The Merchant of Venice Beach (17 page)

“You haven’t even started and you’re already looking to escape?” Fernando asked.

“Well . . . I’m afraid I’ll be lonely.”

Suzanna could tell she was not the only one taken by surprise by this admission. Carla always seemed to be ready to try anything.

“I’m just really scared,” Carla continued. “What if everybody hates me? What if I wasn’t cut out to be an architecture major?”

“You’ll figure it out,” Suzanna said. “It’s college, not prison.”

“You’re one to talk,” Carla said.

Suzanna reddened, but realized that Carla only meant that she and Fernando had chosen a path—together—that did not include prison.

College.

“Everything is going to change,” Eric said. “But it’ll all be good.”

“What if I can’t find a boyfriend, and I’m the only single person left on campus?” Carla said, as if she hadn’t even heard Eric.

“Are you kidding me?” Suzanna asked, incredulous. “With your body? And that great head of hair? Those D. C. boys won’t know what hit them.”

“Well,” said Carla, a little indignantly, “I think it takes more than a great head of hair to fit in . . .”

“Yes,” Eric said. “The great body is going to help, too.”

Carla turned her watery smile to Eric. He squeezed her hand. Suzanna put her fork down. She suddenly had no appetite.

The Land Cruiser arrived in Los Angeles without further incident. The kids called Napa to check in with parents. Suzanna’s mother and father apparently hadn’t gotten wind of the fact that Eric had been a stowaway, so Suzanna breathed a sigh of relief when she hung up the phone. She was fully aware that she probably had just dodged a bullet.

With Eric riding shotgun and working as navigator, Suzanna threaded her way through the streets of Los Angeles. They were on their way to Palms to pick up a set of keys from their new landlady. Los Angeles was gigantic and keeping track of the directions was tough, even for Eric, who was usually pretty good with a map.

Los Angeles seemed to be terrified by its own vastness, giving itself other names every couple miles: Palms, Balboa Lake, West Adams, Baldwin Hills. It was almost impossible to take in.

Finally, the Land Cruiser pulled up in front of a tiny adobe house on an aptly palm-tree-lined street in Palms. Since Suzanna’s parents were paying for the apartment, Suzanna left her new roommate—and Carla and Eric—in the Toyota when she went to fetch the keys.

“Hi, Mrs. Larson. I’m Suzanna Wolf.”

“Where’s your mother?” asked Mrs. Larson, suspiciously eyeing the U-Haul.

“Ummm . . . . she’s home . . . in Napa. I’m renting the apartment. I mean. My parents are going to pay for it and everything . . . . I’m just going to be staying here . . . remember?” Suzanna gripped the doorframe so that she wouldn’t start floating. This woman was making her very nervous.

Mrs. Larson handed Suzanna the keys and walked down to the car. She continued to give the car’s possessions and passengers her stink-eyed squint. She indicated Carla and asked about her in a stage whisper.

“She’s my friend . . . she’s driven down with me to keep me company. She’s going home tomorrow.”

“Well, she’d better be,” said Mrs. Larson. “Two boys, two girls, I don’t want any funny stuff.”

“She said two boys and two girls . . . she thinks we’re two gay couples,” Fernando hissed in Suzanna’s ear as she got back in the car. “And she doesn’t like it. She’s homophobic—she’s a bigot!”

“Unless somebody is wearing a sweatshirt that says ‘I love gay people,’ you think everybody is homophobic,” Eric said. “‘Two boys and two girls’ could mean anything.”

Suzanna pulled away as fast as she could without seeming rude. Luckily, the apartment was several miles from Mrs. Larson’s prying eyes. It was a one-bedroom on the Venice boardwalk, three flights up, and it suddenly seemed much smaller than it had when they first rented it. Looking at it with a bulging U-Haul breathing down their necks, it now revealed itself as a single room with a large closet.

Carla was staring out the window at the beach. It was a gorgeous day and the sun was glinting off the ocean like some kind of advertisement.

“Can you believe you’re going to live here?” Carla asked without taking her eyes off the water.

“No,” Suzanna said honestly, with a slight tightening in her chest. “I can’t.”

They managed to get everything from the U-Haul up the stairs and into the apartment. Considering how few possessions they had, it was surprising how long it took them to unload. By evening, they were famished. The four of them decided to go to a tiny Mexican restaurant they had heard about, and they stepped out onto the Venice boardwalk.

During the day, the boardwalk was full of benign, colorful characters who somehow turned into scary, long-toothed creatures when the sun went down. Suzanna and Carla found themselves walking closer and closer to the guys.

“Don’t look at me, sweetheart,” Fernando said to Suzanna. “One of these creeps makes a move and I’ll scream like a girl.”

Within a few weeks, they had figured out which parts of the boardwalk to give a wide berth. They hung out at a teashop called the Flying Geese Tea Shoppe and Fernando spent a lot of time there, soaking up the atmosphere and insisting that he was going to work there one day. “I love that place,” he said. “But that name has got to go.”

The Mexican restaurant, called the Baja Cantina, was loud, crowded, and fun. The locals were friendly and all four of the Napa contingent danced until the early hours, when the bar finally closed. Carla had met a cute guy and said she’d find her way home. Ditto for Fernando.

Suzanna and Eric decided to go for a walk along what was left of the Venice canals, a newly gentrified area that glowed romantically in what was left of the moonlight. Suzanna tried not to get her hopes up as they stood shoulder to shoulder on one of the curved wooden bridges that spanned the canals. She could see their reflections quivering in the water.

Suzanna’s senses were on high alert. What if they did get romantic? How could you resist getting romantic on this bridge in the moonlight? She worried that if she passed out right now, she’d topple into the canal and either break her neck and die or just get covered in mud and humiliation. She decided that she had to stay conscious, no matter where this evening took her.

“I read something interesting about these canals,” Eric said.

“What did you read?” Suzanna said.

“That the city wanted to clean up the area, but the ducks kept eating the vegetation. So the city fathers came and checked out the ducks and decided—conveniently—that the ducks were diseased and would have to be put down.”

“That’s terrible,” Suzanna said, hopes of romantic kisses evaporating like the diseased ducks.

“Yeah,” Eric said. “And when the vegetation was all grown in, they brought in new ducks.”

“Huh,” Suzanna said as a duck quacked underneath them. She had no idea what to make of this story, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t Eric’s attempt at seduction.

“Hey,” Eric said, walking across the bridge. “There’s a little boat here.”

Suzanna followed him. There was a tiny blue rowboat tied to a moldy bollard sunk deep in the canal.

“I’m sure it belongs to one of these houses,” Suzanna said.

“We’ll bring it back,” Eric said as he untied the rope. “Get in . . . it’s got oars and everything!”

Suzanna was terrified, but she would have impaled herself for another five minutes with Eric, so she got into the boat. Eric pushed off and they rowed silently around the canals. Suzanna was so happy, she couldn’t speak.

“Hey, listen” Eric said, when they had rowed to a silent part of the canals. “I’ve been thinking . . .”

Suzanna tried to clamp down on her thoughts.

Don’t get your hopes up. Don’t get your hopes up. Don’t get your hopes up.

“Oh?”

“Yeah . . . I’m thinking of not going back to Napa.”

Suzanna lit up.

“You mean you’ll stay here until it’s time to go to Boston?”

“No,” Eric said, looking into the water. “I mean . . . I’d like to stay here for the year. I don’t want to go to school yet.”

Suzanna could barely make out his features in the dark.

“What will your parents say?”

“They’ll have a shit-fit.”

Suzanna was surprised. Eric didn’t usually swear.

“I’ll just tell them I’m not ready,” he said. “Look, I know you guys are going to be tight for space, but as soon as we get jobs, we can move someplace bigger. What do you think?”

Suzanna realized that if she said yes, he’d probably kiss her.

“I’ll have to ask Fernando,” she said.

Suzanna drove Carla to the airport the next morning, put her on a plane back to Napa, and prepared to settle into a life in Southern California with Fernando—and now Eric.

PART THREE

DOWNTOWN

CHAPTER 14

Suzanna had missed two dance lessons in a row. The remodel of the tearoom was taking all her time, concentration and money. Eric had been right: with a reconfiguration of the nook, they were able to keep both establishments running. But because Eric and Fernando had jobs to do during the busiest parts of the day, Suzanna and Carla were now moving increasingly heavy pieces of furniture on their own. Suzanna missed the rush of salsa dancing. Her thighs were starting to wobble again, which put her in a bad mood. Not to mention that the experience was proving to be stressful, chaotic, and exhausting. She told Carla as much.

“I know it’s a pain in the ass,” Carla said. “But if you’d hire a carpenter, we’d be able to move things along a lot faster. And we could stop hauling stuff ourselves.”

Suzanna and Carla had dragged a small rectangular table through the hallway toward the opened-up space in the book nook that was to serve as a scaled-down tearoom. Suzanna stopped in her tracks and wiped perspiration from her forehead. Carla put down her end of the table.

“I sort of have a guy I could ask to help us,” Suzanna said.

“I don’t want a ‘sort of’ guy. I want a real carpenter.”

“He is a real carpenter.”

Carla smacked the table with her fist and then showed Suzanna the blisters caused by two weeks of manual labor.

“You mean, you and I don’t have to be doing the heavy lifting?”

Suzanna looked panic-stricken into both the nook and the tearoom to make sure no one was listening to them.

“Keep your voice down.”

“Why are you hiding him?” Carla asked, although she did lower her voice. “Is he an ax murderer?”

“Of course not.”

“I mean, at this point, I don’t really care . . . as long as he’s also good with saws and hammers.”

“He’s not an ax murderer,” Suzanna said, lifting the table again. “He’s a dancer.”

“A dancing carpenter,” Carla said as they wedged the table into a corner. “Only in L. A.”

“He’s a guy from salsa class. His name is Andy. He showed me his portfolio and he’s pretty good.”

“Then why isn’t he here?”

“Because I’ve been too busy to get back to dance class and ask him.”

Carla tried to steady the table, but the old wooden floor wasn’t level and the table tilted. Eric, who had just carried a heavy bag of books to the car of one of their loyal customers, bounded back into the store just as Suzanna was trying to shore up the drunken table legs. She kept packets of Sweet ‘N Low in her pockets for just that purpose.

“What are you doing, Suzanna?” Eric asked.

Suzanna looked up from her crouch.

“I’m using these sweeteners to steady the table.”

Eric went behind the counter, rummaged around in a drawer, and came back with several small wedges. He held them out to Suzanna.

“Here,” he said. “Use these.”

Suzanna stared at them and held them up for Carla to see.

“These are fantastic!” Suzanna said. “What are they?”

“I level the bookcases with them,” Eric said. “Just a little something I invented.”

“Eric, you are amazing!” Suzanna said.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Suzanna!” Carla said. “He didn’t invent them. They’re called shims.”

“No they aren’t,” Suzanna said, defending Eric’s good name. “A shim is what people stab other people with in prison.”

“That’s a shank,” Carla said.

Suzanna looked to Eric and back to Carla. Carla was looking annoyed and Eric had a maddeningly blank face.

“You’re lying,” Suzanna said to Eric, who was kneeling next to her and leveling the table legs.

He picked up the Sweet’N Low packets and shook them at her.