Читать книгу Lost Canyon - Nina Revoyr - Страница 8

Chapter Two

Oscar

Oscar Barajas turned left onto York and immediately ran into stopped traffic. There was a line of it, both ways, bumper to bumper, inching slowly through the main corridor of Highland Park.

“Shit,” he said softly, and then he remembered Lily, his four-year-old daughter, who was sitting in back. He glanced up at the rearview mirror but she was staring out the window and hadn’t heard him.

“Papá, can I have a SPAM musubi?” she asked, pointing at the Hawaiian barbecue place that had recently sprung up, along with a Starbucks and a CVS, in what had once been a stretch of dilapidated houses and trash-filled empty lots.

“No, mija. Not today. Grandma’s probably made you dinner. We can get some when I pick you up on Monday, okay? I promise.”

“Oh-kay,” Lily answered, with an exaggerated shrug. Oscar smiled. She was damned cute, his daughter. His mother doted on her too, and he was grateful to her for watching Lily while he went on his backpacking trip, especially since his ex, Tammy—no surprise—had refused to take her for more than her required time. He just wouldn’t tell his mother that Lily liked SPAM—and red curry from the local Thai place, and of course her mother’s phở—as much as she did her grandmother’s enchiladas.

He inched forward, past the sunglasses store and the graphics shop run out of small converted houses, the check-cashing place, the liquor stores, the hole-in-the-wall taquerías. He couldn’t believe the traffic. When had it gotten to be like this? Five years ago, York had been a drive-through street, a barrio artery, that no one but locals ever stopped on. It was gritty, rough, dirty, all the doors and windows covered with bars, a place where members of the Avenues gang strutted openly down the sidewalk, tagging storefronts and walls in broad daylight. But then real estate had boomed, the Northeast had been “discovered,” and white yuppies who’d been priced out of the Westside came flooding into the hills of Glassell Park and Mount Washington, the quiet streets of Eagle Rock, some even venturing into the flats of Highland Park. Now, young professionals and fedora-wearing hipsters, many in the entertainment industry, were living side by side with Mexican families who’d been there for generations, and with Chevy-driving, blue-collar whites. And a whole new crop of restaurants, shops, and businesses had sprung up in unexpected places, like hearty plants blossoming in what had long been arid, inhospitable soil. Eagle Rock and Colorado boulevards, once full of car repair shops and storefront churches, now boasted several Los Angeles Times and LA Weekly–sanctioned eating establishments, including a sushi joint run out of a converted auto body shop and the best cupcake place in the city.

But the most surprising transformation had been on York itself, which one of Oscar’s realtor colleagues—before the boom—had half-jokingly referred to as “Mexico.” Oscar had come here often when he was a kid, to pick up milk from his mother at the corner bodega or to visit his buddy Reynaldo at the bike repair shop, and the conversations, the store signs, the music wafting through the air, were all in Spanish. It had stayed that way for years.

The first sign of change had been the hipster bar, called simply The Highland. Oscar was driving down York late one Friday a few years ago, heading home from a family-run Mexican place that had been there all his life, and was surprised to see dozens of white people in their twenties and thirties milling around on the sidewalk. At first he thought he’d had too much to drink. But no, they were really there, in front of a brand-new establishment. He peered in through the floor-to-ceiling windows and saw at least a hundred people, an L-shaped bar, and a huge screen airing an old black-and-white movie. The beers were all microbrew, he found when he went in, the salads watercress and arugula. After The Highland came a coffee shop, a few more restaurants, a wine bar, a pilates studio. But while these places gained a foothold, the advance stopped there—the rest of the block remained stubbornly barrio, and really, Oscar was glad; it was hard to see such drastic change hit so close to home, especially since people he’d known for years were getting priced out of the neighborhood.

He had profited, too, from the real estate boom. Truthfully, it had made him. In his early- and midtwenties he had worked for his uncle David, building driveways and brick patios and retaining walls, trying to stabilize all the properties in those unstable hills. But he’d grown tired of the physical work and of spending days in the sun, and ten years ago, at age twenty-seven, he’d gotten his real estate license, just before property values went through the roof and the feeding frenzy began. Little two-bedroom bungalows that had fetched $150,000 before the boom were suddenly selling for five or six hundred thousand, anything three bedrooms or more was up to a million, all this in neighborhoods that were never mentioned—at the time—in any guidebook description of the city. Empty land was going too, to developers building on spec. Sounds of construction echoed through the once-quiet canyons.

At the height of the market, Oscar was making thirty-five, forty grand a month. He bought a BMW, a Rolex, and a four-bedroom house in the hills of Glassell Park. He bought a small Craftsman bungalow for his mother too, down in Highland Park near the apartment building where he and his sister had grown up. And there were women, lots of them, of every color and creed, single women and lonely married women who showed up for open houses and lingered after everyone else had left. He’d dated other agents too, including Lily’s mom, Tammy Ng, who’d represented a buyer to his seller during a particularly drawn-out transaction in Eagle Rock.

But the housing frenzy had come to a halt five years ago. Not sudden, not screeching, but gradual, first fewer clients and properties on the market for weeks, even months, and then the prices started to fall. By the time Oscar realized what was happening, he’d sunk a couple hundred thousand into a string of five houses built on spec in a canyon in Mount Washington. Finished three years ago, the houses stood empty, the gas and electric never hooked up, the connecting road from the main street never completed. All through the hills, houses stood half-built, foundations or retaining walls or septic tank pipes sticking out of the ground, like the remnants of a ghost town that had never been a real one. Now, Oscar was lucky to move a house every other month. Now, his savings were almost gone, and he was barely making his mortgage. He’d defaulted on the loan for the spec houses and the bank had taken them over, but that was the extent of the damage. Thank God he’d put down half the price of his house, and paid his mother’s place off in full.

He turned right onto Avenue 50, which had a new coffee shop on the corner, empty now, at six p.m., as the artists and hipsters who filled it during the day moved a few doors down to The Highland. Two blocks later it was left on Baltimore, past his old elementary school and then to his mother’s place. It was cute, her house, a two-bedroom bungalow placed well above the street, a single-car garage at street level. Oscar had cleared a little seating area on top of the garage, but his mother preferred to sit on the patio, under the overhanging roof, where she could look out at her yard and keep an eye on the neighborhood. She’d lived alone since Oscar’s father died when he was nineteen, and he tried to see her at least once a week. His sister, who worked as an insurance claims adjuster down in Tustin, didn’t make it over as much.

“Grandma! Grandma!” Lily cried out excitedly, as they pulled up in front of the house. From next door, he could hear the strains of music, people laughing on their patio. It was a gorgeous night—warm, but with a breeze, the scent of jasmine and oleander in the air, the clouds turning pink over the San Gabriel Mountains. The night-blooming cactus was preparing to flower, elegant green and purple fingers holding a single white orb, like a hand gently offering an ornament. He reached up to pull the string that undid the gate latch, wishing again that his mother would let him put a lock on it. There’d been a couple of break-ins recently, and the block was home to several members of the Avenues, who’d linger on the sidewalks or drive slowly down the street to remind everyone of their presence. Lily scrambled up the stairs ahead of him and straight to the front porch, where his mother was sitting in her usual spot, in a cheap metal-framed chair with a faded blue cushion.

“Buenas noches, mija!” she exclaimed, arms open wide, and Lily ran straight into them. “Hi, mijo,” she said to Oscar, smiling, and as he mounted the patio stairs, he said, “Hola, Mom. Did you just get home?”

She was still dressed for work, in the gray blouse and skirt issued to the female catering staff at the Hilton Pasadena. Her hair was tucked into a ponytail, with a couple of strands loose. She looked tired, and it pained him to see her this way, pained him that she worked this job at all. He didn’t like that she was on her feet all day, setting up tables and clearing plates, being ignored or worse, yelled at, by the kinds of people who go to hotels for conferences. He didn’t like that people called her by her first name, Dulce, which was printed on the name tag the staff were all required to wear.

“Yes,” she replied. “There was a conference today, nine hundred people, continental breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snack. It kept us busy. Ay, I’m tired.”

“I’m sorry. We could have come later, Mom.”

She waved him off. “No, no, it’s fine, Oscar. Besides, our little girl here needs to eat.”

“Oh, I should have brought something,” he said. “You’ve been working all day. You shouldn’t have to cook.”

Again his mother waved him off. “Ay, mijo, it’s no big deal. I made some enchiladas last night. All I have to do is warm them up.”

They moved inside, and his mother disappeared into her room, returning in loose pants, a button-down shirt, and sandals. She slid the baking pan of enchiladas into the oven, while Lily went to the cabinet in the living room where her toys were stored and pulled out several dolls. Oscar sat in the dining room where he could keep an eye on Lily in the living room and on his mother straight ahead in the kitchen.

“So . . . you can drop Lily off at day care any time after seven a.m.,” he said. “And then pick her up—”

“After four thirty. I know, Oscar. I promise it will be fine. I did raise you and Sylvia, you know.”

“Sorry. I’ve never been out of touch for this long. I guess I’m a little nervous.”

“Well, don’t be nervous about us, mijo. I’m more nervous about your trip. Why are you going off so far away, into the mountains? What will you eat? And who are these people you’re going with? Is this one of those groups from the Internet?”

“I like the mountains, Mom. You know that. And no, it’s not a Meetup group. It’s people from my gym.” Two of them were, anyway: Tracy, who taught his fitness class, and whom he’d represented when she bought her house; and Gwen, who he sometimes saw on Tuesday mornings. Another regular at the gym, a high school football coach named Eric, had laughed at the thought of Oscar making the trip. “You won’t last one night in the wilderness, pretty boy,” he’d said. Eric’s disdain was half the reason he’d decided to go.

He didn’t answer his mother’s question about what they would eat—freeze-dried meals, jerky, and trail mix would be totally foreign to her; would not even qualify as real food. And he agreed, because one thing he wasn’t excited about was his supply of “dinners”—beef Stroganoff and chicken and rice and salmon with pasta—all light, colorless, and desiccated as a block of Top Ramen, in plastic packages with pictures of landscapes that tried to divert your attention from the strange matter inside to the pretty places where you’d be consuming them. But he did like the mountains, and for that he could thank Eduardo, his college roommate from Cal State Northridge. Eduardo was a former Boy Scout who loved the outdoors, and who’d taken him hiking in Griffith Park and up in the San Gabriels. Once they even went over to Mount Baldy in winter, and he’d been amazed by the pine trees with their snow-laden branches, how they folded in on themselves, bent over like praying nuns.

“But aren’t there bears in those mountains?” his mother asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

This last exchange brought Lily running in from the living room. “You’re going to see bears, Daddy? I want to see a bear!”

Oscar scooped his daughter up and sat her on his lap. “I probably won’t see them, mija. I hope not, anyway. But we’ll go see some at the zoo sometime, okay?”

This didn’t seem to convince her. But she was quickly distracted as soon as her grandmother took the enchiladas from the oven. They sat and ate at the dining room table by the window looking out at the mountains, now hulking shapes against the darkening sky. Lily chattered on with her grandmother in English and Spanish, with a word or two of Vietnamese sprinkled in. And Oscar’s mind wandered—to last-minute preparations, to his girlfriend Claudia, and finally to the conversation he’d had with his uncle earlier in the week.

Oscar had worked for his uncle for three years. Their jobs had familiarized him with the neighborhoods where he later sold and bought houses; had given him the eye to see what improvements a property might need, and how much those changes were likely to cost. When the market collapsed, his uncle’s business still managed to thrive, as people hunkered down and improved what they’d originally thought of as “starter” homes. Now, David was sixty-three and getting tired. He’d first called Oscar a couple of months ago: would Oscar be interested in coming back and taking over? David would still handle the business end, at least for a while—negotiate with contractors, help to choose and plan jobs. But the actual projects, the day-to-day site work, would be Oscar’s.

At first Oscar had said no. Going back to his uncle’s company would feel like a step back, a step down. He couldn’t stand the idea of wearing workingman clothes again. He couldn’t stand the idea of someone treating him like a laborer. But as the weeks went by and he watched his savings drop, he thought about his daughter. Real estate was hit or miss, and he was missing more than hitting these days. By the time the market rose again, he might go bankrupt, and then where would he be? His uncle’s company wasn’t glamorous, but it was profitable and dependable. He knew that David must have had some sense of his troubles; everyone knew about the empty houses on Vallejo. When his uncle had called again a couple of days ago, this time Oscar listened.

After they finished dinner, Oscar went back out to the car and brought in the rest of Lily’s things—her pink suitcase full of clothes for the rest of the week, her Hello Kitty backpack. Then his mother handed him a plastic container of leftover enchiladas.

“Mom, I can’t take these, I’m leaving tomorrow. You and Lily can eat them.”

“We have plenty, Oscar. And maybe you’ll want a midnight snack or something to eat in the car.”

He knew it was no use arguing. He put the container down on the table and gave his mother a hug. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

Then he turned to his daughter, whose big brown eyes gazed up at him totally without guile. It made his heart melt. He’d never expected to be a father, had been surprised when Tammy, his decidedly unserious girlfriend, broke the news that she was pregnant. Initially he’d been furious and resentful, and even after Lily was born, he’d been ambivalent about his new role as dad. But now he couldn’t imagine his life without his daughter. He knelt down and hugged her tight, feeling her spindly arms around his neck. “Bye, mija. I won’t be gone long. You listen to Grandma Dulce and pay attention in school, okay?”

“Okay, Papá,” she said gravely. This self-possession just made him feel worse for leaving her.

“I’ll try to call you tomorrow from the campground, all right?”

“Okay, Papá,” she said again.

And then he left and walked outside and down the front stairs, turning once to see his mother and daughter waving at him from the doorway. He waved back, taking one last look at his girl, a knot forming in his stomach as he turned away.

He took backstreets to El Paso, over to Division, and then left up into the hills, Glassell Park on his right side, the fancier Mount Washington on his left. He avoided the street that would have taken him past his unfinished properties. Other houses he’d either helped buy or sell were sprinkled along the streets he drove: the two-bedroom, one-bath on Division, the three-bedroom with den and mountain view on Panamint. Ten years ago, when he’d bought here, the streets were quiet, and the cars parked on them were Hondas, Fords, Toyotas. Now every other car was a Volvo or BMW. He knew it was good for property values, this influx of money, but something solid and familiar was lost too. The first yuppies who’d moved in, maybe eight or ten years ago, had treated the old-time Latino families, blue-collar whites, and elderly gays with respect. The newer ones—well, they behaved differently. They complained about the bright paint on houses owned by Mexican families who’d been there fifty years. They didn’t pick up after their dogs. They sometimes turned their heads when Oscar and Lily went out for walks. Just that morning, on his daily run, Oscar had said “Good morning” to a thirty-something woman who was out walking with her toddler. She looked at him with what might have been fear or disdain, pulled her child close, and didn’t reply.

Oscar turned onto his street, pressed the button on the garage door opener tucked above the sun visor, and pulled into the safe cavern of his garage. It was good to be home. His house was folded into the hill, with the garage at street level, the living room, kitchen, and two bedrooms above, and the master bedroom and bathroom perched like a ship’s lookout on top of everything else, with a bank of windows facing the mountains. He’d been lucky to buy this place when he had, in 2003; now, even after the bubble had burst, it was worth almost twice what he’d paid for it. And he was proud to live in Glassell Park. Not like the other realtors who tried to expand the boundaries of Mount Washington. Not like the owners of the property that had just been featured in the Los Angeles Times, in an article titled, Mount Washington Eclectic—even though the house was only three doors down from Oscar’s.

He made his way to the main level, where he put the enchiladas in the fridge and checked his messages. Only one, from Claudia, saying that she hadn’t called his cell because she knew he was at his mom’s.

He smiled. She was like that, Claudia. He wasn’t used to the women he dated being so thoughtful and low-key. It was easy to take her for granted, and he did so now—not calling her back as he got his gear and clothes together.

There wasn’t much to do, actually. Since he hadn’t had any showings that day, he’d been home in the afternoon, and had already packed most of his gear—filling up the bulky, old-school backpack, borrowed from Eduardo, organizing his food. His bags of jerky and trail mix and freeze-dried meals were all stuffed into his pack. He double-checked to make sure he had the new items he’d splurged on—a headlamp, a GPS device, lightweight collapsible plates. Then he decided to throw together a small duffel for the first night, when they’d be staying at a campground. He packed sneakers and extra jeans, a heavier jacket. But soon he was done, his two bags ready by the door.

He opened a beer and stepped onto the patio, gazing out at the lights of Eagle Rock and Pasadena. It was a cool night, but clear, early summer in LA; the head and taillights of the cars on the 134 looked like stars moving sideways across the sky. For the first time in ages, he felt truly alone, felt what it was like to be by himself, and to be himself, Oscar Barajas, not a father or son or boyfriend at this particular moment, just a man, about to spend four days away from everything he knew. Fuck Coach Eric, he thought. Fuck anyone who didn’t think he could do this.

It was after ten, and he knew that Claudia would be in bed—she worked the early shift as a pediatric nurse at Kaiser on Sunset—so he texted her goodnight and said he’d call her in the morning. Then he went to bed, leaving the sliding glass door to the deck open to get some fresh air.

He awoke around three thirty a.m., groggily, not sure what had disturbed him, until the sound from his dream continued as he opened his eyes. It was a car horn, going off for several seconds. He heard the horn, and then the silence—and then another horn, held slightly shorter, answering back. He lay fully awake now, and it happened again—one car horn, followed seconds later by the other. And again, and again, and now he was annoyed. Really? he thought. At three thirty a.m. on a Wednesday night? The sounds could have been from people leaving The Eastside, another new hipster bar down on Verdugo. He got up and closed the door to the deck but still he could hear them—one horn rich and sonorous, almost like a trumpet, the other one higher and flatter. The sounds would vary in length and in the time lapsed between them, so when the first horn sounded he couldn’t relax until the second one completed the exchange. Sometimes the answer came right away, sometimes it took five or ten seconds. There was no pattern he could expect and tune out. Again he cursed the newcomers, the hipsters who’d invaded this part of town and showed so little regard for those who’d always lived here, working people. Now it was four a.m. and he was getting up at six.

But then he thought of the Great Horned Owls that appeared every winter, one that took up residence in a tree across the street, its mate on a telephone pole just down the hill. They’d start at dusk, the black silhouette of the male almost eye level from his bedroom deck, leaning forward and spreading his wings as he released his call, the four-syllable appeal to his smaller intended. It would be followed, soon after, by the answer from down the street, and the two owls could go on like this, calling and answering, for hours. He and Lily would step out on the deck and watch them sometimes, to witness the conversation, the courting. One night they came out and saw not one silhouette but two—the owls perched on the branch just inches apart, quiet now in their togetherness.

The thought of the owls calmed Oscar—if he could sleep through them, he could sleep through this. Besides, maybe there was something kind of sweet about this exchange. However awkwardly, however inconsiderately, people were reaching out to one another—sending a call into the world and getting a response. On a night when he’d felt so alone, he suddenly wasn’t lonely. He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.