Just Get Home, page 14
20
The white lady looked like a social worker.
Or a Barbie. Somewhere in between.
Dessa. That’s what she said her name was. Weird name for someone who looked like her.
When she was in her sparkly dress that’s probably what made Beegie think of the Barbie dolls. In her sweatshirt Dessa now looked less like a Barbie. But the way she talked. Nice to meet you, Beegie. Like on the television. She talked like she had money. Or used to. People with money don’t live in Van Nuys.
She had a voice like the new caseworkers, the ones who were trying to make “the world a better place” but who had no idea what they were getting into.
But Dessa had surprised her.
Beegie couldn’t imagine one of her old new social workers going under a fallen down bridge like Dessa had. The way her face had looked so angry, but not. Determined was the word. She looked determined while she made her way through. Then she’d laughed like crazy when the whole thing didn’t fall on them, but Beegie knew she wasn’t really crazy. Beegie knew what real crazy looked like.
So maybe Dessa was different. Even though she sounded like social workers and looked like a doll.
She also didn’t talk to Beegie just to make noise the way they did.
As they walked into Silver Lake, that’s what she expected. The usual questions she got whenever she was around someone who sounded like Dessa. “So how are you doing?” and if they were new, “You used to be a very good student. I’m concerned about your grades.”
Chitchat.
But Dessa was quiet.
Beegie could tell the woman was looking at her sometimes. Eyes over, sneaking a peek. But she didn’t force Beegie into conversation.
The houses here looked drunk. Canted and wobbly in the front, but otherwise intact. There was a row whose porch supports had slipped, making the roofs hang like jaunty hats over the face of the houses. Like children putting on a show.
Beegie wondered where the people who belonged to them were. The neighborhood was so quiet, like it was abandoned, but of course it couldn’t be. There must be people here, inside these jaunty houses, waiting for the sun to come up and show them the damage that had been done.
It’s what she would do. Hide.
A heavy perfume smell found them, wrapping itself around Beegie and Dessa, folding them into its sweetness. White star-shaped flowers speckled across dark bushes. A whole long line of them, spanning the fronts of the houses.
“Does your sister bloom at night too?” The woman spoke, but Beegie didn’t understand her. She thought maybe she’d misheard. It happened sometimes when she was thinking hard. Someone would say something and it wouldn’t make sense at first...then she’d hear it again a few times in her brain and the words would sort themselves out, slotting themselves the way they were supposed to be.
But what the lady said didn’t do that. Each time she heard it in her head, what Dessa had said sounded more and more like what she’d heard the first time and the less sense it made. Sisters blooming? Beegie pictured a daisy bursting out of a little girl’s head.
“Your sister.” Dessa nodded at the bushes, sensing Beegie’s confusion. “The flowers. They’re night blooming jasmine.”
Beegie looked again at the bushes, seeing them differently this time.
“I thought jasmine was purple.”
“It smells purple, doesn’t it?”
It was a strange thing for her to say. Not that Beegie was wrong. Not that the flower was obviously white. But that some part of Beegie was correct.
Beegie inhaled the color of the flowers again. They did smell purple, even as she was looking at their white bodies, letting her fingers touch their cool petals. Their scent was too high and round for white.
It occurred to her that there were other things like that. But that she hadn’t ever thought about it until Dessa had said it. That sometimes the smell of a thing and its shape don’t agree. That a white flower can smell purple. Peanut butter and stale smoke can smell like love. Men’s deodorant and cardboard can smell like pain.
The insides of Beegie’s legs ached. Tendons like they had been pulled to snapping then let go.
Something else occurred to her. She tried saying it.
“They also smell loud. Purple and loud.”
Of course what she meant was strong. She knew that’s what she was supposed to say, but strong wasn’t the right word for how much of the jasmine was in the air. It came in through her mouth and sat on her tongue like a taste. It was more than a scent, it had volume and color.
Dessa nodded. Loud purple scents surrounded them.
They fell quiet again. Walking.
The flashlight in Dessa’s hand died. Its small pale beam growing yellow then flickering out. Without a word, she put it in her bag.
The drunken houses gave way to the dim shapes of apartment buildings. Beegie could make out the horizontal lines of their balconies, small dark squares of potted plants. Vague shadows of bicycles and lawn chairs.
A thin sound curled into their ears. A high keening.
It could be a dog. It didn’t sound quite human.
But then, it didn’t sound like a dog either.
An animal wail. Wounded.
Dessa’s breathing became shallow. Her arms tense.
Ahead of them there was a darkness smeared across the street. It broke across the line of parked cars, smothering the ones Beegie imagined should be there, in a spiky hulking mass.
It was an apartment building. Or rather, half of an apartment building. Ripped off and vomited onto the street. Its other half was still standing, giving them a dollhouse view of people’s lives. Living rooms and kitchens. A table stood right at the edge of the break. A chair still pulled up to its side.
The mass consumed their path, reaching the other side of the street. They made their way around it, pulling closer to the jasmine-clad fence on the opposite side. Cracked wood and plaster littered the sidewalk. Without a word Dessa hopped the fence to find a clearer way and Beegie followed.
She pushed her hands into the flowers to find the wire fence beneath. The ugly thing hidden by the beautiful. The purple scent everywhere.
“God.”
It was Dessa who said it. Though Beegie had thought it.
Up ahead three more apartment buildings had collapsed upon themselves. Their contorted shapes unnatural, stucco and wood jutting blue with moonlight. Sick bouquets of destruction.
The wail grew louder. More hollow.
They could hear other smaller sounds underneath it now. Stuttering cries and moans. Leaking out from the rubble.
Asking for help.
This was a haunted place...populated by ghosts that had not yet finished their dying.
How many people were in there? Where were the trucks? The firemen? How torn was the city that no one was in this place, helping these people?
Dessa stopped walking. Her eyes shifting from building to building.
Beegie picked up her pace. “Fuck ’em.”
“But...”
“Don’t listen.”
“Somebody should be helping them.”
“What are you going to do? Dig through every one of those busted ass buildings?” The white woman stared at her. Beegie put on her street face. The one that made her jaw hard and her teeth ache. “Keep walking. They would.”
Beegie believed that. Those moans and wails belonged to people who, if their places were switched, would move past. They might feel bad. It might bother them later. But everybody put themselves first. Prioritized their own selves over others.
Beegie could be in one of those building right now. She’d screamed before. No one had helped her.
“Beegie.”
She was mad. The flat of her hands hungry for hurting something. The world. The way it was. For what it did to her. For what it made her do. “It’s fucking shitty luck, but it’s their shitty luck. I got my own shitty luck.”
A hysterical scream picked up in one of the houses. Threading its way above them all. A woman. Over and over.
“Jesus.”
“I thought you had a girl to get back to.”
Beegie didn’t wait for Dessa to say anything else. She just went. Her face felt heavy and hot. The screams picked up in tempo. Somewhere in the destruction someone had become untethered. Drifted away from sanity and floated on the edge of their voice.
There was nothing they could do.
Beegie felt warmth gather at the edges of her eyes. Wet weakness leaking. She blinked hard to clear it.
Dessa appeared next to her. The woman’s elbows were up, tucked close to her body. Hands at the sides of her face. Her face was soft but she was moving. Doing what she needed to.
Like Dessa, Beegie put her fingers in her ears. The screams were muffled then, barely audible under the scent of all that loud purple.
21
Sunset Junction shone like a street fair.
Its glow made Beegie’s eyes ache. She had gotten used to the violet darkness, with its shadows and gray shade.
Now that she was looking at the light, she was glad for the dim they had been walking through. It meant she didn’t have to see things fully. She wouldn’t have to remember anything but their general shapes. Broken buildings and lives buried under dust and dark.
But as they made their way, up at the top of the hill, Silverlake was alight.
“How do they have power?” Dessa whispered as they made their way toward the collection of buildings.
Words flew into Beegie’s head.
Capricious. A phrase she had seen written on one of her reports. She knew what it meant. That she changed her mind and her mood a lot, which was bullshit, it was all the other shit in her life that was changing...and her mood and her mind changed right along with it. New house, new foster mom, new shit to deal with. Sometimes better but never for long. More times worse.
Fuck yeah, she was capricious.
The earthquake had been capricious.
Beegie thought it sounded like a rapper name. Someone Eric would listen to. A fast-talking spitter lady with blond hair and a big ass. Talking hard and sexy.
She thought that was how this neighborhood had power when all the others they’d been walking through didn’t. Capricious Nature had been walking through with her mood swings all night. This house, she likes. She’d leave this house alone. But right next to it, she’d smash one all the fuck up. That house pissed her off.
Sometimes luck was just about real estate. Where you are when Capricious Nature decides to look your way. Beegie imagined her in a video, a giantess with big fake lashes stepping over the neighborhood they were walking in. Liking the way the lights below shined up her skirt.
Ahead, someone was playing music.
No, not just music. Party music.
“What the hell...” Dessa’s jaw hinged open. There were hundreds of people here, dumped out from the bars and restaurants. It was like a block party. A street fair of hipsters. Young white people in old hats taking pulls from cans of beer. A few places people had even taken out folding chairs and set up hibachi grills.
“Say ‘Earthquake.’”
Beegie turned to see a group of girls taking a group selfie. They wrapped their arms around one another and smiled, their fingers forming peace signs.
“What the fuck is wrong with these people?”
Dessa shook her head as she pushed her way into the crowd. The smell of barbecued meat wafted past them. “You think they don’t know how bad it is?”
They did. At least some of them. Here and there Beegie could see pale, shell-shocked faces in the crowd. Their friends rubbing their backs. Forcing bottles into their hands.
There was a desperation even among the revelers. Eat, Drink and Be Merry for tomorrow we die. They had said that in one of the movies she had seen.
There was a sense among them that no one knew how to act. This was what they had been doing when the quake struck and they were waiting for the grown-ups to arrive to tell them what to do. Some of the bars were still selling drinks, but the crowds radiating out were all centered around the electrical outlets near the ground. Their hands cupped their phones nervously, glancing from the screens to people who had claimed the plugs.
“I got it!” a young man yelled and there was a cheer. He held a power strip over his head and the people cleared the way for him to make his way to the wall. He plugged it in and they pressed toward him again, their voices raised. Each insisting they had been there first. Each insisting their need for power was the greater one.
Dessa whispered as they walked past. “Do you see how no one is actually getting through? They all just keep checking and checking. But no one’s texting or talking to anyone. Everything is down.”
She was right. But that didn’t keep them from looking every five seconds. Panicking that they were disconnected and untethered from their digital worlds.
“Odessa Reilly?”
A man with a camera stood in their path, staring at them. Or really staring at Dessa.
And then before she could say anything he was pulling Dessa toward his body. Beegie felt her hands fly up, ready to claw her away from him, his sudden movement alarming.
But then he was pressing Dessa against his body. A hug.
“Oh my God. It is you!”
Beegie couldn’t see Dessa’s face, but she could tell from the way she was holding her body that she was confused. Tentative.
The man’s lips pulled back in a grin over a set of huge, almost impossibly perfect teeth. Beegie sensed that he was one of those people who had the volume turned up in their souls. He was good-looking...not like a movie star, but like a movie character. Brash and full of it. He winked at Beegie, watching them over Dessa’s shoulder.
“I can’t believe I’m running into you here! I heard you had a baby. Did you have a baby?”
Dessa stumbled back from his sudden intimacy. She nodded.
“That’s awesome! I always thought you would be an amazing mom. You’ve got one lucky kid.”
He was chewing gum. At what point in the night had he decided he needed fresher breath? Beegie didn’t know what time it was, but she knew it had been hours since the earthquake. Had this dude had that same wad of gum in his mouth since then? Had he held it between his teeth while the earth moved under him?
He turned his big smile onto her. “Hello.”
Dessa finally said something. “Zach. This is Beegie. Beegie, this is Zach.”
“Odessa and I used to be together.”
“In college,” Dessa added quickly. Her body had gone tense, like he was making her just as uncomfortable as he was making Beegie. But Zach wasn’t picking up on it.
He swung his camera around. “Oh! You have to see some of the shots I got.” He started scrolling through the display screen. “I got this shot of a homeless guy on Fountain. A wall fell on him. The lighting on it is incredible.” He turned it so Dessa could see. A glow cast on her somber face. Whatever she was seeing, Beegie did not think she would describe it as incredible.
“It’s so weird running into you like this. I live in Brooklyn now but I’m in L.A. for work... I just feel so lucky I’m here.”
“Zach, we have to go.” Dessa backed away from him, her hand gently touching Beegie’s shoulder.
Zach’s mouth made a big O shape. “Oh my God... I’m such an asshole! Where are you guys coming from?”
“Downtown.”
“That must have been intense! I can’t wait for sunrise...the pictures are going to be amazing... Hey, you gotta come to my friend’s place. Well not really my friend...but the guy I’m out here to work with. He told me he might have internet...which I’m interested in because, you know, whoever gets the first pics out of this thing is going to make a mint.”
* * *
Zach chattered at them while he led them up the street. Something about proto-gonzo journalism. Dessa nodded, but Beegie didn’t understand anything he was talking about.
Beegie didn’t like him. She didn’t think Dessa did either, but still they had gone with him to his friend’s place. Dessa didn’t say it but she probably thought she could get in touch with her people if they went there. Her girl, Olivia.
A green plus sign glowed over the street. In its shadow stood a big bearded dude, cherry glow from a blunt between his lips.
“Wade, my brother!” Zach reached out his hand in some white boy trying to be black handshake. “DSL up yet?”
“Nope.” Wade exhaled a cloud.
“Damn it! Damn it! Why does this shit always happen to me?”
Zach actually stomped his foot. Like a cartoon girl who wasn’t getting candy.
Beegie caught Dessa’s eye. We should go.
“I’m sorry. I’m just a little upset at the situation.” Zach saw the look pass between them. “That wasn’t cool.”
“We’re fine, Zach. It was good seeing you.” Dessa was polite.
“No, no wait! Do you need anything? Maybe Wade can hook you up.”
“We don’t need any pot.” Dessa was firm, but Beegie knew better than to pass this up.
“What else you got?”
It was the first thing she’d said since they’d run into this asshole, and she could tell that her speaking had caused both men to see her differently. Like she hadn’t really been there until that moment. Or like she’d just been one of Dessa’s accessories, something that was supposed to stay quiet, like her purse or her shoes.
Wade stepped out from the dark and for the first time Beegie saw that he had a shotgun braced on his shoulder. He smiled at her.
“Come on inside, little girl.”
* * *
Beegie hadn’t ever been in a pot store. But she had been in a Starbucks and that’s what this place looked like. Well, like that but fancier. It was all finished woods and glass display cabinets with lights beneath them. There were bongs that looked like statues rich people would put in their bathrooms.
The white lady looked like a social worker.
Or a Barbie. Somewhere in between.
Dessa. That’s what she said her name was. Weird name for someone who looked like her.
When she was in her sparkly dress that’s probably what made Beegie think of the Barbie dolls. In her sweatshirt Dessa now looked less like a Barbie. But the way she talked. Nice to meet you, Beegie. Like on the television. She talked like she had money. Or used to. People with money don’t live in Van Nuys.
She had a voice like the new caseworkers, the ones who were trying to make “the world a better place” but who had no idea what they were getting into.
But Dessa had surprised her.
Beegie couldn’t imagine one of her old new social workers going under a fallen down bridge like Dessa had. The way her face had looked so angry, but not. Determined was the word. She looked determined while she made her way through. Then she’d laughed like crazy when the whole thing didn’t fall on them, but Beegie knew she wasn’t really crazy. Beegie knew what real crazy looked like.
So maybe Dessa was different. Even though she sounded like social workers and looked like a doll.
She also didn’t talk to Beegie just to make noise the way they did.
As they walked into Silver Lake, that’s what she expected. The usual questions she got whenever she was around someone who sounded like Dessa. “So how are you doing?” and if they were new, “You used to be a very good student. I’m concerned about your grades.”
Chitchat.
But Dessa was quiet.
Beegie could tell the woman was looking at her sometimes. Eyes over, sneaking a peek. But she didn’t force Beegie into conversation.
The houses here looked drunk. Canted and wobbly in the front, but otherwise intact. There was a row whose porch supports had slipped, making the roofs hang like jaunty hats over the face of the houses. Like children putting on a show.
Beegie wondered where the people who belonged to them were. The neighborhood was so quiet, like it was abandoned, but of course it couldn’t be. There must be people here, inside these jaunty houses, waiting for the sun to come up and show them the damage that had been done.
It’s what she would do. Hide.
A heavy perfume smell found them, wrapping itself around Beegie and Dessa, folding them into its sweetness. White star-shaped flowers speckled across dark bushes. A whole long line of them, spanning the fronts of the houses.
“Does your sister bloom at night too?” The woman spoke, but Beegie didn’t understand her. She thought maybe she’d misheard. It happened sometimes when she was thinking hard. Someone would say something and it wouldn’t make sense at first...then she’d hear it again a few times in her brain and the words would sort themselves out, slotting themselves the way they were supposed to be.
But what the lady said didn’t do that. Each time she heard it in her head, what Dessa had said sounded more and more like what she’d heard the first time and the less sense it made. Sisters blooming? Beegie pictured a daisy bursting out of a little girl’s head.
“Your sister.” Dessa nodded at the bushes, sensing Beegie’s confusion. “The flowers. They’re night blooming jasmine.”
Beegie looked again at the bushes, seeing them differently this time.
“I thought jasmine was purple.”
“It smells purple, doesn’t it?”
It was a strange thing for her to say. Not that Beegie was wrong. Not that the flower was obviously white. But that some part of Beegie was correct.
Beegie inhaled the color of the flowers again. They did smell purple, even as she was looking at their white bodies, letting her fingers touch their cool petals. Their scent was too high and round for white.
It occurred to her that there were other things like that. But that she hadn’t ever thought about it until Dessa had said it. That sometimes the smell of a thing and its shape don’t agree. That a white flower can smell purple. Peanut butter and stale smoke can smell like love. Men’s deodorant and cardboard can smell like pain.
The insides of Beegie’s legs ached. Tendons like they had been pulled to snapping then let go.
Something else occurred to her. She tried saying it.
“They also smell loud. Purple and loud.”
Of course what she meant was strong. She knew that’s what she was supposed to say, but strong wasn’t the right word for how much of the jasmine was in the air. It came in through her mouth and sat on her tongue like a taste. It was more than a scent, it had volume and color.
Dessa nodded. Loud purple scents surrounded them.
They fell quiet again. Walking.
The flashlight in Dessa’s hand died. Its small pale beam growing yellow then flickering out. Without a word, she put it in her bag.
The drunken houses gave way to the dim shapes of apartment buildings. Beegie could make out the horizontal lines of their balconies, small dark squares of potted plants. Vague shadows of bicycles and lawn chairs.
A thin sound curled into their ears. A high keening.
It could be a dog. It didn’t sound quite human.
But then, it didn’t sound like a dog either.
An animal wail. Wounded.
Dessa’s breathing became shallow. Her arms tense.
Ahead of them there was a darkness smeared across the street. It broke across the line of parked cars, smothering the ones Beegie imagined should be there, in a spiky hulking mass.
It was an apartment building. Or rather, half of an apartment building. Ripped off and vomited onto the street. Its other half was still standing, giving them a dollhouse view of people’s lives. Living rooms and kitchens. A table stood right at the edge of the break. A chair still pulled up to its side.
The mass consumed their path, reaching the other side of the street. They made their way around it, pulling closer to the jasmine-clad fence on the opposite side. Cracked wood and plaster littered the sidewalk. Without a word Dessa hopped the fence to find a clearer way and Beegie followed.
She pushed her hands into the flowers to find the wire fence beneath. The ugly thing hidden by the beautiful. The purple scent everywhere.
“God.”
It was Dessa who said it. Though Beegie had thought it.
Up ahead three more apartment buildings had collapsed upon themselves. Their contorted shapes unnatural, stucco and wood jutting blue with moonlight. Sick bouquets of destruction.
The wail grew louder. More hollow.
They could hear other smaller sounds underneath it now. Stuttering cries and moans. Leaking out from the rubble.
Asking for help.
This was a haunted place...populated by ghosts that had not yet finished their dying.
How many people were in there? Where were the trucks? The firemen? How torn was the city that no one was in this place, helping these people?
Dessa stopped walking. Her eyes shifting from building to building.
Beegie picked up her pace. “Fuck ’em.”
“But...”
“Don’t listen.”
“Somebody should be helping them.”
“What are you going to do? Dig through every one of those busted ass buildings?” The white woman stared at her. Beegie put on her street face. The one that made her jaw hard and her teeth ache. “Keep walking. They would.”
Beegie believed that. Those moans and wails belonged to people who, if their places were switched, would move past. They might feel bad. It might bother them later. But everybody put themselves first. Prioritized their own selves over others.
Beegie could be in one of those building right now. She’d screamed before. No one had helped her.
“Beegie.”
She was mad. The flat of her hands hungry for hurting something. The world. The way it was. For what it did to her. For what it made her do. “It’s fucking shitty luck, but it’s their shitty luck. I got my own shitty luck.”
A hysterical scream picked up in one of the houses. Threading its way above them all. A woman. Over and over.
“Jesus.”
“I thought you had a girl to get back to.”
Beegie didn’t wait for Dessa to say anything else. She just went. Her face felt heavy and hot. The screams picked up in tempo. Somewhere in the destruction someone had become untethered. Drifted away from sanity and floated on the edge of their voice.
There was nothing they could do.
Beegie felt warmth gather at the edges of her eyes. Wet weakness leaking. She blinked hard to clear it.
Dessa appeared next to her. The woman’s elbows were up, tucked close to her body. Hands at the sides of her face. Her face was soft but she was moving. Doing what she needed to.
Like Dessa, Beegie put her fingers in her ears. The screams were muffled then, barely audible under the scent of all that loud purple.
21
Sunset Junction shone like a street fair.
Its glow made Beegie’s eyes ache. She had gotten used to the violet darkness, with its shadows and gray shade.
Now that she was looking at the light, she was glad for the dim they had been walking through. It meant she didn’t have to see things fully. She wouldn’t have to remember anything but their general shapes. Broken buildings and lives buried under dust and dark.
But as they made their way, up at the top of the hill, Silverlake was alight.
“How do they have power?” Dessa whispered as they made their way toward the collection of buildings.
Words flew into Beegie’s head.
Capricious. A phrase she had seen written on one of her reports. She knew what it meant. That she changed her mind and her mood a lot, which was bullshit, it was all the other shit in her life that was changing...and her mood and her mind changed right along with it. New house, new foster mom, new shit to deal with. Sometimes better but never for long. More times worse.
Fuck yeah, she was capricious.
The earthquake had been capricious.
Beegie thought it sounded like a rapper name. Someone Eric would listen to. A fast-talking spitter lady with blond hair and a big ass. Talking hard and sexy.
She thought that was how this neighborhood had power when all the others they’d been walking through didn’t. Capricious Nature had been walking through with her mood swings all night. This house, she likes. She’d leave this house alone. But right next to it, she’d smash one all the fuck up. That house pissed her off.
Sometimes luck was just about real estate. Where you are when Capricious Nature decides to look your way. Beegie imagined her in a video, a giantess with big fake lashes stepping over the neighborhood they were walking in. Liking the way the lights below shined up her skirt.
Ahead, someone was playing music.
No, not just music. Party music.
“What the hell...” Dessa’s jaw hinged open. There were hundreds of people here, dumped out from the bars and restaurants. It was like a block party. A street fair of hipsters. Young white people in old hats taking pulls from cans of beer. A few places people had even taken out folding chairs and set up hibachi grills.
“Say ‘Earthquake.’”
Beegie turned to see a group of girls taking a group selfie. They wrapped their arms around one another and smiled, their fingers forming peace signs.
“What the fuck is wrong with these people?”
Dessa shook her head as she pushed her way into the crowd. The smell of barbecued meat wafted past them. “You think they don’t know how bad it is?”
They did. At least some of them. Here and there Beegie could see pale, shell-shocked faces in the crowd. Their friends rubbing their backs. Forcing bottles into their hands.
There was a desperation even among the revelers. Eat, Drink and Be Merry for tomorrow we die. They had said that in one of the movies she had seen.
There was a sense among them that no one knew how to act. This was what they had been doing when the quake struck and they were waiting for the grown-ups to arrive to tell them what to do. Some of the bars were still selling drinks, but the crowds radiating out were all centered around the electrical outlets near the ground. Their hands cupped their phones nervously, glancing from the screens to people who had claimed the plugs.
“I got it!” a young man yelled and there was a cheer. He held a power strip over his head and the people cleared the way for him to make his way to the wall. He plugged it in and they pressed toward him again, their voices raised. Each insisting they had been there first. Each insisting their need for power was the greater one.
Dessa whispered as they walked past. “Do you see how no one is actually getting through? They all just keep checking and checking. But no one’s texting or talking to anyone. Everything is down.”
She was right. But that didn’t keep them from looking every five seconds. Panicking that they were disconnected and untethered from their digital worlds.
“Odessa Reilly?”
A man with a camera stood in their path, staring at them. Or really staring at Dessa.
And then before she could say anything he was pulling Dessa toward his body. Beegie felt her hands fly up, ready to claw her away from him, his sudden movement alarming.
But then he was pressing Dessa against his body. A hug.
“Oh my God. It is you!”
Beegie couldn’t see Dessa’s face, but she could tell from the way she was holding her body that she was confused. Tentative.
The man’s lips pulled back in a grin over a set of huge, almost impossibly perfect teeth. Beegie sensed that he was one of those people who had the volume turned up in their souls. He was good-looking...not like a movie star, but like a movie character. Brash and full of it. He winked at Beegie, watching them over Dessa’s shoulder.
“I can’t believe I’m running into you here! I heard you had a baby. Did you have a baby?”
Dessa stumbled back from his sudden intimacy. She nodded.
“That’s awesome! I always thought you would be an amazing mom. You’ve got one lucky kid.”
He was chewing gum. At what point in the night had he decided he needed fresher breath? Beegie didn’t know what time it was, but she knew it had been hours since the earthquake. Had this dude had that same wad of gum in his mouth since then? Had he held it between his teeth while the earth moved under him?
He turned his big smile onto her. “Hello.”
Dessa finally said something. “Zach. This is Beegie. Beegie, this is Zach.”
“Odessa and I used to be together.”
“In college,” Dessa added quickly. Her body had gone tense, like he was making her just as uncomfortable as he was making Beegie. But Zach wasn’t picking up on it.
He swung his camera around. “Oh! You have to see some of the shots I got.” He started scrolling through the display screen. “I got this shot of a homeless guy on Fountain. A wall fell on him. The lighting on it is incredible.” He turned it so Dessa could see. A glow cast on her somber face. Whatever she was seeing, Beegie did not think she would describe it as incredible.
“It’s so weird running into you like this. I live in Brooklyn now but I’m in L.A. for work... I just feel so lucky I’m here.”
“Zach, we have to go.” Dessa backed away from him, her hand gently touching Beegie’s shoulder.
Zach’s mouth made a big O shape. “Oh my God... I’m such an asshole! Where are you guys coming from?”
“Downtown.”
“That must have been intense! I can’t wait for sunrise...the pictures are going to be amazing... Hey, you gotta come to my friend’s place. Well not really my friend...but the guy I’m out here to work with. He told me he might have internet...which I’m interested in because, you know, whoever gets the first pics out of this thing is going to make a mint.”
* * *
Zach chattered at them while he led them up the street. Something about proto-gonzo journalism. Dessa nodded, but Beegie didn’t understand anything he was talking about.
Beegie didn’t like him. She didn’t think Dessa did either, but still they had gone with him to his friend’s place. Dessa didn’t say it but she probably thought she could get in touch with her people if they went there. Her girl, Olivia.
A green plus sign glowed over the street. In its shadow stood a big bearded dude, cherry glow from a blunt between his lips.
“Wade, my brother!” Zach reached out his hand in some white boy trying to be black handshake. “DSL up yet?”
“Nope.” Wade exhaled a cloud.
“Damn it! Damn it! Why does this shit always happen to me?”
Zach actually stomped his foot. Like a cartoon girl who wasn’t getting candy.
Beegie caught Dessa’s eye. We should go.
“I’m sorry. I’m just a little upset at the situation.” Zach saw the look pass between them. “That wasn’t cool.”
“We’re fine, Zach. It was good seeing you.” Dessa was polite.
“No, no wait! Do you need anything? Maybe Wade can hook you up.”
“We don’t need any pot.” Dessa was firm, but Beegie knew better than to pass this up.
“What else you got?”
It was the first thing she’d said since they’d run into this asshole, and she could tell that her speaking had caused both men to see her differently. Like she hadn’t really been there until that moment. Or like she’d just been one of Dessa’s accessories, something that was supposed to stay quiet, like her purse or her shoes.
Wade stepped out from the dark and for the first time Beegie saw that he had a shotgun braced on his shoulder. He smiled at her.
“Come on inside, little girl.”
* * *
Beegie hadn’t ever been in a pot store. But she had been in a Starbucks and that’s what this place looked like. Well, like that but fancier. It was all finished woods and glass display cabinets with lights beneath them. There were bongs that looked like statues rich people would put in their bathrooms.
