“You up?” Dad murmurs.
“Yeah.”
Dad is silent again, then says, “Wish we had some coffee.”
“Yeah, me too,” I answer, studying the room around me. “Maybe we can find a store.”
“Yeah! Why don’t you and Terry go?” His voice is slightly pleading. “Harriet told you about a little market around the corner last night, remember?”
“I remember.”
Through the filtered light I notice several gigantic houseplants loom from hooks at the windows, making it hard for me to tell the position of the sun. Massive fronds cling to the curtains and walls, threatening to take over the house.
I reach over and tap on the green cocoon with hair. “Terry,” I whisper. “Terry, you ‘wake?”
“Uhhhhhhhhmph,” she groans, “nooooooo.”
“Yes, you are,” I prod. “Come on. Get up. Let’s find a store.”
Terry is slipping in and out of sleep. “Give me a minute.” Slowly she rises, releasing pained grunts and groans. “This floor sucks,” she complains, pulling on her clothes.
“Thanks, Ter,” Dad calls from the other side of the sofa bed.
“Welcome,” she answers grumpily. “All right, Dawn. Let’s go.”
We stumble out into the bright afternoon sun of Southern California, and I realize we have slept in late. We walk down the center courtyard past several cottages and out onto the street, following the directions from the night before and making our way to the corner liquor store for some instant coffee and juice. Our walk back is leisurely, as we take in the different styles of houses and types of trees. The blue sky is clear, with none of the characteristic smog Marty warned us about. The air is warm and dry, not humid as it is in Florida. I’m not sure I like it, and Terry and I complain that our noses are scratchy and irritated.
“Purple trees!” I shriek. “Look, Terry, they have purple trees!”
“Cool! Are they real?”
The ground, covered with blankets of colored blooms from jacaranda trees, beckon us to gather up heady handfuls and breathe in their curious smell. “Mmmmm.” We are delighted and squeal some more. Spiky balls from the western sycamores mingle with the blooms on the sidewalk, making the walk back to Harriet’s awkward and uneven.
As we turn the corner to the cottages and arrive with the coffee, John is there. He is in the kitchen under the sink, clinking and banging at the pipes. Dad and Juan are folding the mattress back into the couch and straightening up our things, piling them in a corner on the wooden floor.
“Wait. Look out!” Dad’s voice is panicked. A massive, hairy dog comes running toward us at the door. I brace myself for attack. Harriet, who is leaning against the doorframe between the living room and kitchen in a slightly odd, seductive way, jumps up to grab her dog’s collar.
“Wolf! Halt!” she commands. The dog freezes. “He’s okay, girls. Let me get him back into the bedroom. He’s a pureblood collie. Do you want to pet him?”
Terry and I fall to our knees to pet the classic-looking dog. “Wow!” I tell her. “He is beautiful.” It is true. His coat is long and tangle-free, silky and warm like a winter fur. A long, sharp nose leads to sweet brown eyes adoring Harriet, and I wonder at the depth of her kindness.
Harriet beams and guides the dog proudly to the back room. Quickly she returns, heading back to the kitchen and her conversation with John.
“Can you hand me that wrench, honey?” I hear him gruff from under the sink.
“Shhuure, John,” Harriet answers, syrupy sweet.
I walk into the kitchen, place the bag on the table, and purposely turn my head away from his voice, ignoring him.
“Would you like some coffee, Harriet?” I offer, opening the bag.
The clanking of the pipes stops. There is a thick silence. And then it starts up again.
“Okay,” she answers swiftly. She gives me a look that says she noticed John’s brief attentive silence.
Abruptly, the long, skinny legs that sprawl out from under the sink curl, and John shoots to his feet. I’m startled; he has my attention. In an instant, our eyes fix intensely; and just as quickly, John pulls away. I look down. Both of us blush, embarrassed. As much as I don’t want to acknowledge John, I can’t turn away from his gaze; and he can’t turn away from mine.
“All fixed, Harriet,” John declares as he breaks away from my transfixed stare and grins from ear to ear.
Oh my God! I think to myself, now focusing on the coffee in the bag. What was that? my brain screams, and I feel frozen to the spot.
“Thanks, John. Thanks,” Harriet hurriedly answers. She is tense now, uncomfortable with the obvious energy John is directing toward me, and she walks over to open the door for him to leave. “Can I call you later, after I talk to them?”
“Uh, yeah, sure,” he stammers and gathers his things. “Looking forward to it.” John flashes a charming smile across the room and sends another glance in my direction before closing the cottage door.
The room is silent and awkward. Dad and Terry are going through the bag of Dad’s pills on the coffee table, and Juan has just come from the shower and is combing his hair with a giant wire pick.
“So, guess what?” Harriet announces.
“What?” Terry has been sitting next to Dad on the couch.
“Well, if you want to earn some extra cash, there’s some work around the courts. John and his wife, Sharon, are willing to pay you for gardening and stuff like that.”
Wife! my mind cries with shock. He sure is acting weird if he has a wife. I attempt to dismiss any kind of feeling I might have about him. This guy is strange, I tell myself, blowing him off, trying to forget his gaze.
“Oh, uh, yeah, sure,” Juan, Terry, and I answer intermittently.
“To help you get on your feet.” Harriet sounds caring, warmhearted.
We thank her.
For a moment, I see us through her eyes and feel pity. We must look pretty bad. I picture how ragged we must appear to a stranger. But I shrug it off and replace the image with us as a family simply starting out in a new place.
“Cool, man. Thanks a lot,” I mumble.
“Good. I’ll call John and Sharon and set it up right away,” she tells us, smiling proudly. Dad sips his coffee and digs in his duffel bag for his deck of cards.
The morning is already blinding and hot as Terry and I walk over to John and his wife’s cottage at the opposite side of the courtyard. The rows of identical pale aqua stucco and white-trimmed single-story cottages are bland. But the manager’s unit, the second cottage from the front, has a small wire-fenced space between it and the front unit.
Dad, Marty, and Harriet stayed up late the night before getting high in Harriet’s bedroom while we crashed together on the pullout couch. Juan slept alone on the floor, complaining that I wouldn’t let him sleep between Terry and me. Marty was gone early, having told Harriet he needed to “check in” on a job for a while, but having confided to my father that he was going “to see another chick.”
As we approach the red stone steps of the porch, a little black-and-white brindle dog with bulging eyes and flat face races toward us at the fence, ferociously barking and snorting so hard that it’s back legs lift off the ground with every snarling breath.
“Oh my God, Terry, look at that dog! That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen!”
“What kind is it?”
“Shhhhhh,” I say, lowering my voice and giggling. “He’ll hear you.”
Somehow, the little dog understands we are laughing at him and his barking fades. Holding our bellies, we gather our composure and knock. We hear a few loud steps before John opens the door. He greets us curtly, looking serious and businesslike compared to his demeanor the night before.