The despair of the apartment catches up with me, and I remember the day I found out I’d been rejected from Juilliard. I’d been holding out hope for my last possibility. It was the only school I hadn’t heard from yet. The letter was late, which I knew was sometimes a good sign. I’d been waiting all day for the mail to arrive and was distracting myself by applying a homemade beauty mask. I watched the clock on the microwave turn to 3:00 p.m. as the avocado-and-cucumber mixture stiffened uncomfortably on my cheeks. Mom was upstairs doing laundry. She’d worked the weekend and had the day off. I was beginning to think the mailman had forgotten us until I heard the sound of the next-door neighbor’s dogs barking. I peeked out the window and there he was, coming up the driveway, his bag possibly containing the key to my future. I froze, my heart pounding in my teeth. Seconds later a thick bundle dropped through the mail slot and landed on the kitchen floor.
I knelt down and tossed the Pennysaver, the bills, and the triplicate copies of the Pottery Barn catalog aside. There it was. The envelope I’d been waiting for, with the return address printed in the distinctive navy-blue font. My fingers were shaking as I ripped it open and pulled out the letter.
We regret to inform…Unfortunately…Highly competitive…Record number…Talented pool…Wish you luck…
A glop of mask dropped onto the paper, and a scream, high and pure, escaped my lungs.
“Becca?” Mom called from upstairs. “Are you okay?”
I sank to the tile floor. Mom’s footsteps pounded down the stairs as I sat up and reached for an Easter-themed dish towel.
“Jesus H. Christ, what is on your face?” Mom asked.
“A mask,” I said, and handed her the letter. I felt my face crumble again as I wiped the goop from it. “I’m not going to Juilliard.”
Mom put a hand to her heart and let out one of her quiet, breathy gasps. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
My mother’s sympathetic voice unleashed another wave of tears, and she pulled me in for a hug even though she was wearing an ivory-colored sweater. We sat like that, hugging, Mom stroking my back in even circles until I finally caught my breath.
“It’s official,” I said. “I didn’t get into college.”
“How did this happen?” Mom asked quietly. Then she pursed her lips and, sitting across from me, wiped the places I’d missed: my hairline, my nose, my jaw. She was focused and calm, but I could see her mind working like the gears of a clock.
“Mom?” She steadied my chin with her hand and wiped my eyebrows. “Say something.”
“I’m just…”
“Just what? Say it.”
“I’m not sure what we’re going to do.”
I wanted comfort and reassurance. I wanted her to tell me this was going to be fine, that it was perfectly normal or that we were going to turn it all around. I wanted her to say, “In five years, will you even remember this?” like she had that time Brooke Ashworth was cast as Ophelia when I knew I’d done a better job in the audition, or when I’d gotten a C on the chemistry final.
“What now?” I asked. “Mom?”
“I don’t know,” she said as if I weren’t her baby or her little girl, but a full-blown adult. Just like her. “I really don’t know.”
The whining fridge brings me back to the moment. I’m suddenly ravenous. Luckily, I bought that container of yogurt early this morning. The only problem is that I don’t have a spoon. I fashion the lid of the yogurt container into a scooping mechanism that looks promising. With no chairs, I sit on the floor under the window and try to eat, but it’s not working. I wash my hands with the travel-size Dove, abandon the yogurt lid, and use my fingers to eat it over the sink. I’m an animal, I think, a human-animal. I’m glad that no one can see me until I notice that a lady in the apartment across the street, an old woman in a bathrobe, is watching me. She tilts her head in what I think is curiosity.
“I don’t have a spoon,” I say aloud even though I know she can’t hear me. I look at her and shrug in an exaggerated way. She shuts her curtains. Raj told me he lived in number seven if I needed anything. Well, I think to myself as I wipe the yogurt off my face, I do need something. A fucking spoon.
“Hi!” I say when he opens the door, a coffee mug in hand. I could be wrong, but his eyes light up a little when they see me. “Come on in,” he says. “Becky, right?”
“Becca,” I say, stepping inside. “I’m actually wondering if I could borrow a spoon?”
His apartment is spare and well organized. It has the same basic setup as mine, but actually looks like someone’s home. A neat someone’s home. His bed is made with crisp, folded corners. No clothes on the floor. No piles of papers. I bet I could open any drawer or cupboard at random and everything inside of it would be lined up, purposefully arranged, just so. There are several bookshelves, one dedicated entirely to titles about movies, and another filled with books about everything, from architecture to American history to classic literature. One corner of the room, with a large L-shaped desk and a huge, pristine desktop computer, is clearly what he uses as his office.
“Your place is really nice,” I say.
“Thanks,” he says.
I smell fresh coffee, and my mouth begins to water. My hunger had hardly been satiated by the yogurt. I have to stop myself from running toward the scent.
“You, ah, want some coffee?” he asks, one corner of his mouth turning up in a grin.
“Was I that obvious?” I pull my hair back into a ponytail and tie it with the elastic that’s been around my wrist all night, leaving a red indentation.
“Let’s just say that you look like you could use some coffee. I only made enough for one, but I can brew another pot,” Raj says, leading me to the kitchen nook, where two chairs are tucked under a little table. He hands me a plate with a warm piece of buttered toast on it.
“Thanks,” I say, and take a seat at his kitchen table. I eat the delicious toast in four bites as he scoops coffee into the filter. There are three screenwriting books on the table, all of them marked with color-coded Post-its. “So, you’re a screenwriter?”
“I’m more of a director, but I write some, too. And there’s this screenwriting competition at my school that’s coming up. The winner gets a hundred-thousand-dollar grant to make a movie.”
“A hundred thousand dollars? Wow.”
“I know. And I have this idea that I think is promising, and I really want to win, but there’s not a lot of time.”
“When’s the deadline?”
“December first,” Raj says. “Coming right up.”
“That’s ages away,” I say, thinking of my own promised college deadlines. “You can totally make that.”
“It takes a while to construct a really good screenplay. It’s all in the planning,” he says.
“What do you have to plan?” I ask. I know a lot about putting on a play because I’ve been in so many, but I guess I’ve never thought that much about what goes into making a movie. They just seem to tumble into the world fully formed, though of course I realize that’s not how it works. “Do you outline, like a term paper?”
“Definitely. But I’m nowhere near the outlining phase.” He takes in my confused expression. “I’d like to have a logline by the end of the day and a beat sheet by the end of the week.”
I don’t really know what any of these things are, but I nod as if I do.
“You’ll do it,” I say. “I believe in you.”
“Thanks,” he says. The coffee pot sputters, indicating it’s ready. He smiles as he pours me a mug. “Anyway, how was that nap?”
“I don’t have a bed yet, so I was on the floor…so, not great.”
“No bed? No spoon?”
“No nothing,” I say. As he hands me the coffee, I feel for the briefest second like I might cry. I bring it to my lips and after a few sips, the hot liquid seems to zip through my veins. I’ve never been a coffee drinker, but I become one in this moment. “Oh my God. This is so good! This is like the be
st coffee I’ve ever had.”
He smiles again, this time with his whole face.
“What?” I ask.
“You’re just very enthusiastic. Where are you from?”
“Boston,” I say as he butters more toast and hands me another piece. I devour it. He laughs. “What now?”
“Nothing,” he says, smiling and shaking his head.
“Do you know how to get to Ikea?” I ask.
“In Burbank?”
“I guess?”
“Take Western to Los Feliz to the Five.”
“Can I do that on a bus?”
“You’re going to take a bus to Burbank?”
“Is that so crazy?” I ask. “I could take a cab back.”
“A bus from Hollywood to Burbank?” he says, topping off my coffee. “Actually. Yes. It’s crazy. You need a car.”
“That’s what everyone keeps saying, but there have to be people who live here without a car. I mean, what am I supposed to do? I can’t buy a car until I get a job. And I can’t get a job until I stop living like a human-animal. And I can’t stop living like a human-animal until I get some furniture and a spoon. But I can’t get furniture until I get a car. But I don’t drive. So that puts me back at the beginning.”
“It really is a vicious cycle, isn’t it?” Raj says.
“Yes, it is,” I say. “I used a sweatshirt stuffed inside another sweatshirt as a pillow last night.”
“Tell you what. I don’t have to be at work until four. I’ll take you to Ikea.”
“Really? You’d do that for me?”
“For the most enthusiastic human-animal I’ve ever met? Sure,” he says, grabbing his keys off a hook.
“What about your logline?”
He hesitates. “Eh, I’ll do it tonight.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, but we have to leave now so we can beat the traffic home. Can you do that?”
“Let me check,” I say, and scroll through an imaginary calendar in my mind. “What do you know? I’m free.”
RAJ’S DENTED WHITE COROLLA is parked five blocks away, uphill—the closest parking spot he could find last night—on a narrow street that feels like a totally different neighborhood. The homes are enormous, with big gates surrounding the front yards and driveways with expensive cars parked in them. And the hill is so steep that Raj and I are both breathing pretty heavily by the time he spots his car. When he points it out, I realize that I’m about to do what I’ve been cautioned not to do since kindergarten—get in a car with a near stranger. In fact, he’s basically at the exact position on the stranger spectrum to make him a likely predator. Someone I know but not that well.
It’s fine, I tell myself, remembering that at no point has he made me feel uncomfortable. But still, as he’s unlocking the door, I snap a picture of his license plate and text it to my mom—just in case, on the very, very off chance, he kidnaps me. There is nothing about Raj that would indicate he is dangerous, but I’ve read enough shared statuses on Facebook warning us young women to always be careful to take precaution. At least if I disappear, Mom will have a clue.
“Everything cool?” Raj asks as I scan the inside of his car for chloroform and rags.
“Oh yeah,” I say.
He laughs a little, releases the parking break, does a sixteen-point turn on the narrow road, and we head down the hill.
“Where do you work?” I ask.
“Hotel Uno. Downtown. Very hip,” Raj says.
“Cool,” I say.
I realize pretty quickly how ridiculous it would have been for me to take the bus. Getting around LA is nothing like getting around Boston, where everything feels pretty close together and a ride on the T gets you where you need to be without too many scenery changes.
This is a completely different experience. Raj and I travel past a huge park with a mountain and a zoo inside of it; drive down a wide boulevard flanked by enormous pastel apartment buildings with names like the Villa Pacifica, Fountain Manor, and Tropical Estates; hop on a freeway that I swear has ten lanes; and get stuck in standstill traffic for a solid fifteen minutes before narrowly avoiding death by collision with a cement mixer, until we exit to a land of strip malls.
“I think it might have taken me half the day to figure out how to get here using public transportation,” I say.
“So we have two hours here,” Raj says, as we pull into a parking spot. The sun is a force. I’m sweating within seconds of emerging from the car.
“Is it just me, or is it ten degrees hotter than when we left?” I ask.
“It’s definitely hotter. Always is. We’re in the valley now.”
We step into the cool of the store, and I lead us to the frozen yogurt, ordering us each a cone.
“So, we’re in a different ecosystem?”
“A different microclimate,” Raj says, blushing for a second. “I wanted to be a meteorologist in fifth grade.”
“Aw, really?” I was so silly to think he’d kidnap me! The woman behind the counter hands me two cones.
“Well, here’s a treat from the north,” I say. The frozen yogurt is sweet and pleasing after the hot and windy drive. “A taste of Sweden.” We eat in silence for an awkward minute.
“Okay,” I say, as I pop the last of the frozen yogurt cone in my mouth. I pull my list out of my pocket. Chair. Table. Nightstand. Curtains. Shower curtain. Silverware. Plates. Bowls. Pots. Pans. Towels. Trash can. Laundry basket. Sheets. Blanket. Pillow.
“So I’ve got a budget of two hundred and fifty dollars.” I’m going through the four thousand dollars I brought with me—years of babysitting earnings, my summer as a camp counselor, birthday money, and a little extra help from Mom—much faster than I expected. I’m already down to twenty-five hundred. The expenses included first month’s rent and a security deposit for my apartment, but still. I only got here a few days ago and I’m almost halfway through my entire savings.
“Two hundred and fifty bucks? To furnish your whole apartment?” Raj asks.
“The next thing on my to-do list is to get a job,” I say. “But I can’t—”
“I know. The vicious cycle,” he says, yanking a cart free from the shopping cart snake. “It’s okay. Let’s do this. We’ll start with the kitchen. The most important room in the house.”
“Or corner of the studio apartment,” I say, heading toward a display of colorful teakettles.
An hour and a half later, when the cart is fully loaded with the least expensive, most essential household items for one person to survive in this world, and after finding ourselves in a maze of lighting fixtures and bathroom accessories and rugs we couldn’t seem to escape, Raj and I take a break in a staged living room. He sits on a sofa and I recline in an armchair, both of us exhausted in that shop-till-you-drop way. We stare at an un-plugged-in TV screen.
“I can’t believe we made it out of there alive,” I say, putting my feet up on the ottoman. “I was beginning to think we were trapped with those laundry baskets for the rest of our lives.”
“It was all you,” Raj says. “You were the one who took the left by the rugs. How did we not notice that door before?”
“The way out was in front of us the whole time, but we refused to see it,” I say.
“Classic human-animal behavior,” Raj says, and I laugh, relaxing back into the chair. “Have you heard about the Ikea effect?” I shake my head no. “It’s the idea that something actually means more to you if you build it, or I guess assemble it yourself. So if you buy a table and put it together, you’ll value it more than if someone just gives you the table. Someone at Harvard Business School came up with it.”
“Makes sense,” I say.
“I’m sorry, but I have to ask. How old are you?” Raj rests an arm on the back of the sofa.
“Eighteen,” I say. “Just turned.”
I stroke the soft blue blanket artfully displayed on the arm of the chair. I wish I could afford it. It reminds me of the blanket that lies folded at the bottom
of Alex’s bed. But it’s $39.99. Out of my budget. I smooth it over my lap. It’s so comfortable in this fake living room. I’m the most comfortable I’ve been since I arrived in California. Part of me wishes that I could just move in here, to the fractured home spaces of this Ikea store, where the beds are soft and the food is warm and cheap. Would they really notice me, curling up in one of the bunk beds at night?
“There’s got to be a story here,” Raj says. “You didn’t want to go to college?”
“I’m taking a year off to give acting a try.” This is not entirely a lie, even though the knot in my gut reminds me that it’s not really the truth either. There’s no reason my new LA friends need to know about my epic failure. Besides, everyone else comes to Los Angeles to start fresh. “I figured, what better time than now. You’re only eighteen once, right?”
“That’s bold,” Raj says. “Insanely bold.” He tilts his head and studies me. “But I get it, I think. You seem like an actress.”
“Really?” I ask, not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. An Ikea employee restocks a throw pillow display nearby, intruding on the illusion that Raj and I are relaxing in my modern and brightly decorated living room.
“No, no,” Raj says. “I just mean that…” He pauses, regarding me with an open expression as he searches for the right words. Our eyes meet in a moment of unexpected intimacy. “You’re very expressive. That’s all.”
“Thanks,” I say, looking away. “What about you? How old are you?”
Hello, Sunshine Page 3
