by Ava Dellaira
Finally she sleeps, and when she opens her eyes to the morning light, Sam’s side of the bed is empty. She hears voices in the kitchen, smells coffee.
“Damn girl, you could sleep through a car crash,” Miguel says as she walks in to find him and Sam finishing breakfast.
He hands her a cup of coffee. “Beach day. You in?”
Angie glances to Sam. “Well, actually I have to … There’s someone I’m looking for.”
“Oh, right, Sam said. Your uncle?” Miguel asks.
Angie nods and turns on her phone to check again for anything from Justin, but all she finds is a meme from Lana: Napoleon Dynamite with the text Don’t be jealous that I’ve been chatting online with babes all day. She’s too consumed by worry to even laugh.
If one of the people she left a message for was her Justin, he’d have called her back by now, right? He’d want to meet her, right? So maybe her Justin is at one of the three addresses with an unlisted number. He must be. But what if she can’t find him? What if … what if he’s out of town, or worse?…
“You hear from him?” Sam asks.
“Not yet. If you’re going to the beach with them could I maybe use your car? I have a few addresses I need to check.”
“I’m not letting you go to strangers’ houses by yourself,” Sam replies.
Miguel raises his eyebrows.
“Sam … it’ll be okay. I’ll be careful.”
“Angie. That’s crazy.”
Angie’s face twists up with urgency. “I’ll just take the bus, then. Or, like, an Uber.”
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Sam explodes. “Why don’t you just come to the beach with us, and we can drive around looking for Justin afterwards. I thought you wanted to see Venice anyway.”
Angie begins, in spite of herself, to breathe too quickly. He doesn’t understand; it’s not some casual search.
Sam sighs. “Fine,” he says, before Angie can gather herself to reply. “We’ll go check your addresses first, then we’ll go to the beach. Cool?” He cuts eyes at Miguel. “I’ll meet up with you guys there.”
“Thank you,” Angie says quietly.
The late-morning sun slowly burns through the fog that hangs over the city. It’s the marine layer, Sam tells Angie, that on summer mornings extends far inland from the beach. It gives the light a certain half-awake softness as they drive up from MacArthur Park, past Sunset Boulevard. A man in a shirt cut to his midriff crosses the street; a young woman jogs up the crowded sidewalk with a tiny bulldog; a boy with headphones dances under a stoplight, spinning a Jiffy Lube arrow; palm trees preside over it all.
“So this is Hollywood,” Sam says. “Not exactly the most glamorous.”
But for Angie, it is. She feels as if the LA whose streets they drive through contains both the city in present tense and the city of her invisible past, the city where her parents fell in love.
“I can’t believe I’ve never been out of New Mexico,” she says as Sam pulls onto the 101 North. “Before now.”
Sam looks over at her, and she senses him softening. She rolls down the window. Rihanna’s on the radio singing “Higher,” and Angie loves the crackling longing in her voice, feels it all the way through her body. They’re speeding into possibility, toward a man who could be her uncle. Uncle Justin. Angie tries the words out in her mind as she leans out the window, letting the air rush into her lungs.
She thinks of a camping trip she went on with her mom when she was little, the feeling of freedom in her body as they drove on the highway through the mountains, the windows open and the piney smell of air rushing down their throats as Angie stuck her head out and opened her mouth, singing along to the folk song from her kids’ tape: In my hear-art, in my hear-art, there’s a little song a-singing in my heart …
By the time Sam pulls off the freeway twenty minutes later, the fog is gone; sunlight gleams insistently along the wide boulevard with rows of palms and strip malls. The first Justin Bell on Angie’s list lives in Reseda. Angie stares out the window and makes a private game of counting the car washes (five) and nail salons (seven), a way of soothing her increasing nervousness as they near their destination. She’s been a counter ever since she was kid: the stars in the sky, the streetlights on the highway, the freckles on her mom’s pale face. When she was ten, she made it a project to count the leaves on the elm behind their new house. Lying on her back, she’d move from branch to branch, noting where she left off when her mom called her in for dinner. It calmed her, making her world into something to be kept track of. Now (the last time she checked) 7,505,201,954 people on the earth.
How many of them are caught in the strange feeling between hope and fear? How many are about to meet someone they’ve never met before, someone who could change their entire lives?
Sam turns left into a neighborhood and pulls up to 8956 Valero Street, a low house with gray stucco and an old red Ford parked outside, a tiny sapling tree bending forward in the yard. Angie half expected to see the kid from the photos sitting outside on a stoop eating a popsicle, but the yard is empty.
Sam shuts off the ignition.
“Okay,” he says. “Guess we’re here.”
“I’ll just run up. I’ll be right back.”
Sam shuts his eyes. He keeps them closed for a long moment, and Angie’s not sure whether or not to get out of the car.
Finally, eyes still closed, Sam says, “So I’m just your chauffeur, then?”
“What?”
“I drive you all the way out to Reseda when I could be at the beach, and you want me to just sit in the fucking car?”
Angie chokes back the automated response, the defense: I didn’t ask you to come. I could have gotten an Uber. Instead, she says, “I’m really grateful you brought me. I just—if it’s him, it’s something I need to do alone … I mean, it would be the first time I’d meet my uncle.”
“Whatever,” Sam says. “Go ahead.”
She tries to think of something to say, something to fix it, but her throat has closed in on itself. She only sees the bright sun glaring back at her through the windshield, the fact of the house that could be Justin’s. Finally she opens the door and walks up the path. She can feel herself sweating through her T-shirt.
She rings the bell.
A fortyish white man with a deep bronze tan and cutoff shorts answers a moment later, blowing on hot-pink-painted fingernails.
“Yes?” he asks, a note of irritation in his voice.
Angie opens her mouth, but only silence falls out. Breathe, she tells herself, fighting the weight on her chest. She glances back at the Jeep, but can’t see Sam through the reflections in the windows. He was right, she realizes; she should have let him come with her.
The man drops his pink-painted hand to his side and stares back at Angie, his eyebrows raised. All at once, she wants her mother. She wants her mother the way she wanted her mother as a child. Mommy! Angie thinks. Why did you leave me here alone? But of course her mother didn’t leave her; she was the one who left.
Angie hears footsteps on the path behind her. As she turns around to see Sam walking up, slowly her body comes back to her, and then her voice.
“Um, sorry to bother you,” she stutters, “but I’m looking for Justin? Justin Bell? Does he live here?”
“He went to Gelson’s.”
“Gelson’s?”
“A grocery store,” Sam says as he comes up behind her.
“Um, is he—is he black?” Angie blurts out.
“Huh? No, honey. That man is whiter than rice. A little red at the moment—idiot went out sans sunscreen.”
“Oh. Okay.” Angie tries not to let the disappointment crush her. There are still two more addresses, she reminds herself. But she’d thought, she realizes now, that somehow, as soon as she arrived in LA, he’d be right there—as if she were meant to find him.
“Sorry to bother you. Wrong address, I guess,” she forces herself to say, and even manages a polite smile. “You have a nice day.”
<
br /> Sam follows her back down the path and reaches out to put a hand on her shoulder.
This city is so big, Angie thinks as they get back on the freeway.
* * *
The next Justin on Angie’s list lives in the Pacific Palisades. After forty minutes in the car along busy freeways and then through winding tree-lined streets, Angie can start to smell the ocean in the air. They pull up a long driveway to a two-story home.
“Will you come with me this time?” she asks Sam, swallowing her pride.
He gets out of the car and follows Angie up the path through a perfectly manicured garden—roses, birds-of-paradise, lavender bushes. Angie picks one of the purple flowers, pinches it between her fingers. The scent reminds her of home, of her mother’s garden that she left behind—was it only yesterday morning?
She rings the bell and glances back at Sam. A moment later, the door opens, and Angie’s nearly knocked over by a white Lab puppy. She bends to pet the dog, who plants kisses on her face.
A girl, not more than seven, shouts, “No, Ollie! Come here!”
She looks like she’s mixed race, which makes Angie hopeful. “Cute puppy,” Angie says with a smile.
“You’re not Jenna.” The girl frowns.
“Um, no, I’m not. I’m actually just—I’m looking for someone. Justin? Is that your dad?”
An older white woman in expensive-looking workout clothes appears behind the girl, her voice sharp. “Can I help you?”
“Um, sorry to bother you, I was just looking for Justin? Is he home?”
The woman squints at Angie. “He’s dead.”
Angie feels as if she’s falling through space, the ground below her gone for good. Her voice comes out in a rough whisper. “Dead?”
“What are you doing here?” the woman asks. “Who are you?”
“I—I’m sorry. I—I just, I thought he might’ve been my uncle.”
“No. He was my son, I should know.”
“Oh. I’m so sorry.”
The puppy darts between Angie’s legs.
“Ollie!” the woman calls, and runs into the yard. Sam goes after her. The little girl stays in the doorway, staring at Angie.
“What’s your name?” Angie asks.
“Mary.”
“That’s a pretty name.”
The woman returns with Sam, Ollie squirming in his arms.
“I’m really sorry to bother you,” Angie says.
The woman only nods. She takes the puppy from Sam and shuts the door.
Angie ignores the lump in her throat as she follows Sam back to the car. She imagines he must be thinking how wrong it is for her to intrude on people’s lives like this. She knows she should give up for the day, offer that they go meet Miguel—they’re already near the beach anyway—but her desperation to find her uncle has only increased. She has to know if the last place will be his. Sam asks Angie for the address, types it into his phone.
As they drive away, Angie pulls her knees to her chest, resting her feet on the cracked leather seats, staring down at her toes, which are still painted apple red from when she went to get a pedicure with her mom to celebrate the first day of summer. Her mom, who’s adored by the women at the nail salon, who always goes in with a bright smile and asks about each of the women’s children, who likes to put her newly painted foot next to Angie’s and admire them together—Angie’s always felt proud of her kindness, her care.
But getting her nails done with her mom often reminds Angie of the day Marilyn had taken her and Vivian to get their first pedicures. Angie was maybe ten, and she’d been excited. They all walked into the shop together, and sat in a row in big leather chairs, Angie and Vivian playing with the massage buttons, their feet dipped into bubbling water. Angie had chosen the same teal blue as her mother’s; she always wanted to look like her back then. But the woman who sat on a stool with Vivian’s foot in her hand had looked up at Marilyn and said, “Your daughter’s very beautiful.” Angie knew the woman was referring to Vivian, who was blond like her mom.
“This is my daughter’s friend,” Marilyn said. “And thank you, yes, I agree she’s beautiful, just like my daughter.” She reached out and put her hand on Angie’s leg, as if to claim her. “Two beautiful girls.” The woman squinted for a moment in confusion and nodded, then went back to cutting Vivian’s toenails.
Similar mistakes had been made over the years, involving nearly every white girl Angie had ever been close with—in the checkout at the grocery, with waitresses in restaurants, even last year when her mom took Angie and Lana to Dillard’s to pick out dresses for homecoming. When Lana stepped out of the dressing room and twirled, the clerk had commented on how wonderful it was to see such a beautiful mom and daughter shopping together. Marilyn corrected the clerk, who nodded and grew quiet. On the way out Lana leaned into Angie and whispered, “God, lady, didn’t you get the memo? This is the twenty-first century.” Angie knew Lana must have been trying to tell her she was on her side, but it didn’t make Angie feel better. You don’t get it, she’d wanted to say. You have two parents, and you look like both of them. Instead she smiled back at Lana, trying to laugh it away.
The last Justin on Angie’s list lives in K-Town, short for Koreatown. LA’s downtown buildings rise up just ahead as they drive past a dog-grooming shop, a grocer, more nail salons, clothing stores, a Korean barbecue restaurant. Finally they pull onto Fedora Street and park in front of an old stone apartment building with a green awning and a for rent sign out front. A tall palm tilts in the breeze.
Sam and Angie walk up to the building, only to discover the front door locked.
“Which one is his?” Sam asks, looking to the buzzers.
“I don’t know,” Angie admits with regret. Her listing shows only the street address.
Just then a woman wearing sweatpants comes out with a small fluffy dog on a leash, talking on her phone. Angie rushes forward and grabs hold of the door before it can shut, and she and Sam slip into the foyer, which looks like an old-fashioned hotel, with thick flowered curtains, a gold-rimmed mirror, gold vines carved into the crown molding.
“I guess we can try them all,” Sam says. “There’s probably only ten or so in the building.”
So Angie knocks at the nearest apartment. Just when she’s about to turn away and move on to the next, a young woman—she must be in her early twenties at most—opens the door, a baby held tightly to her chest in a sling.
“Hi, I was wondering if you know if there’s a Justin Bell in the building?” Angie asks.
“I just moved in, sorry.” As the baby begins to cry, her mother lifts her from the carrier and shuts the door.
At the next apartments, they meet an old Korean man who opens the door wearing pajamas and puppy slippers; a Hispanic woman with a bright smile; a white dude who appears in sweats and no shirt, the bones of a rib cage tattooed over his chest; a pretty Korean teenager with tortoiseshell cat-eye glasses; a young black woman with flour on her hands and a T-shirt that reads NAH.—ROSA PARKS, 1955; another white dude who’s in the middle of watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians, audible in the background.
With each new person, Angie’s voice rises with hope: “I’m sorry to bother you, but do you know if a Justin Bell lives here? In this building?” And each time, the reply is the same. Some version of Sorry, don’t think so. Not that I know of.
Two doors have no answer. At the final apartment, a Hispanic guy in his midtwenties opens the door. Behind him, Angie glimpses a girl walking through the apartment in a T-shirt and underwear. She can hear the note of desperation in her own voice as she asks, “Do you know if a Justin Bell lives here?”
“I just moved in and I get mail with his name on it sometimes. He must’ve moved out recently.”
“Oh,” Angie replies, crushed. There’s no way to know if the Justin Bell who moved out of this building is her Justin Bell, but either way, she’s run into a dead end. No more addresses to check. No way to verify that he’s even real.
> As the guy shuts the door, Angie turns and hurries toward the exit. She doesn’t look at Sam, doesn’t want him to see her fighting tears. How stupid to think she could just walk into a city of seven million and find a single man.
She checks her phone as she steps into the bright sun, hoping for an email back or a message from her uncle, but there’s nothing.
“Hey,” Sam says as he walks up. Angie still cannot bring herself to meet his eyes.
A siren passes in the distance. Sam unlocks the car and opens the door for her.
Just as he starts the ignition, Angie sees the woman with the fluffy dog walking back up to the apartment building, carrying a little plastic baggy filled with poop. Angie had forgotten all about her, but she must be one of the people who hadn’t answered.
As the woman opens the front door, Angie jumps out of the car and rushes up. “Sorry! Excuse me!”
The woman turns around and the fluffy dog begins barking.
“Sorry to bother you, but did you know Justin Bell? I think he used to live here?”
“Justin? Sure. Yeah. He moved out, I don’t know, maybe six months ago? He was a nice dude. Used to look after my dog sometimes if I was out of town.”
“Was he black and, like, around twenty-nine?”
“Yep.”
