Wrong City (6 page)

V
ish didn’t expect to hear from Troy again.
They’d exchanged email addresses before parting, and he’d dutifully sent her
his novel, along with a quick message thanking her in advance for any help she
could give him but making it clear nothing was expected. It’d taken him much
too long to compose the note, to find the right balance: polite yet casual,
interested but not creepy.

Two days later,
he returned home from Comestibles and found Troy parked in front of his
building. She slipped out of her car and fell into step with him as he
approached the gate. “Vish! Sorry for just stopping by, but I wanted to let you
know I read your book. I stayed up most of an entire night finishing it,” she
said. “I passed it along to Greg at my agency, and he’s forwarded it to the
literary desk, though it’ll probably take a while before they get to it. But I
thought it was wonderful.”

“Thank you,”
Vish said. He glanced at her. She seemed sincere. Then again, she was an
actress. “Thank you very much.”

“So here’s the
thing,” she said. She was turning pink again. “I also gave it to
Freddie—Freddie Halterman, he’s the guy who created
Interstellar Boys
,
and he’s brilliant and awesome—and I told him about you and how good your book
is and how you’re looking for work...”

She stopped.
Vish’s heartbeat picked up a little. “Oh?”

“Yeah, and he’s
really interested in meeting you. He said he looked through your book, I’m sure
he hasn’t had a chance to read it all the way yet, but I know he was totally
impressed with your writing. I also know he wants to add more staff writers. I
can’t say for sure that’s what he’s going to offer you, and I don’t want to get
your hopes up, but he said to tell you he’d be interested in meeting you.”

“Wow. Troy,
thank you.” Absurd to think the creator of a television series might offer a
writing job to an unknown, but maybe Troy’s opinion carried a lot of weight.
“That’s great news.”

“I thought we
could have dinner. To celebrate.” She hoisted a bulging mesh bag. “I stopped at
the farmers market. You might have plans already.” She shrugged. “If not, I
thought it might be fun to cook together.”

He hesitated,
caught off guard by her enthusiasm. Troy’s brow wrinkled. “I come on strong, I
know. I’m like this whenever I make a new friend. Some people get annoyed by
me.” She smiled. “If you’ve got things to do, or if you’d just rather not, it’s
no big deal, really. I won’t take offense.”

“No, not at
all. I’m glad you stopped by. Cooking dinner sounds like fun.” He held open the
front gate. “Come in.”

The crumbled
hole in the corner of the building was still there, unfixed. Someone must’ve
inspected it at some point, because now there was an orange safety cone in
front.

When they
reached the top of the stairs, the neighboring door opened. Mariposa peeked
out. “Hey, Vish,” she said. She looked at Troy with frank interest. “Who’s
that?”

“Hi, Mariposa.
Mariposa, this is my friend Troy.”

“Nice to meet
you, Mariposa. I really like your sandals. Those are cute.” Troy smiled at her,
all dimples and charm.

Mariposa was
immune to Troy’s dimples. She looked her over, up and down, and gave her a cool
nod. “Thanks.” She shifted her attention back to Vish. “Do you know who’s
moving in beneath you? I haven’t seen anyone, but they’ve been making tons of
noise all day. Bumps and thumps.”

“I don’t know,”
Vish said. “Good that the building’s filling up, I guess. It’s been kind of
weird with no one around.”

“I know. It’s
creepy.” Mariposa glanced back into her apartment. “I’m alone with Luis, so I
better go.”

“Nice meeting
you,” Troy said. Mariposa ducked back inside without answering. As soon as the
door was closed, Troy grinned at Vish. “She has a crush on you.”

Vish snorted.
“I seriously doubt that,” he said. He fumbled to unlock his own door, hoping
Mariposa wasn’t eavesdropping.

“Are you
kidding me? She came outside as soon as she heard us coming. And she really
scoped out her competition. Did you see the stink-eye she gave me?”

“She might’ve
felt shy. Maybe she recognized you.”

Troy shrugged
and moved past him into his apartment. “Maybe. Doesn’t mean she’s not sweet on
you. Is the idea really so crazy?”

“Yes. Yes, it
is. For starters, I’m too old for her to even consider me that way.”

“That’s
probably part of the appeal. You’re old enough that her mother would wig out at
the idea of you as her boyfriend, which makes it kind of fun and dangerous, but
at the same time you’re sweet and gentle and bunny-rabbit cute, which
neutralizes any real threat. That combination is catnip to teen girls. Trust
me, I used to be an expert.”

Vish raised his
eyebrows. “Bunny-rabbit cute?”

“Oh, yes,” Troy
said. “Absolutely.” She winked at him.

Was that good?
Probably not—after all, she’d essentially just told him that she found him
innocuous and kind of sexless. Did Troy like cute boys, or had she left that
phase behind in her teen years? As Vish tried to work this out, she headed for
the kitchen and plopped her mesh bag down on the counter. “This is going to
sound like not much fun, but bear with me. I picked up tofu—it’s the firm kind,
not the drippy crap, and it’s not bad at all if you cook it right—and then a
bunch of vegetables and herbs and stuff. I thought we could do a stir-fry.”

She was right.
It didn’t sound fun. “Sounds great. Healthy.”

“Do you drink?”
Troy pulled a bottle of red wine out of her bag. “And if you do, point me in
the direction of your corkscrew.”

Troy was a good
cook. Troy, from what Vish had seen thus far, was probably good at everything
she did. Vish had worked for Jamie long enough to be comfortable in a kitchen;
he chopped vegetables to Troy’s specifications, then watched as she cooked
everything up with sesame oil and grated ginger and soy sauce. They drank while
they cooked, the kitchen growing warm and filling with good smells.

At one point,
Troy excused herself to use the bathroom. A few seconds later, Vish was
startled by a loud yelp.

“Troy?” he
asked.

She opened the
door, giggling. “You have to see this.” She beckoned him over. “I wanted to
replace your toilet paper roll, so I checked under the sink,” she said. She
pointed at the open cabinet covering the pipes. “I’m guessing it’s not usually
like this?”

The back of the
bathroom wall had crumbled away, revealing a jagged hole. The edges of the hole
were coated with what Vish initially took to be some kind of puffy plastic
insulation, until he noticed it was moving. Grubs. Huge, soft, pale grubs,
dozens of them, clinging around the edges of the gap, climbing up out of the
darkness and into Vish’s apartment.

Vish wasn’t
squeamish, but the sight made him flinch. “God. Yuck. Sorry you had to find
that,” he said. “The wall must have crumbled during the earthquake.”

“Do you have a
maintenance guy?” Troy asked.

Vish shook his
head. “The landlord lives in the building. I’ll get him.”

Troy insisted
on coming with him. Vish wished she wouldn’t. Vish liked to avoid the landlord
as much as possible. Silas was strange and marginal. His apartment, in the back
of the building on the ground floor beside the laundry room, always smelled
like old fish and burnt cheese. He consistently shot down all Vish’s tentative
suggestions—that he buy a lock for the dumpster to deter the scavengers who
crawled in there each week to look for salvage, that he clean and fill the
pool, that he replace the broken locks on the mailboxes—and Vish always left
their encounters feeling whiny and ineffectual.

Troy, on the
other hand… No one could ever accuse Troy of being ineffectual. Troy was a
cheerful force of nature. She rapped on Silas’s door and introduced herself
with a firm handshake and a knee-weakening smile, then took him by the hand and
pulled him upstairs to examine the hole in the bathroom wall before he could
think of some way to blow her off.

Silas flicked a
soiled rag at the grubs to shoo them back into the hole, then nailed a square
of plywood across the gap. He grunted.

“I’ll patch it
later,” he said. “Get some plaster up over it, paint it, it’ll be good as new.”
He straightened up and squinted at Vish. “Happened in the quake, you said?”

“It must have,”
Vish said. “I didn’t notice it until today.”

Silas made some
noise in the back of his throat. “Sure you kids weren’t messing around in
here?”

“Digging a hole
to China?” Vish asked. “No. It happened in the quake.”

Silas shrugged.
“Well, you’d say that, wouldn’t you?”

“This is a
great building,” Troy said, her tone chipper. “These units are really roomy.”

Silas looked at
her, his scowl lightening. “They are, aren’t they? Wouldn’t know it from the
outside exactly, but they’re not bad.”

“I saw the
for-rent sign on the fence,” Troy said. “Bad market right now, isn’t it?”

“Goddamn
economy,” Silas said.

“If you cleaned
and filled the pool, I bet the building would fill right up,” she said. “You
can see it from the sidewalk. It’d be a huge draw.”

That seemed
unlikely—pools were common in the neighborhood, and they certainly weren’t a
necessity this close to the beach—but when Troy said things, people listened.
Silas started to look half-convinced, then he shook his head.

“No one’d use
it,” he said. “Summer’s gone.”

“Does it
matter? You’d fill up the building. It’d pay for itself right there.” Troy
looked relaxed and engaged, like she was having a fantastic time chatting about
pools with Silas, even though Silas was tedious and off-putting. This made Vish
worry a bit, because she looked at him exactly the same way whenever they were
alone together. Maybe she thought Vish was tedious and off-putting, too.

No. It’d be the
easiest thing in the world for her to vanish out of his life if she didn’t want
to spend time with him, and yet here she was, dangling a promising job
opportunity in front of him and cooking him a tasty meal. It had to mean
something, something good.

V
ish next saw Troy on Sunday at her tea
party, which was held at her place in Hermosa Beach. Troy and her roommate
shared the bottom level of a two-story condo. Their sliding patio doors opened
directly onto the Strand, the snaking concrete path that ran along the
coastline for much of the South Bay. Just beyond the path lay a satiny ribbon of
sand and then the ocean, white-blue and boundless.

Apart from the
view, Troy’s place was a disappointment. An enormous flat-screen television
taking up one corner of the living room, a white suede couch and matching
armchair, a glass coffee table on a white wicker frame. White walls adorned
with a framed
Breakfast At Tiffany’s
poster, one that probably hung in
the dorm rooms of cute young theater majors nationwide. No bookcases, no books.
A short stack of
Interstellar Boys
scripts on the floor beside the sofa,
a gossip magazine on the coffee table.

She shared the
place with another woman. Maybe it was just the effect of having a roommate
that made their communal living space so bland. Vish had shuffled through a
succession of amiable-yet-distant roommates in his post-college years, and in
each case their decor ended up with a similar generic quality. Something to do
with compromise, not wishing to assert his own tastes too much, suppressing his
personality for the sake of roommate bonhomie. Maybe Troy was the same.

Or maybe Troy
just liked Audrey Hepburn and frothy magazines, and maybe she had better things
to do with her time than decorate, and maybe he should stop being so damn
judgmental.

Troy seemed
delighted to see him. He’d worried about this a little. He was in his work
garb, the black pants and the silly red vest that marked him as a member of the
service industry, whereas she was the party’s hostess and star attraction.
Maybe the dichotomy would make her re-evaluate her interest in him. But she met
him at the door with a hug and a quick kiss on his cheek, as though this was
the most natural situation in the world. Today she smelled like tangerines.

“I was hoping
it’d be you,” she said. “I almost called your boss—Jamie, right?—to ask for you
specifically, but I didn’t want it to seem like I was
summoning
you.”

“I’m glad
you’re okay about this. I was hoping you wouldn’t find it weird,” he said.

“Are you
kidding? I’m thrilled,” she said. She took him by the hand and led him over to
the couch, where a gaunt, gangly young woman with straight black hair and an
excess of dark eyeliner lounged against the cushions. “I want you to meet my
roommate. Lola, this is Vish. You remember me telling you about him.”

“Sure.” Lola
lifted a thin white arm in the air and languidly waved it, flashing chipped
cobalt nails in his direction. “Hey.”

“Nice to meet
you,” Vish said. Lola half-smiled, pale lips twitching. She gave him a slow
once-over, head to toe, and seemed amused by whatever she saw.

“Likewise, I’m
sure,” she said. Her voice was a low drawl, her tone a whisper away from
sarcasm. “Troy says you’re going to serve us?”

“That’s the
idea, yes,” Vish said.

“Fabulous.”
Lola’s half-smile deepened into a smirk and she glanced over at Troy as though
expecting her to share in some private joke, but Troy’s attention was focused
on Vish.

“Let me show
you where to set up,” Troy said. She led him over to the attached kitchen.
“Stove, sink, refrigerator. Is there anything else you need?”

“I think I’m
good. Thanks.” Vish glanced in the fridge, which was shiny stainless steel,
industrial and cavernous. It held half a head of cabbage, a lonely Styrofoam
takeout container splattered with marinara, and twelve bottles of Cristal,
chilling before the party.

Setting up was
easy. No fussing with chafing dishes and butane burners, just a matter of
arranging dainty cakes and pastries on decorative trays and brewing teas—rose
Darjeeling and blackberry-ginger—in heavy silver urns. He’d transported the
food and equipment in the company van, putting his long-neglected driver’s
license to use for once.

Guests arrived
in twos and threes, maybe two dozen all total. All female, all sporting the
glossy, well-groomed prettiness of working actresses, though for all Vish knew,
they could be screenwriters, or mechanics, or gastroenterologists like Kate.
Shiny hair, white teeth, flawless skin, slim figures. Invisible in his
service-industry trappings, Vish watched as they murmured over the trays of
pastries, or perched on the sofa and sipped at flutes of champagne, or sat on
the floor, long legs pulled close to their bodies. They ate very little and
laughed a great deal.

After the last
bottle of champagne had been poured out and Troy had shooed away the last guest
amidst a flurry of giggles and hugs, he found himself alone with her. Lola had
excused herself as well, leaving with one of the partygoers on a shopping
excursion to nearby Santa Monica.

“Do you want to
keep the leftovers?” he asked.

“Sure, why not?
I can bring them to work tomorrow,” Troy said. “It’ll give us something to
snack on during the read-through.”

She stepped in
to help with the cleanup, unasked. While Vish scrubbed out the silver urns in
the sink, Troy loaded the tiny china plates and champagne flutes into the
dishwasher. And when everything was clean and he was preparing to say his
goodbyes, she placed a hand on either side of his face, stood on her toes, and
kissed him.

It was strong,
and vigorous, and surprisingly rough, like she was sucking all the breath, the
strength, the life right out of him. Vish had an almost physical sensation of
barriers falling down beneath the force of her kiss. After a moment of
hesitation, he returned it.

So strange,
this physical connection, this sensation of another body—a warm, firm
body—against his, of another pair of arms sliding up and around him, of small
hands gripping his shoulders and pulling him close. And then the arms were
moving, sliding again, down his back and around his waist to the button of his
cheap black slacks, and then one of those warm, nimble hands slipped inside his
underwear and cupped him. He hardened at her touch.

Troy broke the
kiss long enough to press her cheek against his. “The counter. Lift me up on
the counter,” she said, her words little more than a gasp. Small teeth nipped
at his earlobe.

Vish moved his
hands to her waist, so slender beneath her loose sweatshirt, then hesitated.
“Wait. Are we going to…?”

Troy laughed,
breathless and laced with irritation. “Why do you think I hustled everyone out
of here?” she asked. “Lola knows. She’ll be gone for hours. We’ve got the place
to ourselves for as long as we want it.” She slid a hand up his neck and fanned
her fingers along his jawbone. “Don’t try to tell me you don’t want to.”

“I do. I do.”
Vish swallowed hard. “But I wasn’t planning… I don’t have—”

“Bathroom,”
Troy said. “The one off of my bedroom, down the hall to the right. There’s a
box in the medicine cabinet.” She winked and released him, then boosted herself
up onto the kitchen counter. She crossed her legs, tanned and smooth under her
white shorts. “I’ll wait here for you.”

“I’ll be right
back,” Vish said. His pants were unbuttoned and on the verge of falling off his
hips. He fastened them again, fingers thick and clumsy. He felt awkward and
panicked, like he was on the verge of ruining an unreal, mind-crushingly great
moment that would never come again.

He found Troy’s
bedroom. White walls, white dresser, white carpet. A framed poster of Van
Gogh’s
Irises
from LACMA hung above the bed, which was queen-sized and
topped with a peach flowered coverlet and an assortment of ruffled pillows.

He checked his
reflection in the bathroom mirror and winced. Hair plastered to his forehead
with sweat, collar askew, one flap of his dumb vest tucked into his waistband.
He straightened himself out as best he could, then went hunting in the medicine
cabinet for Troy’s stash of condoms.

Prescription
bottles. Lots of them, a dozen or more, stored in an open plastic caddy in the
medicine cabinet. The first medicine was for anxiety, the second for depression,
and then he stopped reading the labels. This wasn’t his business. It was a
surprise that there were so many, but still, he had no right to snoop.

He found the
condoms, extracted one from the box, and replaced the contents of the cabinet
as best he could, feeling guilty.

Back to the
kitchen, back to Troy, who was still perched on the counter, waiting for him.
She smiled. “Found what you need?”

He held up the
condom. “All good.” He glanced around the kitchen, at the living room just
beyond it, and beyond that the sliding doors and the Strand and all of Hermosa
Beach. “Ah… we’re kind of exposed here.”

Troy shrugged.
“We’re not, not really. It’s darker in here than it is outside. No one can see
us unless they plaster their faces against the glass. It’s fine.”

“I suppose so.”
Vish looked outside again, uncertain. “We could always move to your bedroom.”

“Or we could
stay here.” Troy’s tone was light, but there was a trace of something beneath
it. Impatience, or irritation. Fair enough. He was, in fact, dithering. She
extended both arms toward him. “Don’t ruin this.”

He stepped
forward and let his arms slide up around her ribcage, almost of their own
accord. Her mouth closed on his once again.

Drowning in
her, losing himself in the scent of tangerines, her heartbeat like the pounding
of the ocean, her mouth sour with the taste of champagne. And when it was over,
and they were sticky with sweat and bodily fluids, arm and thigh muscles
twitching from their participation in this most ancient of sports, Troy wrapped
her arms around his neck and pressed her forehead against his chest. “Let’s
walk on the beach,” she said.

His time wasn’t
his own. He was on the clock, technically, and he still had to return to the
shop and unload the equipment and help Jamie fix sandwiches and brew tea for
customers. But it would be ungentlemanly to leave Troy now, so he nodded.
“Sure.”

They walked on
the Strand, Troy’s hand in his. The air was damp and the sky was whitish gray,
the pale and feeble sun unable to burn away the marine layer. The South Bay was
different than the beaches around Vish’s apartment. Preppier than ratty Venice,
less crowded than tourist-jammed Santa Monica. White-haired boys with shiny
brown torsos played volleyball on the sand, wetsuited surfers paddled out into
the waves, bronze-skinned girls in tiny bikinis reclined in folding beach
chairs.

“You’re quiet,”
Troy said at last. “Are you okay with this? Did I push you into this too
quickly?”

He glanced
down. She looked concerned, almost worried. “No, it’s fantastic. Thank you very
much. It just… I’m a little surprised, that’s all.”

Troy smiled.
“I’m not usually like that,” she said. “I mean, I’m always pretty forward, you
know that about me, but I’m not usually that direct, if you know what I’m
saying. But I really like being around you, Vish.”

“I’m glad. Me
too,” Vish said. He took a deep breath. “I’d like to see more of you, Troy. A
whole lot more.”

It was hard to
say. His stomach seemed to constrict, as though by exposing his neediness to
Troy, he expected to be punched in the gut.

Laughter
exploded out of her, a blast of unfettered amusement that instantly made him
feel better. “I should hope so,” she said. “I wouldn’t have done that if I
thought you didn’t want this to be a regular thing. You and me, I mean.” She
gripped his hand tighter. “I’m not seeing anyone else right now. I want you to
know that.”

“Me either. I
haven’t seen anyone since moving to Los Angeles.” He shrugged. “For a long time
before that, actually.”

She was quiet
for a moment, her small features pensive. “Have you ever been in a serious
relationship?” she asked.

Vish wanted to
lie, because he didn’t want her to think he was abnormal, but he wasn’t sure
how to be anything less than wholly honest with Troy. “Not really. I’ve dated
before, but… No. Nothing anyone would consider serious. Nothing lasting.”

She nodded,
mulling this over. “Any particular reason why not?”

“People aren’t
drawn to me, I guess. The people I like never like me in return. Or if they do,
they don’t tell me about it.”

“That might
explain a few things,” Troy said. “You never having a steady girlfriend, I
mean.”

“Oh?”

She shook her
head. “The way you’ve been so ridiculously skittish about me thus far, I
figured you either weren’t interested, or you weren’t sure how to proceed. Guess
it’s the second option.” She turned to look at him. “I thought you’d call me,
or email after we last met. We had a good time, a really good time, but you
didn’t follow up. If you didn’t show up at my party today, I was going to give
up on you.”

“I’m sorry,” he
said. “I’m really sorry. I’m awkward with people a lot of the time, and I
thought if I called, you’d think I was pushy or clingy, because…”

“Because?”

“Because I
don’t know what you’re getting out of this relationship,” Vish said. “You’re
beautiful and famous, and you’re so nice to me it’s almost unreal, and I don’t
know what you see in me. The whole thing seems, I don’t know, weird.”

He regretted
the word “weird” as soon as it was out of his mouth. She stared at him for a
moment, not amused. “Holy crap, Vish,” she said at last. “Is that the way your
brain works? I like you, and I want to spend time with you and help you out any
way I can. Can’t you accept that without thinking there’s something funny going
on?”

Her cheeks were
flushed, her mouth was set in a grim line, and she was clearly pissed off. “I’m
sorry,” Vish said. “I didn’t mean—”