Model Home (18 page)

On his way out to Antelope Valley to meet the Granillos, Warren kept the Renault in the slow lane in case the muffler decided to fall off. The view from the freeway was soothingly apocalyptic. Go Kart World, Toyota Planet, Land of Sheet Metal—he'd seen the names so many times that they failed to alarm him. Watching cars overtake him and zip back into his lane, steady as water around a rock, Warren ran through the spiel he was going to give Mrs. Granillo as he showed her Durango number 4, the house of her dreams. It seemed, from her voice on the phone, that he might actually have a shot. He would not make the same mistake he'd made with the couple from Riverside. If she asked about the dump, he would tell her it was a shopping mall. He would talk it up, sing to her of the Mojave International Galleria, tell the struggling woman about all its beautiful, air-conditioned, unbeatably priced amenities.

For the first time in weeks, his panic began to lift. It felt just like that: the lifting of a weight. He'd sell the house; word-of-mouth would spread. He'd get his furniture back, his Visa, maybe even his car. Of course, they'd have to leave Herradura Estates—but his life, his family, would be saved.

Rounding the San Gabriels, Warren got off on Highway 14 and began the long descent into the valley, an endless, moon-stark desert stretching into the distance, spiked here and there with Joshua trees poking up from the dirt. Their arms branched haphazardly in the sun, like the thoughts of a lunatic. The trees, the Mojave, seemed to appear out of nowhere. Warren still found it beautiful—breathtaking even—though he regarded it with the begrudging respect you might have for an enemy.

He searched for the poppy preserve that had once been a selling point, trying to spot a few dreamy flashes of orange in the hills, but the summer drought had rendered them as brown as their surroundings.

He pulled off the highway and followed the long dirt road to a block of brand-new homes, his very own ghost town, parking in front of the strip of grass meant to evoke images of croquet matches and Fourth of July picnics. Warren couldn't afford the astronomical water bill, and now the grass had turned to a crunchy brown stubble more befitting the desert. The words
AUBURN FIELDS
glared at him from the engraved rock sitting in the stubble. The name had been Larry's idea. “Fields” implied living grass, even auburn ones, but when Warren had mentioned this to Larry recently he'd laughed in his face. “You're right,” he'd said. “We should have called it Brown Dirt.”

Warren took a deep breath. The Granillos were there already, parked up at the gate. The sun cuffed his face as he got out of the car to greet them. Mrs. Granillo was short and attractively dressed, wearing high heels and a sleeveless dress that showed off the dimpled drape of her arms. Her wrist, heavy with bracelets, clattered when he shook her hand. She introduced her son, who was nervously touching his mustache. He didn't offer his hand.

“I recognize you,” Warren said, surprised. “Do you work with Lyle?”

“I'm a security guard. At Herradura Estates.”

“Right!” Warren realized he was frowning. “Wow. Who knew. She's really been working the neighborhood.”

The son reddened. “We're friends.”

“Of course. I didn't mean—”

“My son like her very much,” Mrs. Granillo said.

Warren looked at them, a ray of sadness spoiling his optimism. In doing his dirty work, had Lyle pretended to befriend this sullen-looking kid? Now here they were, mother and son, imagining some deep connection to his daughter.

Mrs. Granillo wandered over to the red-striped gate, inspecting it with a look of reverent mistrust. Larry had had it installed first thing, before any of the houses were built. Just having a gate out front raised your equity by 15 percent. According to Larry, it was the “honey that drew the bees.”

“I never live with a gate before,” Mrs. Granillo said, glancing around. “No person?”

“It's automatic.” To demonstrate, Warren pulled a key card out of his wallet and stuck it in the little slot. The gate went up with a lurch. “There's a video camera right in here. It feeds to a monitor, a security company, who watch for any suspicious activity.”

She laughed. “Don't say to my son. He'll be out of work.”

Warren walked them through the gate and into the paved block of nearly identical tract homes. It had amazed him, when they were first choosing the colors, to discover there were so many shades of brown. Mountain Elk, Fedora, Olive Leaf. The idea was to match the natural hues of the desert. Like the desert, too, you could walk into any of the houses and hopelessly search for life. Beyond the small clump of houses stretched a vast clearing of dirt, empty lots graded for no purpose and stacked with framing lumber still bound with metal cord.

“
Mira,
” Mrs. Granillo said, entering Durango number 4 and pointing at the plastic chandelier dangling from the ceiling in the front hall. “I never imagine one day I have a
candelabra.
”
She glanced at her son, who was inspecting the chandelier with a skeptical look. “I wish Jorge were here.”

“Jorge?” Warren asked politely.

“My husband. He died three years ago. It was his dream for life—to own a house.”

They walked into the living room. Mrs. Granillo wandered toward the fireplace and began to talk about her husband again, how he used to reminisce about the fires they had growing up in Chiapas. Warren failed to explain that it was merely decorative. He showed Mrs. Granillo and her son the air-conditioning and recessed lighting, the panel doors and stain-grade cabinets. Each time he showed her something new, Mrs. Granillo mentioned her husband and how she wished he were there to see it.

“Oh, Jorge would have so much love the bathroom,” she said, her face lighting up. “He always sweared at the bathtub because it leak. But what I can do? I have to wash my mother every day.”

“Your mother lives with you?”

“Yes,
claro.
This is for each of us.” She looked around for her son, who'd disappeared into another room. “She is sick in the mind. How do you call it?
Esta un poca tocada.
”

“Alzheimer's?”

She nodded. Warren had started to sweat from his armpits. A strange sort of sweat, cold and silvery, as if it belonged to a different climate. Mrs. Granillo's son met up with them in the kitchen, his face still pinched into a frown. He said something to his mother in Spanish. Ignoring him, Mrs. Granillo went over to the sink and inspected the InSinkErator, flipping the switch on the wall. It moaned on cue. She tested the pullout sprayer, hosing the window by accident.

“Look,” she said to her son, “I no longer have to hunch over for dishes.”

“I don't know. It's pretty far from everything.”

“
Eso es!
No one will bother us.”

“How are you going to look after Abuelita if you have to drive forty miles for food?”

This was Warren's cue. He looked out the window at the construction site in the distance and watched a backhoe materialize from the gigantic cloud of dust, buzzing like a mosquito in the empty desert. The dinosaurian neck of a crane loomed over the haze. Surely he was imagining it, the whiff of sourness already in the air.

“They're building a supermarket,” Warren said, avoiding Mrs. Granillo's eyes. “A big one. A shopping mall as well.”

“Where?” Mrs. Granillo's son asked.

“Right there. You can see it.” To get a better view, Warren led them to the sliding doors that opened on the deck. He felt okay—less nauseated—if he directed his words at the glass. “Breaking ground as we speak.”

“All the way out here?”

“Well, it's a high-growth area. Very in demand.”

The son looked at him skeptically, picking up on something in his voice. Warren did his best to look him in the eye. It was his family or theirs, he reminded himself. Mrs. Granillo opened one of the cabinets and began swinging it back and forth.

“That's solid-wood construction,” Warren said. “Maple.”

“Very nice,” Mrs. Granillo said.

Her son said something in Spanish, peering inside the cabinet. Warren thought he heard the word
barato.

“What did you say?”

The young man shifted uncomfortably. “I said it looks like par
ticleboard. The cabinet box. I installed cabinets one summer for my uncle.”

“Lots of them use particleboard,” Warren said, frowning. “What you want to watch out for is MDF, I think. Fiberboard.”

“Actually, they both sag over time. You should have seen some of the carcasses we replaced.” The boy opened one of the drawers under the counter. “Looks like the joints are glued, too,” he mumbled to himself.

“I don't think is so bad,” Mrs. Granillo said. “You should see what I have for fifteen years. The paint at least doesn't peel, with lead for babies.”

Her son walked over to the sink and turned on the hot water faucet, which groaned obstreperously. “The faucet isn't sealed properly.”

“I can get the plumber out here tomorrow.”

“Very agree of you,” Mrs. Granillo said.

“
Y esto es plástico,
” the boy said to his mother, touching the dish towel bar.

Warren turned to him with hatred. The kid's face was flushed, his chin raised as if anticipating an insult. For the first time, Warren saw that the boy's pride was on the line. The sale was slipping away out of some mystifying need to prove his own power. Warren wanted to beg or scream or kiss the boy's shoes. In desperation, he grabbed the plastic bar and yanked it easily out of the wall. The two sets of nail holes, poorly aligned, looked like startled faces.

“We can replace the fixtures. Chrome. Whatever you'd like.”

Mrs. Granillo and her son stared at him. Warren fantasized about trashing the whole place, starting with the fixtures in the kitchen and then moving on to the walls and carpets and plastic chandeliers. He laid the bar gently on the counter.

“Look, honestly, I know that some of the finishing is . . . cost-effective. That's how we manage to keep the price low. But I guarantee you the construction is better than sound. We don't skimp when it comes to essentials.” Warren turned to Mrs. Granillo. “With the money you save, you could install five new kitchens in here if you wanted.”

Mrs. Granillo looked at her son, who seemed to have relaxed a bit. Perhaps it was all that he wanted: for Warren to admit the kitchen was cheap. They moved on to the bathroom, but the boy did not mention the plastic towel racks or vinyl floor curling at
one corner from the heat. For the first time, Warren noticed he was wearing a homemade T-shirt that said
I
THE BERING STRAIT
. A vague premonition crept across his scalp.

“We'll think about it,” Mrs. Granillo's son said at the end of the tour.

Warren felt a tug of hope. “Yes. Please. But don't mull it over
too
long. You're the sixth family I've shown a Durango to this week.”

“Do they build a cinema with the mall?” Mrs. Granillo asked, staring at the crane in the distance. “And a pharmacy?”

“I'm betting yes,” Warren said.

“Ly didn't tell me it was so far out in the boonies,” the boy said.

“Ly?” Warren asked.

“Lyle.” The boy blushed, checking his watch. “We can find out for sure, Mama. Stop on the way out and talk to the construction crew. They ought to be able to tell us what they're building.”

Rat Beach was calm and almost deserted. Lyle strolled along the beach with Shannon, skirting the tidewater and feeling warm lumps of sand under her arches. There were no waves to speak of but a few surfers were out in the water anyway, their hair dry from the sun. Walking with Shannon, Lyle felt a shy flush of excitement, as though she were escorting a celebrity. Sunbathers dropped their books or adjusted their sunglasses, pretending not to stare. Not that Lyle blamed them. Shannon's body in a bikini was tall and perfect, marred only by a dark mole just below her belly button. Somehow it seemed less like a flaw than a public service: the
YOU ARE HERE
dot on a map. Lyle kept her own stomach bandaged in a towel, which she'd tied scrupulously around her waist. If she forgot about the towel, if she stared at the sand fleas in front of her and avoided looking at her pale and veiny feet, she felt almost beautiful, as though the sunbathers were ogling her as well.

Shannon had asked Lyle to the beach. Actually, what she'd said was:
I bet you could get a tan if you tried.
Lyle hadn't known this was an invitation until much later, while she was Z-ing out the register for the night and Shannon had asked casually when she should pick Lyle up for their “tanning session.” She'd started to make up an excuse, but the allure of going with Shannon Jarrell to the beach, of basking in the flattering light of her beauty for a day and absorbing some of it herself, was too powerful to resist.