Christmas in LA

by Herb Scribner

  “What?” he asks.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “I told you. Starbucks.”

  I turn around to confirm my already growing suspicion of guilt. The windows are open, the sky glows white-blue. Everything out there reminds me of a snow globe. Just buildings and props that are layered over with thick frosty flakes. Did he really brave the elements to grab this cup of coffee?

  No way. He’s still wearing his t-shirt and pajama pants. He doesn’t have an ounce of sweat on his body. Nor does he have the grizzled look of labor. He’s tidy and put together. This might as well be a cup of warm milk given to him by his mother before bedtime.

  “It’s snowing like crazy. No way you went out and got it.”

  “Fine,” he says, smiling. “I had Chives get it.”

  “Chives? You sent Chives out into the snow to get Starbucks.”

  He rolls his eyes. “That’s what he gets paid for.”

  “Wow. I didn’t realize you were such a jerk.”

  “I’m a jerk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you sent your butler out into the cold weather to bring you and me coffee?”

  He picks up one of the two remaining cups. “I got two for you and two for me, so that we have more cups throughout the day. I didn’t just get you one.”

  “Wow. That makes it so much better.”

  “If you don’t like how I do things, then you don’t have to stay here.”

  “Wow!” I say, clapping my hands together. I’m only doing that because I rather smack him across the face. “You’re one of a kind you know that. Spoiled, emotionally inept. I can’t deal with you. If I had any other place to go, trust me, I’d be out of here.”

  “Well, don’t do me any favors.”

  What is this guy’s problem? I’m his guest, joining him for a few days in his apartment. And yet he’s treating me so rudely? I’ve met people for a lot less time who are levels more interesting and kind to me than this guy. And trust me, those people tend to have a lot less money than this guy.

  “You’re such an asshole,” I say, ripping the other coffee cup from the container.

  “Looks like you’re taking the coffee.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t want Chives to feel like he did all of that for nothing.”

  I’ve had enough of looking at this rich guy’s face. His smug grin, his dashing good looks and his unhelpful attitude. What kind of person sends their butler out into the cold weather to grab coffee? Who acts with such a snotty attitude when someone confronts him about it? There are so many problems I have with this guy that I can’t stand to look at him.

  “So what? You’re just going to hide in your room then?”

  “Yep!”

  And that’s what I do. I stamp my way through his apartment until I reach my room and his office. I slam the door shut and jump onto my bed.

  The coffee tastes a little more bitter now.

  12,

  You don’t really know what boredom is until you experience it.

  It’s true that we’ve all experienced boredom at one time or another, stuck in a mindless sludge of molasses, the world dragging us onward even as our minds race with thoughts, desires and wants. We just want to experience something different, something new, something more invigorating than normal. But boredom has other plans. It throws us onto a mundane and flat plane of existence. Nothing inspires, nothing encourages, nothing intensifies. We’re sitting in a chair while the TV plays fuzzy static. We’re driving in a car toward the dentist’s office for a routine cleaning. We’re stuck at work in the middle of the week and are already ahead of the week’s amount of duties.

  But we always desire more. We always want more. That’s just what humans do. We crave something special.

  I swear. I’ve been bored more times than I can remember. And for really stupid things. Waiting in line at Starbucks, trying to find the next trendy Netflix show to binge, sitting alone at a restaurant for dinner.

  Boredom creeps up on you like a spider. Its long, stretching fingers casting a web of annoyance and flatness over your entire life.

  Anyway, the only reason I’m talking about this is because I’m sitting in this room, on this bed, one empty coffee cup and one full cup sitting on the nightstand, stuck in the minefield of boredom. I napped for an unknown amount of time — maybe an hour or two. But that’s all. There’s literally nothing I can do that wouldn’t betray my own thoughts and feelings.

  I’ve already aligned to the fact that I don’t want to embrace anything this Ryan guy stands for. That means not watching his television, not booting up the Apple TV, not connecting to the Wi-Fi that permeates through his apartment. I’m just going to lay on his guest room bed, think through my thoughts and hopefully survive until it’s time to leave.

  Thoughts race and race again in my mind. What can I do to survive this torture? Well, I could drink my other cup of coffee. That wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Or I could count the amount of objects in the room and then play my own version of iSpy or something, just to pass the time.

  But even that seems monotonous. These aren’t fun activities in the slightest. They’re horrifyingly dreadful and mundane.

  Boredom, in other words.

  The clock ticks from the other side of the room. You know you’re bored when you finally make out the sounds of a ticking clock. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Counting down to the end of our lives. Funny how clocks work that way. They’re nothing but senseless countdowns to death.

  Ugh. I swear I’m going to die here if I don’t do something fun and quick.

  I roll over onto my left. Gas erupts in my gut and suddenly I have to poo. Oh, great. Nothing like going to the bathroom in someone else’s apartment. The true struggle.

  I open the door to the guest room and step out into the hall. The bathroom door sits all the way at the other end, so I’m definitely risking the chance of seeing him out there, if he hasn’t moved from the kitchen.

  I walk close to the end of the hallway and flip on the light to the bathroom. Ryan stands alone in the kitchen, swirling his fork around in a Tupperware bowl. He’s still dressed in his plain pajamas, his hair messy and mishap. He must sense my attention because he picks his head up from the bowl and nods at me.

  “Making tuna for lunch, if you want some.”

  I smile. “Sure. I’ll be right out.”

  Great. Now the attentions on me. He’ll probably make fun of me for being in the bathroom for so long.

  When I’ve finished relieving myself, I come out and find a plate with a tuna sandwich, a pile of chips and a ice cold microbrew sitting at the table. I check back and forth to find Ryan. The air is flat and empty. Nothing in the apartment stirred. Did he just head off to parts unknown?

  I sit down at the table. Before I put any hands on the sandwich, I notice his iPad is right next to the plate, the screen open to a white background with black text.

  “Had to run out for a minute. Business stuff. Made you lunch. Passcode is 0613. Enjoy.”

  I push his iPad away. Thanks for the offer buddy, but I’m not using this. It’s tainted with your richness.

  Then again, he did make me lunch. I’m not going to deny myself the luxury of food. I take a bite into my sandwich and it’s delicious.

  Baby steps.

  13.

  Okay so I cave in and take the iPad. Why wouldn’t I? It’s free entertainment. And let’s be real for a second here: Not taking advantage of all the cool tech tools and free food this guy has only makes me less of a guest. Clearly he doesn’t want me to be a guest here. Isn’t that what he said? He didn’t want me to hang around and he asked me to leave.

  By staying, and by embracing everything he’s got here, I’m doing the opposite of what he wants.

  So I lay down in my guest room bed and flip through the iPad with the second cup of coffee in my hands. The world hasn’t really moved on since I traveled here and found myself stuck in a modern day cabin in
the woods. More like a cabin in a steel jungle.

  The news is pretty loud about the snow in Los Angeles. It’s your typical bad weather coverage. Stories of heroism flood the front pages, as people marvel at others who help their neighbors in the cold weather. I always roll my eyes at this. Where are the Good Samaritans when I have a flat tire on the side of the road?

  And then there are all the sad stories. No deaths yet, which is good, but a few injuries and crashes. Power is out in pockets of California.

  Celebrities are tweeting about it — #PrayForLA, #ChristmasInLA — and athletes are joking about it. They’ve already moved the Christmas Day NBA game in Los Angeles to Oklahoma City. Oh, and a few conspiracy theorists are talking about how this is going to be the end of the world. Stories like that always pop up during bad weather news cycles.

  I sift through my social media accounts. A rainstorm of red notification bubbles are dotted across my screen. I share a status about how I’m fine and being well taken care of, courtesy of the airport. That’s not exactly a lie. I don’t want to post anything to revealing about my location in case Derek reads his own social media news feed.

  The dive into the app world takes me through the rest of the day. Funny how computers can just suck away the clock like that. I hate how that happens. You think you have all this time to kill, and then you lose almost half of it just by messing around on your iPad or computer. That’s so annoying.

  The window on the right side of the room slowly fades from a bright, stark blue-white to a slate gray. And then it falls even more, darkening more and more, quicker and quicker, and suddenly it’s nighttime again. The sky is a deep black. The clouds have parted, the snow’s falling pattern has slowed and calm has settled in on the world around us. Thank goodness. Maybe with any luck I’ll be out of here early. Maybe I can get to the airport a day ahead of time. That would be fun.

  Funny how the world takes you for a wild ride like this. Here I thought I’d be flying home to spend time with the family. Some good old fashioned Christmas family time. And now here I am, in a lavish LA apartment, running my finger across an iPad, sipping fine lattes with Christmas just days away.

  The world comes at you fast.

  Two knocks on the door stun me out of my haze.

  “Come on!”

  Well this will certainly be a change of pace. I haven’t spoken face-to-face with Ryan since we harassed each other in that little fight. Can’t wait to see what this interaction brings. Well, bring it on, Ryan. Let’s try to outwit each other again.

  Only it’s not Ryan who enters. Instead, it’s a buzzing and flying vehicle hovering the air. Four winged propellers keep it afloat. A red dot gleams from the center of its face. A mini Santa Claus hat linger sat the top, and there’s a single bell dropping down the front of it.

  “Good evening, Ms. Cole. My name is Chives, and I am Ryan’s assistant.”

  Oh no. That’s embarrassing. Chives is a robot? A drone? An artificial intelligent being?

  “Oh, hi Chives.”

  “I understand that you may have had some misconceptions about me earlier. Yes, I apologize. Ryan did send me out into the snow to get some coffee for us. But I didn’t go anywhere that would do any damage to my system.”

  Now he buzzes around the room like an insect you can’t get rid of. He soars to the end of the room and back to me. A face glows on the front of the drone now, taking up the entirety of the front glass bulb. It’s an older gentleman with thick gray hair.

  “I am an artificial intelligent life being that Ryan created on his own. He sent me out to his own personal Starbucks across the street.”

  “Wait, he has a Starbucks?

  “Correct. He owns the franchise across the street. Well, he owns the entire building across the street. It’s a grocery store with accompanying Starbucks. He sent me over there to get you some coffee this morning, as well as some food that he planned to prepare himself for you today.”

  Well that’s insanely kind. My cheeks burn from embarrassment. I’m really a jerk for acting that way toward him, aren’t I? I didn’t even give a chance to explain! Ugh. Typical me. Just rushing to conclusions without even taking a second to think it through.

  “Well, thank you, Chivas.”

  “No worries, ma’am. In fact, Ryan has asked me to ask you if you would like to join him for dinner in thirty minutes.”

  “Is it dinner time already?”

  “It is indeed.”

  “Well then, sure, I would love to. What’s on the menu?”

  “Spaghetti and meatballs. His favorite.”

  “I love spaghetti and meatballs!” I exclaim. I really do. I might not call them my favorite food in the world, but they still sound delicious, especially on such a cool day.

  “Perfect. We shall meet again in thirty minutes in the dining room. I bid you adieu until then.”

  The door to the room clicks open. Chives buzzes through the air and out of the door, closing it right behind him. What a weird moment to experience. If someone had told me that would happen so long ago, I would not have believed them. I fall back onto the bed and stare at the ceiling.

  Maybe Ryan isn’t so bad.

  14,

  Seeing spaghetti and meatballs on my plate brings me back to my childhood. The pasta is that off-white-almost-yellow color, the sauce a deep tomato red with hefty chunks of meat sitting like islands, hunky meatballs standing round like boulders in a plain of grass. Little flakes of parmesan spill across the entire plate like snowflakes, and a crescent shape of garlic bread sitting on the corner.

  I just want to dig into this. Hurry up and sit down Ryan!

  Ryan’s busy stirring the last bit of sauce for his own plate. He gently lays it on and walks over to the table, smiling from ear to ear. Chivas floats in the air above us with two separate cans of La Croix. He pours sparkling water into both of our cups.

  “Drinks, forks, knives, food,” Ryan says, scanning the table. “Alright, looks like we’re good to eat. Let’s dig in.”

  And so we do. I stab at my noodles, twirl them around with a flick of the wrist, and then slurp them up. A splash of the sauce escapes and dabs my cheeks. No need to clean it yet. I’m sure my food is going to make my face a lot dirtier before the meal is done.

  I slice one of the meatballs in half. The smoke escapes like it’s from a dragon’s nose. I bite down on the soft yet firm meat, tasting the garlic and cheese that’s been mixed in. Oh, this is just too good to handle right now.

  Ryan’s not that bad of a cook. My initial opinion of him made me think he never does anything for himself, so he would have no way to know how too cook properly. But I am way wrong. This is one of the most delicious meals I can handle.

  “This is so good,” I tell him, my mouth full of food. His tuna sandwich earlier in the day wasn’t half bad either. But cooking spaghetti and meatballs, with a real meat sauce, is miles different than making a tuna sandwich, which really only requires such skill as rotating your wrist.

  “Thanks. But I can’t lie, this isn’t my recipe, or a family’s recipe.”

  “Oh?”

  “I learned it from the great Antoni Gardina.”

  Antoni Gardina is the newest hot shot Italian cook in American television. Apparently he made a name for himself overseas, putting together a sauce that was so authentically Italian that many scholars compared it to old school Italian cuisine. He brought it over to the United States, where critics compared it to Little Italy family recipes that had permeated the underbelly of American food culture for years. All that is to say that his cooking sauce ballooned his career. The Food Network offered him a TV show where he tries different sauces. CNN hosted a handful of interviews with him. He even earned a spot on one of those weekly primetime gameshows.

  “Wait, the Antoni Gardina?”

  “Yep. The very one. Of course, it was a few years ago before he got all popular and such. When people ask me stuff about his most recent career, I can’t really say too much. We haven’t
spoken in awhile.”

  “How did you know him?”

  “Oh, my business does work out there in Italy. Genoa, specifically.”

  “Why does your business have an office in a port town?”

  “Genoa is actually apart of the Milan-Turin-Genoa industrial triangle. It’s got a lot of shipyards and a booming financial sector. I thought it’d be a good place to have a small office.”

  “And what exactly do you do?”

  “You don’t know?”

  Alright, so Ryan might have collected bonus points for his spaghetti sauce and his tuna sandwich. It helps too that he revealed that Chives is actually a robot. But still. There’s an air of cockiness hanging above him that I just want to tear to shreds.

  “Nope. No clue. Although, apparently you make drones and robots so that’s cool.”

  “Chives is unique,” he says.

  My cheeks start to burn. “Sorry about all of that earlier. I didn’t know he was a robot.”

  Ryan waves it off. “I should have told you. But then again, it was fun seeing you squirm.”

  “Wow. You’re a masochist.”

  “Not necessarily. I just think it’s good to argue with people early on. See someone at their worst so you can handle them at their best. And so you can handle them at their worst, too.”

  “That’s a unique take on the quote.”

  “Well, think about it,” he says, setting his fork down and taking a sip of his sparkling water. “We say that people should be able to handle others at their worst, otherwise they don’t deserve them at their best. But I think, more importantly, we should be able to handle people at their worst so that we actually CAN handle them at their worst. One’s worst is often impossible to handle. Shows a lot of strength if you can handle it.”