Pretty (17 page)

He grabs my hand and leads me into the back shampoo room, which is still empty from lunch. We sit in the shampoo chairs next to each other. I rest my elbows on my knees and hold my head in my hands.

“Okay,” he says, cheerfully. “You first. Does not look good. Looks decidedly ungood. What are you, pregnant?”

I stare at him in astonishment.

“A mother knows, honey. You've been a weepy pain in the ass for the last week. Plus, your ta-tas are positively voluminous. I merely observed your look of hopeless devastation and connected the dots.”

“Shit.” I lean my head over onto his shoulder. “What am I going to do?”

That's what you say, right? You say, What am I going to do.

“Well, honey, that would seem to be the question of the hour, now wouldn't it? Wait here a sec. I still have my surprise for you.”

Javier leaves me sitting alone.

The thought blindsides me that if I had gotten pregnant when I was with Aaron at least I'd have some piece of him still. It wrenches my already wrenched gut even further. I'd have something more than an old guitar. But I didn't and now I have nothing. Not nothing exactly, but almost nothing. I can barely imagine a life for myself. I never think further than hoping to pass the State Board and get a good job in a salon. So I should get rid of it, right? Because I'm unfit. In some countries they sterilize people like me. MDD, CD, ADD: potentially genetic and definitely no good for a baby. I had a father like that myself. I was crazy about him. He didn't last long.

Javier walks in holding a modified Barbie doll and sits back down next to me. Like Kitty Hawk, the doll has a tiny star painted in nail polish around one eye. Her dyed red hair is styled into perfect Farrah Fawcett feathers. She wears a rainbow tube top and sparkly silver shorts. Her tiny heels are painted silver to match. Around her shoulders are little rubber band straps that hold a pair of pink construction paper wings, covered in iridescent glitter.

“Milla wanted me to give you this. We were doing makeovers on her Barbie doll collection all day Sunday. She asked me to tell her a story about the dollies at school and I told her about the adventures of Bella Donna and Kitty Hawk and Lorelei Lee. Anyway, she made this for you.” He hands me the doll and I take her gently by the spindly plastic legs, trying not to rip her wings, which sprinkle glitter every time she moves. “She wanted to give it to you herself but she's with the Cuntessa this week.”

“Milla made this for me?” I turn it over in my hands and look at her fragile paper wings. This is the most precious thing. “Why?”

“You're Milla's fave babysitter fairy ever. She asks about you all the time.” Javier sighs and leans back in the shampoo chair. I lie back, too.

Javi goes on as we stare up at the ceiling, “You think you're the only loser trying to change your life? I'm a fat, broke, thirty-eight-year-old faggot who goes to beauty school and lives in a Woodland Hills cardboard town house with my boyfriend. True, he's gorgeous and, true, I'm fabulous, but still. Milla's the one who saves my life.”

“I don't know.”

Could this save me? A baby doesn't save everyone's life, does it? Some people it ruins their lives and then they ruin its life right back. And haven't I learned my lesson yet about trying to get saved?

“I guess you got to tell Mr. Handsome, is the first thing.” Javier thinks Jake is dreamy handsome in a bad boy kind of way, which he is.

“Me and Mr. Handsome got into it last night. Want to know the funny thing? Can you believe there's a funny thing?”

“There's always a funny thing,” he answers, sitting up straight now and fluffing his Mohawk.

“He asked me to marry him.”

“I hope you said no. He may be handsome but that man is nobody's husband.”

“Of course I said no. He can't keep a job for five minutes and when he gets stressed he tends to talk to spirits and thinks the zombies are coming. Which brings me back to What am I going to do?”

We hear the creaking of the floorboards over us, followed by the unmistakable labored steps and wheezing of Mrs. Montano coming down the stairs.

“Quick,” Javier says. “Look miserable.”

Javier and I stand and pretend to be getting some setting gel down from one of the cupboards. Mrs. Montano walks into the room and stands at the door like a battleship. Her upper lip curls into a sneer and her makeup sits on top of the poreless, crinkled fabric of her skin.

“Bebe,” she says, “you have a phone call.”

“I do?”

“Please come up to the office. And Javier . . .”

“Jes, Meeses?” Javier says in his Mexican maid accent.

“Do something useful, please.”

I hand Javier the Barbie and follow Mrs. Montano up the stairs.

The beauty school office
is decorated with generic, bargain basement office furniture and walls of filing cabinets. On the desks sit ancient phones that actually have cords. There are little souvenir shop plaques around that say things like
What part of “NO” didn't you understand?
and
A Woman without a Man Is Like a Fish without a Bicycle.
A calendar from the Pechanga Resort and Casino hangs on the wall.

I perch on the edge of a mammoth metal desk and pick up the cradle of the archaic receiver.

“Hello, Beth. How are you?” asks Susan Schmidt. I can tell she is trying not to sound pissed at me.

This whole therapist thing really involves being a studied, manipulative phony, if you think about it. And that's who's supposed to help people get better?

“I'm fine. Is everything okay?”

“Beth, I'm going to ask you some questions, and I need you to answer me honestly because it concerns the safety of one of our residents here with whom you are close. I want to express to you that you will in no way be penalized for anything you reveal to me right now. Do you understand?”

“Susan, you're freaking me out.”

“Jacob Hill is missing. I stress to you that we're concerned for his safety and for the safety of those he may come into contact with. This is very important. If you have any ideas as to where he might be headed, please tell me now, Beth.”

I have some ideas where he's going. I almost consider telling her, but she'll sic the cops on him for being a danger to himself and others. He'll get arrested and then slapped back in the hospital so fast, and who knows when he'll get out.

“I have no idea where he is,” I say. “I haven't seen him in days.”

My cell phone vibrates in my smock pocket. I check it and the screen lights up: BUCK. Calling to warn me. Too late.

“Beth,” Susan goes on in that reasonable voice, “we all care about Jacob. He's a unique and fascinating man, but he's deeply troubled. We have access to the resources that may be able to help him. If Jacob winds up hurt and there's something you haven't told us, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Is that a risk you're willing to take?” she asks in a loaded way. Bitch.

“I'm sorry I can't help you.”

“I'm sorry, too. I truly am. Please call us immediately if anything comes to you.”

“I'll do that.”

As I hang up the phone, one thing is as clear to me as a rare L.A. day when the smog blanket lifts and if you stand on top of a tall hill you can see the whole city glitter all the way out to the ocean. I've got to go find him. Before he does something reckless and they lock him up until forever.

I look at the intrepid hulk of Mrs. Montano at the desk across the room, thumbing through a stack of papers. I immediately revert to the fake crying face, which never loses its effectiveness on most normal people; but this is not your average foe. Mrs. Montano is a perfect example of what Jake calls a zombie.

She looks up at me with one drawn-on eyebrow arching sharply, like a stretched rubber band that could snap and shoot straight off her face. At least three pictures of the same mean, yellow-eyed cat stare out at me from ornate frames on her desk. A ray of light breaks through the water-stained ceiling—the perfect excuse.

“My cat is sick and she needs to go to the vet really badly. May I be excused for the day?”

Mrs. Montano casts a sidelong glance at her nice secretary sidekick. They're Tweedledee and Tweedledum, if Tweedledee and Tweedledum had been huffing bleach fumes for twenty years. The secretary is a little dippy and, I suspect, a little tipsy most of the time. She likes to gamble on the weekends and the Pechanga calendar is hers. She looks to Mrs. Montano and then to me, her fleshy face creasing with concern.

Mrs. Montano looks back down at her work and moves a few pieces of paper from one pile to another. I watch as a drop of sweat trails from behind her ear down the side of her neck. I stand there, conscious of my hands hanging awkwardly at my sides. The tight skin itches around the scars on my palms.

“You'll have to come at night,” she says finally. “Miss any more hours and you won't graduate with your class. You'll have to wait another month until the next group graduates.”

She sizes me up, as if looking at a spider on the floor and deciding if she is going to step on it. But I have already seen the flicker of weakness behind her eyes. I found the key to the zombie heart. She spares me the sole of her shoe and instead she says, “Go, then. I hope your kitty's okay. Don't forget to clock out.”

“Thank you,” I say, nearly trotting out the door and down the stairs, thinking that she's not so bad; she loves something.

I stride to my station, maniacally wrap all my equipment in a towel, throw it over my shoulder like a sack, and lug it toward the back bays of lockers. Javier and Violet look up at me, surprised, and then follow me. They stand there as I attempt to force the unwieldy mound into my locker.

“Slow down, crazy,” Javier says.

“I've got to get out of here. Drama. Big. Bad,” I say, shoving on the locker door until it is mostly closed then kicking it and fastening the lock.

“That was the uptight socialite social worker.”

“And?”

“And Jake's gone missing.”

Javier puts his arms up as if in surrender and then starts to fan himself with one hand. “It's getting hot in here,” he says. “What are you going to do?”

“Well, honey, that seems to be the question of the hour, now, doesn't it? I guess I'm going to find him.”

“This isn't your crisis, doll. You've got your own crisis to deal with.”

“I'd say this crisis and my crisis are kind of related.”

“You can't just go running out into the world trying to find someone. What are you going to use, a dowsing rod?”

I pause. I hadn't thought much beyond leaving.

“Wait,” Javi says. He grabs me by the arms. “Just wait one tiny, tiny second. It's important.”

Javier runs to the other room, leaving Violet and me staring at each other.

“Bebes, stay. This is a terrible idea.”

Javi returns, holding the Barbie that Milla made.

“Take her with you. She'll be like your little fairy.”

“
You're
my fairy,” I say to him, but I take the doll.

Javier wraps his arms around me and kisses me on one cheek and then the other.

“Go on, then,” he says. “Go get your man.”

1550 hours down. 50 hours left to go.

W
hat I think is that Jake's probably gone to try to reenlist. Where do you go to do that? There must be a million places and I don't know one. It was ridiculous, my revelation that I have to go and find him. How do you find someone?

I park out in front of Serenity, sag, and lean into the steering wheel. Buck stands on the front stoop talking to Jake's roommate, who gives me an uncomfortable little wave. Hardened criminals who have spent most of their lives in prison are so awkward around women it makes me want to cry for them. The roommate, who Buck likes to call Himmler, is actually a nice guy, even though he's done a lot of time and as a result has a giant swastika tattoo covering his entire back and he really does things like kill people. One or two. The story changes.

One thing about ex-cons is that they are the tidiest guys you will ever meet. The women's Serenity House is often a sty, but the men's Serenity House next door is neat like an army barracks. Jake's roommate saw our kitchen one day and actually offered to clean it for us. And our resident reformed Cholo stood with me out on the back porch one Saturday afternoon and taught me how to iron. He showed me how to press razor-straight creases into a pair of khakis. Not that I've ever used it, but it's a good skill to have if one day I make a life where I do things like iron.