Esme and the Money Grab: (A Very Dark Romantic Comedy) (2 page)

   You may be wondering how I even got myself into this situation...  I’m going to keep this light because it’s a very sad story but not the one I’m trying to tell you, dear reader.

  Time to break out the hankies.

   As I said before, I grew up in the Sun Valley section of Los Angeles, which is sometimes called the armpit of Los Angeles. It’s true my neighborhood wasn’t as beautiful as the rolling estates of Bel Air and Beverly Hills, but it also didn’t have people like Mr. Galloway. I consider that a win.

  My street was a shade-less line of ramshackle apartments that hadn’t been painted since New Wave had ruled the pop charts. The stucco buildings were the color of an old band aid, and the walls were paper thin.

  It didn’t matter. My mother, who worked as a housekeeper for a very nice middleclass family in Encino (which is the nicer part of the Valley), turned our tiny apartment into a home. Usually with the castoffs from her employers. All of our furniture was of a nice quality and sturdy, but at least twenty years old. It was cozy and I was happy.

  My father was a quiet man who worked as a day laborer most of his life. He stood in front of the local hardware stores. Construction crews or do-it-yourselfers who never what they were doing, would hire him for anywhere from ten dollars to fifteen dollars an hour. There were always a lot of men in front of the shops, but my father spoke English fluently and without a trace of an accent. He was in top demand.

  By the time I was in high school, he had been hired fulltime by a good construction company. His salary soared to eighteen dollars an hour. I never felt poor, probably because I never strayed far from my neighborhood. My parent’s watched every penny, but I had everything I needed, and my mother could cook like nobody else.

  I loved them very much and miss them everyday. Tears are forming in my eyes as I type this. Enough about that.

  My high school graduation… It was to be the happiest day of my life. A plateau neither my mother nor father had reached. I had big dreams. I was going to be a dental hygienist. Don’t laugh, this was a big step up the social and financial ladder of life for our family. I still think it is, but my dreams have grown since then.

  Back to my graduation.

  My parents never showed up. A drunk driver plowed into their car, killing them. There was a two miles distance between my home and school. They could have walked.

  FYI The driver was an undocumented Mexican man with blood alcohol reading of .20. The man died instantly. I hate him because he killed my parents with his irresponsible decision, not because he was Mexican. What’s the excuse for your hate Mr. Galloway?

  To say I was devastated would be understatement of epic proportions. Looking back, I don’t know how I survived. I was numb. The families of my friends helped, but there was only so much they could do. Their economic situation was the same as my parents, maybe a little worse.

  I had my high school boyfriend, Jack, for support, but he was just a kid like me. And he had problems. We’ll get to that later.

  The landlord of the building we lived in swooped in and set me on a plan. He was one of the kindest men I had ever met, and he was Mexican. A very wealthy Mexican. You hear that, Mr. Galloway? A wealthy man like you, maybe not as rich, but still big money. They’re not all poor and I’ve never met one that lived up to your stereotypes. Sorry readers, it still bugs me.

  He told me he would let me continue living on in the building for six months, rent-free. He helped me make sense of my parent’s financial affairs. Financial Affairs? They paid their bills on time and had a nest of five hundred dollars at the bottom of the cookie jar.

  I was only seventeen.

  The landlord called me everyday. Sometimes he couldn’t reach me. I would be at the park sitting in the shade of a Magnolia tree, staring at a rock. This was my favorite activity in the weeks following their death.

  He bought me a cell phone. Unheard of for a girl my age, in my community. We weren’t tech-free in my home, but only my father ever had a cell phone and it was crushed in the accident. We had an eight-year old computer gifted to us by my mother’s employer who had also paid for my parent’s funeral and gave me five hundred dollars with which to start my new life.

  She was a good woman, and I’m sure she would have done more if she could have, but she had a family of her own, three kids, and they were only of the middle class, not made of money. We still exchange Christmas cards every year.

  The landlord took me to the bank and had me open my first checking account. He made me deposit my fortune of 1,000 dollars into a savings account too and told me never to touch it. The money was for an emergency only. I’ve never touched it. I haven’t added to it either. But you try holding onto a 1,000 dollars as a girl in her late teens and eventual early twenties. I’ll pat myself on the head for the one, thank you very much.

  He took me to his friend who owned a trendy little pizzeria on Ventura Blvd. I could tell the owner didn’t want to hire me. I was a pretty girl, long dark wavy hair, slim and tall figure, but still very much a gangly teen. The servers in his small restaurant all looked like supermodels. Los Angeles, even the Valley, is like that. Everyone is beautiful, very strange.

  The restaurant owner whispered to the landlord. I couldn’t hear what he what he was saying, but based on the fact that my landlord immediately after took me to a hair salon not far from the restaurant, and shopping at Forever 21, I would guess he was told to gussy me up if he wanted me to work there.

  I did not look like a supermodel at the end of the day, but I wouldn’t end up sticking out like a sore thumb. I wouldn’t even be eighteen for another week. I was very gawky teen, vaguely uncoordinated with absurdly long limbs. Deer-like is what kind people said.

  I should have been grateful or touched by this man, the landlord, who was going so beyond the call of duty to help me. And I was, but I was also numb in a way that frightens me now when I look back on that time. He seemed to understand.

  He couldn’t keep me on living rent-free in my family’s apartment indefinitely. He was a businessman, and he had barely known me before the accident. He set me up in another apartment in one of his other buildings to share with two other young girls. The rent was cheap, and I was making what I considered a fortune in tips.

  Life was as good as it was going to get for a recently orphaned girl. I cast aside my dreams of becoming a dental hygienist. There wasn’t enough money for me to go to the trade school. I probably could have asked the landlord for the tuition, but he had already done so much for me.

  I felt safe in my new world. I had always been frugal, thanks to the values instilled by my sainted parents, and I had my on again off again boyfriend Jack. It really all could have been so much worse, you know?

  A little over a year later into my new life, a regular at the pizzeria handed me his brother’s card. He told me that he liked the way I moved through the restaurant, never getting distracted or chatting with my coworkers (This really was a problem in the restaurant, pretty as they all were, they didn’t have much of a work ethic). His brother owned a temp agency in Beverly Hills. He said I could make double what I was making in the restaurant.

  I obviously didn’t believe him. I was making about 400.00 a week at the time. I was nineteen. I was pretty sure I was the richest girl in the world.

  Coming in everyday at lunchtime, the man pestered. I eventually went just to shut him up. I was sure his brother would laugh at me, and send me on my way back to the Valley, where people like me belonged. The poors.

  I definitely felt rich, but I wasn’t an idiot. Los Angeles has tremendous wealth. You can’t walk down any street without practically bashing up against the fender of a Bentley. But those people never seemed real to me. More like window dressing than actual humans.

  His brother did not laugh me out of his office. He took an instant liking to me. He said a pretty girl like me could make big money as a caretaker. I didn’t even know what a caretaker was, and truthfully maybe I still don’t. You work for Mr. Galloway for two years and tell me if anything in life makes sense.

  He paid for me to take a three-month night course to become a certified nursing assistant. He paid for the classes, but not my living expenses. I worked all day at the restaurant, and went to school at night. I was very tired and the antics of Jack, my boyfriend, were unwanted. We took a year-long break at this point.

  I graduated from the program and was placed into the sprawling Holmby Hills mansion of an actress who had seen her brightest days when my grandparents (long since deceased) had been children. Eight hundred dollars a week for the same hours I had been putting in at the pizzeria. Yes, it required multiple bus transfers to get from the Valley to her home, but it was well worth it.

  When my first paycheck arrived, I took my landlord out to dinner at what I considered a fancy restaurant. I would learn over the years that it a mid-level chain. But it felt like a big deal at the time.

  He celebrated with me, telling me how proud he was, but then… the conversation drifted. What were my long term plans? Where did I see myself in ten years?

  I didn’t know. I was riding high with my sweet new job. I kind of felt like I had made.

  “Do you want to be changing the diapers of old people when you’re forty?” he asked.

  I wasn’t going to mention that part to you, dear reader. Sorry.

  “For eight hundred dollars a week? Yes.”

  “I see what you mean,” he laughed gently, “You could do more. Go back to school. Get your BA. You don’t know what you’re going to want in ten years. Be prepared.” He shrugged.

  You know what the difference between rich people and poor people is? Rich people are always prepared for everything. They’re always buying insurance, saving for a rainy day. Must be easy when you have all that MONEY.

  But he was right, and practically an angel in my eyes. Sainted, like my beloved parents. I signed up for city college the next day, cut back on my work, and lived more frugally than ever before.

Rush, rush, rush. I hadn’t made any real friends in all these years. Jack came and went, disrupting my life, borrowing money and never returning it. He was my tie to the past. I couldn’t let go.

  And here we are. Present day. Two more quarters at UCLA, and I’ll be a college graduate. Quitting my biggest paying job yet, 1,000.00 a week for twenty hours work, may have been a mistake. College is expensive and the only grant I qualified for was, first in family to go to college.

  Living in Los Angeles, even frugally is very expensive, everything is so expensive. But at that moment, sitting on the bus, I felt truly happy for the first time since my parents had died. To never have to see Mr. Galloway again was surely a gift from the Gods.

  This feeling would last for about thirty seconds after I entered my apartment.

  Mr. Galloway’s home had Artic Circle levels of air-conditioning. The walk to the bus stop had been along a canyon with a canopy of hundred-year old trees and a gentle breeze. The bus had the windows open and the air rushing by was pleasant.

  My home on the other hand was an inferno. There were no trees on my street, and like the apartment I had grown up in, the walls were thin and felt built to hold in heat. The tiny windows were not aligned with each other to allow a breeze to run through the small and cramped rooms.

  Still, I was happy to be home, until I opened the rickety front door. A powerful wave of marijuana hit me right in the face. I coughed lightly and swatted my hand back and forth to rid myself of the sweet skunky scent. The living room was so filled with smoke that I wondered for a moment if there had been a recent kitchen fire.

  My roommates had not mastered the fine art of cooking, or much else. They were a few years older than me, but their future was set. The two girls, Belinda and Mara, were perfectly happy in their dead end jobs, perfectly happy to turn their weekends into an extended highlights reel from a beer commercial. It was always Miller Time with those two.

  “Could you guys go smoke out on the balcony?” I asked with what I hoped was a light and friendly tone of voice.

  “You’re home early.” Belinda walked out into the kitchen in her bikini. A good choice for the oppressive heat. “Sorry, Mom.” She said in an exaggerated way.

  That was another aspect of my home life I didn’t love. The two of them treated me as if I were a stick in the mud, as if I were their mother. Sometimes they would literally jump up and run to their rooms when I would come home.

  I know they liked me, and I liked them but I didn’t like being in the position of having to create the chore sheet every week, or of having to collect the money from them to pay the bills. Mara was thirty-two and was even more irresponsible than Belinda if that were possible.

  “Strange day…” I didn’t see the point in continuing. They would never understand. The two of them went from job to job, never worrying about whether things would work out or not.

  I didn’t have that luxury. I’m a firm believer that America is the land of opportunity, but as a non-white women, I had to watch my step. You know what happens when a woman like me spends her days innocently getting wasted with her friends? The harsh cycle of poverty.

  Belinda and Mara were considered free-spirits. Their families could jump in and save them if they fell too far. Me? I would be considered a statistic, a cliché of bad choices leading to my ruin, lazy, undisciplined. No family to save me. I was on my own in life.

  The stress of having no one depend on other than myself hit me with the force of a hurricane as I stood in the living room. I suppose my old landlord would help if I ever truly needed it, but he had already done so much for me. “I’m going to my room to take a nap,” I stumbled past her as the heat of the room caused me to breakout into a sweat. My ridiculous dress clung to me in the most uncomfortable way.

  I stripped off my dress with joy in my heart. Never again would I have to wear the borderline-kinky costume. Good riddance.

  I turned my fan on to maximum and jumped on to the silky quilted cover. It was one of the only things I had kept from my childhood home. My mother had loved quilting, but never had much time to pursue her hobby and most of the others she had made were given away as gifts.

  As I said before, my mother was a sainted woman, so beautiful, even as age nipped at her heels. The slight loss of fat in her face that comes with growing older only made her dark eyes more striking. I missed her.

  My pleasant memories of my mother were interrupted by a pounding on the wall. Mara and her boyfriend… They did love their loud and acrobatic sex. I normally laughed it off, but not that day. I pounded my fist in the wall. They were silent for a moment, but quickly resumed, but to her credit with a lower level of passion.

  It wasn’t good enough. If I could have at that moment walked out the door and never come back, I would have. It was not to be because I’m a practical person. There was no way I could afford to live on my own and attend school. “Two more quarters and I graduate, and my real life will begin,” I screamed out like a crazy woman into my room.

  My real life to be… I wasn’t sure which direction it would take. There wasn’t anything I yearned to be. I wanted high financial stability, with a job that held my interest and had a path to a higher level. Being a certified nurse assistant met the first qualification on my wish list, but not the other two.

  The owner of the temp agency had told me he could place me at one of the larger talent agencies as an executive assistant with a starting salary of 80,000 a year when I graduated college. He assured me that there would be room for growth in the film industry, if that was what I wanted. So this would be my dream job, so to speak.

  I loved going to the movies, and had taken a film appreciation class at UCLA. It was definitely an exciting option, but it didn’t fill me with a passion. I began to wonder if that’s just the way it was, maybe good enough was good enough. I had already come so far.

  Again my pondering thoughts were interrupted. This time by my buzzing phone. My phone was in the pocket of my dress. The idea of getting up to retrieve it was almost too much in the heat, but I did it anyway.

  “Hello,” I said as if I didn’t know who was calling. I knew it was Jack. Cellphones had taken away all the surprise of a phone call.

  “Baby,” He yelled out. He was always in high spirits. I generally liked that about him. He was up, while I was usually neutral. “I’m in a bind… I need to borrow some money, three hundred dollars should do it.”

  “What happened?” I asked as calmly as possible.

  Jack could never hold onto a job for more than a few weeks. As his lifelong friend and sometime girlfriend, this was hard to watch. He seemed to think the world was fighting him, but from my vantage point, it was clear that it was Jack, not the world that was out to get him.

  Jack had grown up in the group home run by our church around the corner from me in the Valley. His mother had emigrated with him from Russia and promptly left him at the local fire station and disappeared into the immense landscape of the city. Or maybe she went back to Russia. Who knows?

  He had been a sickly hyper boy with a stomach filled with exotic parasites. It had taken years for him to recover, and he was smaller than all the other boys for a very long time. It hadn’t helped that he hadn’t spoken a word on English either.

  But, he was smart. He was conversant in English within the year, fully fluent within two. By the time we started high school, he no longer had an accent. Our school was mostly kids from Mexico and Latin America. He was the only white boy, although nobody ever thought of him that way. He defied categories.

  Jack was an outsider everywhere he went.

  I understood his awkward position. I was a Colombian in a world of girls from Mexico and Latin America. It was not a huge gulf, it’s similar to the differences between an American and a Brit. I was lighter skinned and my hair wavy with a golden hued brown. It certainly wasn’t a big deal, but we were aware of it.

  Colombia was exotic to the girls in the way Britain is to Americans, to go back to that analogy. Jack though, was a Russian boy growing up in a Latino culture. He was accepted, in fact even looked up to in some ways, but he never really fit into our close-knit world. Forget about fitting into the adult world.

  To me he would always be the sweetest boy. He played with me on the old swing set at our elementary school, teaching me Russian swear words. He was my first kiss at my very modest Quinceañera. When my parents died, he was by my side as much as he could be. He didn’t have much to say. The loss of my parents, my newfound orphan status was too much for him, too close to his own life. He held my hand tightly instead, and that was enough.  

  But this phone call was seven years later. His life had tumbled around him since leaving the group home. He would disappear for months at time. I would be frantic with worry, but then he would turn up again, a little wounded looking, but okay. One time he came back to me with his back covered in tattoos written in the Russian language.

  He laughed it off, saying he had been drunk and didn’t even know what was written. I offered to write it all down for him, so he could translate it. He said not to bother.

  His energy in the previous few months had grown frightening. He had been more out of it than in it, if that makes sense. Still, he was my Jack and there wasn’t anything that he could do to make me give up on him. Or so I thought until the phone call.

  “You don’t want to know.” He replied in his easy, breezy way.

  “I do want to know.” Maybe I didn’t.

  “What do you call it? I’m on the lam,” He laughed as if what he just said was funny. It wasn’t. “Actually, a couple of thousand would help more, but I know you don’t have that.”

  “I would if you ever paid me back.” I immediately regretted saying. The day was too hot, and my morning with Mr. Galloway too rough. “What do you mean you’re on the lam?”

  He had been a big fan of the film Goodfellas while we were growing up. I was hoping he was using the term “lam” as an homage in some way. He had definitely had legal troubles before, but nothing that required him to go on the “lam”.

  “I was with Derrick and Kyle. I didn’t do anything, it was them.”

  “What did they do?” I sat up in my bed and felt a wave of nausea pass through me.

  “Robbed a liquor store. But I didn’t have anything to do with it. I was just along for the ride, you know?”

  “No, I don’t know.”

  “I just need three hundred dollars.” He laughed again.

  “Jack… I quit my job, and my quarterly tuition is due next week. I’m sorry. You can come stay here for a few days. We can figure it out. Get you a good lawyer, you can turn yourself in—

  “You bitch,” He yelled into the phone, shocking me, “My whole life, all I ever did was listen to you complain. Wah, wah, wah, my parent’s are dead. Wah, wah, wah, I have to work so hard. Wah, wah, wah, school’s so hard.” He shouted, mimicking my lilt.

  “Jack—

  “I’ve never been anything but a good friend to you, and now you do this to me. FUCK YOU. Stay away from me, or I’ll fuck you up—

  I hung up and threw the phone across my bed as if it were radioactive. The phone rang immediately. I knew it was him, and I knew I had to get out of my apartment. Jack had gone over the edge he had been hanging onto for years now. I had been so blind.

  I dressed with lightning speed, grabbed a duffle bag from my closet, stuffed in a change of clothes and my mother’s quilted blanket and was out the door in under three minutes. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing. I set it on airplane mode.

  Out on the street, I didn’t know where to go. Numbness filled me as I aimlessly walked westward on Palms Blvd. Right before the heat of the day did me in, I found myself standing in front of an antiquated 50’s style motor lodge.

  I turned my phone back on to check my bank balance. I was terrified it would still be ringing. It wasn’t but Jack had called thirty-three times and left seven messages. There was no way I was going to listen to them.

  I flipped to the banking app. Subtracting my tuition which was due, I had 486.13. I knew I would have to go back to my job with Mr. Galloway. There wasn’t part-time job that I was qualified for that paid as well. I couldn’t put off my college anymore. Lending money to Jack had already cost me a year. I needed to graduate, have my real life begin.

  I checked into the motel. The room was only 75.00, and it showed. I didn’t mind. I sat down on the bed and cried. I don’t know what had upset me more, having to go back to the embittered old man, or finally facing the fact that I had lost my best friend.