The Merchant of Venice Beach

by Celia Bonaduce

  Suzanna’s father had had a trailer hitch installed and rented a U-Haul trailer to lug all their worldly goods to Southern California. After endless battles with Fernando, Suzanna finally had her trip organized. She was bringing her music collection (records and tapes of soulful or pissed-off singers like k. d. lang, Melissa Etheridge, Bonnie Raitt, and Sophie B. Hawkins), clothes (lots of black denim and her own wimped-out version of grunge), and some furniture: a bed for her, a bed for Fernando, two hand-painted dressers designed and executed by Fernando, a bookcase, a huge table and four unusual chairs (Fernando had grabbed four discarded 30-gallon wine barrels from the side of the road—only Napa Valley would have wine barrels set along the road instead of the random mattress or lamp—and had taken a saw and upholstery stuffing to them. They now were extremely comfortable but odd-looking high-backed chairs), a rocking chair, and a new futon.

  Why her parents decided she also needed a futon when she was already bringing a bed, was a mystery to her. Fernando suspected they wanted to make sure that if she had an overnight guest of the opposite sex, they could at least feel that they gave her every opportunity to send him to the sofa.

  Suzanna got in the overstuffed Land Cruiser’s driver’s seat and looked at her parents. Her mother had been crying, but Suzanna could tell she had resolved to be strong for her daughter’s sake. She sniffled a bit and gave Suzanna a watery smile.

  “Bye, guys,” Suzanna said, trying to keep Goat Girl silent. (Fernando always called Suzanna “Goat Girl” when she was trying not to cry. Goat Girl has that quivery voice with a sort of a bleat in it: “Byyyyyyye, guuuuuys.” )

  Suzanna tried to steady her voice. “Thanks for the Toyota! Really. I love it.”

  Her mother’s fortitude was about to give way.

  “A Toyota. Race fast, safe car. A Toyota! Boo-hoo-hoooo-hooo.”

  Great.

  Well, at least that made it easier to pull away.

  They were silent as Suzanna drove over to the Caridis’ winery. She lurched up the dirt road—she was still getting the hang of the stick shift—through the eucalyptus trees and thought that a final drive up a picturesque private road leading to an even more picturesque winery really symbolized the end of her childhood—possibly more than leaving her parents in a spray of gravel. This was Napa!

  Her car farted and died in front of the house.

  Carla zoomed out the front door with a duffel bag. Since she was not leaving for D. C. for another month and was getting antsy, she was going to drive down the coast with her friends and then fly home. Fernando wasn’t thrilled that Carla was horning in on their big adventure, but since Suzanna had the car and her parents were pretty much financing this whole thing, she got to throw her weight around a little bit.

  “Oh, so this week we like Carla,” Fernando had said.

  “We always like Carla,” Suzanna said. “Even when we hate her. She’s like family.”

  Fernando had gotten out of the car to rearrange some boxes in the back, and when he was ready to get back in, Carla had commandeered the front seat. Fernando got stormily into the back.

  “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” Carla said.

  Suzanna started the car and they headed down the road.

  “Can you stop at the drugstore?” Carla said as they passed through downtown. “I need to get some gum.”

  Fernando sighed heavily as Suzanna swung into a parking space.

  “I’ll be right back,” Carla said as she hopped out of the Land Cruiser.

  As soon as Carla was out of the car, Fernando crawled back into the front passenger seat.

  “Two can play at this game,” he said, his butt still in the air.

  Suzanna tried to set the radio buttons while they waited. Suddenly, there was a huge thud! On the hood, which spooked Suzanna and Fernando so severely they practically cracked heads. There, in the glare of downtown’s sunshine, stood Eric, smiling sheepishly. The loud thud had been caused by his oversized backpack, which he had plunked down on the hood.

  “Want some company?” he asked, as he climbed into the back seat with his bag.

  At that moment, Carla came bounding out of the drugstore. She jumped into the back of the Cruiser.

  “Surprise! Surprise!” she said. “I invited Eric.”

  Suzanna exchanged a horrified look with Fernando. What would her parents think? What, for that matter, did she think? And why had Fernando gotten back into the passenger seat? Carla and Eric were now in the back seat together. Eric caught her eye in the rearview mirror.

  “It’s cool, isn’t it?”

  “It’s cool,” Suzanna said, starting the engine.

  The car stalled about seven times before they finally headed down the highway to Los Angeles. Once they were underway, the car never stalled again. Fernando took that as a sign that all was going to be well . . . and Suzanna was desperate to believe him.

  They stopped for the night at that masterpiece of kitsch, the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo.

  “Michelangelo could not have built anything more beautiful,” Fernando said, gazing up at the cake-frosting turrets.

  “I think you mean Da Vinci,” Suzanna said. “Michelangelo didn’t design buildings.”

  “God, you sound like your sister,” Carla said.

  “No she doesn’t,” Eric said, while he pumped gas into the Land Cruiser at the Madonna filling station.

  Suzanna flushed modestly as Eric defended her to Carla.

  “Erinn would have been right,” Eric continued. “Suzanna is wrong. Michelangelo designed lots of buildings—like the mortuary chapel for the Medici family in Florence.”

  “Wow. Now you sound like her mom!” Carla said.

  Suzanna’s cheeks started to blaze. Eric looked at her.

  “Sorry, Beet, but it’s true.”

  “I just meant Michelangelo wouldn’t have designed the Madonna Inn, that’s all,” Suzanna said—although that wasn’t what she meant at all. She was showing off and it backfired, but she wasn’t about to admit that.

  The four of them walked into the lobby of the hotel. It was truly a design trainwreck. The Inn looks like a wedding cake on steroids, the lobby like a detonation at Santa’s Workshop. The Madonna Inn wasn’t exactly on their student budget, but with the unexpected infusion of Eric’s money, the group thought they might as well splurge.

  They decided on a plan. The girls would go to the front desk and request a room. Then, if the gods were smiling on them and they actually got a room, the boys would sneak in.

  It was summer and the Madonna Inn was a destination with locals and tourists alike, so they approached the front desk, hoping for the best. They had their fingers crossed that they might at least find a vacancy in one of the less intense rooms . . . maybe the Fabulous Fifties room or the rather unnerving What’s Left—a room retched from odds and ends left over from the rest of the rooms.

  But the Inn had a tour cancel out and they managed to snag the Caveman Room. With its cave like atmosphere (in this case, considered a good thing), the room had solid rock floors, walls, ceilings—and even a rock shower. The girls got the key and went up first. They boys showed up a few minutes later. They all loved the room, Fernando genuinely and the other three in a we’re-laughing-at-you-not-with-you kind of way.

  Carla bounced on the bed as soon as they hit the room.

  “Well, at least the bed isn’t made of rock,” she said.

  “This is just too fabulous,” Suzanna said, running her hands over the rock walls.

  “You’re sounding Hollywood already,” Carla laughed.

  “I can’t believe that a whole tour cancelled. That sucks for the hotel,” Suzanna said.

  “But it’s good to be us!” Eric said. “We’re just damn lucky.”

  “Yeah,” Fernando said. “But it’s the kind of luck you feel guilty about.”

  “What?” Suzanna asked. She wasn’t feeling guilty in the least.

  “You know. Sort of like when you’re in a traffic jam and th
ere is a hideous accident and even though somebody is probably dead, you’re actually relieved that you’re in the front of the line and won’t have to wait long.”

  Suzanna nodded her head. Now she did feel guilty.

  For not feeling guilty.

  They went downstairs to the dining room, which, in July, had a Christmas tree set up.

  “Listen to this,” Suzanna said, reading the menu, “they have something called Pink Shrimp Dolce Vita! ‘Dolce vita’ for whom? Certainly not the pink shrimp.”

  Eric snickered appreciatively—something Suzanna always loved about him. He always understood even the most obscure reference. Suzanna and Eric each ordered the shrimp.

  “So the shrimp would not have given up their vita in vain,” Eric said.

  Carla ordered pasta primavera and Fernando ordered spaghetti and meatballs.

  “So, Eric,” Carla said as they dove into their food. “Boston is only a seven-hour train ride to D. C. I hope you plan on coming down once in a while.”

  “Or you could come up north,” Eric said.

  “Maybe I will. In case I need to escape.”

  “You haven’t even started and you’re already looking to escape?” Fernando asked.

  “Well . . . I’m afraid I’ll be lonely.”

  Suzanna could tell she was not the only one taken by surprise by this admission. Carla always seemed to be ready to try anything.

  “I’m just really scared,” Carla continued. “What if everybody hates me? What if I wasn’t cut out to be an architecture major?”

  “You’ll figure it out,” Suzanna said. “It’s college, not prison.”

  “You’re one to talk,” Carla said.

  Suzanna reddened, but realized that Carla only meant that she and Fernando had chosen a path—together—that did not include prison.

  College.

  “Everything is going to change,” Eric said. “But it’ll all be good.”

  “What if I can’t find a boyfriend, and I’m the only single person left on campus?” Carla said, as if she hadn’t even heard Eric.

  “Are you kidding me?” Suzanna asked, incredulous. “With your body? And that great head of hair? Those D. C. boys won’t know what hit them.”

  “Well,” said Carla, a little indignantly, “I think it takes more than a great head of hair to fit in . . .”

  “Yes,” Eric said. “The great body is going to help, too.”

  Carla turned her watery smile to Eric. He squeezed her hand. Suzanna put her fork down. She suddenly had no appetite.

  The Land Cruiser arrived in Los Angeles without further incident. The kids called Napa to check in with parents. Suzanna’s mother and father apparently hadn’t gotten wind of the fact that Eric had been a stowaway, so Suzanna breathed a sigh of relief when she hung up the phone. She was fully aware that she probably had just dodged a bullet.

  With Eric riding shotgun and working as navigator, Suzanna threaded her way through the streets of Los Angeles. They were on their way to Palms to pick up a set of keys from their new landlady. Los Angeles was gigantic and keeping track of the directions was tough, even for Eric, who was usually pretty good with a map.

  Los Angeles seemed to be terrified by its own vastness, giving itself other names every couple miles: Palms, Balboa Lake, West Adams, Baldwin Hills. It was almost impossible to take in.

  Finally, the Land Cruiser pulled up in front of a tiny adobe house on an aptly palm-tree-lined street in Palms. Since Suzanna’s parents were paying for the apartment, Suzanna left her new roommate—and Carla and Eric—in the Toyota when she went to fetch the keys.

  “Hi, Mrs. Larson. I’m Suzanna Wolf.”

  “Where’s your mother?” asked Mrs. Larson, suspiciously eyeing the U-Haul.

  “Ummm . . . . she’s home . . . in Napa. I’m renting the apartment. I mean. My parents are going to pay for it and everything . . . . I’m just going to be staying here . . . remember?” Suzanna gripped the doorframe so that she wouldn’t start floating. This woman was making her very nervous.

  Mrs. Larson handed Suzanna the keys and walked down to the car. She continued to give the car’s possessions and passengers her stink-eyed squint. She indicated Carla and asked about her in a stage whisper.

  “She’s my friend . . . she’s driven down with me to keep me company. She’s going home tomorrow.”

  “Well, she’d better be,” said Mrs. Larson. “Two boys, two girls, I don’t want any funny stuff.”

  “She said two boys and two girls . . . she thinks we’re two gay couples,” Fernando hissed in Suzanna’s ear as she got back in the car. “And she doesn’t like it. She’s homophobic—she’s a bigot!”

  “Unless somebody is wearing a sweatshirt that says ‘I love gay people,’ you think everybody is homophobic,” Eric said. “‘Two boys and two girls’ could mean anything.”

  Suzanna pulled away as fast as she could without seeming rude. Luckily, the apartment was several miles from Mrs. Larson’s prying eyes. It was a one-bedroom on the Venice boardwalk, three flights up, and it suddenly seemed much smaller than it had when they first rented it. Looking at it with a bulging U-Haul breathing down their necks, it now revealed itself as a single room with a large closet.

  Carla was staring out the window at the beach. It was a gorgeous day and the sun was glinting off the ocean like some kind of advertisement.

  “Can you believe you’re going to live here?” Carla asked without taking her eyes off the water.

  “No,” Suzanna said honestly, with a slight tightening in her chest. “I can’t.”

  They managed to get everything from the U-Haul up the stairs and into the apartment. Considering how few possessions they had, it was surprising how long it took them to unload. By evening, they were famished. The four of them decided to go to a tiny Mexican restaurant they had heard about, and they stepped out onto the Venice boardwalk.

  During the day, the boardwalk was full of benign, colorful characters who somehow turned into scary, long-toothed creatures when the sun went down. Suzanna and Carla found themselves walking closer and closer to the guys.

  “Don’t look at me, sweetheart,” Fernando said to Suzanna. “One of these creeps makes a move and I’ll scream like a girl.”

  Within a few weeks, they had figured out which parts of the boardwalk to give a wide berth. They hung out at a teashop called the Flying Geese Tea Shoppe and Fernando spent a lot of time there, soaking up the atmosphere and insisting that he was going to work there one day. “I love that place,” he said. “But that name has got to go.”

  The Mexican restaurant, called the Baja Cantina, was loud, crowded, and fun. The locals were friendly and all four of the Napa contingent danced until the early hours, when the bar finally closed. Carla had met a cute guy and said she’d find her way home. Ditto for Fernando.

  Suzanna and Eric decided to go for a walk along what was left of the Venice canals, a newly gentrified area that glowed romantically in what was left of the moonlight. Suzanna tried not to get her hopes up as they stood shoulder to shoulder on one of the curved wooden bridges that spanned the canals. She could see their reflections quivering in the water.

  Suzanna’s senses were on high alert. What if they did get romantic? How could you resist getting romantic on this bridge in the moonlight? She worried that if she passed out right now, she’d topple into the canal and either break her neck and die or just get covered in mud and humiliation. She decided that she had to stay conscious, no matter where this evening took her.

  “I read something interesting about these canals,” Eric said.

  “What did you read?” Suzanna said.

  “That the city wanted to clean up the area, but the ducks kept eating the vegetation. So the city fathers came and checked out the ducks and decided—conveniently—that the ducks were diseased and would have to be put down.”

  “That’s terrible,” Suzanna said, hopes of romantic kisses evaporating like the diseased ducks.

  “Yeah,” E
ric said. “And when the vegetation was all grown in, they brought in new ducks.”

  “Huh,” Suzanna said as a duck quacked underneath them. She had no idea what to make of this story, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t Eric’s attempt at seduction.

  “Hey,” Eric said, walking across the bridge. “There’s a little boat here.”

  Suzanna followed him. There was a tiny blue rowboat tied to a moldy bollard sunk deep in the canal.

  “I’m sure it belongs to one of these houses,” Suzanna said.

  “We’ll bring it back,” Eric said as he untied the rope. “Get in . . . it’s got oars and everything!”

  Suzanna was terrified, but she would have impaled herself for another five minutes with Eric, so she got into the boat. Eric pushed off and they rowed silently around the canals. Suzanna was so happy, she couldn’t speak.

  “Hey, listen” Eric said, when they had rowed to a silent part of the canals. “I’ve been thinking . . .”

  Suzanna tried to clamp down on her thoughts.

  Don’t get your hopes up. Don’t get your hopes up. Don’t get your hopes up.

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah . . . I’m thinking of not going back to Napa.”

  Suzanna lit up.

  “You mean you’ll stay here until it’s time to go to Boston?”

  “No,” Eric said, looking into the water. “I mean . . . I’d like to stay here for the year. I don’t want to go to school yet.”

  Suzanna could barely make out his features in the dark.

  “What will your parents say?”

  “They’ll have a shit-fit.”

  Suzanna was surprised. Eric didn’t usually swear.

  “I’ll just tell them I’m not ready,” he said. “Look, I know you guys are going to be tight for space, but as soon as we get jobs, we can move someplace bigger. What do you think?”

  Suzanna realized that if she said yes, he’d probably kiss her.