Slipstream

by Leslie Larson

  “Uh, I think that woman might be waiting for you. I forgot her name.”

  “Tonya?” Logan turned and looked over his shoulder. “Uh-oh,” he said. “I guess I better get going.”

  As she stood in her graduation gown, watching Logan walk back to two more people who would probably never get a big enough piece of him, Jewell had felt him slip away, disappearing back into the part of his life that she knew so little about. She had wondered when he might pop up again—in a week, several years, maybe never. But now, three years later, as she slid a spatula under an omelet and transferred it to a plate, she sensed him drawing near. She would see him again soon, she could almost feel it.

  “Way too much cheese,” a ponytailed sorority type said as Jewell handed the omelet over the glass partition. Jewell knew the breed: snotty and fresh-faced, the kind who worked the Stairmaster while reading glamour mags in the gym, fucked her meat-headed boyfriend on the weekends, and was headed for a public relations job in some corporation, a husband who golfed, and two kids with a live-in nanny.

  “It’s an omelet. This is how they come,” Jewell said.

  “I asked for light cheese. You must not have heard me.”

  Too bad Jewell wasn’t in the dish room, where she could have blasted this bimbo right in her peaches-and-cream face with the overhead sprayer. Instead she gritted her teeth and gestured peevishly with the spatula. “Look, this is the fucking cafeteria. Not Sunday brunch at the Ritz.”

  “I can’t eat this much cheese. I’m sorry.” The sorority girl maintained her tight smile. They always did.

  “Fine.” Jewell slid the spatula under the omelet like she was slitting a throat. She catapulted it into the garbage behind her, where it landed with the dull thud of a dead body. “Anything else? Sausage?” She picked one up with the tongs and held it so the girl could inspect its turd-like profile. “Look, not a speck of cheese.”

  The woman paled. “I don’t eat meat.”

  “Oh, really? Why not?”

  It wasn’t worth getting obnoxious over, but Jewell was starting to hit the wall. She hadn’t eaten or slept much for several days now. She felt lightheaded and belligerent. The plate she held felt like concrete.

  “Forget it,” the sorority girl said, looking at Jewell with frank disdain. “I’m just going to have cereal.”

  Jewell shrugged. Her father had never had a real job, she reflected as she ladled maple syrup over the next student’s French toast. Nothing where you punched a clock and got a regular paycheck. It was always some get-rich-quick scheme or legally questionable scam that was supposed to pay off big. Then it would be high-rolling for the rest of their lives, don’t bother working. For a while they’d talked about moving to Tahiti, to Mexico, to New Zealand, paradises where houses with lots of land were dirt cheap. But the farthest they ever got was a double-wide near Palm Springs where Logan planned to cash in on an egg farm. Two weeks after they moved, raccoons wiped out the whole flock of chickens.

  “Hello? Excuse me?”

  Another twit. This one had two ponytails, one on either side of her head.

  “These eggs aren’t done. They’re, like, almost raw.” The girl jiggled them on the plate. “Could you put them back on the grill for a little while longer? Just, like, thirty seconds?”

  Jewell didn’t have the energy to be snide. She slid the eggs onto the grill and cooked them until the yolks were solid. “Enjoy your breakfast,” she chirped as she passed the plate back.

  She sleepwalked through the rest of her shift, daydreaming about the apartments she might find: a cottage in Laurel Canyon owned by a wealthy old lady crazy enough to rent it out for peanuts; a bungalow in Santa Monica, steps from the beach, offered in exchange for minimal yard work; a rambling rancher in the Hollywood Hills with views to forever. The first place she could remember living in, when Logan was still around, was the top floor of a two-story wooden house owned by two old Italian sisters who lived downstairs. She remembered only a few things about it—a tile painted with a black-and-white striped angelfish set into the wall near the tub, the metal cupboard under the sink in the kitchen where she was allowed to stick her magnetic alphabet, and the avocado tree in the backyard where the skunks came after dark to eat the fallen fruit. Logan had taken her out of bed one night to watch them. From the top floor she could barely make out the white stripes on three or four of them as they snuffled in the grass. Shhh! her parents said if Jewell jumped or ran on the bare floors. It riled up the old sisters, who would bang on the ceiling with a broomstick. When that happened, the three of them—Jewell and her mother and father—would freeze in place, look at each other, and—with their hands over their mouths—laugh.

  It was downhill from there. There was a succession of lifeless apartments alike in their dreariness, with sliding glass doors that led out to slabs of concrete, buzzing squares of fluorescent lights set into the ceilings, walls so thin you could hear people clearing their throats next door. Downy, Whittier, Pomona. A place in Torrance built so close to the sidewalk that people seemed to be passing through their living room at all hours of the day and night. Another in Inglewood that smelled so pervasively of cat piss that Jewell and her mother always ate their dinner sitting on the front step, staring out into the wide, treeless street. The one in a city-subsidized housing project where fuses were always blowing, where a fire had started inside the wall. Houses that were more like dentists’ offices, banquet rooms, tool sheds. Shower stalls with sordid pasts, cupboards saturated with odors of despair. Throughout her childhood and adolescence, Jewell dreamed about returning to the first place she’d lived, the one the sisters owned. She daydreamed about the thick wood windowsills, the arched doorway between the living and dining rooms, the swirls of plaster that had been troweled onto the walls. Listen! Logan had said, crouching on all fours and putting his ear to the floor. Jewell had pressed her cheek to the floorboards and heard, traveling up from downstairs, the deranged wheeze of an accordion and, accompanying it, the shrill warble of an old lady’s vibrato. The old coots are sauced, Logan had laughed. Drunk as sailors.

  Jewell slung a gluey scoop of Cream of Wheat into a bowl and handed it over the counter. Who in their right mind would eat that shit? While she doled out strips of bacon, she furnished, landscaped, and painted the houses she dreamed of finding and inhabiting, right down to the faucet on the bathroom sink. And when it was all finished, when she was settling back near the fireplace in a room with a one-eighty-degree view of the whole city, when the dark was coming down and the lights were coming up, that’s when the phone would ring. That’s when Celeste would call to say what a mistake she’d made. That’s when she would cry and beg, when she would plead with Jewell to give her one more chance. And since the house was big, since there were bedrooms and bedrooms, who wouldn’t want to live there, well—Jewell would reconsider. There was even room for Rachel. And so they’d start again, and this time it would be different. This time—

  “Hey, homey. Jules! Jules!”

  Standing on the other side of the hotline was Eli. He was fresh from the dish room, wearing his hairnet like a beret and with his billygoat beard strung through a chunky wooden bead.

  “How’s it going? You look totally spaced. What’s up?”

  Jewell shook off her daydream. Eli had already loaded his tray with four milks and two cups of coffee. “Jesus, what time is it?” Jewell said.

  “Time to close down, girlfriend.”

  Jewell glanced at the clock. “Shit! I’m supposed to look at an apartment in a half hour. You want the usual?”

  “Yeah, the works.”

  Jewell loaded a plate with a mountain of scrambled eggs and a heap of sausage and bacon. “French toast?” she asked.

  “Yeah, why not? I’ll take a couple of pieces.”

  As soon as she served Eli, Jewell started jerking the pans of stray sausages and stiff hash browns out of the steam table.

  “So you haven’t found a place yet, huh? What’s up with Miss Priss?” Eli
had never liked Celeste.

  “Nothing. We’re still living in the house together. I’m sleeping in the closet. I run into her in the hallway on the way to the bathroom once in a while.”

  “Sounds harsh,” Eli said, munching on his third strip of bacon.

  “It sucks. I need to get out of there. It’s hard, though, not having much money. It’s not like I have a whole lot to choose from.” She pulled a rag from under the counter and started wiping down the stainless steel. “Keep your eyes open, will you?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Old men with big houses who’re circling the drain, summer places down on the beach where I can hole up during the off-season.”

  The bead on Eli’s beard swung when he nodded, thumping him on the Adam’s apple. “Don’t worry. You’ll find something.”

  “You think so? It just seems so unreal. I mean, I can’t believe this is happening.” Jewell paused. The rag had a sour smell. Her stomach did a queasy flop. “I guess part of me thinks there’s still a chance something will happen,” she admitted. “That we’ll get it together somehow.”

  Eli had eaten almost everything on his tray while he stood there. Now he paused with a strip of bacon halfway to his mouth. “You mean you’re still thinking you can patch it up with Celeste?” he asked incredulously.

  Jewell gave a slow, guilty nod.

  “Jules, you’re better off without her,” Eli said emphatically. “Trust me, she doesn’t appreciate you. You deserve better.”

  Jewell nodded, even though she wasn’t convinced. Eli didn’t understand. On the other hand, things were miserable at home. Intolerable. She couldn’t take it much longer.

  “Hey, I’m going to ask around,” Eli said. “I might have a lead on a place. Really, I mean it. Friends of mine mentioned they might be moving.” He wiped his face with the back of his hand. The only thing left on his plate was the pile of scrambled eggs. “You gotta get out of there.”

  “This is it ?” Jewell asked the landlord.

  He was a healthy-looking blond guy in chino shorts and a polo shirt who lived in the huge, sunny house on top of the renovated garage he’d listed for rent. He’d divided it into three tiny, windowless rooms. You dropped the mail through a slot in the big double door and it fell onto the linoleum floor. But the landlord could afford to look smug because there was a buzz of competition among other would-be tenants who were poking into the closet-sized bathroom and running their hands over the Formica counter that was supposed to pass as a kitchen. While the others crowded the landlord for applications, Jewell escaped through a side door. It was a bad start, she told herself. It had to get better.

  The next apartment had shag carpet halfway up the walls. The windows faced a four-lane thoroughfare. Jewell had to shout at the manager, whose eyes kept shifting to her breasts.

  “You get used to the noise,” he said with a shrug. “Just turn up the stereo.”

  By the time she looked at the third place, one that the ad had listed as “furnished,” but that turned out to be a storehouse for the landlord’s old furniture, Jewell felt that she was carrying a bowling-ball-sized lump around in her chest.

  “What if I wanted to get rid of some of this stuff?” she asked the landlord as she looked over the living room packed wall-to-wall with old sofas, government-issue desks, and armchairs that smelled of cat piss.

  “Then you wouldn’t be the right person for this apartment,” he replied with a sniff, as if the place were the Taj Majal.

  The last place on her list sounded like a flophouse, but it was cheap. dntwn, cls to all, lg closet, share bath. She thought again of her father as she headed downtown, thought of the houses where she’d lived with him when she was young, the stained carpets and banged-up walls, the gouged floors and the smells of other people’s lives: dirty socks, baby powder, cigarettes, stale perfume, fried hamburger. But when Logan was around, it hadn’t seemed to matter. He was the kind of guy who could feel at home anyplace. Where was he now? She exited the freeway near the Civic Center, turned down a one-way street, and added a few more details to the house she was building for herself in her dreams. She might make a little addition for her father, a place where he could live in the back. She was an architect, after all. Her place would be Zennedout. Feng-shuied to the max. Bamboo floors, smooth lines. Lots of windows, lots of wood. No curtains, carpets, or clutter.

  She pulled up in front of a three-story brick building with a laundromat on the ground floor. When she buzzed, a wiry old man with a German accent and thick white hair that stood straight up on his head answered the door. He took her to the top floor and led her down a hall that smelled of Pine-Sol. They walked past doors with panes of wavy, frosted glass set in the top half like in old detective movies. She imagined her name painted on one: JEWELL WYLIE, P.I. The manager stopped at the end of the hall. While he was working the key in the lock, an older woman wearing a bathrobe, men’s athletic socks, and plastic sandals cracked the door across the hall and watched them.

  The place was one big bare room with a window that looked out on the buildings across the street. The manager crossed the room, opened a wide closet door, and pulled down a bed that lowered to the floor with a metallic clank. There was a chipped porcelain sink in one corner, a tiny refrigerator, and a small range with two gas rings. Jewell crossed the room and looked out the window. There was some kind of church or rescue mission across the street. On its roof a blue neon cross glowed weakly against the gray sky. It looked more medical than religious, like something you’d see on an ambulance.

  When she turned, the manager was watching her. His huge white eyebrows curled over his forehead. “What happened to your old apartment?” he asked suspiciously. His accent made her think of Nazi interrogations. “Why are you leaving?”

  Jewell choked. She and Celeste had known the minute they walked into their house that it was the right place for them. “This is it, Jewell!” Celeste had beamed. “This is our house.”

  “I’m getting divorced,” Jewell told the manager. The queasy feeling rose up into her throat. She could feel her jaw loosening, the spit gathering in her mouth. “I have to leave, find a new place.”

  There was something creepy about the old dude, who kept his watery blue eyes fastened on her. In an effort to pull herself together, Jewell walked over to the sink and opened the medicine cabinet above it. She felt raw, like there was no insulation covering her nerves. Anything might set her off, even the chip in the porcelain sink, black on white. No one had cleaned out the medicine cabinet. The shelves were stained with rust from razor blades. There were a couple of old Band-Aids and a few cotton swabs.

  She clamped her hand over her mouth.

  “Bathroom’s down the hall,” the manager said.

  The places where they’d lived when she was a kid had driven her mother crazy. All her father’s so-called friends coming and going, sharing places with other families and all their kids, who mixed like litters of dogs who’d forgotten who their own mother was. Her mom was always moving cast-off furniture around, building tables out of milk crates, and hanging bedspreads on the walls. No wonder she’d gone round the bend.gd lite, sm grdn, quiet Jewell told herself. The room blurred as her eyes filled with tears.

  “You want to see?” the manager asked.

  Jewell shook her head.

  Outside, the rain started, pocking the window with hollow taps.

  20

  Rain sputtered against the window like buckshot. Logan groaned when he opened his eyes and saw the heavy sky hanging outside. The dense, suffocating gray. Just under his breastbone, at the very top of his stomach, the dime-sized hole was acting up. He could feel himself leaking out of it: his soul, his energy, every want and desire, every reason for living bleeding out with a low hiss like a pinprick in an inner tube. They’d find him like that: flat, a pelt in a broken-down bed.

  He felt so bad, what was the point? Of holding off any longer, one day at a time, saying no no no when all he wanted to do was say yes.
Get it over with. Feel the thrum in his veins, higher and higher, the power and the knowledge and everything sliding into place. Outside, cars roared down the streets, up one way and down the other. Horns honking, valets chirping for cabs in front of hotels, planes taking off and landing. All the people outside and not one he could call then and there, say how’re you doing, what’s going on. No one he wanted to see and who wanted to see him. No one to love. Not one. The women were gone, he’d blown that. His mother was dead. His kids had gone their separate ways.

  Yeah, he felt sorry for himself.

  One of the guys inside, a Muslim who was doing time for embezzlement, said that in his religion you didn’t have to believe. All you had to do was go through the motions: pray, fast, play by the rules. Morning, noon, and night, just go through the motions and pretty soon the belief would come, almost without your knowing it. So Logan got up. He took a leak in the sink, washed and shaved, got dressed. One thing they forgot to tell you was, once you get clean, there’s still life to deal with. Minor detail. It’s still here and you’re still here, the same loser you always were. He was sober and clean, but so what? He was still a thirty-nine-year-old ex-con who basically had no skills no interests no direction few friends no family who was working a shit job and who seemed to be thinking more and more of the old ways: scoring, using, selling.

  Logan combed his hair and pulled it back with a rubber band. He put on his jacket and a baseball cap and tried to push away the bad thoughts. At least a little way away, at least for now. First have breakfast, he told himself, then you can score. Easy does it, one thing at a time.

  He took the stairs down. The cinnamon-roll smell was strong today and he took that as a good sign, a signal that things might get better. Salem the manager was reading the paper in the little cage in the lobby and the big fat guy with bandaged feet was sitting in one of the armchairs watching the rain fall. The hole in Logan’s chest whistled like wind through a broken window, emptying him out. That same tender spot like someone pressing a fingertip just below the place where his ribs joined over his heart. It was an old feeling, he’d had it as long as he could remember. The sound of the house when the door closed and you were all alone. The buzz of fluorescent lights, the smell of warm bologna, the look of the dirty dawn when you couldn’t go to sleep. Ah, jeez. He pressed his hand over the spot to staunch the flow.