It seems like a reasonable division of the property—he gets the dog, she gets the car—but as the sun climbs in the sky and she leaves Santa Monica (where she could have bought those shoes) she remembers all of the other stuff that will be arriving from Brooklyn by moving van later in the week. She feels solitary, free, and sweetly sad right now, but in four—no, she looks at the date on her watch—three days, when she is schlepping boxes into the apartment and opening them to discover volumes of Claude Lévi-Strauss and The Proceedings of the American Anthropological Society, not to mention Grand Theft Auto I–IV, Super Smash Bros., and Final Fantasy, what will she feel? And then there will be the spices: rosemary and thyme for her, cumin and cardamom for him.
As she snakes up Malibu, Julia decides that this is the sort of practical thought her mother would have. Follow your dream, but don’t forget where you stored the winter coats, and did your father remember to drain the oil from the crankcase when he put the lawn mower away for the winter? That leads to another thought—is Terence the person she wants to own a lawn mower with? Does she really want to own a lawn mower? She’s only 25. Her mother was 32 when the first lawn mower was purchased.
And why is she on the Pacific Coast Highway, anyway? When they planned this leg of the trip, they intended to go up I-5. They planned to stop in San Juan Bautista. It was meant to be a calm and orderly day. Of course, it was supposed to have been a calm and orderly trip, too, which it had not been, and maybe that was the lesson of Terence—that where Terence was, calm and order were not.
Still she is pulled back to that hotel room, that man, that dog, by a long elastic band. Maybe if she drives far enough, the band will snap. She glances at her cell phone, at rest in the passenger seat.
Silence. The GPS[1] lady is quiet.
But then, of course, too soon, her phone rings. It’s coming through the radio; gotta love that Bluetooth*. She presses the steering wheel’s connect button.
A woman’s voice says, “Hello! Is this Julia?”
“Yes, it is.” The number. 408 something. Preoccupied with Terence, she doesn’t recognize it, but as the voice says, “This is Merry Roma! Is this Julia?” she remembers who this is—her new boss.
Julia swallows her heart, which has risen right into her throat, and pulls safely onto the highway’s shoulder. Then she pats her forehead, suddenly dripping with sweat, with the tail of her shirt, Terence’s shirt.
Speak in an even tone, she tells herself. She fails, caroling, “Hello! I can hardly hear you. Bad connection. I’m in a canyon!” L.A. people like to say that.
Merry Roma asks if she should call back.
“No, that’s better,” says Julia, calm and orderly.
“I wanted to welcome you, and give you directions for tomorrow.”
Merry Roma (and is she supposed to call her Ms. Roma? Merry? Or, for that matter, “Signora Roma”?) is chatting, but Julia can’t quite grasp what she is saying. When Merry Roma says, “OK?” Julia says, “Oh, thank you so much, Merry. My problem is that I still can’t hear you very well”—she can hear her perfectly, she just can’t listen—“so, do you mind just texting me the basic info? I so look forward to meeting you and starting work tomorrow.” Tomorrow!
Merry says, “Will do! Looking forward to it. Bye, now.”
The call is lost, making Julia not quite a liar after all.
She examines the local color. Guys with burnt-blond bangs and deltoids defined like arrowheads are parked by the side of the road, surfboards at the ready as they shimmy into wet suits, towels wrapped around their waists. Kind of guys who never have nightmares. California. It’s home now. She looks at her watch a third time. It is 8:17.
Not that late. Terence may have slept through this latest part of her adventure. OK, so calm and orderly isn’t the be-all, end-all. Ready for anything has its place, too.
She starts the IS F and watches carefully for phantom cars to appear around the bends of the road. Before she has time to pull out, the phone rings again.
Terence’s voice on the other end is sleepy. “Hey, you get some shoes?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I slept forever,” he says.
“I thought you might.”
“But now,” he says, “I need my gal.”
“Your gal?” She feels herself smile.
“That’s a California term.”
“Oh, I see.”
There is a pause, during which she hears him yawn in an especially unsuspecting way, and she says, “The GPS lady thinks I’ll be there inside an hour.”
“I’ll be waiting. Larry, too.”
She makes a little kissing noise. He already hung up.
And it’s back on the road. At Oxnard she turns onto Highway 34, looking for signs for the 1. South. She said an hour.
Great, now where the hell is she going to buy shoes?
WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
Come back in February to read the bonus final chapter, as submitted by one of our readers.