Los Angeles Noir - Denise Hamilton [120]
Cleaning was good. I cleaned a lot. I moved the TV cabinet and cleaned behind it. I found a Christmas card from 1979 when I was six years old. I remember that Christmas. I remember wanting something so badly and praying for it as hard as I could, but what I got was something different. I liked it too, but it wasn’t what I’d been asking for. I can’t remember what it was, only the want like a tight place in my chest. I pushed the couch to the middle of the room so I could get the dust bunnies along the baseboard. I hoisted the armchair on top of it. That looked pretty good to me, so I climbed up and sat in it. Of course I tipped over and fell. I banged my arm hard on the colonial-style coffee table. As if they had coffee tables in the Colonies.
Immediately, I carried the coffee table out to the curb. That was enough of that. Someone driving by would take it home to his mother and she would be so happy. The front door opened in the house across the street. I didn’t know those people. Out came a young black girl, in candy-pink capris and a tight white tank top with glitter in a heart on the front. The neighborhood was mostly black people now. Not that it mattered to me or my mom—even before she was dead.
The girl was carrying her car keys, but she stopped at the door to her little red Chevette. “Sorry about your ma.”
She made me notice the flowers in the yard next door and the blue sky.
“She was old,” I said. “And sick.”
“You puttin’ out that little table?”
“I always hated it.”
The girl laughed. Her teeth were as white and sparkly as her shirt. She nodded. She knew what I meant.
“Do you live there?” I asked.
“It’s my brother’s house. I’m just staying with him for a while.”
“Welcome to the neighborhood.”
She shrugged and her brown shoulders gleamed in the sunshine.
“Wanna come in? Have a drink or something?” I asked.
“I got to go. I’m late for class.”
Loyola Marymount University was right nearby. She didn’t look like one of those stuck-up Loyola students. Stupid Jesuit school. I’d been destined for it starting at about, oh, maybe two years old, but that was another way I’d disappointed my mother. Too dumb to get into Loyola.
“Not LMU?” I asked her.
“Over to the aviation college. I’m gonna be a flight attendant.”
“See the world.”
“Exactly.”
She got in her car then and drove away and I was glad to know she’d be back. I left the coffee table out, but I pulled it off the sidewalk and onto the edge of my lawn. Just in case she wanted it for her mother. Then I went into the house and sat down on the couch. I could see the table through the big picture window. I could see her brother’s house across the street. Later, I’d be busy doing other things and I’d walk through the room and look out the window and see her struggling with it. I’d come out and lift it into her car. Then she’d have to take me over to her mom’s with her so I could help her get it in the house. We’d have fun and then she’d be a flight attendant and fly away.
And one day, awhile after that, I’d see her on an airplane. I’d be sitting in first class, in a really nice suit, blue, no, maybe dark charcoal-gray, and I’d be flying on my way to some big deal and there she’d be.
“Would you care for a beverage?”
“Don’t you remember me?”
And of course she would and she’d be so impressed and she’d look great in her cute stewardess outfit like a military uniform and we’d go right to the airport bar after and talk and talk and talk. Every