Reckless Hearts. Sean Olin

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СКАЧАТЬ somewhere with him, imagining, like they sometimes did, all the ways that, when Nina’s baby was born, the two of them would make sure it had good taste, teaching it about art and music and culture.

      Eventually, the familiar sound of her father jangling the spring-loaded clip on which he kept his keys broke the monotony. Elena could hear him futzing with the door before realizing it was already unlocked, and then there he was standing in the room with them, a look of exhaustion and smoldering frustration weighing down his face. His white guayabera shirt was stained with sweat at the armpits and his pleated linen pants had inched under his gut.

      He flipped his keys back and forth around his finger, slapping them repeatedly in the palm of his hand, taking in the situation at the house.

      “Hola,” he said. “Good to see you’re all doing something constructive with your day.”

      With three great strides, he moved to the window and dramatically pulled the curtains open, filling the room with streaming evening sunlight. Elena and Nina shot quick wincing glances at each other, blinking in the suddenly bright light and bracing themselves for what was about to come. He was in a mood. Everybody was in a mood today.

      “What’s wrong with you?” Nina said bullishly.

      He brushed his hand from the top of his bald head down over his bushy salt-and-pepper mustache, reigning in his thoughts. “What’s wrong with me is, one, I’ve been zipping back and forth from one Super Suds to the other, dealing with all kinds of mierda—Selina locked her keys in her car on the south side and I had to open up for her, then the basement flooded on the west side … uno, dos, tres, quatro. Every single one of my Laundromats had something go wrong today. And then while I’m dealing with all this, what do I get? I get a call from a Mr. Ricardo Colon. You know that name? You should. That’s Matty’s parole officer—”

      At the mention of her boyfriend’s name, Nina shot up into a sitting position, ready to fight. “No, no, no, no,” she said, waving her finger at her father. “I’m not his keeper.”

      “You see? Why don’t you tell me why this Colon guy called me, hey?”

      “I don’t know,” said Nina, defensively.

      “Sure you do. Matty missed his appointment. Matty hasn’t been to work. Matty this, Matty that. Matty’s blowing it again.” His voice rose a tick with each new item on his list. “Where is he? He heard me coming and snuck out the back door?”

      “He’s not here,” said Nina.

      “Oh? We must have run out of food, hey?” Elena’s father shot back.

      And then they were both shouting, rapidly, in Spanish. Elena was caught between the two of them, ducking as their words zipped back and forth above her head. She’d so had enough of this. All they ever did was fight, and always about Matty.

      God, get me out of here, she thought. But where would she go? She couldn’t flee to Jake. It’s not like she could ride her bike all the way across town and show up at Cameron Pendergrass’s estate, begging to be let in. He’d think, Who’s this crazy Cuban girl and why’s she on my lawn?

      Her dad was stalking around the room now, circling Nina. And Nina was wagging her finger all over the place. Elena couldn’t take it anymore.

      “Everybody! Shut up for a second!” she said. She leaped to her feet, putting herself physically between them. Turning to them one at a time, she said, “Dad. Matty hasn’t been here all day. I’ve been sitting right here. I would have seen him. And Nina. Dad’s right. You have to get Matty under control. What are you going to do when the baby is born and he disappears for days on end, or shows up drunk in the middle of the night shouting for you to come out and party with him? He’s the father of your child. Tell him to get it together. Jeez.”

      She didn’t usually get involved in their fights like this, and the two of them stared at her in surprise for a beat. Then they turned right back to each other and commenced shouting again.

      “You people are hopeless!” Elena said.

      But neither of them even heard her. They didn’t notice when she slinked out of the room, either. They just kept on yelling. It was almost like they liked the drama.

      She padded down the hall to her room, feeling with each step how wrong it was to head in this direction, farther into the house, when she should have been moving in the other direction, out into the crisp night air, toward Jake’s place next door, where they’d find a way to remind each other that laughing about their troubles always made things better. But she couldn’t do that. For the first time since Jake had driven away with his guitar and the duffel bag of clothes in the backseat of his beat-up old Jeep, which they affectionately called the Rumbler, Elena sadly understood how her life would be different without him living next door.

      Locking the dead bolt she’d placed on her door, she sparked up her computer, put on her headphones, and checked out the new animations her virtual friends had posted on AnAmerica, hoping they’d be distracting enough to drown out the drama on the other side of the door.

       3

      Jake had never seen a house quite like this one. It was like something out of a magazine. It had been featured in a magazine, actually. Luxury, it was called. Jake had never heard of it, but the name said everything he needed to know. It was hidden from the street by a solid white gate and the first time Jake had seen the surreally lush lawn he’d wondered how many thousands of dollars Cameron spent every month on landscaping. There were no trees, just this vast flat green space perched above the beach and the house sitting there like a sculpture.

      From the outside it looked like a set of blindingly white boxes, each one set off-center from the ones above and below it, like children’s blocks that had been placed precariously on top of one another. Inside, it was a cavernous, flowing open space with different platformed levels connected by brushed concrete stairs that seemed to float free in the air.

      The interior was so tasteful that there weren’t any Christmas decorations, not even a wreath. Jake felt like he was in an art gallery, not someplace people lived. But people did live here. He lived here now. It would take some getting used to.

      That first night, as he sat at the hand-carved, blond-wood dining table—positioned in just the right off-angle location in the big oblong main room that was, all by itself, larger than his old house across town—he had the strange feeling that he and his mother and Cameron were guests at a five-star restaurant that only served one party a night.

      They were served by a waiter with artfully mussed hair and a carefully untucked linen shirt, which he wore over crisp jeans and white no-brand sneakers. He looked casual but brought their duck confit and shaved fennel salad to the table with regimented efficiency. Jake wished Elena were here to see it—he could imagine the arched eyebrow she’d throw his way, the way she’d poke him under the table and slowly twist her silver custard spoon in the air, studying it like a mystifying artifact from an alien civilization until she finally got Jake to chuckle over the pomposity that was surrounding him.

      Cameron didn’t seem to notice the waiter was even there. He held court, telling stories about the various adventures he’d had over the years, most of them involving the yacht he owned and small islands in the Caribbean. He was a small СКАЧАТЬ