by Penny Wylder
After a tour and some final questions on Rebecca’s part, we say our goodbyes. As I retrieve my bag and portfolio from her car, she asks, “Are you sure you don’t need a ride back to my office?”
“No, thank you,” I say. “I’ve got a family appointment, and I’m going to meet them. I’ll have someone pick me up. Thank you so much for showing me this. It’s lovely.” It’s sort of a lie, but a small one. I just know I can’t leave here yet.
She waves as she gets into her car. “We’ll be in touch.”
“I look forward to hearing from you.”
I watch her car until it disappears, and then start walking. I don’t call a cab yet, because I’m going to find out why James is here building a house for the place interviewing me. It seems too convenient to be purely coincidence, but then again…I’ve heard of stranger things.
It takes me maybe fifteen minutes to get back to the house—and by that time I’m wishing I’d brought different shoes. I hear the sound of a drill from inside, and wonder if I should just ask him about it when I see him tomorrow—No, if I don’t ask him now it’ll just burrow into my brain and drive me crazy before we even get to dinner tomorrow. And if there’s something he’s been keeping from me, maybe tomorrow is off the table. I realize that it’s just late afternoon, and wonder if he came here straight from my house.
I push open the door and see the first floor is mainly completed, though the finishing touches haven’t been added yet. The sound of work is coming from the back of the house, and I wander through it, looking for him. The house is well done, with clean lines and lots of open space.
Finally, I find him. He’s on a ladder installing a heavy iron and glass light fixture to the ceiling. I don’t want to startle him when he’s working with something so heavy and breakable, so I hang back, waiting until I see that it’s secure.
Finally, he releases his hold.
“James,” I say, and just like I thought he might, he jumps while scrambling to see who said his name.
There’s confusion on his face that’s quickly replaced by a genuine smile. “Hey there. What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” I say. “My interview was with The Harrison Foundation.”
He hops off the ladder and comes over, all smiles. “That’s great! You didn’t mention who it was with. How’d it go?” He kisses me, and I find myself pulling away.
“I didn’t know that you were a contractor.”
He raises an eyebrow at me, and his voice is playful. “You thought I made a living as a pool boy?”
“Caretaker,” I say, blood rushing to my face as I realize how ridiculous I sound. “You do this on the side?”
“I do that on the side,” he says. He takes off the work gloves he’s wearing and stretches. “I think I mentioned I’m filling in for one of your guys this week. I took it for the extra money.”
A bunch of little things click into place all of a sudden. “That’s how you made all those great suggestions on my design. How you knew that they would work. Why didn’t you tell me what you really do?”
He shrugs. “It never came up. I mean the way we met…we talked about you and your fight with your dad and what you wanted to do with your life. And after that—”
“I didn’t ask.” A surge of shame washes through me. I assumed because he was doing the job of a caretaker that that’s all he did—that that’s all he was qualified for. I didn’t ask because I assumed that I already knew the answer. And there are a hundred assumptions that line up behind my assumed answer that led me to those conclusions.
I’m no better than that rich girl who tried to sleep with him just for the thrill, because I didn’t care to go any deeper.
“Vera?”
“I’m sorry.” Tears start burning my eyes. I try to blink them away. I turn away from James, even though there’s a zero percent chance he didn’t already see them.
“Hey,” he says, and I feel him come up behind me. “You’re okay. I knew we were going to talk on our date. Cover all the first date topics. We’re still going to, right?” He hugs me from behind. “You’ve had a crazy week. I don’t think less of you for not asking.”
“You probably should.”
“No,” he says, “I shouldn’t. We all come from a certain worldview. Some things are built into it. And we learn those limits, we grow as people.”
I close my eyes and relax against his chest. Take the lesson, move on. Open up. Try. Okay. Actually, I won’t have to try, because I know deep down that I will never forget the shame of this moment. I will never forget the kind of assumptions I made about him.
“Okay,” I say out loud.
“Good.”
“Actually,” I say, “do you think we could have our date tonight?”
He turns me around to face him. “Why?”
“Because I don’t think I can wait until tomorrow to ask all the questions I have now.”
A lazy smile drifts across his mouth. “There you go being all impatient again.”
“You bring it out in me.”
“Do I?” I notice his eyes are focused on my mouth.
I tilt my face up, giving him the hint. “You bring a lot of things out in me.”
He kisses me, soft, slow and deep. We don’t come up for air, and my head spins. I grip his arms to keep from falling down.
“You win,” he says, finally breaking away. “As long as you’re okay with stopping by my house quickly so I can change.”
“Fine with me.” Who am I to argue with a chance to watch him change? That’s a sight I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of.
I try not to sulk on the way to the mystery restaurant—James still won’t tell me where we’re going. He also made me stay in the car at his house. “Do you really think that if you come inside that we’re going to make it the restaurant?” he’d said. I mean…he had a point…but still.
I sigh audibly in my seat now, and James laughs. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” I say, putting on a mask of disappointment. “You denied me a chance to ogle you.”
“Don’t worry.” He puts his hand on my leg. “I plan on giving you many more chances.”
We pull up to a restaurant that borders the beach. It’s Italian, and I smile that he made a point to choose my favorite. We’re seated right away at a table overlooking the beach, and a soft breeze off the ocean plays through my hair. The late afternoon sun slants toward us and the beach is practically shimmering.
I glance over the menu, and even though I feel like I should be adventurous, I opt for comfort. I order the baked ziti, James orders fettuccini and a bottle of wine. Good wine.
“So,” James says when the waiter leaves, “you said you had a bunch of questions. Shoot.”
I grab a piece of bread from the basket and spread butter on it to buy myself some time. Now that I have the opportunity to ask, I’m not sure what to ask first. I guess I’ll start with the most immediate. “What do you really do?”
“I’m a contractor. Specifically I try to focus on low-income housing, but there’s not always work in that area. I take the contracts I can get and do my best to stay in that vein. The Harrison Foundation has given me several contracts. They’re a good company. It would be great if you worked for them.”
“I hope so,” I murmur. “But if that’s what you do, then why are you cleaning my pool?”
The waiter stops by with our wine and pours us each a glass. I savor the first sip while waiting for his answer.
“Contracts don’t last forever,” he says, “and when there are none to be had, I still need a job. So I take on occasional landscaping gigs. I haven’t had to do it in a while, but I have a friend named Mike whose dad is having surgery this week. He likes working for your dad—he gives nice bonuses. Mike didn’t want the company to give his place at your house to someone else, so I said I’d fill in for him while he’s with his dad.”
Wow, I think to myself, his willingness is amazing. And he’
s so kind.
“Mike also works on my crew when he can, so it’s the least he can do.”
“You have a crew?”
He takes a sip of wine and smiles. “If you can call them that. They’re mainly friends who are good with their hands. When I have extra money in the budget, I bring them on to help. Makes the job go faster, and they get paid.”
“That’s really nice of you,” I say, shoving another piece of bread in my mouth. His actions are staggering, really. I know that my father would never even consider doing something like that. There’s a twinge in my chest as I realize it. I need something else from him, something lighter, and the first words out of my mouth are, “How old are you?”
He laughs at the abrupt shift in topic. “I’m twenty-seven.”
“Do you have siblings?”
His face falls. “Maybe.”
My breath catches, and I know I’ve stumbled onto something serious without meaning to. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
James holds out a hand. “It’s okay. My family history is complicated.” He takes a deep sip of wine, and it seems like he’s bracing myself.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I say.
“I know,” he says, “but it’s a huge part of where I am today. So I want to.” He takes another sip of wine. “My mother…she had me young. She wasn’t on good terms with her parents to begin with, and they kicked her out when she got pregnant. She worked odd jobs here and there, but there aren’t many opportunities for underage pregnant women.”
I nod, my brows knitting together in sympathy. “Yeah…”
“In the end, the story is unfortunately pretty typical. She lived in shelters when she could, on the streets when she couldn’t. She did what she had to, and unfortunately that mostly meant prostitution.” He breaks off as the waiter brings us our food. I can’t help but feel that it would be inappropriate to eat right now.
“I don’t remember a lot of that,” he continues. “Honestly. I do remember living in a house with a big backyard. There was a guy my mom was with, and he let us stay with him for a while. I remember being happier than I’d ever been while I was there. But then that guy was out of the picture and we had to leave. It became the same old thing of a different guy every night. Not long after, the cops were called and I was in the system.”
“Foster care?” I ask.
“Yeah, I bounced around a bunch of different homes until I was sixteen. I probably wasn’t a great kid. I had a lot of anger issues and I could never seem to settle in one place for long. My last foster home was bad. I butted heads with the guy, and we were at each other’s throats. I think at some point he was probably a good foster parent, but it got lost along the way. Really, if he had a bunch of kids like me living with him I wouldn’t be surprised. He’d go off all the time…all he wanted was his check and for the kids to be quiet, and that wasn’t me.”
He stops and takes a bite of his pasta, but I still can’t eat.
“We fought all the time and it got bad. We both hit each other multiple times. He threatened to get me thrown in juvie if I did it again, so I left. It wasn’t the smartest move, but by that time I knew that the social workers almost always believe the foster parents over the kid.”
I take a sip of my wine, and nod my head. “Where did you go?”
“I didn’t have anywhere to go.”
My heart plummets. “You were homeless.”
“For a while, yeah.” He looks at me and frowns. “Vera, eat. It’s all right. Ancient history.”
“How did you get here, then?”
He smiles. “Construction. After fending for myself for awhile I overheard someone talking about a construction job that was hiring people off the street since they needed workers so badly. At that point I was scrawny as anything, but I showed up. I lied about my age, I lied about where I lived, and they gave me the job. One of the foremen, Antony, he knew I was full of shit but he gave me the job anyway. He told me I had one day to prove myself and if I didn’t, I was out.”
“Let me guess. He let you stay.”
James nods and we share a smile. I finally take a bite of my pasta, holding back groan because it’s so delicious, and I appreciate it even more as I listen to James’ voice while he continues with his story.
“Antony kept letting me work whenever I showed up, and I tried to do the best work I could so that I would always be welcome back. He finally got me to admit that I was homeless, and he let me move in with him, sleep on his couch. He trained me in construction, and I finally started to get my own jobs when I showed people the solutions I’d found for using less expensive material.”
“He sounds like an amazing person,” I said.
“He was. And when Antony died, he left me his house.”
“Wow,” I say. We take a moment to eat, and James feeds me a bite of his fettucine, which is without a doubt the best I’ve ever had.
“I owe everything to him,” he goes on, “and I knew that if I screwed up he would come back and kick my ass. So I changed my name—I never knew my mom’s and I always used the name of my foster family. London, California was the place where that house with the big yard was, and it was the last place I felt truly happy. That became my last name. Then I started my own one-man company with the jobs I already had, and slowly started to get more. I would work every possible odd job on the side until I could support myself. I swore that I would never be homeless again.” He takes another bite of his dinner. I watch as each chew softens the expression on his face. “But to answer your original question, I don’t know if I have siblings. Maybe. I’ll probably never know for sure.”
I can’t think of anything to say. What is the response to that? My own life has been so different that the contrast is shocking, and I’m immediately embarrassed by the ridiculous wealth that he sees every day at our house. “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” I say, hoping that it’s the right thing, or at least not the wrong thing. “And so young. You’re so strong. I wish…it had been different.”
He reaches across the table and takes my hand. “I don’t. Tough as it was, it made me who I am. And I can’t go back and change any of it, so staying angry or sad about it, or holding onto what hurt, doesn’t help anyone.”
“That’s a really great view.”
“Antony also sent me to therapy,” James says, chuckling. “But it’s true. I’m not sad about it. It led me to where I am. And I’m very happy where I am.” He squeezes my hand and I feel it in my gut. A deep and expansive feeling I’m not familiar with.
I drop my gaze into my pasta to avoid his eyes, both hoping and fearing I’ll see that same emotion clearly displayed on his face.
He squeezes my hand again. “Do I get questions too?”
“You already know a lot about me.”
“I don’t know why you want to build houses for poor people.”
After his story, I feel like the way I stumbled upon the concept pales in comparison. He has real life experience, and he knows what it’s like to have nothing. I’ve never wanted for anything in my life. “It’s going to seem silly.”
James sighs. “Vera, it’s not your fault you were born wealthy, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’d never resent you for it. We both have things to learn from the other, and both experiences are valid.”
“I was in Peru,” I say, finally. “Family trip, and we were sight-seeing. It was the first time that I had seen something like that, these people who lived in these patched-together structures, and barely had a roof over their heads. I didn’t understand why their houses looked like that. I was young, I’d only ever seen L.A., or Paris, or cities. My father’s buildings. I realized that that was all they had, and I never forgot it.”
“That doesn’t sound silly at all.” His gaze pierces into me, warm and supportive, and I feel the tightness in my chest start to loosen.
“My father pushed me to go into architecture. I knew it was because he wanted me to work for him. I told him from the start that
I didn’t want to do that, that I wanted to do something better. He didn’t listen, and now…here we are.”
He smiles, and I take the time to drink him in. I like every curve and angle of his face. I like where the light is captured, and the shadows form. I could lose myself in his eyes, dark as they are. I could spend a very long time looking at him. I’ve never been good at artistic drawing, but his face—oh god, his body—makes me want to try. He’s spent his entire adult life building houses, and now I know exactly where that body came from.
“You’re going to get the job,” he says. “You’re more than qualified, and you’re perfect for it. There’s no reason for you not to.”
“Thanks. I kind of have to get it, though. My week is up tomorrow.”
There’s something hanging in the air, and I can’t put a name to what it is. It’s unformed and hovering, waiting for either of us to make it real.
He’s braver than I am. “I like you, Vera. A lot.”
My stomach drops into a free fall, the kind of exhilarating sensation you get from going over the top of a roller coaster. He likes me. A lot. And I like him, so much more than a lot. I clear my throat and take a sip of wine. “You’re okay,” I say, winking.
He laughs, a huge belly laugh that draws looks from others in the restaurant. “Maybe we should keep our date for tomorrow night.”
“I think I’d like that.”
He settles the check and reaches for my hand. “Drive you home?” he asks.
“Not to your place?”
“And take you to bed on a first date?” He returns my wink. “What kind of gentleman would I be?”
12
James
Vera is quiet on the way back to her house, and I’d do anything to know what she’s thinking. But at the same time I think she might need some space. I’m sure that my story is a lot of information to absorb in a short amount of time. I know that I’d need some space if someone dropped that kind of personal history on me. But I’m glad it’s out in the open now, glad she knows the real me. I reach over and take her hand, and she weaves her fingers through mine.
