Lovely You Page 15

  I knew how it was, because I was busy too. And Klere was also, apparently, since she wasn’t getting back to me now at all. She had posted some pictures of herself making out with her boyfriend, blurry, arty selfies, so I was pretty sure she was in town, but she wasn’t picking up any form of communication from me.

  Simona and I left her all-white house and went to the beach. It was beautiful—not very warm, but beautiful. If I closed my eyes and just felt the sand and listened to the water, I could pretend that I was in Hawaii. Which made me think of Nate, and what he and Joey and Pia were up to. They had been gradually making rounds of every cultural site in San Francisco and today was the modern art museum, which they hadn’t been very excited about but were forcing themselves to visit. I had called him the night before when I got to the hotel, late, just briefly to say that I was there.

  The first words out of his mouth were not a greeting. “Did you lock the door?” he asked me.

  “Yes, of course!” I had told him.

  “And the bolt,” he reminded me.

  “Check. Got it. Did that sound like real military talk?”

  “Not at all. Are you running in the morning? Please tell me that you didn’t try to take the brass knuckles through airport security.”

  “I’m going to the hotel gym and taking on the treadmill,” I assured him. He told me goodnight and to try to sleep. Then I had checked the door again, and spent the rest of the night avoiding my mom and Zara (who never gave up on calling), and watching a local high school boys’ golf tournament. And then some African stick fighting, because they had good channels at this place. The whole time I had thought about the night before, when I had fallen asleep with my cheek against Nate’s hard chest, listening to his heartbeat and lulled by his rhythmic breathing.

  “This beach is overrun,” Simona announced, interrupting my thoughts and pointing at a man taking pictures. “I wish we could put up some type of electric fencing so it would be residents only.”

  “Riff raff,” I agreed, but inwardly rolled my eyes. What in the hell was she saying, she wanted to electrocute the tourists on a public beach? I started to walk along the shore, swinging my sandals. “You were always pretty good at keeping people out,” I reminded her. Simona had been the head of the recruitment committee for our sorority, and she had once black-balled a freshman for saying that she put olive oil in her hair.

  “Are you serious?” Simona had asked her. “Do you know that it’s to cook with? There are specific products for your hair. You should try those.” Then she had made a big mark next to the girl’s name on the list in her hand, very ostentatiously, while shaking her head. The girl had started to cry, knowing it was over. At the time, I had thought it was pretty funny, but looking back, I thought of how it sucked for the olive oil girl.

  “I mean, Malibu is fine, and all,” Simona said to me now, “but it would be better cordoned off.”

  “Tell me about the new hotel in the UAE,” I suggested to change the subject. Simona’s great, great-grandfather had started off with one hotel, and it had become a global empire of which she was now a part. The hotels were not quite the best, the most luxurious, the toniest, but they did generate a lot of cash, and Simona had always been rolling in it.

  I listened to her tell an interesting story about berating local officials for their stupidity and provincialism. That, combined with the memory of the frizzy-haired girl who had used the olive oil, made me start to wonder why I had called Simona. If anyone else had been able to spare the time, I wouldn’t have gone to her new house in Malibu.

  “But what’s happening with you, Scarlett?” she asked me. “I want to hear all about your love life.” This was surprising, since she hadn’t even asked yet why I was in Los Angeles. “I was so sorry to hear that you and Mats broke up.”

  I could tell how sorry she was, by how she was smiling gleefully. “I’m not,” I said shortly.

  “Are you with anyone new?”

  I shrugged. “I’m going out, but nothing serious. Are you seeing anyone?” This gave her the opportunity to go into rhapsodies about her latest boyfriend, the son of an Italian racecar driver. She showed me his picture, and he was pretty cute. Just a little soft-looking, in my opinion. I wouldn’t have gone for that.

  I got tired of Simona pretty fast, but it all worked out, because she had her massage lined up. I backed out my rental car and wondered why I still had her name in my phone. Why had I ever hung out with her in the first place way back in college? I had thought she was funny when she was snotty and rude, but now I just thought she was snotty and rude, and there was nothing amusing about it.

  I checked to see who else had gotten back to me and listened to a voicemail from Daria, who had been my freshman year roommate. We had lost touch a little bit when I had rushed and moved out of the dorms after our first year and she had been working a lot while juggling her classes. We were different enough that I had at first wondered why they had ever put us together as roommates, but it had turned out that we got along really well, and we had become good friends. “Hey, Scarlett!” she had said into my phone. “I was so happy to hear your voice!” She invited me over for dinner with her family, if I wouldn’t find them all too annoying, and if I didn’t mind take-out.

  I found myself wanting to go, to see her family and her house. I had met her husband but I had only seen pictures of her two kids, one named…she was named after a flower, I was sure, and the baby was named after a stuffed animal, like Rose and Puppy or something like that. I texted Daria back and told her that a take-out dinner with her family would be great and that I was looking forward to it. Oddly, that was true. In the past, I had generally been annoyed by kids. My own niece and nephew had always irritated me extensively, interspersed with moments when I thought they were kind of cute—except for the last time I saw them and had watched how much fun they’d had playing with Pia, and the cuteness had seemed to overwhelm the annoying parts of them.

  Now, since Klere was still unresponsive and I didn’t have any plans besides going to Daria’s for dinner, I had the whole day in front of me, by myself in a city that didn’t feel like I knew it very well anymore. So clearly the only thing to do was to go shopping. It took forever, but I drove down Highway 1 into Santa Monica to look around, then to Rodeo Drive and Melrose. I didn’t buy anything for myself, but I did find a few things for other people, including when I went into a really cute pet store to shop for Pia. I texted Joey to get her neck size and Nate called me right back.

  “What are you doing, Agent Scarlett?” he asked me.

  “I’m buying stuff for Pia. To accessorize,” I explained. I stopped and put my bags down so I could focus on talking. His voice sounded nice.

  “Pia needs to accessorize?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt anyone,” I retorted. “When was the last time you thought about it?”

  “That would be never.”

  “Well, don’t worry, because I picked up a few things for you and Joey, too. By the way, do you know your sleeve length? I guessed a thirty-seven.”

  “I have no idea what my sleeve length is. Why do you need to know that?” he asked warily.

  “If you’re going to accompany this woman to fancy dinners, you need something other than your one, white shirt. But if you wear that, don’t worry. I got you a few ties.”

  He actually groaned. “What are you trying to do to me?”

  “I’m going to force some style on you. Joey too. Tell him we’re going through his t-shirts when I get home.”

  “Joey, when we get out of this museum, we need to hide your t-shirts,” he said away from the phone and I heard Joey ask what in the hell he was talking about.

  I smiled. “You’re all going to look great when I’m done. Especially Pia.”

  “She is the cutest,” he admitted. “I don’t like to use that word too much, but I have to give it to her."

  Pia was the cutest dog, of course, but right now I was thinking of how cute Nate was. Even Pia couldn’t m
atch him. “I’m on my way to meet a friend for dinner. My old roommate.”

  “Are you driving carefully?”

  I thought about the rental car. It had insurance, so it was fine. “I’m an excellent driver.”

  Nate laughed. “We all know the truth of that statement. When are you getting your ass home?”

  “Miss me already?” I stood up from where I had been leaning against a shop window and waited for his answer.

  “I just want to get my hands on the ties you bought for me.”

  Ok. “I’m not sure,” I told him. “I haven’t been able to talk to Klere yet. I’m going over to her house tomorrow even if I don’t hear from her.”

  “Be careful down there, Scarlett Fever.”

  “I will,” I answered.

  “And come home soon, with or without the ties. The three of us are anxious to see you.”

  “I will,” I said softly, and we hung up. I got a bottle of wine and some flowers and headed over to Glendale, but my mind was a lot farther north, back in San Francisco where people (and a dog) were anxious to see me.

  Chapter 10

  Two large, brown eyes stared at me through the crack between door and its frame. “I’m not supposed to open this,” the little voice told me. “You’re a stranger, which is someone that I don’t know. It could be someone who looks very normal, but it just means that I don’t know you.”

  “Um, I’m your mom’s friend,” I answered. “You can open the door for me.”

  “That’s what a stranger would say.”

  She had me there. “Can you go get your mom and your dad and ask if they can open it?”

  The eyes watched me for another moment, then the door shut and locked. A moment later I heard adult feet pounding up to it and it swung back open. “Scarlett!” Daria exclaimed. She hugged me and then stood back, pushing strands of hair out of her face and wiping something off her cheek. “I was just changing a really poopy diaper and Iris said there was a stranger trying to get into the house.”

  Iris. That was the flower name. “Hi,” I said. “She’s a good guard.”

  “We’ve had to talk about that a lot. We had a little issue because a guy came to the door with religious tracts while I was trying to put Teddy down for a nap, and Iris invited him in. He turned out to be very nice, though.”

  Teddy. That was the stuffed animal name.

  Daria looked down at her hand and frowned, and I really hoped that hadn’t been poop from the aforementioned diaper that she had just wiped off her face. “Here,” I said, and held out the stuff I had brought. “For Iris and Teddy.”

  “Wow, what’s all that?” She looked at the bags with surprise. “Thank you! Why don’t you carry it into the kitchen? I need to wash my hands, immediately.”

  So it probably had been shit, literal shit on her face. Oh, God. I trailed after her through the tiny living room into the tinier kitchen where she washed her hands vigorously and scrubbed her cheek while she talked. “Ivo—remember my husband?—he was supposed to be home by now but he got caught in traffic. I bet you really miss LA freeways,” she said, and picked up a round-faced baby out of a playpen shoved next to a table covered with stuff. “Sorry, it’s really a mess in here. This is Teddy,” she told me, and kissed the baby’s fuzzy head. He burped and a white, curd-like substance ran down his face. Disgusting.

  Daria seemed unconcerned and mopped at it with a kitchen towel. “He always does that with formula,” she explained. “I’m trying to wean him a little before I go back to work, but this guy is all about the boob.”

  “Aren’t they all?”

  She laughed and took the flowers. “These are beautiful! And wine? Thanks, Scar!” She put the flowers in a glass of water, and opened the shopping bags to ooh and aah over the gifts I had gotten for the kids, the toys and clothes. I had maybe gone a little overboard but Iris was loving it all and Teddy bit his new stuffed penguin’s beak enthusiastically. “Scarlett, they’re going to wish you lived closer by,” Daria told me. “Thank you.” She signaled to Iris, who said it also.

  “You’re welcome.” I watched Iris try on the beret I had picked out for her. She could really carry off hats. She looked at me proudly and I got a huge smile on my face. “It’s a great color for you,” I pointed out, and she studied her reflection in the oven door and nodded thoughtfully. That was something I had always liked about my niece and nephew: no matter what they had on, whatever degree of mismatched awfulness it reached, they always thought that they looked great. But Zara was usually pretty careful about what they got to wear outside of the house.

  The doorbell rang. “That’s dinner arriving,” Daria said. “And still no Ivo. Can you hold the baby?” She kind of pushed him into my arms before I could say no and went off saying something about finding her purse.

  I held Teddy slightly away from me and he looked at me with the same brown eyes that his sister Iris had. She was watching me too, probably keeping an eye out to make sure I treated her brother right. Older siblings were good like that. I tried to recall holding my niece and nephew and what I had done with them but didn’t seem to have many memories of being around them when they were so small. “Hi,” I told the baby. He just stared, so I held him closer and patted his back. Despite the white gunk still that was still a little visible around his mouth and the poopy diaper that Daria had mentioned, he didn’t smell terrible. He actually smelled kind of sweet. I sat down on the one chair that didn’t have a pile of papers, toys, or clothes on it and stood the baby on my lap. His legs folded underneath him and he kicked his feet.

  “He doesn’t stand up?” I asked Iris.

  “He doesn’t do much,” she informed me, and rolled her eyes at the stupidity of babies. I smiled at her again and Teddy smiled back, a toothless little grin.

  “You can do that, can’t you?” I asked him. “You’re a great smiler!” He did it again, the show-off. I held him closer and rubbed my cheek against the soft fuzz of his dark hair. He leaned forward with a plop and tried to gnaw on my onyx pendant with his gums, slobbering on my chest in the process. I held up the chain so he could get a good taste of my necklace, wondering if Daria would mind. From the casual way she had handled the poop on her own face, I thought not.

  She came back into the kitchen with a bag full of take-out boxes. “I’ll just set the table…I’ll just clear the table,” she corrected herself. “Would you like something to drink? I don’t have much other than water from the faucet. Ivo was supposed to bring home a better selection.”

  “I brought the wine,” I offered.

  “Yes, thanks! Um, it’s been a while since I had anything alcoholic, with breastfeeding, but the opener must be somewhere…” Daria stated digging in a drawer just as Iris went on a pretty major rant that she was never, ever going to get her dinner, never, and she was soooo hungry.

  “Daria, don’t worry about the wine. I’m great with water,” I said as I bounced Teddy a little. I wanted to get him to smile again. I didn’t see another of those, but I did elicit a burp.

  “This dinner isn’t what you’re used to,” Daria said. She swept crap off the table and put plates down, then looked at one and frowned, and put it in the sink instead.

  “D, usually I eat alone, and not any actual food. So this is really a step up,” I told her. That was what I had been doing, anyway, before Joey and Nate showed up. They were really into eating meals and Nate liked to make sure that I partook of something, too. I wondered what they were having for dinner after the art museum.

  “Really, you aren’t always doing big nights out on the town?” Daria asked me. She pulled out forks and then put all of them into the sink also. “Something’s wrong with our dishwasher,” she mentioned, and studied the utensils in the drawer. “Ok, these are better.” She set them next to the plates. “I always pictured you at nice restaurants all the time, going to all the new, cool places with interesting people.”

  “Yeah, not so much. Mostly I work,” I said. “Tell me what you’ve been
doing lately.”

  “Well, you’re looking at most of it!” She leaned down to kiss Iris’ head, then put her into her booster seat. “And the sequel,” she continued, and reached to take Teddy.

  “No, it’s ok. I can hold him.” I flipped the baby around so he could face out, and he left off sucking my necklace.

  “Are you sure?” Daria moved the toys, clothes, and papers off the other chairs and then started opening the containers of food, sparking a prolonged discussion with her daughter about who would be eating the steamed vegetables. “We all will,” Daria concluded firmly, and I nodded.

  “Me, for sure. I love vegetables,” I announced, but Iris looked like she knew I was lying.

  While we ate, Daria filled me in on what else she had been up to, since we hadn’t seen each other for a while. She hadn’t been able to come up for my ill-fated engagement party due to pregnancy complications, which had thankfully worked out ok. Because here was this warm, sweet baby on my lap, trying with clumsy hands to reach for my semi-clean fork while I ate off it.

  “So yeah, I’ll be back in the office about twenty hours a week, which I’m hoping doesn’t turn into me being there part-time but expected to produce full-time results, like what happened to the last two people who tried to cut their hours.” She shrugged. “I’ll have to wait and see. My office hasn’t always been great about women returning to work. About babies in general. When I was pregnant with Iris, I heard a lot of comments about pregnancy brain, and when I came back after my maternity leave, I also heard a lot of snide remarks about my commitment and divided loyalties.”

  “Maybe you should get a new job, after you kick them in the—” I stopped, and glanced at Iris. “It probably isn’t a good idea to kick people.”

  “That’s basically what Ivo has been saying to me, too,” Daria agreed. “It’s really not a wonderful company to work for in general and I don’t like what I do there, besides collecting the paycheck.” She shrugged. “I started off thinking that I would be this big writer and I’m still editing technical manuals. Iris, no. Use your fork.”