrants. Streets named after vegetation. I hum snatches of songs, the melody of the verses dissipating; I end on a chorus on repeat. Ferndale, Palm Grove, Vineyard, Hickory. A man climbs out of his still-wheezing vehicle and walks up a driveway. He’s wearing a collared peach shirt, stern expression, thick mustache. Two small children in the doorway wait to greet him, yelling-laughing-kicking-each-other, white teeth flashing in their faces.

The world is a gray thing recovering its color.

My left knee itches. I’m hungry I’m thirsty I’m sorry I love you. I will tell her everything if she’ll hear it. I travel under six lanes of a groaning, traffic-filled freeway—the suction of sound like a monstrous seashell against your
ear—and emerge in a new neighborhood, less cozy, more activity. In the spaces between the houses and the cleaners, the gated apartments and the video store, small groups of people huddle. All the stop signs get ignored by speeding cars. Not even halfway there. A dead bumblebee on the sidewalk, one wing pointing at the sky. Birds fly overhead; I had forgotten there were even birds in Los Angeles.

I think about being an EMT, how it means you get to say to someone, “We’re here to help.” Even now I crave an algorithm. My life spilling onto a whiteboard, boxes and circles around crucial events, every arrow pointing to—what? It used to be that any memory of my mom caused horror, spasms of shame and disgust. I still don’t forgive her, maybe I never will, but something has shifted, unseating my ability to deny the obvious, and I can finally permit what Dad and Ryan have been trying to tell me for years—that she loved us. In her own hurtful, distracted, confused way, Mom loved us. The arrows point to my feet, solidly on the ground, moving toward Ayla. To flip-flops slapping against concrete. The arrows point to conclusions too small and innumerable to name.

And then I’m on Crenshaw Boulevard for a long time, moving slowly against the backdrop of a palm-tree-studded skyline. The streets widen; intersections take longer to cross. Impatient cars swerve by so close I could reach out and touch them, so close I could trail their sides, flat oil from my fingers leaving residue on their gloss. The smell of fried toxins hits my nostrils; I spot a Jack in the Box and ache for even five dollars, mechanically checking my pockets, though they’ve been checked and rechecked. Yesterday we ran a call on a woman who wanted a ride to work. Her car had broken down, she didn’t have bus fare, and I was too exhausted to yell at her for calling 911. Was that really yesterday? Time flies when you’ve gone crazy.

The sky darkens, the streetlamps come on, and because Los Angeles was never designed for pedestrians, the blocks are long and dark and lonely, each bright intersection a carnival. A billboard’s spinning pink and blue
lights twirl on the image of a sports car; an eighteen-wheeler, thundering by, sends shudders through me; the silhouette of a pigeon, nesting in the green orb of a streetlamp, serves as the go signal. My skin has split open and been subverted, my nervous system exposed. This is all there is. Each nerve, raw and eager, shrieking its sensitivity, bending toward the sounds of laughter and music, toward the early evening sky. Every time I think of Ayla I want to break into a run. I tried so hard to avoid thinking about her but now I’m looking for her everywhere.

An ambulance goes blaring by, not an A & O rig, but a dark blue beast with yellow stripes and a different siren. I spy strip malls, churches, a sign boasting
BEAUTY SUPPLY & WIG
, a stand set up in a gas station parking lot that’s selling furry car seat covers and animal skin rugs. Maybe Ayla would want a neon-pink leopard-print car seat cover?

My body leans forward, weight transferring from the heel-arch-toes of one foot to the heel-arch-toes of the other, hips shifting slightly to counterbalance, arms swinging. This simple momentum—passing ads, benches, street signs, bus stops, traveling below concrete pillars and telephone poles, seeing your reflection in shopwindows and many-mirrored office buildings—while all the cars, trucks, motorcycles, and the smell of the city race by.

At the corner of Wilshire and Norton, a man in a white shirt halves limes under the rainbow umbrella of his fruit stand. I’m so hungry. I watch him help a customer. Mango, orange, pineapple, watermelon, coconut, and cucumber, loaded into a plastic bag as heavy in your hand as a soiled leather boot. Chile, lime, salt? He looks at me and places a toothpick spearing a trapezoid of mango between my fingers. I force myself to eat slowly. The flavor permeates all the way to my hair follicles. “Thank you, but—” He waves a hand in the air. Using his knife to brush several desiccated limes toward the trash can, he’s surprised when I stop him. “
¿Quieres?
” Yes. He laughs as I pucker from the sour pulp; we wave goodbye like old friends.

The air is getting colder. It occurs to me that I will never get there.
I will spend the night shivering in someone’s yard, sipping sprinklers for survival, and in the morning forage breakfast from trash cans. My former self would be so disappointed with me; I don’t even have a backpack. But then I round the corner from Vermont Avenue. I step onto 1
^st
Street and catch sight of the 101 freeway. My heart begins to race. Almost there. How does it go again? She will—

My right flip-flop breaks away from my foot and I retrieve it by the loose strap, sprung up like a released spring. My feet are disgusting. Two skin-colored lines travel through solid grime and disappear into the crack next to my blackened right big toe. The top edge of the flip-flop has torn open, the side strap is about to come loose, and the back has a suspicious-looking crack, like the heel is about to snap off completely. I’m scared to see how the left is doing. All of a sudden I can’t stop laughing. Practically a mile still to go and I’m down to one flip-flop.

At a liquor store on Virgil Avenue I hobble in, trying to use my naked right foot less than my left—as if it matters!—and ask for duct tape. He stares at me. “Duct tape,” I say again. “For my shoe?” For the first time in my life someone points at the sign,
WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYBODY
. I nod at the man and move on.

I go into a Vons and leave immediately. The glare of too many fluorescents burns spots into my eyelids. Inside a pawn shop, a large, curvy woman with large, curvy hair lays newspaper on the counter and proceeds to put my flip-flop back together with superglue, adding Scotch tape like a garnish. If I survive today these flip-flops will get bronzed and hung on my wall. I leave my watch on the counter as thanks.

My stomach churns; my bowels threaten to eject the lonely piece of mango. I will get there and immediately need to use her bathroom. I will vomit before I ever get there. How much farther? My phone is about to die; the damn blue button hasn’t moved for over an hour; I must have been walking in place all this time. Why didn’t I call Ryan or Marla? I’m starving.
I’m dying. I’m exhausted. This is stupid. I’m stupid. What happens when I get there and she refuses to talk to me? It will only hurt to look at her. If I went home, and left talk of second chances for another day. This will be so much easier when I’m rested. I’m not thinking straight. It’s not too late to change my mind.

The last time I saw Ayla, she tried to tell me there was no way out but through. Now, even while I resist, even while some part of me throws a tantrum—imagining all the ways this could end badly—I know my only choice is to keep moving forward, and I’m so glad.

The steps to Ayla’s studio: remember to tell her you don’t deserve her. I’m done with counting. I won’t count anything ever again. Not hours or minutes or miles or freeways or reasons or steps or stars. I see movement in one of the windows and feel a jerk of fear and relief. She’s home. It’s time. I’m so very tired of being so afraid.

As I climb the final distance into the hills of Silver Lake, the sky above me dusted with light, I find a hose between two bungalows, take deep gulps of water from it, and spray down my throbbing, filthy feet.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Especially Damara Ganley, Dave Reid, Katherine Redington, Rachael Lincoln, Noel Plemmons, Charlotte Wheeler, Rachel Nagelberg, and my mother, Tracy Grant: this book wouldn’t exist without your love and support. Much thanks to Erin Minnick, for focusing her expert eyes on the details, Liz Curry, for just generally being a badass, Tom Christie, for pushing me past the daydreaming that might have remained the ghostbone of this book, my editor, Andi Winnette, and Stephen Beachy, whose feedback alone was worth the price of graduate school.

To those who granted me interviews—Kurt Schmitz, Susan Voglmaier, Tyler Pew, Linda Noble, Janeen Smith, David Schoppik, Starlyn Lara, Akiva S. Cohen, Tara Fagan, Sarah Kotowski, and others—I’m so, so grateful.

Chris Black, thank you for being you. I feel lucky every damn day.