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An Excerpt from There Will Never Be Another You
by Carolyn See
He backed out of the Meadow Oaks parking lot perhaps a little too fast, Vern slumped beside him in the passenger seat. It hadn't gone well, the interview. Now, in the car, neither one of them talked. Phil didn't trust himself to say anything. They swerved down Sunset Boulevard to Gelson's in the Palisades. The last time he'd picked up berries for Felicia he'd made the mistake of going to Ralph's and she'd clucked her tongue at them. She'd clucked her tongue! So he went to Gelsons and picked up salmon and blackberries and celery remoulade and a good bottle of wine and a peach cobbler, getting exactly what he wanted, for a change, while Vern tagged along, being the person who wasn't being spoken to, although the thing with him was you could not speak to him for two months and he probably wouldn't notice. Phil paid and they went out past the security guard and he got to see once again the squadrons of women who -- as far as he could see -- had never done a day's real work in their lives, and their pampered children, dull-eyed, waiting to be hauled to thier next lesson in whatever. It really was too much: lives wasted, his own life sucked away. He slammed the groceries into the back of his car, climbed in, and, without waiting for Vernon to fasten his seat belt, put the Lexus in reverse. And hit something. They surrounded his car, a dark-skinned family -- not Mexican -- shouting. "We kept signaling! Couldn't you see us signal? Didn't you hear us honk? Get out of the car! Look at that damage! What's your insurance? We demand to see your license!" It was a woman, heavyset, unusual for this part of town, with three kids. She wore a floppy sweater and a long full skirt. A little girl in a red dress with a bad cold had set up a horrid screeching wail. A boy about twelve, in old clothes, held his head and groaned, while a scrawny adolescent guy, maybe sixteen, pounded on Vern's door and kept repeating, "Get out of the car! Take a look at what you've done! You hurt my ma! Get out of the car, take a look, get out of the car!" Instead, Phil took a look around for the security guard. He could see him, over by the entrance to the store, closely supervising the parking of a harmless bakery truck. You couldn't blame the guy for not coming over. Everybody was afraid now, of everything. Anybody could be armed, or have a bomb. Or a disease. Or all three. "Get out of the car!" It was the woman yelling now. "Look at what you've done!" Over on Vernon's side the sixteen-year-old was still pounding on the door. Phil could see and hear the little girl wailing. Well-dressed wives scurried past, staying away, out of trouble. The heavyset woman's face was twisted with rage. "All right, all right!" He stepped out of the car and went around to the back to look at the damage to his own car first. "I don't see anything." "Of course! Your big truck thing is so big you run right over honest citizens. People like you don't care! You look at that! How could you, when I was signaling and everything?" People put up a fuss about gas-guzzling SUVs, but her car was in its way just as big, a Buick or a Chevy Malibu with many dents, a bashed-in front end, and a crumpled bumper with just about every color of the rainbow on it. "Look at what you've done!" she howled. "I don't think I did that. Because, look, there's no damage to my car at all." "My head feels like it's going to fall off, Mama," the middle boy said. "I think I have to go to the hospital." "Get out of the car, you little runt!" the teenager yelled at Vern. Phil noticed the kid's T-shirt was dirty and torn. "Stay right there," he shouted to his son. "You stay out of this!" "There, right there!" the heavyset woman announced, and pointed to a fleck of red on the bumper. "You can't deny it. Shame on you! This man," she began to scream at a passerby, "he's trying to rob me because I'm not rich! I demand to see his license! I demand to see his insurance!" Because he'd been told this all his life, and because it was the right thing to do, Phil reached in his wallet for his driver's license. She snatched it from him, held it close to his face, looked at him suspiciously, then gave it to her middle boy. "Write everything down," she said. "Then get his insurance." "May I see your license?" The little girl set up a howl and began to blow her nose on her skirt. He noticed, sadly, that her cotton panties were dirty, loose fitting, and worn. Fuck it, he thought, I can take the hit, and moved toward the passenger side of the SUV, where the teenager was still slapping on the window. "Get out of the way," he said, "so I can get to my glove compartment." He had to push the kid behind him so he could open the door. As he reached in, or began to reach in, Vern slid out underneath him and went for the teenager. His head only came up to the guy's ribs, so he went for him there, butting him as hard as he could. "Fucking ass-bite faggot! Stay away from my dad!" Vern's thick hands reached up and grabbed the kid's ears and yanked him down. He butted his head hard against the kid's head and then kneed him in the crotch. The guy knelt on the ground between cars, groaning. The woman and the daughter were both crying now, genuine tears. Vern went for the middle kid and punched him in the face. Blood poured from his nose, onto Gelson's parking lot. "Give me my dad's license, faggot ass-bite! Give it to me now, unless you want what your brother got! Dad! Get in the car and start it!" Phil and the heavyset woman looked at each other. Kids, their looks said momentarily. Then her eyes filled with hate and shiftiness and he heard the sound of Vern's fists against flesh again and he knew enough to get in the car and start it. He backed out of his place, slowly and carefully, making sure to miss the retching teenager, trusting all the others to look out for themselves. He reached over and opened the passenger-seat door. Vern jumped in, clutching the driver's license, which was drenched in blood. "Fasten your seat belt," Phil said. They stopped at a Starbucks a few blocks away, and Vernon went in to clean up. They ordered Frappuccinos. Phil said, "They must have been, you know, like the people who do that in parking lots? For insurance money? Gypsies?" "Goddamn Arabs is what they were." "Watch your language. Every bad person isn't an Arab." The place was filling up by now, a Wednesday afternoon around three thirty or four in Pacific Palisades: mothers, and sometimes dads, coming in with their kids for a treat after school. If any place in the world is safe, this is safe, Phil thought, watching the dust motes in the afternoon sunlight; the other stuff is just on television. He thought of San Onofre, eighty miles away, of all the dubious marked targets all over the city and state that made nuclear weapons or their components. A kid on a board skated by, debonair, dodging outdoor tables, beautifully impervious. People could die, Phil thought. Every one of us is going to die, in fact. He said, "You did good, Vern." The boy flicked a glance at him, looked away, took a swallow of Frappuccino that left icy foam on his lips, then looked at his hands, which were puffed and bleeding. He smiled. "What'll we tell your mom?" Vern shrugged. But Felicia was so deep into her own world that she only asked, "What did you do with this salmon? How come it isn't still cold?" And then, apprehensively, "How was the interview?" "Fine," Phil said. "Vernon did fine." "We had some fun," Vern said. And went upstairs.
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