Chapter Eighteen
I almost missed her. My fretting finally exhausted me and led to a deep sleep as the sun was rising. I awoke to the sound of Mom gently tapping on my door and loudly talking through it.
“Nick?” she said. “There’s a girl named Shay out front. You were supposed to say good-bye?”
Cursing to myself and hollering back a “yes, just a minute,” I put on some shorts and a t-shirt and burst through the door with the sudden focus of someone responding to a fire alarm or an emergency phone call.
“Do I know Shay?” Mom asked as I passed her in the upstairs hall.
“Not if you have to ask,” I said as I rushed downstairs.
Shay stood in the doorway and cut a peaceful presence against my apologetic whirlwind.
“I’m so sorry,” I pleaded. “I hardly slept last night.”
She started to speak and I was compelled to explain what I meant.
“But not because of what happened,” I interrupted her momentum, then lowered my voice: “I had a few beers from my parents’ cooler later on.”
“And that had nothing to do with us?” she smirked. “It was just a coincidence?”
I exhaled. She let me try to think of something to say for a few moments before rescuing me.
“Just keep in touch,” she said. “Okay? It’s not hard in this day and age.”
I nodded, enjoying the dynamic of keeping my mouth shut. Besides, I could tell I had really bad morning breath. I kept the theme going by reaching out for a hug. She obliged, and we clung to one another for quite some time. I enjoyed feeling her breathing, and her heart beat, and her breasts. I realized it was because I didn’t have to worry about them anymore, and that our tryst had made it much easier to say good-bye to her.
“Sorry if I screwed up what we had,” she choked up as we parted.
“Don’t be sorry,” I said in all sincerity. “I’m grateful for everything.”
She leaned in and rested her forehead on mine, looking down at my chest as she traced shapes on it with her finger. One of them may have been a heart.
I started to get impatient, but didn’t want to be mean. I waited for her to do what she needed to do. Finally she stood up straight and looked at me with tears in her eyes. I was shocked at how little it affected me.
“Bye,” she barely managed to say.
“Bye,” I tried to look and sound more sad than I was.
She started to cry, but I was confident it had nothing to do with my reaction. As if to confirm my self-assessment, she came at me for one more hug and whispered “I love you.”
I thought of returning the same whisper, but was not confident that I could deliver a line about love convincingly. I remembered from the night before how afraid she was of being regarded as ugly. So I told her she was beautiful. She didn’t look at me as she pushed away and trotted down our driveway, so I was left to wonder if it worked.
I stood in the doorway long after she was no longer in view, searching myself for some sort of emotion. Her parents’ car drove by with her in the backseat. We caught a glimpse of each other and waved, and I thought that I must have looked quite despondent standing there, which would help her trust in what I said. Then it occurred to me that it wasn’t her I was trying to inspire, it was myself. I really wanted to have a reaction, but couldn’t conjure one up; I reached for something and found emptiness far greater than all of our evacuated homes put together. I clung to the possibility that it may just be a hangover, but imagined that would feel temporary, like something that could be cured. This felt permanent, like something that could only be managed.
I shut the door and walked past my parents, who were sitting in the kitchen, who had also cried in front of me while I stood dispassionately by the sign that had pierced their story. I went to my room and spent more time in bed, most of it staring at the ceiling.
I wondered if this is what it meant to be a man.
My self-imposed confinement went on for a few more hours. I had no intention of breaking it until I heard a large vehicle rolling into our neighborhood in low gear. I assumed it was a moving truck come to make a pick-up at Shay’s. I peeked out my window to see if the sight provided any last-minute sensations, but saw that it was a different sort of vehicle entirely.
It looked like one of those shuttle buses that drive around airport loading zones and bring people to hotels or rental car lots. Only this one was decorated with a real estate company logo. As it passed by our house, I could hear a faint voice over a microphone from within the bus, saying something about buying multiple lots and the interest rates available. It continued slowly down the street and stopped in front of a cluster of foreclosed homes. A group of smartly-dressed people filed off the bus, while from out of the houses still occupied drifted a smattering of parents dressed for a day of waiting around for that night’s party.
The parents looked at the bus and at each other, and started moving in its direction. The people fresh off the real estate shuttle didn’t notice the Ranch Ranch residents. The real estate agent had their attention as he led them into one of the houses, plus their view of the approaching posse was obscured by the bus. Not that they had anything to be concerned about; I took the parents as curious spectators, and left the window to try and think of what to do next, having exhausted any possibilities that staring at the ceiling offered.
I noticed some reflections flashing in various parts of my window, and went back to look through it. More parents were arriving from other corners of the development, passing by our house on their way to the space being surveyed by the real estate tour group. I re-positioned myself where I could see the bus and gauge just how big the horde was becoming. It was fairly sizable, looking like a group of people waiting outside a courthouse for the verdict in a show trial.
The realtor and his clients must have also watched the mob grow through the windows of the vacant house they had been sizing up, as they came out at a cautious pace, as if bracing themselves. Some of the parents started yelling at them. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, so I ran down and outside to get closer.
“Scavengers!”
“Blood suckers!”
“Vultures!”
Variations on a theme of taking advantage of others’ misfortune were being lobbed at the tour, whom the realtor shepherded back into the bus. The shouts were scattered; single words for the most part, no slogans that had developed into chants. The realtor smiled sheepishly and got back on as well.
The bus started up and made a U-turn. The gang of parents had continued to swell, with more of us sons and daughters joining them. We followed the bus as it crept back down the street, and a slogan emerged:
“We’re still here!”
Most everyone adopted the chant and repeated it full throat, over and over, as we marched behind the bus. I assumed it would exit through the gate, but it turned into the block where the North house sat, the most bank-owned block at Rancho Hacienda. The windows were tinted so I couldn’t see any of the tour group’s faces, but the realtor was obviously determined to see this through. He had sprung for gas and promotion, so he was not going to waste the trip.
That’s the way he carried himself as he walked down the stairs of the bus after it parked in front of an entire row of houses hung with foreclosure signs. He applied his resolve to help him conceal his nerves as our group continued to chant “We’re still here!” None of his clients followed him outside. By order or default, he was doing this alone. He gestured for quiet, and finally got it.
“We are not disturbing any current occupants,” he said. “We respect your privacy.”
“Those are our friends’ houses!” hollered a voice from the back of the mob.
The realtor took a deep breath. “Not anymore.”
The boos were loud and sustained, eventually giving way to pockets of “We’re still here!” The two mixed together, boos providing background for the main chorus. The agent made another mild attempt at asking for quiet a
nd realized it was futile.
Help arrived from inside the bus. A red-faced man dressed for an office party stormed the bottom step, keeping him just above the realtor, and started berating the crowd. It was difficult to hear him at first, but the swarm quieted down if for no other reason than curiosity.
“It’s not our fault you people can’t manage your money!” was the first complete sentence I could hear out of him. “Take some responsibility! Live within your means! Get a job, for Christ’s sake! What are you all doing here in the middle of the week at this time of day, anyway?”
The boos returned and the realtor tried to guide his client back up the stairs. The tour member complied, but screamed in some last shots as he ascended:
“And you call us vultures?! We’re the parasites?! You people are pulling the rest of the country down with you! People like us are here to save it!”
His last comment as he disappeared with the realtor into the shuttle was “Grow up!”
The horde gave up on slogans and analogies and simply started to curse at the tinted windows. The agent appeared again on the steps, but could tell there was no more room for coherent thoughts. He turned and said something to the driver, then the doors exhaled and shut. The Ranch gang was furious at being ignored by someone they didn’t want to listen to. They charged the bus and started banging on the windows with their fists and karate-kicking the sides. The engine started and rather than disperse, our parents spread themselves around all sides of the bus and lifted their anger higher, hoisting it up and back to a time before people walked upright. They were just screaming now, no words were formed. Their bodies shook and their fists flew. The rest of the kids and I shrunk to the outside of the circle and looked at each other, vexed by the terrible impression that childhood never ends. I darted to an area in front of the bus to see if I could figure out what was going on inside through the windshield, which was its only un-tinted window. The driver looked merely irritated, as though stuck in traffic, which lent some perspective I found comforting.
I relaxed a bit and started to connect with some friends and told them this would pass. They seemed prepared to believe me, but then a couple of gunshots made everyone jump and scream; then a couple more sent everyone ducking.
All was quiet. I looked out from under my arms in the direction of the shots, and there was Soren, handgun still raised in the air, holding the pose to make sure as many people as possible saw him. Once he estimated the moment was about to pass, he silently walked to the bus and knocked on the door, which I had to hand it to him was a smart move, as I thought for sure he was going to say something stupid. He held his hands up and the gun upside down in a gesture of peace. The door opened and he went inside, then disembarked a minute later. The bus pulled into gear and Soren directed it with his gun. The stunned crowd cleared a path, and civilization returned as we watched the real estate shuttle drive away.