Neighbors

by Danielle Steel

“How long have you been working on it?” Ava asked, when he mentioned his book to her. He seemed so intent and passionate about it that it touched her. He had loved writing since he was a boy and was determined to make his family proud of him one day.

  “Two years. I have a job in the daytime, and I write at night when Arthur is practicing, or after he goes to bed. He doesn’t need much help from me. I’m hoping to finish it in a few months. Working for Arthur has given me the opportunity to spend time on it and make some headway at night.”

  “I used to dream about being in film production, but it never happened,” Ava admitted shyly. “I was freelancing as a tradeshow model, and Joel gave me a job as a receptionist at one of his startups. Eventually, after we started dating, he made me quit so I’d be available to him. I haven’t worked in two years, so I’m taking classes now in graphic design, which I love, so I can get a better job one day, after…” Her voice trailed off and Peter understood. There was no future to her relationship with Joel, and she knew it. He wondered if she was with him only for his lifestyle and the perks, or if she loved him. But he didn’t know her well enough to ask. She seemed like a sincere person, but Joel’s lifestyle would be hard for most people to resist.

  “It’s nice that you have dreams,” she said softly, as their eyes met, and Peter felt an electric charge run through him. Everything about her fascinated him, not just her body, but her mind, her drive to do something better with herself. She seemed like a sympathetic person. He liked talking to her. He wondered if Joel ever did. He made it so obvious that he was with her for her stunning body and her looks. It embarrassed Peter for her. He knew he had no right to, but he felt protective of her, although he barely knew her.

  “You have dreams too,” Peter reminded her, “or you wouldn’t be taking classes.” She smiled. He understood. She knew that her time with Joel was finite. He never stayed with a woman for more than two years. He had told her that in the beginning, and it had been slightly more than that now. She was on borrowed time. She knew that Joel didn’t love her. He enjoyed her company, but women were interchangeable to him, like cars. And one of these days he would find a newer model, give her a generous gift, or an apartment, and be gone. She’d been thinking about it a lot recently. It made her work even harder on her classes, and she was hoping to graduate soon. She had to get a new computer now, so she could continue her classes and complete her design assignments. Several of her professors had said in their reviews of her work that she had real talent.

  “I’d better get to work,” Peter said as he stood up. “Before Arthur wakes up from his nap. I’m not usually with him in the daytime, just at night. He never stops.” He smiled at Ava. It had been nice talking to her.

  They walked upstairs together, and they each disappeared into their rooms. Peter had the pages of his book in front of him on the table, and a pen in his hand, and all he could do was stare at it and think of Ava. He’d never been as obsessed with any woman in his life, and there was nothing he could do about it. She belonged to someone else. He was asking himself how could someone like him compete with Joel Fine? He had no money, two uninteresting minor jobs, he was writing a novel, which would probably never get published, and he lived in someone else’s house. He had nothing to offer her, or to dazzle her with. Ava, with all her beauty, brains and youth, was like Joel’s Ferrari, totally beyond his reach, and all he could do was dream. He loved being in the same house with her, but he hoped they moved back to Arthur’s house soon, before he lost his mind, obsessed with her. Just thinking about her made him long for a future that would never be even remotely possible.

  Chapter 4

  Charles Chapman’s visits to check on them every day were beginning to seem familiar to all of them. He chatted with them, and kept them abreast of the progress around the city, to repair the damage from the earthquake. Three days after it had devastated the city, they were still digging people out. The next time Charles stopped by for coffee in the morning, Peter asked to volunteer for the Office of Emergency Services. He wanted to do something more useful than just keeping Arthur company. And Arthur was managing well with his white cane in Meredith’s safe, comfortable home. And there were plenty of people for him to talk to. He had asked Arthur’s permission, and he thought Peter volunteering was an excellent idea. There were enough people around to assist him if he needed help with some small task until Peter got back.

  The others were startled when Peter mentioned it, and Charles was pleased. He told Peter where to report. He said they needed all the help they could get. Two hours later, Peter took off, in work boots and jeans, with a pair of gardening gloves Meredith gave him, and they wished him luck. He knew it would be rigorous work and deeply upsetting at times. Not everyone they pulled out of the rubble would be alive, but there had been amazing stories about infants pulled out of the debris, old people, small children. Many or even most of them had survived.

  “We ought to do something like that,” Ava said at lunch after he left, speaking to Meredith and Tyla.

  “Digging people out of the rubble? I don’t think I’m strong enough,” Tyla said, worried.

  “Not that, but we could serve food at one of the shelters that have been set up, or help at a first aid station. There must be something we can do.” They all felt slightly guilty, living in comfort and safety in Meredith’s palatial home, while others in the city were enduring unimaginable hardships and had lost everything.

  “It’s not a bad idea,” Meredith commented. “Why don’t we? Why don’t we just turn up and offer our services?” She turned to Tyla then. “You’re a nurse, at least you know what you’re doing. But I could serve food, or hand out clothes.” Ava nodded agreement.

  “I haven’t been a nurse in a long time,” Tyla said shyly, but all three of them liked the idea, and decided to go down to the nearest shelter at a public school in the Marina, to see what there was for them to do. “Who could I leave Will and Daphne with?” Tyla asked Meredith.

  “Debbie can keep an eye on them,” Meredith volunteered, and went to explain it to Debbie after lunch. She looked anything but pleased at the idea.

  “I don’t know anything about kids. I’m not a nanny,” she said, looking miffed.

  “You don’t need to be. They’re not infants. Plant them in front of the TV. They have iPads. They can entertain themselves.” Debbie told Jack about it after everyone left the kitchen.

  “We have to get rid of them. These people are all over the house, and taking over her life. I’m watching fifteen years of hard labor and planning go up in smoke.” He nodded agreement. He had been observing the same thing and trying to come up with a plan to scare them off and encourage them to leave.

  “I’m working on some ideas.”

  “Meanwhile, I’m a babysitter now.”

  “Just go along with it. We’ll get them out of here soon,” he said, with a look that would have frightened Meredith if she’d seen it. They were desperate to reclaim their turf and their power over her.

  “Not soon enough for me,” she said under her breath with a murderous expression.

  Joel was downtown meeting some of his employees at his office, since the police had let them in. They were trying to salvage what they could from the rubble in the office. Andrew was at the hospital, and Peter was volunteering with the OES. Meredith told Arthur that the three women were leaving for a few hours, Jack and Debbie were available to help him, and he said he’d try to entertain the children. Maybe a piano lesson, he suggested, and Tyla smiled.

  “Good luck with that! I can barely get my kids to do their homework.”

  “Playing the piano is fun,” he said to her.

  Half an hour later, the three women left. They took Meredith’s car, since their own garage doors were stuck and they couldn’t get their cars out, and Meredith’s wasn’t. They took her SUV, and Jack was shocked. Normally, she had him drive her, but she didn�
�t want him to. She had suddenly found independence, and now she had friends. He was as worried about it as Debbie, who looked sour as she turned the TV on for Tyla’s kids when the women drove away. Arthur had suggested a piano lesson to them and they liked the idea. Debbie was going to take them all to the piano in the drawing room after they watched a TV show or two. Since Meredith was out, she helped herself to a beer, out of sight of the children. Jack had had a swig of bourbon after lunch and was in a better mood, and he had told Debbie he had a plan.

  “What do you think it will be like?” Ava asked them as they headed down the hill toward the Marina. It was slow going with many streets blocked off, and part of the Marina closed, since it was on landfill, and rows of houses had collapsed. They had suffered the worst damage in ’89 too. “Do you think it will be scary?” She was nervous now, but all three of them were excited, and liked the idea of lending a hand to help people in need.

  They parked between two piles of rocks. Nothing was orderly when they got there, and they threaded their way through the crowds in front of the school. There were hundreds of people, men, women, and children, and close to a thousand more once they got inside. There were large rooms with food stations, a massive cafeteria, and everything else was set up as dormitories. There was a haphazard information area on rickety tables, with half a dozen people telling new arrivals where to go. There was a nursing station in the rear, where minor injuries were being treated. Those with anything more severe were being sent to local hospitals.

  Meredith explained that they wanted to volunteer, and the woman they spoke to looked relieved.

  “Great,” she said, glancing at them. They were clean, sane, sober, and willing. “Any special skills?”

  “I’m a nurse,” Tyla said, and the woman told her to go to the first aid station. She left with a smile on her face and looked excited now that they were there.

  “I’ll do whatever you need,” Ava said, “childcare, cafeteria.” The woman pointed to the main cafeteria and Ava took off with a wave at Meredith, and the same woman sent her to a room full of children, where they needed someone to read them stories, so they could give their frazzled parents a break.

  They assigned Meredith to about twenty five- and six-year-olds, with another woman to help her, and she read book after book, wiped noses, took them to the bathroom, and let them sit on her lap in turns. She felt like she’d been running a race all day by the time her shift ended at seven. The children thanked her, and she went to find Ava in the cafeteria. She’d been handing out sandwiches, yogurt, and bottles of juice and water all day. She told them she had to go, and they went to find Tyla, who was bandaging scrapes and cuts. She had just assessed a child with a concussion, and sent her and her parents to the hospital where Andrew was working. She finished a few minutes later, and the three of them left the shelter a little after seven P.M. They’d been there longer than expected, and could have stayed all night. The school was filled with people who were now homeless, or with damaged homes, and were in desperate need of food, clothes, and housing.

  “Wow, what an incredible day,” Ava said, as Meredith drove them home. All three of them were deeply moved by what they’d heard and seen.

  “I hope my kids didn’t drive Debbie nuts,” Tyla said, on a high from working as a nurse again.

  “I read stories to five-year-olds all afternoon. We spent more time in the bathroom than reading, but we went through a stack of books. I felt like Mary Poppins.” Meredith grinned. They had all promised to go back the next day. It took them less time to drive home, because Meredith knew what streets to avoid now. She pulled the car into the garage, and they entered the house through the kitchen. The men were all talking at the kitchen table. Debbie was cooking dinner, and shot Meredith a dark look. They were home much later than they’d said.

  “How was it?” Ava asked Peter, and he was beaming.

  “We found a family of a mom and dad and a three-month-old. The baby was fine, the mom was pretty shaken up, and the dad had a nasty head injury, but they’re going to be okay. Where were you?”

  “At the shelter in the Marina.” All three looked as excited as Peter did, and Daphne ran into her mother’s arms.

  “I can play the piano!” she said. “I played ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’ Mr. Arthur showed me how.” Tyla smiled and kissed her, as Andrew looked at her coldly.

  “You just walked off and left our kids? What if there’d been another earthquake?”

  “I’d have come back if there were, and so would you,” she said, less cowed by him than usual. She didn’t want to let him spoil a great day where she’d done something useful and got to use her skills again.

  Joel looked hurt as he came to kiss Ava. “Hey, babe, if you want to help, you can help me put my office back together. You don’t have to go to some school with a lot of filthy homeless people. There are others who can do that.”

  “You have your staff to help with your office. They need everyone they can get at the shelters,” she said, and kissed him. He looked like a boy whose feelings were hurt.

  “You have talented children,” Arthur added. “We had a very good first lesson,” he told Tyla and Andrew.

  “I really liked it, Mom,” Will said.

  “Me too.” Daphne grinned.

  Debbie had hamburgers ready for them ten minutes later and they all sat down to dinner. Andrew said he’d had an exhausting day, and didn’t speak to his wife all through the meal. He left the table as soon as they finished eating, and signaled to Tyla to come with him. She followed a few minutes later with the children, who didn’t want to go upstairs, but thanked Debbie for dinner, and did as they were told. Peter, Ava, and Meredith were full of tales about what they’d done that day. And they all went to bed early. They were exhausted, and Joel made it obvious that he wanted alone time with Ava, which left Arthur and Meredith alone in the kitchen for a little while, until he went upstairs too. Meredith walked him upstairs, and Peter was waiting for him with the bed turned down, and his pajamas.

  “It sounds like you had a good day,” Arthur said to Meredith as they walked upstairs together.

  “I feel alive for the first time in years,” she admitted. “It’s terrible to say, but the earthquake is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I feel useful again.”

  “That’s something to think about, isn’t it?” he said wisely, kissed her cheek, and walked into his room with Peter.

  He was right, Meredith realized. She sat in her room, physically tired but wide awake, thinking about her afternoon at the shelter, but at the same time, she was worried about Tyla. She didn’t like the look on Andrew’s face when he went upstairs and gestured to Tyla to follow him, like a child who had done something bad and needed to be punished in private. She hoped he wasn’t being too hard on her. Something about him frightened her for Tyla, but she hadn’t complained about him. It was the look of terror in her eyes that Meredith didn’t like.

  As she thought about it, she went to her closet and pulled out piles of old sweaters and jeans, some warm jackets and shoes to take to the shelter the next day. They needed them more than she did.

  * * *

  —

  Downstairs, in their separate apartment, Jack was telling Debbie his plan. She smiled when she heard it. “It’s perfect. I like it. That should do the trick.”

  “It will,” he said confidently. “I’m tired of helping all of them, and she hardly speaks to us now, now that she has them. She’ll want them out after this.” Jack toasted Debbie with his flask of bourbon, and then lifted it to his lips, and drained it before he set it down again. It was a silver flask that had belonged to Meredith’s father. Jack had found it in a box in a storeroom shortly after they arrived. She had never missed it or asked him about it. It had become his in the last fifteen years, like a lot of other things that Meredith had never missed.

  * * *


  —

  Andrew had locked both children in the bathroom as soon as they got to the room. He had given them both their iPads and told them to put their earphones on. And as soon as he locked the door, Andrew had hit Tyla so hard she had literally flown across the room. She hadn’t expected it, not here, where someone might hear them, and she hadn’t braced herself for it. She fell over the rollaway bed that Will had been sleeping in, hit her head, and was dazed for a minute. Daphne was going to be sleeping on an inflatable mattress they had brought from home, since the children didn’t want to sleep alone. The room was big enough for all of them.

  Tyla didn’t have time to recover before he hit her just as hard again. She cowered on the floor this time, with her arms over her head. She had learned how to protect herself and not to cry out, since their children were usually in the next room when he hit her. When she looked up at Andrew, her nose was bleeding from both nostrils, and her eyes were glazed. There was hatred in her eyes, but there was unbridled rage in his.

  “How dare you go down to that filthy place without my permission. You probably got lice and God knows what else.”

  “I administered first aid all day,” she said weakly. “I’m a nurse.”

  “You’re nothing. You probably don’t even know how to put a bandage on by now. You haven’t worked in eleven years. You left our kids with that bitch of a housekeeper all day, and a blind man. Are you insane?” Tyla didn’t answer. He wanted to control every second of her day, and anything that might give her pleasure or make her feel good about herself was forbidden to her. “You don’t take a shit unless I tell you to! Do you hear me?” She nodded, and felt a pounding in her head where she had hit it on the rollaway. He was a master in the art of wife beating and knew how not to leave marks on her unless he wanted to. He bruised her breasts when he felt like it, and left marks up and down her arms and legs. He had left a footprint of his shoe on her back once, and almost broken it and could have crippled her. But he usually didn’t leave any telltale signs on her face. The rest she could cover with pants and long sleeves.