“What happened to the girl?” Aria asked, suddenly terrified for the answer.
“She died,” Luke said flatly. “I was driving across an intersection and a huge black Suburban hit the wheel well and she wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. My lung popped. They told me in the emergency room that she had died. I wanted to die too. It was me that killed her.
“I was hysterical. By the time they let me out of the hospital, I had eighty thousand dollars’ worth of medical debt and nothing to go home to, so I just put everything I needed in my camping backpack and paid for a flight out here.”
“That’s so fucked,” Aria said when Luke finished. It was all she could say. She was unable to break through the rough persona that she had manufactured over the years. But inside, she was speechless. She knew the contours of grief well enough to know that saying “I’m sorry” would have been a slap in his face. She felt guilty for having judged him so wrongly to begin with. She felt like holding him. Instead, she held the heaviness with him just sitting in the quiet, sharing his burden for a few minutes.
Luke didn’t ask Aria anything about her life that day. He was the kind of man who hated to ask anything of anyone for fear of their rejection, even details about themselves. Instead he filled the space with his political theories.
Once their clothes were reasonably dry, they put them back on. Having clean clothes again felt like heaven to Aria. Another simple pleasure that she had taken for granted before now. They sat down again to take in a few more minutes of the peace being offered by the nature around them. Luke got out his bag of trail mix and rolled down the sides of the plastic far enough for it to resemble a flimsy dish. He offered Palin part of a sandwich he hadn’t finished. The dog devoured it and then sprawled herself across their legs, exposing her belly to the sky as a solicitation for affection. The glee with which she did it made them both laugh. Together, they fussed over her as if she were a maharaja.
It struck Aria how strange life can be. One second, your life can fall apart to the degree that you don’t want to go on living. And the next, a pleasure as simple as a dog can bring the breath back to your life again. Aria could see that Palin had picked up where the woman of Luke’s life had left off when she died. Palin had brought him back to life again. She had given him a reason to live and she had loved him like his mother had not. She wondered if maybe the reason Palin felt so human was because she wasn’t really a dog, but an angel in a dog’s body come to save this man.
Taylor didn’t return to the car lot until Aria was already asleep. Despite his less-than-graceful movements, he tried to get into the car quietly, so that she wouldn’t wake up. Unbeknownst to him, his attempt failed. However, instead of saying something, Aria surveyed him through a hole in her sleeping bag until he had fallen asleep.
Taylor was noticeably distraught. He had slipped out before first light and bummed change off of people at the closest bus station until he had enough to buy a fare. He had taken several buses to the studio whose flyer he had been carrying around in his backpack, thinking it would be his promised land. But when he got there, he had been told that all the work/study positions were currently filled. They asked for his number so they could call him if one opened up, but he didn’t have a cell phone. Instead of admitting to his current situation, he simply told them he would check back every week.
The studio was nowhere near the offices that Luke had referred him to for temp work. On top of that, he made the mistake of taking a wrong transfer on the bus system and found his efforts opposed by the masses of people visiting Universal Studios. So he only had time to visit one temp office before they had all shut down for the day, and that office had nothing for him. He was too proud to mow lawns for a landscaper. He felt humiliated at the idea of being a janitor at a manufacturing plant. He couldn’t lifeguard because he couldn’t swim.
Taylor could not accept the reality of where he was in life. He had imagined himself being instantaneously scouted once he came to LA. He had come here to be an actor. Compared to that, every job that was available felt beneath him. The day had been just one more exercise in disappointment in his life. His stomach throbbed with emptiness, both emotionally and physically. So much so that it was hard to fall asleep. But eventually, he did.
CHAPTER 14
In the morning, their sleep was shattered by the sound of tapping on the window. At first, they
