Roomies (15 page)

I guess I am not a hot date. Or haven’t been yet!

On that note: Any more thigh touching?

I took Keyon’s dad’s (imagined) advice and called Justine and we talked and it was good. We’re going to try to do something fun soon. Hopefully just the two of us, but probably with Morgan, too. I think I told you I had two besties but in reality Justine and I go way back and Morgan’s great but also sort of new. I guess it’s dumb to get possessive about your friend. Especially now?

Anyway, I am actually not sure I can keep a secret from Mark and I feel SICK about what my mother did, which means I feel sick about the thought of telling Mark. He has alluded a few times to the fact that he’s less than impressed with his dad but it is still, you know, his DAD. I so wish my mother knew how to handle all this better. Right now she is pretty much ignoring me. I half expect I’ll wake up tomorrow with an eviction notice taped to my door. So I dug out this letter my dad wrote me, in which he said I could come visit him. It was years ago (I mean, it was a letter! Like, on PAPER) but I’ve been thinking maybe it wouldn’t be that crazy to e-mail him or call the gallery and see if I COULD come out to San Francisco before school starts. I know I’m going to be living there and could possibly see him anytime or all the time but I’m going to be in school by then and I’m sure it’ll be busy. Am I delusional? I think I probably am. Maybe I’ll just change my ticket and get on a plane and stroll in like I’m going to buy some art and see if he even recognizes me. Good plan, right?

—EB

I look around my room, wishing I had a little sister to pack.

Yes: Super-comfy slipper socks with nonstick bottoms. (I live in these, you should know.)

No: Slips. (My mother is obsessed with them but I have never met a slip that didn’t show under my skirt or ride up to my waist.)

Maybe so: All new underwear and bras?

SATURDAY, JULY 27

SAN FRANCISCO

This nasty flu that’s been going around the city strikes our household. Gertie and P.J. are up all Friday night blowing chunks, Jack has a fever, and Marcus says his throat hurts. Mom has Francis sort of quarantined and suggests to me on Saturday morning that I get out of the house and
stay
out until whatever this is has passed. She says I can go either to Grandma’s or to Zoe’s, if it’s okay with her parents; it’s up to me.

“I know you’re trying to make as much money as you can this summer,” she says. She’s talking to me from the hallway, keeping a safe distance, holding a tissue over her mouth. Right now all the sick kids are in the boys’ room. “I’d hate for you to miss a week of work.”

Yeah, me too. Not only because of the money, either. I like being with Keyon at the deli. Even though the work itself is generally a grind, being near him isn’t. It’s something both chemical and emotional, a kind of excited calmness I feel as long as I stay within a few feet of him.
Excited calmness
may not make sense but it’s the best way I can think of it and I’ve been feeling it all week.

So, no, I don’t want to miss work. Still, I feel obligated to ask, “Don’t you need me to stay and help?” even as I’m stuffing a handful of underwear into my backpack and thinking about T-shirts and jeans.

“I think Dad and I have it covered. Thankfully it’s the weekend—maybe by Monday no one will be contagious and then you can come back and take care of them
and
us.”

Yay.

We hear a pathetic, weak “Mommy?” cry coming from the boys’ room. Mom trudges off to answer. I call my boss from the insurance company to see if anyone’s there today, thinking I could go in and do some filing to kill some of my time. But the office is getting carpet-cleaned and de-mildewed over the weekend. Zoe or Grandma. Grandma or Zoe. I wonder if I could sleep in the van….

Not that I don’t love Grandma, but she’s a total worrier and never goes anywhere and still treats me like a kid. Her idea of a good time is playing Crazy Eights for hours and making ice cream sundaes, which of course was my idea of a good time, too, ten years ago. It’s basically impossible for her to see me as an independent, capable near-adult. Last time I spent the night over there, I offered to go out and get us a pizza. She pulled back the living room curtain, noted the dark, and said, “Do you think that’s safe?”

Zoe, though, is also problematic, and that’s mostly my own fault—there’s the matter of her unanswered e-mails between us. But then I think about what my dad said: Take care of the relationships that are in front of you. There’s no way my friendship with Zoe has lived out its natural life. And Ebb’s last e-mail (also unanswered) worried me a little. If she comes to San Francisco to stay with her dad, is she going to expect me to hang out with her all the time and show her around or whatever? Like I need one more thing to be responsible for.

It all gives me the feeling I should do a better job of maintaining things with Zoe. I should have been more cautious with Ebb before jumping into this “you’re my second-string BFF” stuff.

I hit good old number 5 on the speed dial, right in the middle of the keypad. It’s been a while. “Zo?” I say to her voice mail. “The kids have the plague. My mom is kicking me out for the weekend. Can I stay with you? If it’s no trouble? Call me. Don’t text! You know I’m so bad at texting. Bye.”

It’s not ideal that the first time I’ve called in a week is to ask a favor, but there it is. You sort of earn the right to do that when you’ve been friends with someone for a decade.

I finish loading up my backpack, and Mom shoos me out of the house, thrusting the keys to Dad’s old Saturn at me. “It’s not like we’re going to go anywhere,” she says. “I sanitized the keys but keep washing your hands.” I head over to Simple Pleasures Cafe to wait for Zoe to get back to me. It’s a great little run-down hole-in-the-wall, in the middle of the fog bank that is the Outer Richmond in summer, furnished with dirty, saggy old couches, and funky art on the walls.

As I sit with my coffee, I have a lively conversation with myself, in my head, about whether or not to call Keyon and see what he’s up to. We haven’t actually set a date for me coming over for dinner, but I don’t want to be one of those girls who’s always, like, “Look at me, look at me, look at me,” afraid that if you don’t remind a guy every five minutes that you exist, he’ll forget about you. Even if I feel that way a tiny, tiny bit.

The thing is, I don’t know how seriously to take his flirting. From what I remember about him at school, he always had some girlfriend or other. Never the same one for long, like he was always looking for the next thing. Which isn’t a crime. It’s high school, after all. Was Joe advising him about
those
girls? Does Keyon flirt with me mostly because I’m
there
? Or is there something specific about
me
he likes? And if he finds out I’m a virgin, as in if
I tell him
I am, will he drop me like a hot potato or make it his goal in life to be my first, for the conquest of it? Neither scenario is fantastic.

What I want to know is: Am I special?

It does occur to me that I only feel insecure when I’m not around him. When we’re together, or talking on the phone, or e-mailing, I feel completely at home and these questions don’t torment me.

As I stare at the café wall measuring out the pros and cons, my eyes land on a flyer for a new exhibit at a gallery called The Wall. After racking my brain for a full half-cup’s worth of coffee sips, I realize why it’s familiar. That’s Ebb’s dad’s place.

The pictures on the flyer are exactly the kind of “art” I don’t get: big blocks of color with, like, one black dot randomly applied. I’m intrigued, though, by the idea that Ebb’s dad is right here in the city. Maybe getting a glimpse of him will help me know something about
her
, and trigger some intuitive sense of whether or not we should go forward with the whole being roommates thing.

A little stalkery, I admit.

But really, what else do I have to do today? I tear the flyer off the wall and stuff it in my messenger bag, getting a refill of my coffee to go.

“Remind me again why we’re doing this?” Zoe asks while I drive in circles around SoMa in search of parking. She called me right as I was pulling away from the coffee shop and after shrieking at me a few minutes for being out of touch said yeah, of course I could stay with her. Then I talked her into coming with me on my art adventure.

“I want to get myself cultured before I start at UC. You know how those East Bay hipsters love their art. I saw this flyer and thought—”

“There’s one!” she shouts, sticking her arm right in front of my face and pointing to the other side of the street. I flip a U-turn and jerk into the space, earning several wrathful honks from other drivers. Zoe’s always had the magic when it comes to finding parking.

We lock up and embark on the seven-block walk to The Wall. In traditional San Francisco microclimate fashion, it’s as sunny and warm here as it was cold and foggy in the Richmond. As we walk, I peel off layers of clothes and Zoe stares at her phone, thumbs busy.

I compose imaginary tweets and status updates and say them aloud. It’s my favorite way to harass Zoe about her phone addiction.

“I’m walking down Eighth Street to go see art a child could paint.”

“There are a lot of pigeons out today.”

“About to cross Folsom. Hope I don’t get run over.”

She finally fires one back.
“Lauren is bugging the shit out of me.”
But she does put her phone into her pocket before we cross. “When’s the last time we got together on a weekend?” she asks, fingering the ends of her recently highlighted hair.

“Never. And like I said, I’m sorry for being out of touch. My family—”

“I know. Your family needs you.” She sounds bored. “Always such a handy excuse.”

“There’s a difference between a reason and an excuse.”

“Yes,” she says. “I know.”

Before I can answer, she stops and walks backward a couple of feet. “It this it?” We stare at a nondescript storefront with the name
THE WALL
stenciled on the glass door in modern-looking block letters.

“Yep.”

We step in. It’s small; a few bare, narrow rooms, little but the art on the white walls. There are a few other people here. It’s hard to tell who’s working and who’s like us, looking. “So what do you do in an art gallery?” I whisper to Zoe.

“Stroll around. Look thoughtful. Nod.”

We do, and spend some time staring at a single huge canvas painted green, with three small white squares in one corner. “This one’s only five thousand seven hundred dollars, Zo.”

She nods. She looks thoughtful. “Would be great for your dorm room.”

“Did you have any questions?” a voice behind us asks, and I turn around and I just know from how he’s dressed and the whole effect of him that he’s the owner. Ebb’s dad, I assume. He’s super-good-looking, like one of those middle-aged guys in a Ralph Lauren ad, on a yacht, tan and windblown and slightly squinty.

“No, thank you.”

But Zoe says, “Actually, I wondered, what’s this painting supposed to be… saying?”

“Did you read the artist’s statement?”

I detect a slight New York-y kind of accent. It has to be Mr. Ebb. I mean I guess he could have a partner or a
partner
, also from back east, but I have this feeling.

“Oh,” Zoe says. “No?” She glances around the room.

He goes over to a small wooden stand and picks up a trifold brochure thing and hands it to Zoe with a smile. His teeth are very straight. I try to construct a face for Ebb made up of some of his features. Does she have the blue eyes? The narrow nose? I’m suddenly filled with an urgent need to
see
her, as if this will answer all my uncertainties about her as a person, roommate, and potential friend.

And I could send a picture of me. Maybe with Keyon. I’d like to have a picture with him and me together before I go to school.

Zoe reads the artist’s statement, then hands it back, unimpressed. “Hm.”

“Not for you?” Mr. Ebb says.

“Not really.”