8
Please Mr. Postman
============DANNY===========
The brightness of the sun beamed off the hood of Rob's Porsche Boxster into my eyes like needles into my retinas. Perhaps I didn't need to use that much wax. Aside from the obvious years behind the machine, when all washed up and waxed, it looked pretty sharp. Despite the growing heat of noon roasting the back of my hair and neck, provoking a patch of sweat, I was feeling a little sulky and cold. No, it wasn't Rob's car that was depressing me, it was...well, I kept checking my phone for a response that by noon, I was positive would never come.
Karma had been kind last night and sought mercy on my love-struck soul, leading Rob's Porsche peacefully through the night without a single scratch. About time my life dispelled those ridiculous Murphy's Law rumors. Even though by the time I rolled in on home it was three in the morning, I woke up unconventionally early and got a sunrise start to my Porsche duties. I let Superior do the bulk of the wash. When I got there, Miller and the boys got a real hoot outta calling me Rob Jr. Which was annoying. Still, believe it or not, I played along with it, and they all died at my Rob impression.
Miller kept saying, "That's jokes, Bon Jovi!"
And then I came back home to do all the precise work, like scrubbing the corners with a toothbrush. In an alternate universe, I filed some Child Slave Labor lawsuit. Working with a toothbrush. Who actually works with a toothbrush?
So, as I slaved away, driving the toothbrush in between the crease of the gearshift and the center console, I grabbed my phone to see if it was yet the Perfect Time. The time on my phone read 10:07am when I clicked it on––not too early, not too late––and so I typed in two consonants, one vowel, and two improperly placed punctuation devices, sending:
Hey :)
Then chucked my phone into the backseat. Giddier than ever, my heart raced with anticipation for Mary's reply. The seconds felt like hours. After such an amazing night, anything other than her and I rolling into a procession of crystallized summer scenes—slow walks on the beach, cracking open bottled Coca-Cola's at Seaside Shack Candies, catching the double-feature at Americaviews Drive-In—seemed impossible.
Though, no matter how badly I didn't want to check my phone, about every twenty seconds I would dig for it wherever I threw it last and click it on to see nothing but the clock add on minutes and pack on hours. Completely submerging myself into whatever cleaning task was next at hand did not serve as the distraction I wished it would be. She consumed every inch of movement. A thick square had wedged itself in my chest. And more than the emotional distress, I felt stupid because it was the kind of day where the smell of fresh-cut lawn sweetened the air, and the sun was shining high and bright in the pure blue sky, printing the colorless reflection of the crosshatch of leaves onto the street. Even my microcosmic daydream of being the kind of guy who works on a car while listening to sixties music on the radio––alternating between the 1961 Marvelettes version of "Please Mr. Postman" and the 1963 version by The Beatles––was plucked away from me. All because of a girl and her silly, torturous mind games.
MARY
"You really can't reactivate my phone?" I said, plopping on my bed, cushioning my butt into the mattress.
"No sorry, miss. Your account has been indefinitely suspended due to continuous missed payments," the cell phone customer service guy said.
"What? This is bullshit. I had to help my dad pay for shit."
If my vicious cat claws were properly manicured, I would have reached through the receiver and clawed his face off.
"Again, I am personally sorry—"
"I sure as shit bet you are because you've had the shittiest customer service, and I'm glad this call was recorded for ensuring quality purposes because your quality has been shit. Bye."
I smacked the phone back on the receiver. Congratulations. You caught me being a red-hot liar already. I actually smacked the phone down on the brim of the receiver, so I lifted it up again and then smacked it dead on. God, how annoying.
Scattered in shapeless piles on my bed were all Jim's depressing bills and bank statements. Jim's a freaking gorilla when it comes to money, and we're like a quadrillion dollars in debt. So, like the teenage girl I am, I dramatically threw myself down on my bed, and cuz my mattress is a wobbly piece of crap, all the papers bounced up and drifted onto the floor, scattering half underneath my bed and half underneath my dresser. I snatched the pillow next to me and screamed burying my face into it.
My Goodness Lord. The test results came in and told me that no civilized human can survive thirty (freaking thirty) days without a phone.
Thank Jesus I'm a bitch from Venus.
While mulling over the death of my already non-existent social life, my OCD got the best of me and told me to start cleaning my room. Cleaning's like crack. Try it. Not crack, cleaning. Except, this sweeping motivation I had to suddenly become a maid died a swift, painless death when I dragged my wooden vanity chair across the carpet and saw Danny's jean jacket. When I picked it up, wanting to know what size Danny wore (medium, for the record), his scent immediately rolled into my nose. I tossed it on the floor. After all, it was just going to Goodwill. What do those bums care?
The rest of the shit on the floor, such as all those awful outfits I tried making look like they were purchased at Urban Outfitters, were on their way to the Laundromat. So while snatching up my mess and shoving it in the laundry bag, I thought of how Danny probably had maids to do this. Or at least a woman to do the domestic shit. It bothered me that I was expending innocent brain cells even thinking of him.
I don't even know why I "forgot" to give him his jacket back. Worse than my negligence, why didn't Squeegee Boy ask for it back?
Boys confuse the hell out of me. It was irking me that I couldn't place what goddamn scent that was on his jacket, so I picked it up again to decipher. Most likely it was deodorant. Now, whether it came from his chest or his pits, it was a tolerable boy smell. Most boys don't smell good, like at all.
Slipping a tank over, like, the only bra I ever wore (owning other bras is entirely pointless) I got changed to leave my house. Really all because (not to complain or anything, but I am just as deep in debt as Jim is, except my bad credit lies with Karma) I'd end up, like, missing my period or something stupid if I didn't return Danny's jacket.
DANNY
By two in the afternoon, I declared it was all over. The entire night—the carousel, the fireworks on the beach, the endless midnight country drive when the rest of the world was asleep—had all been a fluke.
"Danny!"
Mom yelled for me. I turned around to see her standing on top of the three cement steps that led up to the front door. While looking up at our house from the driveway, especially given the stark contrast with Mom's slender figure, our house looked and felt impractically large.
"Do you want lunch?" she asked.
Do I want lunch? Hah.
Our home at 21 Eneleda Crescent had been transforming. No, not any renovations or anything, but all that had been hidden away, pushed back in closets and stuffed in drawers for years, had recently coughed up all over the place. Boxes began piling on boxes, starting from the front foyer at the base of the stairs, down the hallway, and all the way into the kitchen. Mom had begun her crazy packing ritual.
"How was your night?" Mom asked as I walked into the kitchen, the tile floor felt cool beneath my feet.
"Good. Good."
I sat down at the kitchen counter and checked my phone again for stupid Mary's response. It didn't make sense. The ache had actually slipped away for two seconds when I forgot about it. Stupidity backslapped me.
"Did you take Rob's car out?" Mom asked.
I rebutted the outrageous claim as I picked up the plate of quesadillas to bring them outside.
"Oh, yeah right, Danny," Mom said as I walked down the hall. "I was seventeen when I stole your grandma's Stingray to see U2. The Broken Lyre was good? You know, I sort of miss when you used to always invite me to go to their shows."
My mother, a lot like me, is a goddamn fabulous storyteller. I never used to always invite Mom. She's only been with me, like, one or two times. When she's being a brat, I would never admit it, but I was somewhat grateful that out of all the potential mothers one could be brought into this world through, that I had been brought in by my mom. Considering everything the old gal has gone through, Mom still looked relatively good, a tolerable kind of pretty for a mom.
Mom went on to tell me that she had called LACM's (Los Angeles College of Music) submissions office after they had reopened from being closed on the Fourth of July, and that she wanted me to call myself and speak with the friendly counselor she had spoken to on the phone.
As soon as I could, I dismissed the conversation as I was not in the mood to talk about California––or anything really––and that conversation would only make me all the more upset.
For God's sake, she KISSED me.
And with the quesadilla plate in hand, I began walking back to my child labor when, through a clear trash bag on the ground, I saw something that would make Mary's non-reply feel outlandishly insignificant.
"Mom!" I yelled from the hallway. "What's my Tiny Tigers Tee Ball Mitt doing in a garbage bag?"
I marched back into the kitchen. The china glasses stacked in their designated cabinet shook in tiny clinking tremors with my steps. Behind the white marble counter, Mom was on her phone sending a text, rigorously ignoring me.
"Mom?"
"Sorry, sorry, Danny. Just figuring out a work license thing." Her fingers clicked away.
Goddamn, it would be nice if Mary could text me that fast.
"But, yeah, Danny, when was the last time you looked at that thing? And besides, that glove wouldn't even fit you anymore."
"Yeah, but, Mom, I wanted to keep it."
"Okay. Then you can keep it!" Mom got off her phone.
I went back to the hallway, dropped the quesadilla plate on the stairs, shoved the boxes out of the way and rummaged through the plastic bag stuffed with board games, sing-along cassettes, and everything else that was shoved in the back laundry-room closet––and pulled out the mitt. The leather smelled stale, and the thumb cracked when I drew it back. I tossed the mitt inside the bag, grabbed my plate, and marched up the stairs with the entire bag in hand.
On my way up I yelled, "Mom! Can you please check with me before you throw anything else away?"
"Okay! I promise I will!"
By the tone and inflection of her voice, I could tell Mom was back on her phone.
The bag found space between my dresser and acoustic guitar-stand, right over the untamed etches of magic marker on the hardwood floor. Mickey Mouse's smiling face on an old board game met my frowning one when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move on the driveway. I jumped up to the window and saw Mary power-walking up to my house. I darted down the stairs and pushed through the front door.
"M-Mary!"
On the edge of my driveway, wearing a tight pale orange tank top, straddling the frame of an old rickety white bike, with her flip-flopped feet planted on the road, stood Mary. She turned around and just vaguely pointed at me. It took me a second to clue in that I should turn around. A Wright Bros shopping bag was slung on the hooks of my mailbox.
"Your jacket," she said.
"Oh. Thank you."
"You were beginning to look too much like this decade."
I wanted to laugh, sincerely I did want to, but the teenage girl locked within my soul was still all bent out of shape over the whole text message fiasco.
Mary began to peddle off.
"Wait!"
The bike jerked. The brakes screeched.
"Don't go. I mean, unless you have to go. But, um," I said, starting to walk down the steps.
"I have to go," she said.
I stalled for a second, staring at her. She looked unjustly perfect sitting on that bike. Reminding me of a black and white photograph of Audrey Hepburn I'd seen long ago. I was so mesmerized by the way the sunlight slipped in through the shadows of the leaves dancing across her body, and how the pattern resumed to fall on the grass behind her.
"Did you get my text?" I asked.
"Text? Oh. Uh, yeah," Mary began saying. Air wheezed through the tubes of her bike as she clutched the handbrakes and rolled towards me. "Funny enough, I dropped my phone right after you dropped me off. Giant crack in the screen. It won't turn on."
"Oh! Oh. Yeah. Shit." I stopped yammering when I saw how, as she slid forward from out of the shade, the glow of the midday sun shimmered upon her cheeks.
Up until then, I hadn't noticed all the freckles Mary had sprawled along the horizon of her tanned face. Being of the male gender, I couldn't quite place my finger on it, but she almost looked better than she had the day before. Her cheeks and nose were charred red, and she had on less of that black shit girls smother around their eyes. With the way her hair waved and sprung up in places she would've been embarrassed about, she looked like some gorgeous surfer girl who spent her summers down on the shore.
Mary gestured in the direction of the Porsche. "Your car looks good."
"Ha Ha. Funny."
Mary asked where (what she believed she was entitled to call) "her baby" was at. Mary clearly didn't understand the rules of car ownership and I wanted to call her out on her ignorance, but I didn't bother.
"Well, my baby's in the garage."
"Tell 'er I say Hi. Yeah. Okay, well, I just wanted to make sure you got your jacket back, it's supposed to be cold tonight."
I wanted to argue that all the weather reports called for an oncoming heat wave, but I didn't bother. Instead, I asked, "Do you want to hang out?"
"And do what?"
"Well, I dunno. Are you hungry?"
"Uh, yeah. I could eat."
Mary stretched her leg over the frame of the bike and with her foot, swept out the kickstand.
"Let me grab that," I said, taking the bike by the handles and then guided it up my driveway. While laying Mary's bike against the side of my garage, my pocket started vibrating. I reached into my shorts and pulled out my phone. Jess had replied:
Heyy ! No I couldnt make it :( boo. How was it???
I looked down my driveway at Mary swinging her head, throwing her hair back, using her fingers to brush out the kinks. And above, I heard whistling and the flap of wings as two birds flirted in song. I slipped my phone back in my pocket.
=========Author's Note===========
Thank you for reading this chapter of "Some Place Better Than Here"!
Writing this book certainly wasn't easy by any means. It was an honest-to-God from the bottom of my heart labour of love. And so, if the writing has touched you in anyway, please share your thoughts in the comments or vote on a chapter that you particularly liked!
Sharing a little bit of love back really helps me grow my platform as a writer so I can continue to publish great works for you and I both to enjoy !
Also, if you enjoyed SPBTH please check out my latest project "The Roar of Andora," a explorative fantasy that will be told over a three-part anthology.
https://www.wattpad.com/611263651-the-roar-of-andora-book-one-prologue-the-boy-king
Thank you for reading "Some Place Better Than Here"!
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