Moorpark Palms - 12. Chapter 12

While Bret and Lola were fighting, something as strange was happening across the courtyard – the New York women were having their own dirty little war.
Lisa – the one with the baby – wanted to marry Dale – the mechanic who shared a place with Lonnie. All through the randy summer – and despite, it appeared, her roommates’ raunchy objections – Lisa and Dale had managed to stay together.
“He’s the guy I want to be with,” I heard her tell Teri, possibly hoping for more sympathy from the UCLA senior than she was getting from her own, less-formally-educated roommates.
That was the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It had still been warm enough for them to be sunning by the pool, while Lisa’s son, Morgan, happily explored on his safety leash. I was checking a soft tire in the carport.
“Go for it,” Teri advised.
“Everyone says I can do better,” Lisa sighed
Teri shifted in her chair, possibly moving her cleavage further from Vic’s sight. “What do you want?” she asked.
Lisa seemed to think. “Would you marry him?”
Teri hesitated. “You can’t go by me – I’m twisted – my parents have lots of money. Even if all my plans work out, I’ll probably never come close to earning what my dad does – he’s a cinematographer. But the guy I marry better.”
“We’ve never been rich,” Lisa allowed. Though neither she, nor I – and maybe not Teri – knew just how much a cinematographer made.
“It changes things,” Teri admitted.
“But Dale already makes as much as my father,” Lisa said. “And he’s only twenty-four.”
“Will you work?” Teri asked.
“I want more kids – and it’s hard enough keeping a job with Morgan. But I will if I have to.”
“Then marry Dale. He’s a great guy.”
Lisa’s roommates felt differently.
“Why did we move three-thousand miles?” Jackie yelled. “So you could marry Scott all over again?”
“He’s not Scott!”
“He looks like Scott! Talks like Scott! Bet he even...”
“Just stop! Just fucking stop!”
“Then why ask me?”
It was suddenly quiet. This time I was in the courtyard, oiling my new bike – a used twelve-speed I’d bought, foolishly thinking I’d ever have time to ride.
After a moment, Lisa went on. “I’d just like to hear one of you say one thing nice about Dale,” she almost pleaded
“He fills out his shorts,” Jackie teased.
“Great thing to tell her!” Kim blasted. “That’s what always gets her in trouble.”
“Right!” Lisa shouted. “Like I fall in love every day!”
“Not in love...”
“Jackie!” Shannon hollered.
“I do not!” Lisa insisted.
“When you got pregnant, you weren’t even sure it was Scott!” Jackie went on. “That’s why he wouldn’t marry you!”
“Did he tell you that?”
“No, I made it up,” Jackie sassed.
“When did he tell you!”
“I don’t know!” Jackie was suddenly vague. “Before we left!”
“Did you sleep with him?” Lisa suddenly accused.
“Liar!”
“Liar,” Lisa mimicked.
“I never slept with Scott!” Jackie yelled. “But I might be the only one of our friends who didn’t!”
“I know that!” Lisa shrieked, then went abruptly quiet. “Who else?” she asked, now softly.
“You know!”
“No, I really don’t!”
“Not me!
“Then who!”
“You know!”
“All right.” This time Lisa backed off. “I just had to be sure.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Shannon said calmly – she was often the peacemaker. “After all, she’s not marrying Scott. She marrying dipstick Dale.”
Sometimes the peacemaker.
“Stop calling him that!” Lisa howled.
“It’s what he’ll do all his life!”
“He’s a specialist. He fixes Porsches!”
“Which he can’t even afford to buy!”
“He could always build one from parts,” Jackie taunted.
“Stop it!” Lisa begged.
“If you can’t take it now, then how you gonna take it in ten years? When he’s not cute? When he’s still slow? And still not making enough money. It’s not cheap to live in California.”
In answer, Lisa slammed out of their apartment, past me and up the stairs to Dale’s place.
“Nice!” Jackie told Shannon. “Now we gotta watch the kid!”
But Jackie had her own problems – maybe part of the reason she was tense. She wanted to move in with Chris, the band’s drummer.
“King Sleeze,” Kim called him.
“I didn’t say I wanted to marry him,” Jackie tossed back. “Though we’d have hot-looking kids.” She hesitated, then seemed to explain. “He’s just more fun than anyone I know.”
“When he’s high,” Kim poked.
“He’s not always high.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“You’re a fine one to talk.”
“I’m not defending myself – this isn’t about me. You come down on Lisa, then chase a musician who can’t even read music.”
To that, Jackie had no reply.
Kim wasn’t blameless, either – she also wanted out. But not to be with anyone special.
“Don’t you miss the East?” she asked me one night. We were in the laundry room, waiting for our driers to stop.
“A bit,” I admitted.
“What do you like best here?” she went on.
I grinned. “The weather.”
She laughed. “Everyone says that. Then they run out of reasons.”
“I like seeing foreign movies before they’re five years old,” I said.
That didn’t impress her. She preferred Hollywood films. “Next reason,” she asked.
“Restaurants. There are so many kinds.”
“So?”
“That’s a lot to someone who hates to cook.”
“What else?”
“The mix of people. Where I come from’s mostly white.”
“I’ll give you that. Growing up, the only different people I saw were on TV.”
“But you still want to go back?”
“I’d go home right now if I thought my car would make it.”
She drove an old Ford that still had New York plates.
“What do you miss?” I asked.
She laughed again. “Everything. Knowing places. Knowing people. Fitting in. Okay, maybe my life won’t be as interesting. And maybe – if I stay a few more years – LA won’t always feel like Star Trek. But what if I’m wrong?”
I thought about it. “I was at a party the other night,” I told her. “For work. There were lots of guys. Network types. Future producers. I was amazed how much attention the girls I see every day in the office were getting.”
She considered this. “Probably married guys.”
We laughed.
“I know what you’re saying though,” she admitted. “It’s a huge decision.”
Shannon – the fourth roommate – wouldn’t have considered leaving.
“I can’t believe you were in movies!” she told Sally one afternoon. “That must’ve been so great!”
Sally nodded. Quietly, but proud.
“It’s why I came here,” Shannon went on. “Not to act. I’m terrible at that – can’t stand people staring at me. I was in a play once in high school – a musical. I only had a tiny part. I mostly sang. But I had one little line: ‘Oh, no, sir, not me!’ I about squeaked! Every night!”
Sally laughed. “You couldn’t have been that bad.”
“I was horrible!”
“What do you want to do?” Sally asked.
“That’s the problem. I don’t really know. But I love the movie business! I work in this producer’s office. I started as a temp, but as soon as they saw me at the computer, they stole me from the agency. All around me, people know exactly where they’re headed. And what they need to do to get there. I’m just happy being paid.”
“You don’t have to make up your mind yet,” Sally told her. “I started dancing when I was four – before I even knew what dancing really was. But I never thought, ‘This is all I’m going to do.’ I haven’t danced for years now, but I’ve done so many other things.”
“I don’t know what I’ll do, either,” I told Shannon. I’d been listening. “I might have used up twenty-eight years of good luck getting my present job. I may never be that lucky again. But what I’m doing now isn’t what I’ll stay with all my life. It’s just a start.”
“Everything’s so weird,” Shannon confessed. “Kim even wants me to go home with her. Soon, I won’t have Jackie and Lisa – all of them around. And I’m not sure I’m ready to live here alone.”
“I came out here by myself – on a bus, in 1935,” Sally encouraged. “Knowing no one, and with almost no money. You already have a job in a producer’s office. Things can only get better.”
“You’ll be okay,” I assured her.
“You think?”
Her test came sooner than anyone expected. The same January weekend Bret and Lola moved, the New York girls split up.
Lisa and her baby found a new place with Dale.
Dale made sure Kim’s car would safely drive east.
Jackie followed the band – which was headed to Seattle. “Good times there,” Younger Brother promised when the van stopped to pick Jackie up.
Shannon found a friend from work who needed a roommate.
“I won’t miss them,” Claire said, watching each of them leave.
I felt differently. It was kind of sad. They’d been my family for a year
“I wonder if the pool will ever be clean again,” she went on.
“Something no one’s told me?” I tried to joke.
She managed to smile sarcastically.
“She’s jerking you off,” Vic said. It seems he’d been lurking. “Nothing’s wrong with any of those girls – ’cept maybe the creeps they sleep with.”
“I’m sure you’ll miss them,” Claire baited.
Surprisingly, Vic grinned. “That depends who moves in.”
There were suddenly lots of openings. As Bret, Lola, the New Yorkers, and Dale left, the Kansas couple found their long-sought house.
“Enormous!” Eric exclaimed. “Three thousand square feet!”
“Four bedrooms! A fireplace!”
“A bank default! Terrific deal!”
“We wanted a pool,” Sue admitted. “But maybe next time.”
“Lots to do. So much to repair. We’ll stay here another month while we paint. And tear up carpets. Re-do floors.”
“We can’t put so much into the place, we won’t get it back. But if we do most of the work ourselves...”
“Not electric!” Eric insisted. “I don’t do electric!”
They laughed. It was clearly a personal joke.
“Something to do with codes?” I asked, trying to rejoin the conversation.
“No,” he said, grinning. “Don’t ever tell anyone, but I nearly burned this place down. Just trying to fix a switch one night.”
“This was before you moved in,” Sue assured me.
“That makes me feel safe.”
This time, we all laughed. Their euphoria was spreading.
During the next month, Sally, Claire, Vic, and I saw a seemingly endless album of pictures of Eric and Sue’s new house. “Before,” looked pretty good. “After,” was terrific.
“Definitely worth the wait,” we admired.
“Isn’t that linoleum great?”
“Did you see what Sue did in the den?”
“Don’t you love the bathrooms?”
“You have to come over,” they insisted, though we could never all get coordinated. Still, even before their moving truck was loaded, we had nearer things to distract us – three new sets of neighbors.
None pleased Vic.