Ana Lucía met me at Simply Coffee and bought me a cold brew and swiped through my photos of the wreckage in my house. “What a mess,” she said. “Ugh. I’m really sorry.”
“Not your fault,” I said. I was processing the grief in spurts, ricocheting between rage and fear and heartbreak and cold revenge-obsession. The caffeine helped at first, then soured in my guts and amped up the fury. It was soupy hot on Simply’s patio, even with the shade sails and fans, and I had soaked through my shirt and the ass of my shorts.
“Where will you sleep?”
I shrugged. “At home. I can clean up my room in a couple hours, they weren’t so bad there. I think they started off thinking they could get whatever they were looking for and then get out easy, and when they couldn’t find it, they got angrier and angrier and started smashing the place. I’ll just take it room by room.” I shrugged. “It’s not like I’ve got anything else to do, with all the construction canceled.”
She shook her head. “Stay with us then. At least until you can get it cleaned up. You said you thought your insurance might cover it?”
“Yeah, I’m waiting for them to get back to me.”
“There you are, then. You come stay with us tonight, and tomorrow you’ll know if your insurance will take care of the house. If they will, then fine, someone gets paid to clean up. If not, we’ll get you some help.”
“You don’t need to—”
“You’re right, I don’t need to, I want to. You helped me and my friends when I needed it.”
“But you don’t owe me anything for that. I did that because it was the decent thing to do. It was solidarity, not charity.”
“Yes, stupid, that’s right. Solidarity, not charity. That’s what I’m offering you.”
“Oh.”
* * *
Ana Lucía was staying in a People’s Airbnb room in a nice retired Indian couple’s house downhill from Kenneth Village, near the old Grand View cemetery, with a view of its Spanish tile and whitewashed walls. She was sharing the room with another woman, Mason. The room had once housed a daughter, now grown and moved away, and it had a bunk bed with a double below and a single up top. Mason insisted on moving from the single into the double with Ana Lucía, so I could have my own bed. I insisted that I could sleep on the floor. I lost the argument, and then Maneet, the grown daughter’s mom, overheard us and produced a trundle bed from under the bottom bunk with the air of a stage magician doing a card production.
“And don’t you argue about who will sleep in the trundle bed,” she said, wagging her finger at us, but smiling. “Brooks sleeps there. That way he gets clean sheets.”
We all laughed and Maneet brought us to the kitchen for chai masala and clucked her tongue at the photos of my trashed house, muttering, “Disgusting, disgusting.”
Somehow it was dinnertime, the day whirled past in a chaotic mess of new-relationship energy, fear, rage, and disgust, and here it was, getting dark, my stomach grumbling, Maneet finding me some clean sheets for the trundle.
I sous-chefed for Maneet, and she was patient with me in telling me what went into her quick chana spice mix and how she flash-fried the zucchini from her garden before marinating it in a tangy vinegar mix, while her husband, Kabir, had his regular weekly call with his cousins in Mumbai, them sitting around the breakfast table and waving at me and shouting hello.
After dinner, I found that my eyelids were drooping, and after I fumbled and nearly dropped a plate while loading the dishwasher, everyone told me I had to go to bed and so I did, barely waking when Ana Lucía stepped over the trundle some hours later to climb into the bottom bunk. If I woke at all when Mason came in, I didn’t remember it.
I got up hella early the next morning, disoriented at first, then catfooted out of the house and bikeshared to Lou the French’s and got a big, fragrant box of croissants and rode them back to Maneet’s place, finding Kabir already up in his pajamas making coffee. He helped me find a nice serving basket and some jams and preserves and we laid out the table.
“You didn’t have to do this,” Maneet said, dabbing crumbs from her mouth and nightshirt.
“But I’m glad he did,” Ana Lucía said, tearing the last croissant in half and transferring it to her plate.
“Best in LA,” I said. “Maybe best outside of Louisiana.”
Ana Lucía said something but it just came out as a spray of crumbs.
I was ready to just head straight home, then I remembered my drain full of concrete so I took up Maneet and Kabir on their offer of a shower and thanked them profusely before heading out, a little jar of Maneet’s homemade pickle at the bottom of my bag.
I leaned the bike up on the curb by my house and released it, then started to head around to my usual entrance, the back door, but then I remembered how that had led me astray the day before, caused me to miss the state of the house for crucial moments. Instead, I headed through the front door.
The house was clean! I mean, not spotless, but much cleaner than it had been before I left, the worst of the mess picked up and the pictures squared on the walls, the coats hung up and the shoes in rows. I took it in for a moment, then stuck my head in the living room (still a mess) before taking a trepidatious peek into my absolutely trashed and filthy kitchen.
It was tidied. Some of the cabinet doors had been ripped off, but they were leaned neatly on a cupboard, and the smashed crockery was in large contractor bags along with the ruined food.
The floor, table, surfaces, and empty fridge were spotless. In the middle of the table was a sheet of paper folded in thirds with my name neatly printed in the middle of the top third.
I unfolded it but even before I read it, I knew what it was.
Dear Brooks,
Sorry we didn’t do this in person, but we hope that our help with the cleanup makes it up to you a little.
We’re both going to find somewhere else to live. We’re intensely grateful to you for being so generous with your home and we’ll keep paying rent through the end of the month.
But for obvious reasons—the place getting trashed—and other reasons—you want to tear it down and build a high-rise (which is so cool, seriously!)—it makes sense for us to find somewhere more stable to live.
We hope you aren’t too upset. We should all get together for dinner soon, okay?
Take care of yourself.
Love,
Milena
and Wilmar
And below their signatures:
PS: You’re seeing Phuong Petrakis?!?!?! You are a VERY lucky guy—Wilmar
I dropped the note on the table and walked the rest of the house. They’d cleared out their rooms and done a good job cleaning them up. The living room and my room needed work, and someone would have to haul all the junk—the bulging bags, the slashed mattresses—to the dump, but the job was three-quarters done. I could probably have just called a plumber to fix the shower drain, paid for bulky item removal, and spent a couple of hours disinfecting and so on, and been back to normal. Add some new roommates and I’d be up and running. Hell, I could just do a big People’s Airbnb number.
Fuck that.
* * *
Phuong had left me a couple of messages since I’d texted her after arriving at Ana Lucía’s People’s Airbnb. At first, she was sympathetic, then a little worried, but she’d finished up with I assume you’re just dealing with a lot of literal and figurative mess right now so let me know if you need help, otherwise I’ll leave you alone.
I texted her and she got back to me in an instant, which felt incredibly good (she’d been waiting to hear from me!) and incredibly shitty (why hadn’t I gotten back to her sooner?). I got as far as telling her about the roommates leaving and how I was going to need a plumber to sort out the shower when she all but ordered me to go over to her house and stay there until I’d figured things out.
New-relationship energy made for a weird mixer with enraged terror. The whole ride over to Phuong’s, I kept sliding into hate-filled revenge fantasies and then I’d remember that this incredible woman had invited me over to her house for a sleepover and I’d have a moment where I was just on autopilot, lost in a happy daze at my stupendous good luck. New-relationship energy is the best energy.
I knocked at Phuong’s door a couple of times but didn’t get an answer, and I was about to text her when I registered the loud music coming and thumping from inside and decided to try the doorknob.
Phuong and her roommates were all crowded into the living room, all the furniture pushed against the walls, and loud beats blasting. They were dancing their asses off.
I was thunderstruck for a moment and then I busted out in a huge grin, and then Phuong spotted me and smiled even wider than me and stretched out a hand to me and I jumped into the fray. I’m not a great dancer, but Phuong was, and I was good enough to follow her lead, and the music was so good and her housemates were having so much fun. I got whirled from one to the next, until I’d danced with all of them and I was panting and someone finally killed the music.
“What was that?” I asked, as Phuong slipped a sweaty arm around my waist and kissed me where my earlobe met my jawbone.
“Motivational exercise,” she said, panting a little. “Every day we do a house-wide, two-minute cleanup called the Two Minutes Hate where we clean as much as we can in a hundred and twenty seconds. But twice a week we do a thirty-minute session and if we get the whole house done in that time, we have a dance party.”
“I love you guys,” I said. As soon as I heard myself speak the words aloud I realized that I was treading on perilous ground.
But she said, “We love you too,” and gave me a smoldering look that made all the blood in my body rush out of my extremities (with one exception).
I helped them move their furniture back into position and accepted a sweating icy glass of homemade ginger beer that was so spicy it made me cough (in a good way).
Phuong plunked down in our snuggling couch and patted the cushion next to her. I didn’t need to be asked twice.
“So, you’ve had quite a day, huh?”
I groaned. “Don’t remind me.”
“Come on, I wanna hear about it.” So I told her: Kenneth’s threats and offers, the wrecked house, my baby blanket, the sleepover with Ana Lucía and her Airbnb hosts, and then the note from my housemates.
“Holy shit,” she said.
“Wow,” Don agreed. He and Miguel had stayed for the retelling, and then Arina and Jacob had come in midway through. They were all looking at me like I’d blown their minds.
“Your fucking baby blanket,” Arina said. “I mean, how low is that?”
“What did your grandfather keep in that cache, anyway?” Phuong said.
I shrugged and said, “I have no idea. He was a weird-ass, paranoid old man.” I felt like a dick for lying but also didn’t think that Phuong and her friends would be excited to hear that I had assault rifles stashed in the Burbank hills. I liked these people so much and I wanted to be someone they’d like, too.
“I bet you can fix up the blanket,” Miguel said. “Get the scraps out, hand-wash them, then fit the pieces together on a backing. You could frame it.” He patted the worn, stitched-together denim kimonos that covered the sofa. “That’s basically how I made this. I could show you.”
It was such a nice offer I nearly cried. The welling up of emotions made me realize how fucking hurt and angry I was at the Maga militiamen who’d defiled my house and chased out my roommates.
“Hey,” Phuong said. “Hey. You’re shaking. It’s okay, Brooks, it’ll be okay.” She stroked my hair. They were all looking at me, staring at me, and the rage all bubbled up.
“These fuckers, these fucking … fuckers. They think they’re the future of California, of America, of the world. They’ve got rich psycho friends who’ll arm them and pay for their lawyers and organize them, and they’re planning some kind of paramilitary coup. They’re not going to stop at vandalism and cross burning. They want a war. We have to do something, you guys. We have to. It’s them or us. They want to steal the world from us. We can’t let them. The world needs defenders. Who’s going to do that if we don’t?”
“Sit down, okay, Brooks?” Phuong said. I almost snapped that I was sitting down and then I realized I was pacing the room, fists clenched, and they were all staring at me.
I sat down. Don looked at me with soft concern in his eyes. “Brooks, I get it. After what you just went through, you’ve got a right to be angry like this. But don’t let them turn you into what they are.”
“Translation,” Phuong said, “forget all the macho ‘defenders of the homeland’ shit. We’re not going to get into a firefight with these assholes. They’re not a militia, they’re a criminal conspiracy. They’ve got big money behind them, but Brooks, they’re nitwits.”
I couldn’t help myself. I snorted.
“So what do we do, call the cops?”
Now she snorted. “You’ve called the cops on these assholes how many times now? Three? Four? Has it helped even once? It’s no good to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome?”
“So what, then?”
“Let’s figure it out.”
Miguel brought out his cabernet-finished Jefferson’s, which I liked a lot more than the Pappy. We had it on ice with spicy bitters and citrus peels and it took the edge off everything. Phuong stuck a whiteboard up on the wall and got some markers and we drank whiskey and brainstormed. Her housemates really took the brainstorming rule that no idea is too stupid to throw out seriously. I found it a little bewildering when Arina suggested finding all their addresses and chalking their sidewalks with personal testimonials from people who’d been rescued by GND programs, but Phuong added it to the board and everyone nodded so I rolled with it.
“Send their dox to Watanabe’s office,” I said.
“Who?” Arina asked.
“The state attorney general. She hates these fucking militias.”
Phuong gave me a quick headshake before writing it down. I guess calling the AG was basically the same as calling the cops.
“And the National Guard. My history teacher had all kinds of stories about Grizzlies fighting off rioting militias after Uwayni’s election.”
Again, that little headshake, but she wrote it down, too. Guardsmen were definitely just cops by another name.
Getting that disapproval from Phuong—especially when Arina’s dumb sidewalk-chalking idea hadn’t gotten any—fired me up, so I fished around for a more out-there idea.
“Let’s tear down my grandfather’s house and build a high-rise there before anyone notices.”
She didn’t write anything down this time, just looked at me. Soon, I realized that they were all looking at me.
“I think we have a winner,” Miguel said.
“Seriously,” Don said.
“Dude,” Jacob said.
And Phuong? She kissed me.
* * *
The brainstorming session made me think they were just dreamers, but Phuong and her housemates were all ex–Blue Helmets. They were used to getting up in the morning, meeting with a community group about the destiny of some brownfield site, and building a new residence there in three days flat.
Don and Arina got onto some next-generation modular slab designs and then Arina realized she’d been in the field with the woman who’d led the project to create them, so they bridged her in.
Miguel had a contact in Simi Valley who coordinated GND Housing Guarantee builds for the whole region, and he took all of ten minutes to find us a flock of cranes, bulldozers, forklifts, and other heavy machines.
Meanwhile, Phuong was crawling these databases of parameterized build plans, dragging buildings of various sizes onto Gramps’s lot to check out the shadows, seismics, and whether they needed more water infrastructure than the city could provide from the nearby mains and sewer.
I had said “high-rise” but honestly, I’d never really thought about anything more than five or six stories. The tallest building in the neighborhood was only three stories tall. Plus, even with all my GND trufan energy, I couldn’t imagine a ragtag group of guerrilla builders erecting an honest-to-goodness skyscraper.
Phuong had other ideas, and she clicked and dragged a bunch of legit high-rises onto her rendering of the lot before settling on a building that could be scaled up as high as thirty floors, though she’d settled for twenty, earmarking both the top and bottom floors for community spaces.
“How’re you going to sink the pilings?” Don asked, looking over at her screen. She tapped and showed him a picture of a machine with an auger bit on it that was insane, like something you’d use to drill to the center of the Earth.
Don laughed. I laughed too. It was absurd.
“That’s two, three days of drilling,” Miguel said. He tapped at Phuong’s screen to bring up a time-critical path chart. He dragged the top story of the building down to eight floors and we watched as the time ticked down. “Ninth story is always the killer,” he said.
Phuong stuck her lower lip out. “I want a skyscraper!”
“I know baby, I know,” Don said, distractedly, tweaking the floor plans to create more flexible configurations, either a three-bedroom and a bachelor on each floor, or two two-bedrooms. I mirrored his work on my screen and started tapping around, finding a mode that let me tap into the city street plan and start dragging that around, and before long, I was transforming the whole Verdugo corridor into high-rises with a light-rail line down the middle of it, anchored to a subway station where the old strip mall was currently languishing, part-occupied, mostly used as a skate park and a weekend craft market.
I zoomed out and saw that my own crude high-density corridor was being polished by Phuong’s housemates, who abandoned their work on the hypothetical high-rise we were going to build on Gramps’s lot in order to create green roofs, vertical farms, parkettes, a community center added to the main branch library at Buena Vista. I watched with my mouth open as they worked together, like musicians improvising a jam session, except they were improvising a whole neighborhood, and I could tab over to the spreadsheets where there were build plans, bills of materials, critical path and building-code variances we’d have to file for.
Jacob shoulder-surfed me. “It’s cool, isn’t it? It’s just Blue Helmet stuff, though; kind of thing we used to do in-country, helping people think through what their neighborhoods could be. We’d do a couple training sessions, turn ’em loose for a week to come up with designs, get into revert-wars, and then we workshop ’em and do it again. A month later, you’ve got some incredible designs, and all that stuff gets trained back into the model so it hints the next group who try it. That’s why it’s going so fast—it’s hella trained.”
“Don’t say ‘hella,’” Arina said. “It makes you sound stupid.”
“I am stupid,” he said, and crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue. Then Arina took away his screen and wiped out and reshaped a granny flat he’d been sticking on top of a garage off California, tapping the seismic rating box when she was done.
“There, not a death trap anymore.”
“Aw, man,” he said, with feeling.
I grabbed a screen and dug in, snuggling up to Phuong, who’d sometimes look over at my screen and show me a faster or more elegant way to do what I was trying to do, and the neighborhood took on a polish and veneer that made it seem like a real architect’s rendering. I was flying around when I realized I was looking at the building we’d started with. Gramps’s house. My house.
It was beautiful, eight stories tall, roofed over with photovoltaics and a couple of eggbeaters, a courtyard with vegetable beds and ornamentals. The apartments were neat, thoughtful, weatherized for cross breezes, with charming, self-adjusting shades that kept them cool.
I flew through it, one apartment after another, the utility spaces and infrastructure, and I realized that we were the last ones in the room, and Phuong put her fingers over mine and guided them as we flew through the house, through the neighborhood, through the city, flying off the edge of the map into the undefined places of Cartesian grid lines. Phuong swiveled us around so that we were looking at my neighborhood, the place that had been my home since I arrived in trauma and bewilderment when I was eight years old. It glittered with photovoltaics that picked up greens from the roof gardens. Trolleys glided down the arteries, and people thronged in and out of the subway station. The Warner and Disney lots were opened up with pass-throughs for foot and bike traffic, and the LA River wended its way along their backs and through the equestrian district.
I felt for a moment like I’d lost my body, like my mind had separated from my flesh and flown into the screen, a world I’d conjured up with my friends that was so real that I could disappear into it, soar into it, accompanied by the untethered spirit of Phuong, whose nearness stayed with me even as my body drifted away.
Slowly I returned to the world, and Phuong’s fingers were on mine.
“Oh. My. God. Aspirational urban planning is so fucking hot,” she hissed in my ear.
We barely made it to her room before we tore our clothes off.