“Yeah, man. Ample possibilities.”
“Sweet.” I’m thinking a tal , leggy, blue-eyed blonde with huge tits.
This is LA—I can’t throw a rock and not hit one of those.
*** *** ***
Dori
Day three has not gone as I’d envisioned it. Of course, neither did day two.
First, he showed up an hour late and hungover. He thought he was hiding it (with sunglasses—real y?), but just because I’m personal y naïve when it comes to getting drunk or doing drugs doesn’t mean I don’t know it when I see it. The neighborhoods where I work are rife with the ways and means people use to cope through their disappointing lives—and those coping mechanisms sometimes include substances that don’t do any more than mask the real problems and valid issues.
Frankly, his slightly bloodshot eyes and lack of energy—
coupled with the tardiness and an even more contrary coupled with the tardiness and an even more contrary attitude than the previous day—almost pushed me over the edge. I wanted to bundle him right back into the backseat of his fancy car and send him home. I’m supposed to be above such reactions. Some social worker I’l make, if I can’t keep a more even keel. I’l have clients with bigger personality limitations than he’s got, as difficult as that is to imagine at the moment.
He was a walking safety liability. There was no way I could leave him alone with a paint rol er, not to mention what paint fumes might do to him in his already taxed physical condition. Anything with tools, especial y power tools, was out. The only task I could imagine assigning to him was helping to lay sod in the back yard. I thought I was doing him a favor—he could wear the sunglasses and be out in the fresh air (such as it is—this is LA, after al ), and he wasn’t going to put a nail through his hand.
Of course, depositing him outside meant I had to abandon the tiling I’d planned to do so I could paint, because somebody had to do it before the carpet arrives.
Determined to get back to work, I left him outside with Frank, who’s in charge of landscaping.
When I came out to check on him just before lunch, hoping he hadn’t given Frank any trouble, he was standing in the middle of the half-sodded yard, shirtless, leaning on a tamping tool and chatting up a cute girl in cut-offs and a pink tank top. Judging by the cooler at her feet, she was supposed to be passing out bottles of water. When she turned, I saw that she was Gabriel e Diego, the daughter of the people who would soon own this house—and into whose rental house Reid had crashed his car.
Her family of five was living in a motel room because of him, and she was smiling up at him like he could crash into her house any old time, no big deal.
When she spotted me standing on the porch slab, she touched his arm and said something that made him turn.
Our eyes locked. Without severing that connection, he took a long swal ow from the water bottle, leaned close to her and spoke. At the sound of their laughter, my patience snapped. I stomped back inside and finished painting a second coat of pink on Gabriel e’s bedroom wal s and a coat of primer on the boys’ room without stopping for lunch or a break. By the time Dad arrived to pick me up, the muscles in my back were screaming for mercy. Reid must have gotten Frank to sign his sheet, because I hadn’t seen him again until this morning.
We finished the master bed and bath wal s today, not speaking beyond obligatory Q & A. He sat with Gabriel e at lunch, which made me uneasy. As I scrawl my name on the line marking the completion of his third day, I say, “You’re not here to socialize, you’re here to assist with construction of the Diegos’ house, and possibly become more communal y aware.”
He gapes before making a remark about my (f-word) humanitarianism and how he doesn’t need a savior and if he did, it wouldn’t be me.
Instead of biting my tongue, I tel him I wouldn’t give him a glass of water if his hair was on fire, nor does he ever have to worry about me trying to save him because I learned years ago that some people aren’t worth the effort.
“What—so according to you, someone like me isn’t worthy of redemption?” He smirks at such a preposterous notion.
I turn away from his smug expression and begin sweeping arches of thinset onto the shower wal with a trowel. “I don’t believe in wasting my time on hopeless cases.”
He laughs. “What about me constitutes hopeless?” I don’t bother to look at him. “What doesn’t constitute hopeless?” I press a tile into the corner, add a spacer, pick up the next tile and line it up faultlessly level with the first one. “From your language to your lack of morals to your inability to consider anyone’s needs or hardships but your own—honestly, what is there of any value to anyone?
Besides to yourself, I mean.”
“ I ’ m here, in this shithole gangbanger barrio, volunteering to do manual labor—”
“Volunteering? Manual labor? Real y?” I scoff, ignoring his elitist estimation of the respectable blue col ar neighborhood. “First, you’re here by court order, and second, you don’t do as much by lunch as the rest of us do before you arrive. You’re done for the day the exact moment your plea bargain agreement specifies, or before, if you get distracted by something, or some one.” He’s actual y worked harder than I’d expected him to, but his superior attitude just makes my usual unbiased judgment fly out the window.
“Ah, so I noticed an attractive girl. That’s your problem?
Jealous?”
I sputter and shake my head. “No, far from it. You disgust me.”