The Red Car (2 page)

I had been an English major. For my job, I wrote descriptions of job openings for custodians and engineers and contract managers. I handled Judy's busy calendar and I took her calls. I also wrote short stories at my computer. I liked to play a video game where a geometrical worm was stuck in a maze. With every dot it ate, this worm would grow longer and longer until it crashed into one of the maze walls and then I would be dead.

“Do you want some spaghetti?” I asked Alice.

“No thanks,” she said. “I already have my dinner.”

I did not like having roommates. Tonight, for instance, I had the ingredients to make a sauce for my spaghetti. I liked to cook. I had olive oil and fresh tomatoes and garlic, Parmesan cheese, but I never felt comfortable cooking in front of an anorexic. It felt inappropriate. I also was not sure that I would be able to locate a saucepan. I had lost weight since moving into this apartment. That, at least, was something.

My boss, Judy, was surprised by this fact. My losing weight instead of gaining. Our relationship was not entirely professional. We told each other things. Twenty years older, Judy was always giving me advice, which, for the most part, I appreciated. Judy said that living with an anorexic would make her hungry. Judy did not suffer from feelings of guilt. She did not care what other people thought. We had had long conversations in her office about my roommates, about my love life, and also her love life, while Judy sat at her desk knitting. She had knit me an itchy green scarf that I pretended to love. I loved Judy, though I pretended not to. I had moved cross-country on a whim, far from friends and family, and often I felt unsure of myself, the space I occupied in the world.

“Why did Phoebe take the colander?” I asked Alice.

Alice shrugged. “She wants us to move out,” she said.

“Well.” I sat down next to Alice. My eyes focused on the joints in Alice's thin fingers. I could swear she was getting thinner. “Why doesn't she tell us?” I said. “If that's what she wants.”

Alice had lived in the apartment for six years. I had been there for six months.

“She hates confrontation.”

I had had so few conversations with Phoebe. The truth was I had never liked her, but I had liked the apartment, in an old
Victorian house on Castro Street, from the start. My room was tiny but I had a bay window, a view, a futon and a desk. A chair I had found on the street.

“She took the toaster,” Alice said. “And the coffeepot and most of the plates.”

I wondered how I had not noticed the toaster. The coffeepot had not been a problem. I mainly went out for coffee in the morning.

“So she wants us to move?”

Alice took a bite of broccoli coleslaw. She chewed very, very slowly. Then, she shrugged.

“Are you going to move?” I asked her.

“I can't afford to leave,” Alice said.

“But it's her apartment.”

“I have the key.”

“She could bolt the door when you go out,” I said.

“I know that. I am not going to go out anymore,” Alice said. “I don't have a job. I just have support group and therapy. It's more important for me that I keep this apartment than go to therapy.”

“What will you do when you run out of food?” I asked her.

Alice reached into her back pocket. I don't know why I felt nervous: what could this ninety-something pound woman do to me but infect me with her sadness? Any more than she already had. She handed me a twenty-dollar bill.

“You can buy me groceries,” she said. “I don't need much. I am almost out of chamomile tea,” she said. “And coleslaw.”

I looked at the money. It would be more uncomfortable, more unpleasant for me not to take it. “I was going to ask you if you wanted to go out with me for a burrito.”

Alice had done it once before. She watched me eat and sipped an iced tea. She had ordered a side of black beans and ate six beans. We went to a bookstore together where she watched me buy a book. She seemed envious, that I could buy a book. It was a used bookstore and I offered to buy her one, too. The book I bought cost four dollars. Alice had refused.

“I can't leave,” Alice said now. “Phoebe might lock me out.”

It was possible that she might lock me out, too, but I would take that risk.

“You want me to get you chamomile tea and broccoli coleslaw?” I asked.

“Would you?” Alice said.

She had a look on her face.

“Anything else?”

“Some soap?”

“What kind do you want?”

“Oh anything,” Alice said. “Something organic. And fragrance free.”

I nodded.

“You are so sweet,” Alice said.

People constantly had that idea about me. Maybe Judy was the only person who knew that I wasn't sweet. I looked at the pot on the stove, the few strands of spaghetti I had extracted from the boiling water on the plate on the kitchen counter. I would not take the time to clean up. I couldn't get out of the apartment fast enough. Chances were good Alice would clean it up for me so as not to further anger Phoebe.

“I'll be back soon,” I said.

“No hurry,” Alice said. “I have been out of soap for days.”

I
HAD FOUR FAVORITE BURRITO PLACES,
but I went into La Cumbre, the place I liked the least, because it was my boyfriend's favorite. On each table, there was a picture of a sexy woman with big black hair and enormous breasts that nearly escaped from her dress. She was a whore. That, at least, was what Daniel had told me. Walking through the Mission, I remembered that tonight was his night off.

Daniel was sitting at a table by himself, eating a burrito and drinking a Negra Modelo, reading Henry Miller.

“Leah,” he called out to me.

He had seen me right away. I did not even have to wonder if I would have to pretend not to see him. He was happy to see me. He was so happy I wondered why he had not just called me and said, “Leah, let's go out for a burrito.” But that would be too simple. I could not stop thinking of him as my boyfriend, though he wasn't actually my boyfriend, he was the poet/bartender/college dropout that I was sleeping with. He would be the first to remind me of this. The last time I had slept with him was already two weeks ago.

“I didn't come here because of you,” I said, sitting down at his table. This, of course, was the same as admitting that I came there looking for him. He knew it already. Or maybe he was not that smart and would believe it was a coincidence. He
looked good to me. He was wearing a black T-shirt, his blond hair slicked back.

“I love this place,” Daniel said, ignoring my comment. “San Francisco is becoming so gentrified, but this place, this is the real thing. This is purity.”

“Purity,” I repeated.

I am not sure why, but suddenly I had a vision of Alice alone at the kitchen table. She was probably still sitting there, finishing her undressed coleslaw. I thought that her coleslaw could be considered pure.

“Tonight, I wanted a good burrito, a cold beer. I wanted a real conversation,” he said. “And here you are.”

You could have called me, I thought, but I did not say this. Anyway, we never had real conversations. I mainly let Daniel talk. I could not get into Henry Miller. Honestly, I thought there was too much sex in his books. I never had a good conversation with Daniel because either he did not talk at all or he never stopped talking. It was a relief to know that tonight was probably going to be a nonstop-talking night. Which meant that I was getting ahead of myself, assuming that it would be a night. That he would let me go home with him. I couldn't take him back to my apartment, not anymore.

“I haven't had dinner yet,” I said. “I'm going to get a burrito.”

Daniel laughed.

“Oh shit,” he said. “And I thought the only reason you came here was to find me and get laid.”

I looked at Daniel. I think I blushed. I did not want to blush.

“You know I am going to fuck you tonight,” he said.

It was weird to me how that was exactly what I wanted,
but at the same time, I wished he wouldn't speak those words out loud.

“Okay,” I said quietly.

“Let me buy your burrito,” Daniel said.

“Okay,” I said.

I was not sure why, but I liked it, Daniel spending money on me. It was a rare thing, though the night we met, he had bought me a drink. A vodka tonic. I was brand-new in San Francisco, right out of college, and I thought it was thrilling, a guy buying me a drink. I didn't think, how tacky, this creep is buying me a drink. I thought, how amazing, I put on lipstick and a short skirt and look what can happen.

“I am not going to get up,” he said. “I am going to finish reading this scene.”

He handed me twenty dollars.

I looked at the bill. I shoved it into my pocket, along with Alice's twenty-dollar bill, and I bought a burrito and a Negra Modelo. All of this money being handed over to me made me think of Jonathan Beene. I had asked him for money and he had given it to me. I did not like to think about him.

I ate the burrito and I drank the beer while Daniel read me a dirty passage of Henry Miller out loud in the taqueria. I knew, as he read to me, that someday, I would be older and that I would be mortified at myself, for allowing this to happen. I was twenty-three years old.

Part of me also thought that I should not be able to eat my burrito in front of Daniel, but I did. I was hungry. I did not like the picture of the whore on the table, but the burrito, it was good. I felt happy to be alive, to not be an anorexic, to be outside of that apartment, in a city that I loved, far from home,
from where I was from, far from New Jersey. Out of my apartment, I understood that it was a sinister situation back there.

We did go back to Daniel's apartment.

We did have sex.

I fell asleep, my head on his chest, pleased with myself, but at some point Daniel shook me awake.

“I hope this doesn't seem weird to you,” he said. “But I would prefer it if you don't sleep here tonight.”

“Really?” I said.

I started putting on my jeans before I was fully awake. I had them on, backwards, realizing I could not zip them up that way. Daniel tapped me on my shoulder, handing me my underwear. I started the process all over again.

“I sleep better when I am alone,” Daniel said, though this was news to me.

“It's okay,” I said. Of course, it was not okay. It was two in the morning. I was able to find and put on the rest of my clothes. It was safe enough to walk home. Or maybe it wasn't safe enough, but I felt safe enough, and on the way back I stopped into the Safeway on Market Street, which was open twenty-four hours. I bought chamomile tea and broccoli coleslaw and even found a bar of unscented organic soap for Alice, but when I got back to the apartment, I discovered it was locked from the inside with the dead bolt.

Any other night, I might have thought of going to sleep at Daniel's. Instead, I fell asleep in the hallway, using my backpack as a pillow.

J
UDY SHOOK HER HEAD WHEN
she saw me the next day, dressed in the same clothes I had worn to work the day before. “We used to call that the walk of shame,” she said.

“I don't even know where to begin,” I said.

If only I had rolled out of my boyfriend's bed.

I always felt pleased by the fact that Judy liked me. Before getting this job, I had only temped at a couple of places. I had, in fact, started out temping for her. Even before the interview, I had that going for me. I had showed her a shortcut in Microsoft Excel that she thought was clever. “You can make spreadsheets!” she said, surprised and delighted.

It was true. I had skills. I also told her about an Italian movie I had seen at an art house theater that I thought she would like. She went to see it and she liked it, too. It turned out she created the position for me. Until then, she had never had a full-time assistant because everyone bugged her too much. Judy had also tried teaching me how to knit, but it turned out that I did not have the patience for it.

I would not know until later, years later, when I didn't work for her, when I had left San Francisco, that I loved her. She looked like Liza Minnelli. She was divorced. She liked to paint. Almost everyone at the office was scared of her. She said what
she thought. She had the power to hire people and also fire them. And she did fire people, frequently. Drunken custodians, incompetent receptionists, high-paid managers who went over budget. Rarely did anyone get a second chance.

I told Judy about my night, leaving out the part about sleeping on the floor of the hallway. I knew about Judy's ex-husband, an alcoholic who used to beat her before she got the hell out. She knew about my anorexic roommate and my boyfriend who was not actually my boyfriend. Still, I had to keep some things to myself. She had some clothes back from the dry cleaner, which she told me to wear.

“Really?” I said.

“You can't work looking like that,” she said.

I was not only creased. My clothes were dirty. I put on Judy's black skirt, the white silk shirt, and then, the blazer.

“You look like a different person,” she said.

“Bad?” I asked.

I felt uncomfortable in Judy's clothes. Like an impostor. She was six inches shorter than I was and so the skirt showed off way too much leg. Otherwise, her clothes fit.

“No,” Judy said. “You look incredibly put together. I am surprised.”

What this told me, of course, was that normally I did not look put together. I supposed I knew that already.

“You need a new boyfriend,” Judy said.

The observation made me wince. “I know that.”

“And a new place to live.”

“I know that, too,” I said.

Judy sighed. Sometimes she knew when to back off. Sometimes,
she reminded me too much of my mother. Other times, just as irritating, she reminded me that she was boss. Now, she handed me a folder.