CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Lily thought she had misheard her father again. “Danny? Danny Fitzpatrick?”
“That’s right. I thought you knew he was here.”
“What? No.” Lily looked around the room and noticed an orange suitcase next to the guest bedroom doorway. Upon closer inspection, she could see the Broncos logo on the luggage, along with a prominent #16 in blue lettering.
“He came in yesterday to help me move in. He’s been incredibly helpful, showing me around town, helping me get acquainted. He knows this city like the back of his hand. I guess he used to spend his off-seasons out here. It was kind of a last minute thing, but he’s not just here to help me. He had some press stuff he had to go and take care of. He should be back any minute now.”
“He’s staying here?”
“Yeah. I hope that’s alright with you. We still need to figure out sleeping arrangements, but he needed a place to stay for the weekend, and I figured you wouldn’t mind.”
The trip couldn’t have been over soon enough. In case spending the weekend with Ming, shuffling around with her eyes on the floor, occasionally sneaking peeks around the doorway, and her father, smiling and pretending like none of this Los Angeles nonsense was bat-shit crazy, now Lily had to awkwardly face Danny after having just rejected him a few days earlier.
“You know,” Kilgore continued, “as soon as Danny’s gone, that bedroom’s all yours, if you want it. Until yesterday, Ming was just using it to store extra sheets and pillows.”
The thought made Lily shudder, but somehow she managed to smile. All she could think of was Aaron’s beautiful home in Burns Bog—quiet, spacious, warm, inviting, with scents of rich cedar and not strange sea creatures. And all she could hear was the clock ticking on the wall, slowly counting down the seconds before she was back in Burns Bog, back with Aaron, away from the noise, the smells, and the awkward tension.
Danny entered, dressed sharp in a pressed suit and tie, with a shimmering gold watch around his wrist. His face lit up when his eyes found Lily, sitting across the room, alone. “You made it,” he said with a beaming smile. He didn’t look to be too uncomfortable with the situation. Maybe he’d completely blocked the rejected kiss from his mind, Lily thought. “Welcome to LA.” He opened his arms for a hug.
Lily stood up and accepted the embrace. “Hi, Danny,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I tried calling you, but the phone kept going to voicemail. I left a message and everything.” Lily hadn’t checked the house phone before she left, only returning home from Aaron’s briefly, to pack a bag. “Something smells delicious,” he said.
Lily strongly disagreed, but she kept her mouth shut—dinner was at the bottom of her concern-list. She was still trying to figure out why Danny was in Los Angeles, whether he was genuinely there to help Kilgore and do interviews, or if he had another agenda. She was still struggling to understand what her father and Danny had in common, why, of all the people in Burns Bog, of all of his old high school buddies, of all of the diehard sports fans, he connected with Kilgore, an old man who hated sports. She couldn’t figure it out, so she asked. “Why are you here, Danny?”
“To help your father with his move. Well, that and I was asked to do a guest spot on Good Day LA. That ran this morning.”
“Where’s all of my dad’s stuff?”
“Most of it’s in the garage. Ming doesn’t have a car and your dad doesn’t mind parking on the street, so we set him up a bit of a man-cave down there.”
“So he’s all moved in?”
“Yeah, pretty much. He still needs to put his books in his shelf down there, but he said he wanted to do that himself later. He says he has a system,” Danny said, kneeling down to remove his shoes. “How was the flight in?”
“It was fine—but Danny, why are you here? I mean, not to be rude or anything, but why not go and stay in some fancy hotel downtown? Wouldn’t you rather be staying in some penthouse suite overlooking Hollywood or something?”
“I thought about it, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what your friend said, Fred Whatever, the investor guy, and I figured it can’t hurt to save a buck or two here and there, you know?” He walked over to the guestroom and took off his suit jacket, hanging it on the hook behind the door. “If it makes you uncomfortable, I can go check into a hotel. I don’t mind.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lily said, following Danny to the guestroom, but getting distracted by the apartment’s many unfamiliarities along the way—old family pictures of Chinese strangers and cards written in a foreign language. She picked up a photo of Ming standing with an elderly couple, likely Ming’s parents, and another couple not much younger than Ming, maybe some brother or a sister and his or her significant other. Lily tried to imagine the same photo with her father next to Ming, but such a thought was too surreal to imagine seriously.
“You can take the bed. I’ll make a little nest on the floor,” Danny lowered his voice and stepped up next to Lily. “I would offer to sleep on the couch, but there’s none here. How weird is that?” He laughed, then lowered his voice even further. “Oh, and by the way, don’t eat the stuff she calls Xiao Gourou. I don’t know what the heck it is, and I don’t think I want to know either. I asked last night, and she was silent for a while, then she said, I don’t think there’s an English translation. Between you and me, I think there’s a fine translation, but she knows it’ll freak us the heck out.”
Ulterior motive or not, there was a relief in having someone around who recognized the absurdity of all this nonsense.
Lily watched as Danny folded up a blanket and placed it down to act as a mattress between him and the old hardwood floor. Brave, she thought. She wouldn’t have slept on that floor. There were cracks in the floorboards and a few ants already crawling around on the walls. Though she did feel more comfortable with the idea of Danny sleeping on the ground, the queen-sized bed was more than enough for two people to share. It was only for a couple of nights, after all. “Don’t sleep on the floor. We can split the bed,” she said.
“I really don’t mind.”
“Seriously, don’t sleep on the floor. You don’t know what kind of bugs crawl around here at night.”
“Good point. I wouldn’t want to get eaten by an Xiao Gourou.”
Lily laughed. It was nice to laugh. Laughing made it easier to bear, made her feel sane.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Ming didn’t speak much during dinner, only when prompted to by Kilgore. And even then, she kept her mouth shut and her eyes down. “Dinner’s great, Sweetie.” She looked up at Kilgore and nodded.
“Where did you learn to cook, Miss Wong?” Danny asked.
“China,” Ming said, looking up just briefly at Danny. She had a thick accent, but her English wasn’t terrible. She seemed to understand everything, even if she was just replying with smiles and nods.
“Ming moved here from Hong Kong when she was your age, Lily.”
“Oh, really?” Lily replied, trying to force some enthusiasm. “Do you like it here?”
Ming remained still and silent, staring down at her plate as if she didn’t hear the question. It was clear she wasn’t comfortable with Lily being in her home. For what reason, Lily had no idea, but she could think of plenty. In her own way, Ming was being plunged into a new life; surrounded by new people with a different culture than she was used to. And the possibility must, at some point, have occurred to her that she was just a convenient replacement for Lily’s mother.
The long silences between short conversations were uncomfortable, but Lily preferred the silences to Kilgore forcing her and Ming into conversation. “Tell Lily about your job, Sweetie.” Ming looked up at Kilgore with eyes that screamed, Why are you doing this to me? And then she looked back down at her plate.
“I work in PR for the Dodgers,” she said simply.
Lily looked down at her food and tried to figure out what was supposed to be eaten and what was some creatu
re’s bones. She pushed the food around on her plate, hoping to uncover an obvious answer, but all she could find was just as questionably edible as the layer above it.
Ming leaned over close to Kilgore and cupped her hand against his ear. She thought she was inaudible, but Lily could hear her very clearly say, “She’s a spoiled brat.” And judging by the wide-eyed look on Danny’s face, and the quick glance he gave towards Lily, he heard the same thing.
Lily hoped her father would defend her, but instead, he just smiled, hoped, and pretended Ming’s words never made it past his ears.
Lily wasn’t angry. All she could think was, I wish Aaron was here—a phrase that repeated in her head so many times, she nearly said it aloud when Kilgore said, “Have you thought any more about what kind of career you might want to pursue?”
Lily forced a smile. She looked up and caught Ming staring at her plate and scowling. It took a great deal of willpower not to say she wanted to work for Deportation at the Immigration Department. “I’m not sure yet,” she said instead.
Ming leaned over again, cupped her hand to Kilgore’s ear, and whispered, “You don’t give her your money, do you?”
A career in immigration wasn’t sounding so bad. Lily fought back the urge to tell her father he was making an enormous mistake with his life. The smell of the food was making her nauseous. “I think I’m still a bit motion sick from the plane. I might go lie in bed.” So she did. It was early, and the California sky was still a bright orange.
Lily stared up at the ceiling of Ming’s guestroom for an hour, not actually tired enough to go to sleep, but happy enough to be avoiding Ming and her possibly brainwashed father. After two hours, the sky was still the same glowing-orange colour, and Lily realized it was just what Los Angeles nights looked like, the thick layer of pollution glowing in the constant city light. The boredom eventually became too much to handle, so she dug her laptop out from her bag to check her e-mails. There was an e-mail from Aaron.
Hi Lily. I hope you enjoy your stay in the armpit of America,
Attractions include: rivers of homeless urine in the alleyways, sex-starved Cholos, and the famous car-alarm symphony, with shows every hour of every day.
I was going to call, but I can’t get reception for more than fifteen damn seconds here. I think they’re still working on the lines. Anyway…
I imagine things are pretty weird there, with your dad and his mail-order wife or whatever. Things are weird here, too, not being able to play my guitar for five seconds without getting a headache. Not that I tried…
Attached to this e-mail is that song I recorded the other day, the one you thought was about you. Hopefully it’ll cheer you up, even though it’s not about you or anyone, it’s just a song... Okay, so it’s kind of about you, get over yourself.
Don’t spend too long in that festering city. It’ll get to you soon enough. It gets to everyone.
Aaron
Lily wrote an e-mail back, telling Aaron about Ming and the apartment and Danny’s unannounced arrival, and how all of her father’s things had been shoved into some little garage. Before she pressed send, she deleted the bit about Danny. She knew Aaron didn’t like Danny, and that mentioning him would just get Aaron all worried that there was something going on between her and the ex-football star. There was no sense in getting him worried over nothing.
Lily was listening to Siren of the Bog when Danny came into the bedroom. She turned it down quickly.
“You’re up,” he said quietly after closing the door.
“Shocking, right?” she said.
“Your dad and Ming just went to sleep.”
Lily looked over at the clock. It wasn’t even 7:30PM. “Seriously?”
“I guess Ming needs to be up early to Skype with her family in China.”
Lily fell onto her back and looked up at the ceiling, which was stained a brownish-yellow colour by God-knows what. “This place is a dump.”
“This is actually a pretty nice apartment for central LA,” Danny said. “You want to see dumps, we can go down to Venice Beach.”
Lily was actually referring to the city, but she decided to keep that to herself.
“Actually, yeah. Let’s go,” he said.
“Go where?”
“To Venice Beach. C’mon. It’ll be fun.”
Lily sat up and stared at Danny with narrowed eyes. “You just said it was dumpier than this place.”
“It is, but it’s a lot of fun. It’d be good for you to get out of the house, here. And hey, there you can bitch about Ming all you want.” Sold. Lily was up and ready to go faster than Danny could change his watch. They didn’t have to walk far from the fourplex to find a free cab.
Venice Beach was exactly what Aaron described, a dump, but a lot of fun. The beach was littered with homeless people and the houses looked like they were rotting into the ground. And despite the place being strangely silent and nearly-desolate, it was somehow vibrant, colourful, alive. Seemingly out from nowhere, a man walked by, casually juggling balls of fire. Lights from distant yachts glistened off the water, and the laughter and cheering of the onboard partiers could be occasionally heard from the boardwalk. In the distance stood a pulsing, colourful Ferris wheel.
“When do you fly home?” Danny asked.
“Wednesday night, you?”
“Same. Delta?”
“Yep.”
“I bet we’re on the same flight.”
Lily smiled and looked around the neighbourhood. Behind the line of shops was a sea of shack-like homes, like a third-world country plopped right in the center of a thriving American metropolis. “So who even lives in this place?” Lily asked.
“Some poor people, a bunch of hippies, and lots of artists.”
“Why don’t they move? If they’re so poor, why not go somewhere more affordable? Or somewhere quieter, more peaceful—where they don’t have to work three jobs just to pay rent for some crappy apartment.”
“Some people like living like this. They like that they can always hear something happening, or that the lights are always shining. They like being woken up by a car alarm at three in the morning, and knowing that there are a hundred other people on their block that were woken up by the same alarm.”
“Why would anybody want that?”
“I dunno,” Danny said, shrugging his shoulders. “I like it here. I like all the crazy people and the car alarms. I guess it’s just nice to know you aren’t alone, that you aren’t as important as you think. I think that freaks some people out, but it’s kind of relaxing if you think about it, to know that life’s not a big deal, that there are millions of other people with their own little problems. When I was a kid, growing up in Burns Bog, sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night and there would be no sounds and it was pitch-black and I would get this anxiety. I don’t know if I can put it into words, but I just felt like there was only me, and I had to do something, or it was all a big waste.”
“What was a big waste?”
“I dunno, life, I guess. I’d train for ten hours a day and then go home to bed, and it would be quiet, and I would lie awake, listening to the clock ticking. And I’d think, each of those ticks is being wasted on me. I shouldn’t be laying here, doing nothing. So the next day I would train even harder, even longer, and I’d get home, exhausted, and I’d hear that ticking. Later, when I was signed to the Seahawks, living in Seattle in an apartment that overlooked thousands of little apartment windows, I realized I wasn’t so important. I could have worked my ass off everyday to be the best in the world, won the Seahawks the Super Bowl, and all of those little people in those little apartment windows would have just gone on with their lives as usual, worrying about all their own little problems.”
“But you did work your butt off, and you did win the Super Bowl.”
Danny laughed and then looked down at his feet. “I was on the team that won the Super Bowl. I didn’t win the Super Bowl. And I never worked my ass off, not after I got signed, anyway.
I played less than a minute total in the Super Bowl—the lowest field time of any player in the game, Carolina players included.”
“Well, I bet you could have scored the winning goal if they played you more.”
Danny laughed. “No, they were right not to play me, Lily. But it’s fine, I was happy just being there to support the team, my friends. Just like you’re here, supporting your dad, keeping your mouth shut when all you want to do is scream in his girlfriend’s face.”
“Fiancée… And is it that obvious?” Lily’s cheeks became rosy.
“You’re staying surprisingly calm.” He laughed. “Calmer than I would be if I were you.”
“I just don’t understand why he’s doing this. He used to be so happy in Burns Bog, so excited to move to Florida. And now, he’s not in great shape and let’s face it, he doesn’t have many years left, so why does he want to spend it with… with her?”
“She’s not so bad when you get to know her. Your dad seems to like her cooking, and you really do get used to the feet-dragging after a while.” Danny had a big, infectious smirk on his face. “As for those remarks… I dunno, maybe it’s a cultural thing.”
Lily suddenly remembered the swing that sat on their lot in Burns Bog. Her parents used to sit out on that swing and hold hands, watching sunsets during the evenings, and stargazing at night. “He calls her Sweetie. That’s what he called my mom,” Lily said.
“I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but I think your dad’s afraid of being alone. Your dad was telling me that Ming lost her husband years ago. She’s probably afraid of being alone, too. They’re both trying to fill holes that probably can’t be filled. But I think, in a weird way, they’re actually filling them, if that makes any sense. And your dad appreciates that you’re letting him have it.”
“Does he though? Or does he secretly want me to pull him out of this mess and he’s just afraid to say it?”
“He actually does. He told me after dinner.”
LIMELIGHT LOVE: A Small Town Rock Star Romance Page 13
