Less Than Nothing Page 7

  Put that way, maybe it isn’t so bad. Beats dodging rapists in the park.

  “What about the guys that were after us?”

  “They won’t follow this far. This place has a rep. Bull’s been here for a long time. He’s got a deal with the gang that controls this block.”

  “A deal?”

  “Right. They don’t screw with him, and he doesn’t cause them grief. He grew up around here, so he’s a homeboy. Everyone’s just trying to get by, and if he wants to run a little hotel business out of here, nobody cares.”

  I wonder whether he thinks my hand’s sweaty and gross. It feels like it. But he doesn’t seem to mind. We reach the end of the seating, and he points to an exit sign.

  “What?” I ask.

  “My place is upstairs.” I realize he’s pointing to a metal ladder that leads to the balcony. I slow, and he squints at me in the dark before dropping my hand and turning off the flashlight. “Are you afraid of heights?”

  I consider the ladder. “I’m not afraid of anything.” My words sound hollow to me.

  “Good. Up you go.”

  “What about my guitar?”

  “I’ll hand it up once you make it.”

  Crap. I take each rung carefully, my eyes screwed tight by the time I reach the second level, and it’s all I can do to swing my leg over the balcony and get off the ladder. Derek climbs up behind me, easily mounting the rungs using only one hand, and passes Yam to me. I pull it up, and he returns to get his guitar, then follows me up and hands me his case when he’s at the balcony. I take it, and he climbs over next to me and then takes it back.

  “Over here,” he says and moves to a clear area, where there’s a sleeping bag neatly rolled up by the wall.

  I stop and shake my head. Derek slows and turns to me. “What?”

  “I want to get out of here.”

  “You will. When it’s safe.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Morning. By daylight, everything outside calms down.”

  I shake my head again. “No.”

  He looks at me, puzzled. “No, what?”

  I exhale loudly and hear a rustle and a grunt from the other side of the balcony. Someone’s sleeping there. Maybe more than one someone.

  Derek’s voice is hushed. “There aren’t many rules, but you need to know them. First, no stealing or violence, for any reason. Second, people come to sleep, not to party, so we respect everyone’s space. Break the rules and Bull boots you regardless of the time, and you get a beating on the way out.”

  “So I should keep my voice down?”

  “That would be good.”

  I try to contain my agitation. “Derek, I’m not sleeping with you.”

  He moves to the wall and sets his guitar and rucksack down next to the sleeping bag. “Is that what you think this is about?” he whispers.

  “What am I supposed to think? You bring me into this area, and now I’m at your crash pad…”

  “Right. You think this is all part of my birthday conspiracy. To get a little present for myself.” He smiles at me. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t need to kidnap girls to keep me company.”

  I feel like a complete moron. Of course he doesn’t. For crying out loud, he’s catnip. He could probably be a gigolo and be driving a Benz or something.

  He moves closer. “Not that you wouldn’t be the first girl I kidnapped if I had to.”

  I stand staring at him as he moves back to his sleeping bag and unrolls it. He unzips one side and flattens it out on the floor, double wide. “So while sleeping with you would be top of my list of awesome ways to finish my birthday, I’m afraid that’s not why you’re here. I can’t get you back safely with those clowns on the street, so you’re stuck.” He sees my face and presses on, his voice calm and quiet. “Don’t worry. You’re safe. I’m not going to try to buggerize you or anything.”

  I almost laugh at the word and stifle it with my hand. He smiles again and yawns. “You want to use the bathroom? Showers are downstairs, but there’s a bathroom up here. It’s not the Hilton, but everything works, and Bull cleans it once a week.”

  I’m here with a guy I don’t know, in the middle of a war zone with no way out, and he seems more worried about whether I’ll think the toilet’s gross than getting my panties off. I don’t know whether to cry or not, but my response surprises me.

  “I’ve probably seen worse. Might as well show me where everything is.”

  I’ve never been to Calcutta or Bangladesh, but the bathroom would probably give them a run for their money. When we get back to the sleeping bag, Derek kicks his combat boots off and stretches his arms over his head before removing his jacket. It’s warm inside, bordering on too warm, and I debate how I’m going to sleep. He grins and lies down with his hands folded on his stomach, using his jacket for a pillow.

  I stand watching him for several minutes, and there’s another stirring from the far side of the darkened balcony. Derek looks about as interested in attacking me as the waiter did in giving us free wine, and after he throws me a final look that clearly says, “You going to stand there all night?” I move to him and set my backpack down. I’ve used it as a pillow before, so that’s nothing new. I slide it next to his head and untie my Chucks and, after slipping them off, lie down next to him.

  His breathing is deep and regular. I’m as jumpy as a meth fiend in withdrawals, but slowly the tension seeps out of my shoulders and back, and I start to relax. When he speaks, it’s so quiet I almost don’t hear it.

  “Sorry about the bogus dinner.”

  I smile. He’s apologizing for the first real meal I’ve had in months. Maybe he’s not a serial killer after all.

  “Good thing it’s against the rules to sing happy birthday or you’d have me up all night, wouldn’t you?”

  It’s his turn to smile. I can make it out in the dark, his teeth seeming to glow in the dim light from the lone lamp downstairs.

  “Nah. I’m actually beat. But thank you for making it my most memorable birthday ever.”

  “You must not get out a lot.” I pause. “What’s with the bard thing?”

  “What?”

  “Bull. He called you the bard.”

  Derek snorts. “Oh. That’s nothing. It’s a long story.”

  “Seems like I’m not going anywhere for a while.”

  He stirs, and a part of me trembles – and not from fear. I’ve never felt this way before, and I do my best to stifle the unexpected sensation. He moves a few inches closer and turns his head to face me. I continue staring at the ceiling, which I can see is ornately sculpted.

  “I had a copy of Romeo and Juliet when I first started crashing here. Bull gave me nothing but shit about it for the first few weeks, and when I finished with it, I left it for him – he’s not a huge reader, in case it isn’t obvious.”

  “The Bull nickname was the giveaway.”

  “Anyway, I guess he read it to pass the time, and now there are two people in this dump who’ve read Shakespeare.”

  I close my eyes, the last of my anxiety draining away. “Three,” I say.

  He nods to himself and returns to his original position, closing his eyes as his breathing slows. I can barely hear him when he whispers his final words of the night – words that keep me awake for another half an hour before I’m able to drift off.

  “Sleep well, Sage.”

  Chapter 9

  I start awake, and it takes me a second to remember where I am. It’s been so long since I slept more than a few hours at a time I feel drugged and disoriented. I’m lying on my side, curled in a fetal position, and as I crack an eye open, I realize there’s an unfamiliar weight on my waist.

  An arm.

  Derek’s arm. Around me.

  A beam of sunlight’s shining through a long crack in the theater ceiling, and I can see dust motes floating in it like a slow motion snow flurry. In the dim light I can make out how trashed the interior is, at least the section in my view. T
here’s graffiti everywhere, spray-painted A for Anarchy symbols next to elaborate works of art featuring street scenes from around town – vatos in zoot suits next to low-rider cars, the Golden Gate bridge with a marijuana leaf superimposed in the clouds above it, Fisherman’s Wharf with stylized caricatures of fat, clueless tourists toting oversized cameras.

  I can feel Derek behind me, softly breathing, and I try to decide how I feel about the arm thing. My initial impulse is to pull away, but a split second after that I realize that I don’t completely hate it. In fact, it feels kind of nice to have him sleeping next to me.

  Last night I was treating him like he was a molester. Now I’m spooning and happy about it?

  If you’d told me thirty-six hours ago that I’d be waking up next to the hot guy who’d stopped traffic on Haight, I’d have asked you what you were smoking.

  Now his arm’s around me.

  I lie like that for a while, not moving, wondering at how fast life can change, and then my butt cheek vibrates. Not from Derek. My phone. I debate ignoring it, but he’s stirring, and then the arm disappears, and he shifts away from me.

  I roll over onto my back and glance at him. He looks like ten million bucks, even with his hair flattened on one side of his head. He blinks, checks his watch, and looks at me. His eyes are sleepy, but there’s something else in them. Worry. I can see him trying to decide whether to say something, maybe apologize for the arm, but in the end he doesn’t say anything, so I do.

  “Morning.”

  His emerald green eyes warm, and the worry fades from them, replaced by…something else I really like.

  “Morning.”

  He moves his hand to my face and pushes my bangs aside so he can see my eyes, and then smiles. The worry’s back, and he clears his throat.

  “About last night. Nothing happened.”

  I realize I haven’t been breathing since he touched my hair, and if that keeps up, I’ll pass out. I sit up and draw a long, slow breath and then look at the sunlight again so I don’t seem like I’m fixated on him.

  “I figured that out when I woke up with my pants on.”

  He laughs. “I guess that sounded pretty dumb.”

  I don’t say anything. He tries again. “It’s just you were so concerned about it…”

  I close my eyes and think about possible responses. “Don’t sweat it.” What I really want is for him to put his arm back around me so we can stay like that all day. But I’m not going to say that. In fact, I don’t even know that I want that at all.

  Lie.

  I totally do. But I know I shouldn’t.

  My conflicted thinking’s becoming a crowd in my head. I remember a cartoon where there’s an angel and a devil on the character’s shoulder as he tries to figure out what to do, and I smile at the memory.

  Derek looks at me, trying to read me. I almost tell him not to waste his time trying to figure me out when I’m having a total Sybil moment, and then I feel my phone buzz again. I slip it out of my pocket and look at the screen – it’s Melody, of course.

  Can you still walk? Can he?

  One thing I can rely on is that Melody will go straight to the gutter and gladly roll around in it. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be Mel. It’s one of the things I love about her – she’s so cheerfully slutty sometimes.

  I text back: How can you be sure I was even with him last night?

  Her response is like lightning: The way you two were looking at each other? Gimme a break. If you weren’t, I’m going to kick your skinny ass.

  It’s pointless to try to explain, but of course I try, my color rising as I do. It’s not like that. We had dinner. It was his birthday. Nothing happened.

  She fires back: I think we need to have that talk about where babies come from.

  I giggle, and Derek looks at me with a puzzled frown. I text her, finishing the exchange. I’m serious. It was just dinner.

  Melody’s not happy. You let that hunk of yum get away without road rash, I’m pimp slapping you, girl.

  I turn the phone off and return my attention to Derek, who’s watching me with that edgy intensity I find so…Derek. I wonder when he became a verb in my head. He Dereked me. He’s all Derek on his bad self. I smile to myself, further mystifying him, judging by his expression, which is polite but puzzled.

  I laugh as I turn to him. “Don’t worry. My head won’t spin around or anything. It’s been a while since that happened.”

  “I don’t scare easy.”

  I look around our surroundings. “I see that.”

  “It’s better than a park bench or a doorway.”

  He’s right, but that doesn’t mean I have to concede the point. “I just hope I didn’t catch anything, sleeping on that bag.”

  Derek adopts a totally fake hurt expression. “It’s not dirty. I wash it.”

  “Uh-huh.” It isn’t dirty, but it’s fun to see him defensive.

  He stands up. I yawn.

  “What time is it?” I ask.

  “Seven.”

  “Figure what, half hour or so to make it to the Haight?”

  “Forty-five.” He moves to his rucksack. “I’m going to take a shower.”

  “Do they have a ladies’ steam room?”

  “Sort of.” He thinks for a second. “I’ll make sure nobody goes in while you’re in there if you want to use it.”

  I’m not convinced, but a shower sounds appealing. I decide on a punt strategy. “Let me see what it’s like. If it’s anything like the bathroom up here…”

  “It’s better. And most everyone gets up later, so we should have it to ourselves.”

  “Not a lot of heavy schedules, huh?”

  “Got that right.”

  One of the benefits of being homeless is you get to work your own hours. Which is a laughable way of saying one day blurs into the next and time stops having any meaning. The only reason I’m a stickler about getting to my spot every day by nine is to keep some scumbag from stealing it.

  My gaze flits to Derek. Who’s no longer a scumbag, I guess. He’s my partner. At least for the week.

  He walks through the beam descending from the crack, and the light seems to bathe him like a spotlight. I just about hear music, that waca chica waca chica seventies funk guitar, and I shake it off. What’s going on with me? I mean, my inner voice is usually spun, but even for me, this is weird.

  We climb down the ladder, and I see seven or eight sleeping forms on the theater main floor. Bull is dozing in a chair by the door, his bulk unmistakable even at a distance. I follow Derek through one of the exit doors by the stage, and we enter a darkened hall that winds around to a pair of bathrooms, one of them boarded up, the other with no door on it. He waves at the doorway. “This is the spa.”

  We go in, and there are two stalls with toilets, a couple of wall sinks, and a homemade plumbing job with an exposed pipe featuring a showerhead pointed at a floor drain. I approach the ‘shower’ and regard it with the caution I reserve for live cobras, and Derek joins me.

  “As long as you like one temperature of water, it does the job.”

  “I’m guessing that isn’t hot, right?”

  “That would be the other temperature.”

  “Mmm.”

  “I use a pair of flip-flops. And I don’t take long showers. Even in the summer it’s not really that fun.”

  “Don’t oversell it.”

  He shrugs. “I’ve got a towel. You can use it.”

  I’m not convinced. He doesn’t push it. He glances at the time and sets his rucksack down in a clean corner and tosses his jacket on top of it. “You’re welcome to stay,” he says with a grin.

  I go to the doorway. “I’ll just wait out here.”

  “Scream if you need anything.”

  “Or if the rats come.”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

  I move outside and set my backpack down. The place is Turkish prison-level gross, but my sensibility’s changed a lot in four months, and I’ve s
een way worse.

  Which saddens me and reminds me of Derek’s question from last night. Is this really what I want my life to be about? Running from predators and spending nights in hellholes? I’m going to be eighteen soon, and what do I have to show for it? A battered guitar, whatever I can carry, and a bag of spare change.

  I’m getting into full-blown ‘beat yourself up’ mode when I catch a glimpse of Derek, shirtless, pulling his jeans off. I avert my eyes and fumble for my cell phone, but not before his sculpted abs and stunning chest are seared into my brain. I’m tempted to keep looking, but the small part of me that has any decency left focuses on the phone screen instead.

  My battery’s almost gone. I charge it at the bagel place in the mornings, and it usually lasts a few days if all I’m doing is texting, which is the only thing I use the cell for. It’s not like I have an extensive list of friends to call and catch up with. It’s pretty much my Melody line, and that’s it.

  I pick up the texting where I left off. So I spent the night at the place he crashes. It’s a total poophole.

  Her response is immediate. OMG. You did not.

  Me: We didn’t do anything.

  Uh-huh.

  Me: We should be in the Haight by the usual time.

  I’ll stop by. Totally jealous.

  Me: Don’t be.

  Did you at least kiss? Tell me you did.

  No.

  Melody: What’s wrong with you?

  Fair question, I suppose. Maybe I’m not a tramp who rubs all over every guy she sees?

  But that’s not really the whole story, is it, Sage? Not even close. The truth is, I’ve got some hang-ups. I just don’t feel the way girls like Melody do. All I feel when I make out with a guy is a creeping sense of dread.

  I’m not some goody two-shoes. Not morally opposed to mutual attraction or happily ever after. I’ve just never seen the point of it with any of the dudes I had a chance to date – they were boys, more about trying to score than who they were doing it with.

  Which at least kept me from getting knocked up. Life’s complicated enough without that. My mom’s years of drunken warnings about boys only wanting one thing and the dangers they represent had their desired effect. Every time I kissed someone, all I could think of was how I might be catching something or where their mouth had been. Like a broken record.