We were on Twenty-Seventh—I was paying attention to street signs so I could learn my way around—when he started whistling. He looked over at me and lifted his eyebrows in some sort of question, only I didn’t know what the question was. Then he grinned. I smiled back. I was supposed to smile back, but I felt uneasy in that hard-to-explain way, like when a certain man sits next to you on a bus. Or like that time Gia’s brother drove me back to the dorm after her birthday dinner. You don’t get the creeps exactly, just the pre-creeps. You start imagining how you’ll roll out of the speeding vehicle if you need to.
I smiled back out of duty, but he must have thought we were pals now, because he reached over and squeezed my knee with his two fingers, in that place where it really hurts. He shook it a little, like we were playing a game. I think I was supposed to squeal. Instead, I said, “Ow,” and he took his hand back, and I couldn’t tell, but I thought he looked pissed.
The scenery was a disorienting mix of the familiar and unfamiliar, since the city was still newish to me. I was sure I recognized a street of tightly packed houses, but then again, it looked like all the other streets of tightly packed houses. Suddenly, though, the homes got larger and nicer. There was more space between them. And then, yeah, those I recognized—two cement pillars standing like guards on either side of the street, with the little metal plates labeled SEA CLIFF.
The first house through the pillars was a white wedding-cake mansion with a manicured green lawn. The street was wide and roomy, and the houses had actual yards, and the gray sky got brighter and larger, as it does when you get closer to the ocean. There were terra-cotta roofs and brick stairwells, hedges cut into fancy shapes. There were columned estates with large, curved white windows and embellished balconies and gated driveways. You felt the calm orderliness of money. You felt the way some people paid other people to clean up their messes. You felt… like there were lots of secrets hidden behind all that order.
The crew from a yard service swarmed a lawn like hedge-clipping ants. A leaf blower hummed, and the smallest gathering of leaves blew up like confetti. In between the houses, I spotted glimpses of the Pacific Ocean and the orange Golden Gate Bridge. We made a left and there it was: 716 Sea Cliff Drive.
You’ve seen it, I know, but for the record, Lila’s house was a Mediterranean-style stucco painted a Tuscan orange, with a large stucco wall closing off the garden. It was maybe the fixer-upper on the street. At least, the garage needed a tiny bit of painting in spots, and the grass had a few rogue dandelions.
As Jake pulled into the drive, I was suddenly nervous to see Lila. This always happened. Even though she was ever-present, in texts and calls and magazines right on my lap, not seeing her for almost six months could make it feel like our first date. My stomach fluttered.
“All righty. Here you go,” Jake said. He released the trunk so I could get my pack.
“Thanks.”
Thanks. It was the wrong word. The very most wrong word. I forgive myself, because we say a lot of wrong things to a lot of wrong people. Still, when I think about it now, I want to spit that word right out of my mouth. I can see it landing in the dirt, feeding some ancient tree, one with the kind of big, old roots that crack sidewalks and lift foundations, same as an earthquake.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Exhibit 12: Floor plan, 716 Sea Cliff Drive
Exhibit 13: Photo of 716 Sea Cliff Drive, main entry
As I headed up the walkway to the door, I heard Jake’s dog barking his head off. Actually, he sounded like he wanted to rip mine off. Visions of some adorable puppy vanished in two seconds.
“Max!” I heard Lila yell from behind the door. “For God’s sake!”
I figured it might be better if I didn’t just walk in. If Max thought I was an intruder, he might tear my leg off like I was the turkey and this was Thanksgiving. Jake was still in the car on his phone, so I rang the bell. The dog went insane.
“Knock it off, you idiot!” Lila shouted. When she opened the door, she had the dog by the collar. Or rather, the dog had her by the hand. He had the golden brown and black coat of a German shepherd, and his teeth were bared, and his toes slid and skittered along on the marble entry like the most furious novice ice-skater you’ve ever seen in your life.
“Niiiiice puppy,” I crooned.
“Jesus!” Lila was using every muscle in her body to hold him back.
But then Jake came up the walk, tucking his phone into his pocket, and before my very eyes, the dog transformed into an entirely different animal, the loving little angel in sweet reunion with his master. His limbs were his own again. He wound and bumped through Jake’s legs as Jake kept walking, ignoring him. I actually felt kind of sorry for the dog—insulted by Lila, snubbed by Jake. He was like the bad kid that acted out in class because no one paid attention to him.
Jake kissed Lila’s neck. “We’re back,” he said. But now Lila was doing the ignoring. The kiss was like a bee she swatted away.
“Hey, guy.” I scruffed the dog’s scary head and patted his large, intimidating body. “You’re a beautiful boy,” I told him. This was too much love too fast, because then he jumped up excitedly and we were staring at each other, eye to eye. I gave him a big shove down. In two seconds, I had dog hair all over me, but I didn’t mind.
“Don’t I get a hello?” Lila said. “Baby! I am so glad to see you. Come here.”
I hugged her. She smelled like Lila—the gentleness of orange blossoms, the aggressiveness of spice. Of course she looked beautiful, in her white capris and a sleeveless navy top, her hair up in a stylish messy bun. Her wrist was wrapped in an Ace bandage. Lila was always getting injured or sick. Twisted ankles, broken fingers, mysterious stomach maladies. Little amber pill bottles lined her bathroom sink.
“What happened to your arm?”
“Damn dog pulled me right to the ground when the UPS man came. I’m sure it’s a sprain. Baby, I missed you! Get in here.”
Inside, the terra-cotta floors opened to a large staircase, which curved upward, like the inside of a seashell. The kitchen and the dining room were on the main level, and so was the centerpiece of the house, a large living room done all in white—white rugs, white furniture, white pillows. Lila called it the White Room, for reasons that should now be obvious. The entire back of the room was glass—windows that looked out onto the Pacific, and glass doors that opened to the patio, which perched scenically over the cliff. From there, an orange stucco staircase wound like a maze down to China Beach.
Lila told me she’d gotten a great deal renting the place, but this was hard to imagine. How could the word deal even sit in the same sentence with that house? That view. It took your breath away. Literally, like a sock in the stomach. Even when I knew what to expect, I walked in that day and wow. There it all was—the sea and the Marin Headlands, laid out like nature’s most valuable work of art. And the Golden Gate Bridge, too, right there, looking close enough to touch. It shocked me, how beautiful that view was. It pulled me toward it. I went to the glass and looked out.
“You want lunch? I ordered all your favorites. Beecher’s mac and cheese? Those lovely tomato basil paninis?” Beecher’s mac and cheese was my favorite when I was six, and the tomato basil paninis were her favorite, but I didn’t care. I was happy she’d thought of me.