The Wonder Bread Summer (4 page)

“Done?” Allie asked.

“Yeah. I’ll see you in two hours,” Beth said.

B
eth had a brand-new 1983 Honda Prelude with a moon roof. It had power windows and locks, a tape player, air-conditioning, everything. It even had a license plate that Beth had picked out when she registered the car: CAL GRL. California Girl. Or Cal—the common moniker for the University of California, Berkeley—Girl. Allie almost thought she couldn’t be friends with Beth after she had first seen that plate—the amount of attention it brought, the showiness, was too much. But eventually Allie saw that in spite of all the
things
Beth owned (all of which Allie would have gladly taken), she was not a thingy person. She had a nice car, but she’d let anyone borrow it. She had a nice apartment, but she’d let anyone crash on the couch. She wasn’t a hoarder, and this, Allie believed, was a good quality in a friend.

Allie placed the Wonder Bread bag on the seat beside her. It appeared to be punching out sporadically as if there were a kitten in the sack. She shifted the car into reverse and backed out of the parking space slowly—her fear of bumping the cars on either side of her was equal to her fear of Vice Versa and Jonas.

The yellow wooden arm that would allow Allie to exit the garage seemed to take hours to lift (the pocket watch, now floating on the ceiling of the car, ticked off thousands of seconds). As it was rising, Allie examined the cassette that hung out of the player like a plastic white tongue, pushed it in, and changed the song seven times. Peter Gabriel. Beth loved Peter Gabriel. When she and Allie went to the Peter Gabriel concert at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, Beth started crying every third song. Allie had been bored senseless. She had tried to make the time pass quickly by entering into a daydream in which she was married to Billy Idol and they lived half the year (when he wasn’t on tour) in a hillside villa in Cannes, France. She had been so immersed in the fantasy that she had been shocked when Peter Gabriel took his final encore bow. She and Billy Idol hadn’t even finished decorating the villa.

Allie hit eject, threw the tape on the floor, and looked up to see where she was. Somehow she had managed to get herself down the street, toward University Avenue, near the freeway entrance. She popped open the glove box, reached in for a different tape, and blindly shoved it into the tape player.

The cassette turned out to be Prince. Much better. Prince was crooning about sex with a lady cab-driver as Allie pressed on the gas to propel the Prelude onto the 580 freeway toward a place she had yet to locate in her mind.

Chapter 3

O
n the one hand, Allie felt like she had been sleeping for six hours—it was as if she had closed her eyes, opened them, and found herself awake on the San Diego Freeway in Los Angeles.

On the other hand, Allie felt like so much had happened in those six hours. She had memorized the entire Prince
1999
album. Every song. When she had messed up a word or two, she had rewound the tape and played the same section over and over until she had the right words, tone, notes, attitude even. Allie was convinced that her voice sounded exactly like Prince’s, that no one, not even the most talented sound artist, would be able to tell them apart. She hadn’t stopped to pee, or for gas, or directions. It was like the car had driven itself and she had been super-busy the entire time, making sure she didn’t sing
got
a time in my pock head and baby it’s rarin’ to roll
, which were the words she had been using the first time “Little Red Corvette” played. It wasn’t until the third round of the A side of the tape that she realized how wrong she had been about those lyrics and so many others.

And now, on the San Diego Freeway at eight p.m. on a Saturday, Beth’s Prelude was idling, the moon roof and windows were open, Prince was turned down low, and the baby-jar coke had worked its way out of Allie’s system (no more timepieces floating in the air). Allie could actually think, focus, and figure out what she was doing and where she would go.

Yes, she had grown up in Los Angeles: Pasadena, for a time, while her parents were still together, and then apartments and condos everywhere from Santa Monica to the Valley. But in all those years of being a resident, Allie had never
driven
in Los Angeles. She got her license when she started dating Marc, and only then because he wanted to take her out to bars and restaurants where he hoped she’d have a glass or two of wine. Allie wasn’t twenty-one yet, but Marc showed her how to use chalk and a pencil to change her birth year on the California license. The pencil color matched the print perfectly, so unless some ruthless bartender with a wet thumb rubbed his digit over the altered number, it was a pretty reliable fake ID.

Allie’s father’s restaurant was on Fairfax Avenue, so all she had to do was figure out how to get to Fairfax from the San Diego Freeway. She could hang out in the safety of her father’s looming figure while she figured out where to go next. Hopefully, her father could help her locate her mother, Penny. Though Frank would disown Allie if he found out she was fraternizing with a drug dealer, Penny wouldn’t be bothered by it. Her boyfriend, the faded rock-star Jet Blaster, was a former heroin addict. And, once, Allie had discovered in
People
magazine that her mother had been stopped at customs with “traces of cocaine on her luggage.” Allie had been ten when she read that article while standing in a 7-Eleven waiting for her father to buy a pack of Juicy Fruit gum. With Wai Po’s voice in her head (
WHAT IS TOLD INTO THE EAR OF MAN IS HEARD A HUNDRED MILES AWAY)
, Allie swore she’d never reveal to a soul that her mother was involved in drugs. She hid all the copies of
People
behind
Life
and hoped that no one she knew at school read
People.
At the time, few things seemed more shameful. Now, Allie was almost grateful that her mother had a history and experience with drugs. Who better to help her out of this mess?

The glowing orange light in the center of the gas indicator flashed on. Growing up, Allie had seldom been in a car that showed when you were running out of gas. Her father had always driven an old, white cargo van that didn’t have a working gas gauge. Frank had always said the van was part of the restaurant’s fleet (although it was the
only
car in the fleet), something to haul cases of wine back from Napa Valley, or discount pots and pans from Mexico. And Penny had had an antique Triumph convertible that Allie rarely rode in. It was a two-seater car, something Penny used to go off on her own while Allie stayed home doing crossword puzzles and word searches with Wai Po.

Allie let the car glide off the freeway. There was an In-N-Out Burger on one side and a gas station on the other. She wished she had enough money, and gas, to use the drive-thru. In front of the In-N-Out Burger was a palm tree that appeared to have been blown halfway down by the wind. Allie was so busy staring at the palm tree that she almost missed the turn in for the gas station. She cranked the wheel to the left, pulled in too fast, and then hit the clutch and brake, stopping with a squeak. As she turned off the engine and pulled up the emergency brake, she realized a man was shouting at her. He was in a blue jumpsuit. Pale skin. A swoop of golden-brown hair. Teeth whiter than the whites of his eyes.

“Yes?” Allie tilted her head out the open window. The guy approached.

“Your gas tank’s on the other side,” he said, and he smiled in a sly, almost bashful way.

“Oh, okay. Thanks.” Allie started up the car and drove around to the other side.

“Fill it up?” the guy asked.

“Uh, yeah.” Allie looked around and realized she was at the full-service pump. She was too embarrassed about the wrong-side-gas-tank mishap to undo the full-service mistake.

When the nozzle had clicked full, the guy unlatched it, then leaned toward Allie’s window and said, “Eighteen dollars and sixty cents.”

“Ah.” Allie opened her mouth and smiled up at him. In her post-drug delirium, she had been aware that she had no money for In-N-Out Burger, but had somehow failed to understand that she had no money for gas, either. She lifted her butt off the seat and stuck her hand down the front pocket of her jeans to make a show of searching for money, although she knew the only thing in her pocket was her single house key.

“Just a sec,” Allie said. She reached toward the floor, shifted aside the
Glamour
magazine that sat there, pulled up her grimy purse, and dropped it on her lap. Her wallet was tucked below the eviction notice. Allie opened it and rummaged through each empty pocket. She wasn’t sure where this fake search would lead, but it certainly was buying time. Allie unzipped the change purse and looked at the pennies and a dime. She dumped them out in her palm. They felt sticky as if they had once been glued together.

With a hopeful grin, Allie held out the handful of coins.

“Do you have a credit card?” The guy flashed a closed-mouthed smile. Allie could see that this was as hard for him as it was for her.

“No. But . . .” Allie popped open the glove box in the hope that Beth kept a stash of cash there. Nothing. She glanced at the Wonder Bread bag. “Do you—” She broke off, not sure how to put it. Somehow, in the delusional drug-induced fantasy of paying herself by selling the coke, Allie had never thought about how to conduct an actual transaction.

“Do I?” The guy smiled again.

Allie was relieved to have an opening. “Do you want some coke in exchange for the gas?” It was almost shocking to hear the words come out of her mouth so smoothly. But, Allie told herself firmly, if she wanted to get out of the situation she had put herself in, she better get used to it.

“Coke? Cocaine?” The guy looked confused.

“Uh . . . yeah. You’re not a cop, are you?”

He laughed. “Nah. I’m a student at UCLA. My uncle owns this station and I work here every summer.”

“Cool! My best friend from high school, Kathy Kruger, goes to UCLA. Do you know her?! Sometimes she goes by Kat.” Kathy Kruger was mellow. Allie had always wished she could be as mellow as Kathy. Kathy never seemed excited about anything and it made her seem wiser and more sophisticated than Allie.

“No. But, listen. If you have coke to sell, I know someone who would buy some. So, you could sell the coke and then you’d have the money to pay for the gas.”

“Oh, okay!” Allie heard the excitement in her voice and took a deep breath. Mellow, like Kathy Kruger, she reminded herself.

“I try not to do that kind of stuff.”

“Yeah, me too.” Or at least Allie
had been
the kind of person who tried not to do that kind of stuff. But who was she now? Now that she’d watched a man masturbate, done coke (coke and whatever it was cut with), and stolen enough drugs to buy a house in the Berkeley flats! For the first time, Allie was relieved that Wai Po wasn’t alive. Her own shame compounded with Wai Po’s disappointment would be too much for her to carry.

“Why don’t you pull up there.” The guy pointed toward the little market attached to the gas station. “I’ll call my friend and get him over here anon.”

“Anon,” Allie winced, as she started the car.
Anon
was a Marc word. He had even used it when she handed over her cashed-out student loan and scholarship money: “I’ll pay you back anon!”

Allie spaced out, staring at nothing while waiting for the gas-station boy’s friend to arrive. After such an intense high, she felt depleted and empty. In no time, she was asleep.

A knuckle rap on the window made her jerk awake. A guy was standing outside the car: blond, skin the color of browned butter, eyes like a doe. He had on a Mr. Zogg’s Sex Wax T-shirt and was obviously a surfer. Allie turned the key in the ignition, pushed the button, and the window slid down.

“You the girl Jimmy told me about with the blow?” Sex Wax asked.

“Jimmy?” Allie asked.

“Jimmy.” Sex Wax pointed to the gas-station guy with his thumb. He wasn’t smiling. Allie wanted him to smile. She wanted him to flirt with her.

“Yeah.” She said it slow. And she smiled.

“How much?” Still no smile. He was probably four or five years older than Allie. His body looked like it was made of hard rubber: smooth on the outside but dense as rock.

“How much do you usually pay?” Allie wished she had just once asked Beth how much she paid for the coke she loved to do. Although most of what Beth did was given to her by Jonas, so maybe even she didn’t know the price.

Sex Wax cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. Allie could tell he was trying to figure out how and why
she
was dealing coke.

“It’s my friend’s,” Allie said. “I told him I’d sell it for him and he wrote down a price list for me, but I lost it.”

“He wrote down a price list for you?” Now Sex Wax smiled. He seemed incredulous. Allie’s face burned. “What else you selling?”

“Just coke.” Allie sat up straighter in the seat as if that would give her more authority.

“And he gave you a price list? Are you sure you have coke?” He leaned his forearms on the window ledge and peered in toward the backseat as if he were expecting someone with a billy club to be hiding there.

“I’ll give you a taste,” Allie said. “But shut your eyes.”

“Shut my eyes? What are you talking about? Are you going to pull out a hidden price list?!”

“I don’t want you to see where I keep it.” Allie’s heart was thumping the way it had when she’d done the coke.

“I’ll turn around.” He leaned against the car, the giant triangle of his torso filled the window in a perfect silhouette.

Allie unwound the Wonder Bread bag, took out a pinch of coke, and put it in the center of her left palm. She put the open bag on the floor in front of the passenger seat. “Okay.”

Sex Wax turned around, looked at Allie’s palm, and laughed. “You’re the funniest fucking dealer I’ve ever met!” With his hands on the windowsill, he dipped down as if he were doing a push-up and snorted the line from Allie’s palm. He straightened up, shook his head, and then bent down again and licked the dusty remains off the center of her palm. “Wow,” he said. Even his eyes looked happy.

Allie felt like he had just licked her neck, or lips, or the inside of her forearm where she had liked to tickle herself into a semi–sexual trance when she was a young girl. “Good?”

“Fucking great. Where’d you get this? It feels like it isn’t cut with anything. It feels like pure fucking coke.”

“It is.” Allie had no idea whether that was true, but why not?

“Fucking unreal!” He shifted his shoulders, almost as if he were dancing.

“Totally pure,” Allie said, going with it. She watched him. He wasn’t watching her. Allie knew this type. Since Marc broke up with her, as Allie willingly escorted Beth to bars, she had met many guys whose attraction to her appeared to be based solely on her appreciation of them. It was a smoothly paved one-way street—easy to cruise on as long as you didn’t want to go in the other direction. Allie had stupidly kissed a few of these guys, thinking she might find a Marc replacement who would help mend her battered heart.

“So what about the price list?” Sex Wax grinned slow and wide.

“What are they charging down here in L.A.?” Allie asked as casually as possible.

“Usual,” he said.

“Hundred?” Allie guessed. She knew coke was expensive and she remembered a group of four friends getting a hundred dollars together once in order to buy some for a Blondie concert. The trick would be to figure out
how much
for a hundred.

“For a gram of the good stuff,” he said, and Allie nodded.

“That’s exactly what I figured.” Allie spoke confidently. She was starting to feel the part of the drug dealer.

“So you’ll take a hundred a gram?” Sex Wax asked.

“No way,” Allie said. “This isn’t cut with anything.” (Maybe.) “It’s one twenty a gram.” She felt fairly certain that a twenty-dollar increase over the usual price would be close enough to, and maybe even better than, what Jonas charged.

“Okay,” Sex Wax said, surprising Allie, “I’ll take three.” He stood up straight and reached into his back pocket. His jeans were slung low and revealed the two channels running from each hip, tendons pointing down.

“Three what?”

Sex Wax laughed. “Grams.”

“Oh, right!” Allie laughed, feeling a little panicked. She couldn’t get too cocky. She had almost blown her cover.

“What’s your name?” He leaned in the window, holding four hundred-dollar bills.

“Allie.” She took the bills. “I don’t have change.”

“So give me three and a third.”

“Sure.” Allie stared at him with a small panic fluttering in her gut. She felt like she was in a play and hadn’t yet memorized her lines.