The Wonder Bread Summer (8 page)

“Smooth move.” Bud laughed.

Allie pulled back and aimed for the doorway again. It felt as though she was trying to thread a needle, but she and Roger made it outside.

Bud said a brief, sloppy good-bye and slipped into the BMW that Kathy had pulled up beside him. Kathy waved quickly out the window and Allie waved back. She wondered if that would be the last time they’d see each other. Then she wondered if she’d be sad about it tomorrow. Right now, she felt relieved.

Allie looked around. “Where’s your van?” she asked Roger.

Roger tapped out C-O-K-E.

“Coke?” Allie asked. “You want a Coke?”

Roger’s head flopped down hard on the NO.

“Oh!” Allie said. “You want cocaine?” She figured anyone who made movies in Hollywood, no matter what the genre, did cocaine.

Roger hit the YES, then spelled: I H-A-V-. Allie wondered if Bud wasn’t really as against drugs as Kathy thought. If Roger did coke so openly, he surely had offered it to Bud before. Although that didn’t necessarily mean Bud did it. Beth
loved
coke, and Allie had been best friends with her for almost two years before she tried it herself.

“Don’t waste what you have,” Allie said. It seemed harmless to give just a little of the Wonder Bread coke away, and cruel to deny a guy in a wheelchair with a head pointer and an enchilada-stained mustache what was probably one of his few physical joys. She let go of the wheelchair and staggered to the Prelude. When she looked back at the wheelchair, it was rolling toward a parked car, but slowly enough that Allie didn’t worry. She retrieved the bread bag, locked the car, and returned to Roger, who had gently bounced into the parked car. Allie held the Wonder Bread bag against one of the wheelchair handles and her purse against the other handle as she pulled the wheelchair off the car it had hit and directed it to the sidewalk beside the driveway. The air was the perfect temperature, neither hot nor cold. If she weren’t so drunk, Allie thought she’d probably enjoy a ride in the Prelude with the moon roof fully open, the blur of smudgy gray night sky above her head.

“You think your driver’s coming?” she asked Roger.

Roger tapped YES.

“Want coke while we wait?”

Roger tapped YES, YES, YES.

“Okay.” Allie rummaged into her purse and pulled out a Bic pen. She snapped off the cap and dug the pointed concave tip into the bag and pulled out a tiny pile. When she placed the cap under Roger’s nose, his head tilted and jerked and the contents spread into his mustache like powdered sugar.

Roger knocked the pointer on the letter
A
.

“Try again?” Allie asked, and Roger lifted his head and squealed. “How about this?” Allie shoveled her cupped palm into the bag then held the heap under Roger’s nose with the thought that maybe a twentieth of it would make it up his nostrils. Roger snuffled and rubbed into her like a dog rubbing into dead animals it finds in the woods. Allie remembered Mike licking her palm. It was a shame he turned out to be such an enormous jerk.

The van pulled up while Roger was still nuzzling his whiskered walrus face into Allie’s hand. “Okay, finish up, our ride’s here.” Allie pushed Roger’s head up with her free hand. Roger had his tongue out, so she wiped her palm clean on it. She didn’t get the same erotic jolt as when Mike had done it.

A Hispanic man in a gray cotton zip-front coat stepped out of the van. “Roger! How you doin’ tonight, sweetie?” He came over and collected Roger, rolling the chair toward the open sliding door of the van that had a silver ramp sticking out like a tongue.

Allie held her wet palm out, looking at the driver, looking at Roger, trying to decide what to do. “Can I have a ride, too?” she finally asked.

“Jump in!” The Hispanic man smiled at her and nodded his head toward the van. Allie blundered into the front seat and waited while the guy fastened Roger’s wheelchair into the back with seat belt–looking straps. “You in Roger’s movies?” he asked.

“No, just a friend,” Allie said. The Wonder Bread bag was twisted shut and sitting on her lap like a small baby.

“I’m Jorge,” the guy said, and winked. “Where you going?” He stepped through the van into the driver’s seat. Then slowly, as if he were driving a truck carrying glass panels, Jorge pulled out of the driveway and they cruised away.

“Where are we going . . .” Allie’s brain felt impossibly heavy. She closed her eyes to give herself a minute to think and her head lolled forward. Allie jerked up, looked at Jorge, and smiled as if that would erase the embarrassment of almost passing out mid-conversation.

“Well, Roger’s house isn’t far, so I’ll just drop him off first.” Jorge had a gentle face: soft and kind, with no sharp edges. His eyes were perfect circles. Allie wanted to touch his cheek, but even as drunk as she was, she knew she shouldn’t.

Allie looked at the blur outside the window. They were in Beverly Hills now, driving past well-lit mansions, gates, driveways that had separate entrances and exits. Her gaze was fixed on a pink stucco house that looked like a Moroccan palace when a gasping, barking sort of sound erupted from the backseat. Before Allie could turn and look, Jorge had put the car in park and was pulling Roger out of his chair. The van was spinning, but Allie knew they were parked. She watched as Jorge straddled Roger’s chest and performed CPR on the floor of the van in front of the chair.

“Pick up that radio, hold the side button, and tell them we’re at Alpine near Lomitas Ave. They need to call 911.” Jorge wasn’t yelling, although his voice was urgent and stiff.

Allie picked up the small square speaker. She pushed the button on the side. “Uh, call 911,” she said, almost whispering. “We’re at Alpine and Lomitas and I think Roger’s having a heart attack.” There was a smokey wooziness in Allie’s head. She tried to remember how much coke had been in her palm when Roger had snuffled it up. How much did people usually do in one sitting? Jonas had taken about eight pinches of the bread-bag stuff. Was a palm-full more than eight pinches? Could a
full palm
of coke really have gone up Roger’s nose? Wasn’t most of it in his mustache? Allie’s heart thumped. Her eyes burned. She wanted to scream and cry in frustration. Everything she had done today had been wrong. Completely wrong! No wonder Kathy hated her.

The ambulance was there. Allie hadn’t heard it, or maybe she had somewhere in the back of her panicked, drunken head. Two men in white jumpsuits were hovering over Roger with paddles on his chest.

“Is he dead?” Allie’s voice quavered. Roger was flat on his back, his mouth open like a bird’s beak, his eyes staring straight up. He didn’t look like a quadriplegic. If it hadn’t been for the pointer jutting up from his forehead like a unicorn’s horn, Allie would have thought he was a normal middle-aged paunchy man. A snorer, for sure.

“Not totally,” one of the paramedics said, and he jolted back as the paddles electrocuted Roger’s giant, bloated body.

Allie righted herself in the front seat. Wai Po’s voice was in her head.
DO NOT USE HATCHET TO REMOVE FLY FROM FRIEND’S FOREHEAD.
Allie shut her eyes and fervently prayed that she hadn’t just killed Roger, hatcheted him with cocaine. She could barely finish the prayer words in her head when she dropped into a dead-drunk sleep.

Chapter 5

A
llie opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling. It was white, or more gray, really, with a spiderweb-looking crack that radiated out from where a chip of plaster was missing. Once her mind caught up with her eyes, Allie sat up, alert, wary. Nothing was familiar.

One side of the room had a Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends poster. The other side had a poster of Snoopy dancing with Woodstock. There were tiny stickers scattered on most of the walls: smiley faces, rainbows, dragons, more Spider-Man, and Strawberry Shortcake. Allie was in a stumpy bed with a red blanket and Fox and the Hound sheets. Next to her was a peeling plywood dresser covered with more stickers. On the other side of the dresser was another bed, with Strawberry Shortcake sheets. The room smelled like an elementary-school cafeteria: stale, crowded, sweaty, sour.

There was a weight in Allie’s lap. She lifted the sheet, expecting to find a cat or maybe a rabbit. Instead she found the Wonder Bread bag, molded into a lumpy tube. Allie shook it so the coke fell to the bottom, untied the twisty, looked in, then shut the bag. All seemed normal.

The dirty pink purse was also in bed beside her. Allie spread it open and found the keys with her lucky rabbit foot. She stroked the gummy fur and instantly felt calmer.

Allie got out of bed, carrying the bread bag and her purse. She was in her Flashdance shirts and her acid-wash jeans but she was barefoot. The door to the room (more stickers) was ajar. There were fingerprints and peanut butter and other shiny viscous smears on it, so Allie toed it open. “Hello?” she called into the hallway that faced her. Framed photos hung from both walls. Jorge? Allie stepped closer. Yes, there was Jorge and two children, a boy and a girl. And a wife: black hair, overweight but curvy, a smile like a giant glittering diamond in the middle of her face.

The hallway smelled of coffee and burned cheese. Shag carpet wormed through Allie’s toes. “Hello?” Allie crossed the length of the hallway and stepped out into a living room. There was a radio on somewhere. It sounded like it was playing the news in Spanish. Allie followed the sounds of the radio into a kitchen where the woman from the photos was talking on the phone. She jumped as if she were excited to see Allie, waved enthusiastically, then did a few
uh-huh
s into the phone.

“
Mami
, I have to go now, the girl is up.” She switched to Spanish then, which to Allie sounded like
acata acata acata acata ack
. And then she hung up the phone and walked toward Allie.

“Hey,” Allie said, and she waved with the hand that wasn’t holding the bread bag.

“Are you okay?!” The woman put her arm around Allie’s shoulder and led her to a red wooden chair at a linoleum-topped table. There were pots steaming on the stove. The radio had an antenna and sat like a giant insect on the chipped plastic countertop.

“Yeah, I guess.” Allie slumped into the chair and stared at this woman as if she might be the better judge of Allie’s state of mind. Currently, Allie only felt a strange disorientation, and fear that something even worse than her having stolen a bag of cocaine had gone down.

“Jorge said you were a friend of Roger’s and you passed out from shock after he—” The woman smiled and lifted her shoulders as if she didn’t want to say the word
died.
Allie felt like she had to vomit. What sort of karmic revenge would come at her for smearing a palm-full of cocaine into the face of a drunk quadriplegic?

“He didn’t know where to take you,” the woman said. She seemed not to notice the guilt that was pushing Allie into the chair with such force that she expected at any minute to be spiraling through the linoleum floor into the chalky earth below.

“Yeah, of course,” Allie said.

“And he thought maybe the best thing for you was to just sleep through it, so he brought you here.”

“Yes,” Allie said, although she had no idea where
here
was. For all she knew Jorge had driven her across the border into Mexico. Allie hoped it wasn’t going to be too hard to get back to the Prelude. Although, she thought, she certainly deserved whatever difficulties came upon her now.

“I’m Consuela. I’m Jorge’s wife.” Consuela sat in the chair opposite Allie and stared at her with a questioning smile, as if she expected Allie to burst out in tears.

“I’m Allie,” Allie said, though just then she wished that she weren’t. She’d love to be any normal non-drug-thieving person who hadn’t possibly killed a man in a wheelchair and didn’t have some thug named Vice Versa after her.

“What’s in the bread bag? It sure isn’t bread, but I didn’t want to open it. You were clinging to it like it was your blankie.”

“Oh, yeah.” Allie’s heart pounded. “It’s my parents’ ashes.”

Consuela gasped and put her hand to her heart. “Oh you poor thing. I bet after what happened with Roger—” She stopped, as if she couldn’t bear to continue.

“Did the police come?” Allie could feel her head swirling.

“Yeah, Jorge said the police came, Roger’s assistants came, there were people all around and you were just sitting in that front seat sleeping it off.”

“They’re not going to arrest me or anything are they?” Allie’s voice cracked and she felt a cry creeping into her throat.

“Arrest you? What for!” Consuela took Allie’s hand from across the table, and Allie started crying. Really crying. Head on the table. Snot dripping into her mouth. Strange choking animal sounds. Sobbing.

Consuela rushed around to the chair and pulled Allie’s head into her soft, deep, warm belly. She rocked Allie back and forth. “Roger will be fine,” Consuela said. “My father had a heart attack and now he’s like Charles Atlas or something, running in marathons and everything.” Consuela separated Allie from her middle and held her wet face in her hand.

“You mean he’s alive?” Allie was so relieved she wanted to laugh.

“Yes, he’s alive! He’s in the hospital. He’ll probably be out in a week.” Consuela stared at Allie as if she were trying to make sure Allie understood what was being said.

“Oh god, I thought I killed him!” Allie’s voice broke on the last two words,
kill-ed hi-im.
“I gave him the coke that gave him the heart attack!”

“Someone always gives it to him. He has a problem!” Consuela scooted into the chair beside Allie. “He’s addicted. Jorge tells him every night to stop doing it, but he does it anyway. If it hadn’t happened last night with you, it would have happened tonight.”

“But he probably never does as much as he did with me.” Allie sniffed.

“Listen,” Consuela said. “You probably saved Roger’s life. Maybe now he’ll stop doing coke. He was either going to die or have a heart attack from it. It’s his good luck that he had the heart attack!”

“Maybe.” Allie sniffed and tried to smile.

“Don’t think about it now.” Consuela stood and went to the stove. “Now you eat tamales. I’ve got cheese and I’ve got beef.” Consuela put two on a plastic plate that had a picture of a teapot in the center. She set the plate in front of Allie, then handed her a fork and a knife, each with a fake wooden handle. Then she sat across from Allie with her own plate of tamales. “Is there anyone you need to call? I hope no one was looking for you last night.”

“No, no one’s looking for me.” The only person who wanted to find her, Allie thought, was Vice Versa. She had no idea what he looked like but she pictured him as a blood orange–colored gryphon: half-lion, half-eagle, with claws that would slice through her flesh like a box cutter into butter.

“You can call anyone from our phone. Roger gives Jorge the codes for calling long-distance so that we don’t have to pay for it. I think Roger’s company pays for it. And, you know, I hate that dirty movies are paying for my phone calls to my mama in Mexico, but Roger is a good guy, and he treats our children well. They don’t know he makes dirty movies.” Consuela laughed.

“He seemed like a good guy.” Allie unwrapped the corn husk off each tamale and took a bite. They were so good she didn’t want to talk. She tried forking a little of each together to get just the right salty-savory balance.

“Yeah, he gives pornos to Jorge and Jorge brings them home and gives them to the garbage men. They think it’s better than the six-pack of beer our neighbors leave them at Christmas.” Consuela was watching Allie as she ate. “You like that, don’t you?”

“They’re amazing,” Allie said, taking another bite. She couldn’t say anything else. She was too focused on eating.

“Have some more.” Consuela got up and went to the pot on the stove.

“You know,” Allie said, “if you really don’t have to pay for long distance, there are a couple people I should call.”

“Honestly!” Consuela plopped down two more tamales on Allie’s plate. “It doesn’t cost us anything.” She rubbed Allie’s shoulder and looked down at the Wonder Bread bag. “It’s nice that you always have your parents with you.”

“Yeah,” Allie said. “It’s like free long-distance day and night.”

C
onsuela let Allie use the phone in her and Jorge’s bedroom. The bed was made with a poinsettia-red quilted bedspread that reminded Allie of a roadside motel. There was a thick wooden cross over the bed, with a dried brown palm frond stuck behind it at an angle. On the dark, wide dresser were framed photos and a small colorful statue of the Virgin Mary with a crown on her head and a cross at her heart. Allie imagined it would be nice to have Catholicism, to believe in the power of a Hail Mary. Wai Po’s words had always been Allie’s prayers—incantations she repeated over and over again, the rabbit foot clutched in her hand like a rosary.

Allie sat on the edge of the bed, dropped the bread bag down next to herself, and picked up the receiver. She looked at the telephone number printed in the center of the dial. Area code 213. Wherever she was, she was still in Los Angeles. Allie dialed the long-distance code Consuela had written on the back of a business card that had
NOBGOBBLERS, INC.
printed in cherry-red. Roger’s name and a telephone number were also on the card
.
When the dial tone returned, she punched in Beth’s number. The digital clock on the nightstand said it was eleven thirty-eight.

Beth answered with a quiet, trembling voice.

“What’s wrong?” Allie asked.

“What do you mean
what’s wrong
?!” Beth was whisper-yelling. “There’s, like, a fucking seven-foot black man taking a dump in my bathroom
right now
. And the guy isn’t fucking leaving my apartment until you come back with my car and the, like, seven tons of coke you stole from Jonas!” Her words came out like the swish of a washing machine.

“Is it Vice Versa?” Allie whispered, too, although there really was no reason.

“No. His name’s Rosie.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously!” Beth’s whisper was sounding hoarse. “And where the fuck are you? You were supposed to be back in
two hours
! Are you on, like, the fucking Gilligan’s Island cruise with my car?!”

“Are you tied up?” Allie pictured Beth bound at the feet, with her arms tied behind some chair and duct tape over her mouth. Then, since Beth was talking on the phone, she erased the duct tape.

“No, I’m not tied up! I just can’t leave. This guy is fucking living with me until you come back. And he eats, like, nonstop? I swear he had, like, two large pizzas for lunch. TWO. By himself. And it’s not even noon yet!”

“You didn’t have any pizza? Not even a slice?” Allie tried to stop whispering, but her voice kept slipping there in reply.

“Allie, where the fuck are you?! I swear I’m going to call the police the next time this guy takes a bathroom break and the only reason I haven’t called yet is because you’re carrying, like, a suitcase of coke and, like, I totally don’t want you to get arrested. They told me that if you called I’m supposed to, like, tell you to just come back, return the coke and they won’t hurt you?”

“Do you believe them?” It seemed impossible to Allie that Jonas would employ a guy named Vice Versa and a seven-feet-tall-double-pizza-eating man if he didn’t intend to use them in violent ways.

“Not really. This guy has a gun
down the back of his pants
. Like you know when people have, like, plumber’s butt? He’s got gun butt. Every time he bends over I see a pistol sitting there above his crack just wedged into his pants. And he’s huge. I swear. Totally enormous.”

“So what should I do?” Allie felt her face going hot. Her hands started to shake.

“I don’t know.” Beth’s hushed voice sounded so sad, Allie wanted to cry again.

“I’m trying real hard to figure this all out,” Allie said, although she had yet to formulate a plan that seemed good enough to share with Beth.

“I know,” Beth said. “Oh! I forgot to tell you. Your dad called? He said he moved and he wanted to give you his new phone number.”

“Did he say anything about his restaurant? I’m in L.A. now. I went to his place and it’s closed.”

“He barely said anything about anything.”

“I know,” Allie said. “He doesn’t like talking on the phone. He doesn’t even like talking in person. But at least I know he’s alive now.”

“You ready for the number?” Beth said.

“Yeah.” Allie grabbed a black Magic Marker off the nightstand and wrote it on the bread bag as Beth recited it to her. “Why do I have to have a father who never lives in the same place long enough for me to memorize his phone number?”

“Why do I have to have, like, a seven-foot man who just ate two large pizzas taking a ten-hour dump in my bathroom?” Beth asked.

“Okay, okay. Sorry. Listen. I’m going to start by calling my dad to see if he can help somehow. I’ll try to get the pizza-eating-dumper out of your apartment as soon as possible. I promise.” Allie picked up the bread bag and looked at her father’s number. It was smeared from her hand. “Shit. Give me my dad’s number again, I can’t read what I wrote.”

“Oh my god!” Beth said. “I just heard the toilet flush! He’s coming out!”

“Didn’t he hear the phone ring?”

“I don’t know! He probably has the fan on in there—it’s like a jet engine. And I, like, picked up in the middle of the first—” Beth hung up.