The Last Days of California: A Novel (21 page)

She shrugged and drank her tea. I wanted to know why she’d done it, what the point of it had been, but I didn’t want to offend her. It seemed unbelievable that someone would spend so much time and effort doing something so purposeless. It would have been better to donate money, or write a blog post about it. I imagined her standing in front of the poem after it was complete and seeing nothing but a bunch of holes. Like a pack of moles had dug up the ground.

“Did you take any pictures of it?” I asked.

“A few, but only for myself.”

“That’s really cool. I’d like to do something like that.”

“You should,” she said. “I’ll do anything once and if I don’t like it or I’m not having fun, I’ll think,
You are having an experience
.”

“So you’re thinking that right now?”

She smiled. “Touché.”

I’d never met anyone like her. Instead of watching TV or playing on the Internet, she wrote poems about human rights issues and searched out empty fields. It made me envious, but I also felt sorry for her. If she went back there now, her words would be unreadable; she’d have nothing to show for her efforts. But maybe that was the point.

Elise returned with
a plastic bag and I stood and told the woman it had been nice talking to her.

“You too,” she said.

“I hope you get to go camping next year.”

“Thanks,” she said, and then she wished me luck. I didn’t like it when people wished me luck. It was like they thought I needed it, like I wouldn’t be okay without it.

On our way out of the coffee shop, I saw my father. He stopped at a machine and stared at it for a moment, pressed a few buttons. Then he sat at the one beside it. I wondered if someone would come along and sit next to him, at the machine he knew he should be playing, and hit it big. I wondered if he always chose the machine right next to the one he felt compelled to play, if he always purposefully fucked himself.

Elise tripped, nearly falling on her face. I took the bag out of her hand and looped my arm through hers.

“How’d you get so drunk?”

“I’m not that drunk. I just need to eat something,” she said. “I got me some french fries.”

I slowed as we passed the Native American store with its turquoise jewelry and dreamcatchers, watching the girl behind the counter. She had long silky hair but she was wide-faced and flat-nosed and thick.

“Hold on a second,” I said to Elise, and signaled for her to sit on a nearby bench. I stepped into the store and smiled in the direction of the girl, who remained slouched over the counter with her hands folded in front of her. “How much are the dreamcatchers?” I asked.

“All prices,” she said. “I think our least expensive one is sixteen.”

“I want it,” I said.

“It’s that one,” the girl said, nodding to one in a corner.

“I want it,” I said again. It was perfect, the one I would have chosen even if I hadn’t known the price.

She stood on a stool to get it down for me. She wasn’t that big but her butt was disproportionately large and I wondered why she didn’t do something about it, go on a diet or do some kind of target exercises.

“What do they do?” I asked. “I mean, how do they work?”

“Positive dreams slip through the hole in the center and glide down the feathers to the sleeping person,” she said, like she’d said it a hundred times. “The negative dreams get caught up in the web here. Do you have a lot of bad dreams?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what a normal amount of bad dreams are.”

“I never have bad dreams.”

“I dream my teeth are falling out sometimes.”

“You’re worried you’re not attractive enough,” she said. “Or you’re sexually frustrated, but they all seem to mean that.”

This irritated me. I was a lot better-looking than she was—nine out of ten boys would pick me over her, or at least eight.

“I’m really into dream interpretation,” she said. “Give me another and I’ll tell you what it means.”

“I don’t remember any others,” I said.

“Come on.”

“Sometimes I dream I find a treasure chest and it’s full of gold.”

“Hmm,” she said, twisting up her mouth. “You’re about to unlock some important information that you’ve kept hidden from yourself. Of course it could mean other things, too. I’d need to check my book.”

This made me wonder if I’d been molested as a child and had repressed it. When people unlocked important information, wasn’t this always the case? Nobody ever unlocked anything good. I handed her my money, hooked a finger through the loop, and didn’t thank her as I walked out. This went against everything I’d been taught and felt very liberating.

Elise was still on the bench. “A dreamcatcher,” she said, putting her cigarette out on the floor.

I explained how it worked, that the bad dreams got caught up in the web and the good ones slipped down the feathers.

She stuck a finger in the hole and wagged it. “My dreams have been all fucked up lately,” she said. “Like they’re picking up where somebody’s left off the night before.”

An elevator was
open and we stepped inside—we had it all to ourselves. I looked at myself in the mirror, first one and then turning to look in another and another. One day I would have a house without mirrors, not a single mirror to remind me of myself. It was amazing to think about, having my own place where I could do whatever I wanted. I could go to bars and drink beer or watch
Friends
reruns in bed for days and nobody would be there to say anything. I could order pizza and answer the door in my pajamas. When the elevator was about to stop, I jumped so I could feel the floor rise to meet me.

At our room, Elise couldn’t find her key. She emptied her purse all over the carpet, shaking it and turning out the fabric lining.

“What are you doing? I have one right here.”

The woman across the hall opened her door and deposited another room service tray outside. She was in a white bathrobe, pink foam curlers in her hair. She closed the door and Elise crawled over and picked up a perfect half of an untouched sandwich. “It’s got turkey on it,” she said, tossing it down the hall.

“Go pick that up,” I said, gathering her stuff, running my hands over the carpet to make sure I’d gotten all of her bobby pins and loose change. I noticed the chocolate in my nails, like dirt.

“Do you want to see the birds?” she asked. “Let’s go see the birds.”

“She’s probably asleep.”

“I want them to land in my hair.” She flipped over onto her back with her legs and arms splayed, lightly touching her head with one hand.

“Get up.”

“You look funny from this angle,” she said, laughing. I left her there and went into our room, set her food and purse on the bed. I laid the dreamcatcher on my bag and looked at it. I hardly ever bought anything for myself, and never anything so decorative. I couldn’t wait to get home and find the perfect place to hang it. The light on the telephone was blinking red—a message from our mother.

I went to get Elise but she was already in the bird woman’s room.

“Come on in and close the door,” the woman said. She was in bed in her big purple dress, Luke in a cot by the window, shirtless.

Elise opened the middle cage, and I went over and knelt next to her. The birds stayed where they were, one on either side, their heads tucked into their bodies.

“I think they’re asleep,” she said.

“We were all asleep,” Luke said.

“What if they see the other birds?” I asked. “I thought they’d beat their wings and go berserk.”

“They will,” Luke said.

“It’ll be okay,” the woman said.

“Come here, little birdies,” Elise said. “Pretty little birdies, sweet little birds.” She called to them like she was calling a dog, patting her knees. I could feel Luke’s eyes on us. We probably reminded him of all of the girls who’d never liked him—girls who’d made fun of him in elementary school and then hadn’t cared enough to do even that. Elise called louder.

“Just be quiet for a minute,” I said, taking her hand. We backed away from the cage and waited. I glanced at Luke in his cot with its thin white blanket. He hadn’t bothered to cover himself, and his breasts—they could only be called breasts—were small and folded over. They were different from a woman’s, missing whatever was inside them that gave them shape.

Finally, a bird flew out and perched on the fat woman’s foot. It looked around with its jerky bird neck before flying from one wall to the other as if measuring the dimensions of the room.

“This one likes to peck,” the woman said. “Not hard, just little love pecks.” The bird flew back to her foot and demonstrated, and the woman squealed and tossed her head about.

“I want it to peck me,” Elise said.

And then the other bird was out of its cage and they were both flying, stopping to look at us from the desk, the top of the TV cabinet. It reminded me of being a little kid, how I’d stand on tables and chairs to see things differently. How it would alter my perspective in the most pleasant way. I leaned against the wall and watched them. At the beginning of summer, on a walk around the neighborhood with Cole, a baby bird fell from its nest and landed at our feet. I’d nearly stepped on it. I was sure it had been some kind of omen, like a black cat in a dark alley, only a thousand times worse. It was dead, slick and eyeless.

When I looked at Luke, his eyes moved off to the side. He was the kind of guy who walked into a library or a movie theater and shot up a bunch of strangers, the kind who wouldn’t even have the guts to shoot himself afterward. He’d put the gun in his mouth and pull it out, put it in and pull it out, and then maybe break down in tears.

No matter how she called them, or how still and patiently she waited, the birds wouldn’t go near Elise. She stood and held out her arms like a scarecrow and they cut an even wider arc around her.

We got in
bed and opened the box of fries, drenched and soggy with cheese.

“This is the orangest cheese I’ve ever seen,” I said. I stuck a finger into a corner, cold and gloppy.

“That means it has a lot of nutrients,” she said.

Or it’s poisonous
, I thought. “Mom called,” I said. “We should call her back.”

“You call her.”

“She called my cell, too. She’s probably freaking out.”

“So call the woman.”

We ate while watching Anderson Cooper, our dresses wrinkled and hiked up our thighs. She stopped eating to tell me about Anderson’s brother, how he’d committed suicide. “ ‘I can’t feel anything anymore,’ he said, hanging from the ledge of a tall building. And then he let go.” She said he was handsome and rich and had everything and he still wanted to die.

“Do you want to die?” I asked.

“
No
,” she said. “I love my life.”

“Are you being serious?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

“I thought that was your point.” I concentrated on getting as much cheese onto each fry as possible before putting it in my mouth. “How do you know Anderson’s gay?” I asked.

“He’s thin and well-groomed and eats a plain baked potato for every meal.”

“A plain baked potato?”

“That’s what I read. He thinks eating is a burden.”

“I wish I was like that,” I said. I closed the box and threw it away, washed the cheese off my fingers. Then I took off Elise’s dress and hung it in the closet, put my shorts and tank top on.

Anderson was over and some other guy was talking about the rapture. If the rapture was supposed to start at 10
P.M
. tomorrow night in California, it would start earlier in other parts of the world. For some reason this hadn’t occurred to me. Australia was waiting to see what would happen. They were sixteen hours ahead of us and it would all begin, or not begin, in a few short hours.

“Shit,” I said. “I forgot.” It seems like God wouldn’t care about time zones. Why do we have time zones again?”

“Because people used to set their time based on the sun but it was a mess,” she said. “Imagine if you were traveling and had to catch a train or something.”

“How do you know everything?”

“I make stuff up a lot,” she said. “People don’t question it if you act like you know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m not going to be able to sleep now,” I said. “I’m going to have to stay up all night and watch.”

“You can sleep with the TV on,” she said, nuzzling my arm.

There was a knock
at the door, a series of hard raps. Elise ran over and looked out the peephole. “What do you think? Should we let them in?”

They heard her and called yes.

“What about your boyfriend?” I asked.

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Yes you do.”

“I think I’d know it if I had a boyfriend,” she said.

They knocked again, calling our names, and she opened the door. They walked in like they belonged, but when they got to the middle of the room, stood there looking out of place. And then one of them sat in the chair and another sat on the bed. One of them said he had to take a piss and went to the bathroom. The last one looked out the window and commented on the view.

The one who’d bought us date grapes, Brad, was on the bed.

“Make yourself at home,” I said.

“I will, thanks,” he said, taking off his shoes. He had a nice smile, much nicer than Gabe’s, but I wanted Gabe, my beautiful boy. My beautiful, lovely blond boy. Why hadn’t he texted me? I hoped he didn’t think I was just some girl who had given him a handjob in the back of his van. I was, of course, but I couldn’t think of myself that way, and couldn’t think of him thinking of me that way, either. There had been something special between us.

Brad ruffled my hair. I had the urge to go to the bathroom and check, but I just smoothed it back into place and looked at my sister, standing on the bed. She ordered the Yelapa guy to stand in front of her and climbed onto his shoulders. Then she directed him around the room, running her hands along the bumpy ceiling. She told him to jump and he hopped, his feet not even leaving the ground.

Brad played music on his phone, a tinny, desperate sound, as Jake took a tin of cigarettes from his shirtfront pocket. He pulled out a wooden box and slid the top off.