“I have a tiny, ugly furnished studio apartment in West Hollywood, but the ancient air conditioner works.”
“We can get takeout, and eat there if you want,” he said easily, and she shook her head. She would have with Jake in a heartbeat, for the pure practicality of it. But she didn’t know Jeff well enough to invite him to her apartment.
“No, that’s okay. I don’t have enough plates.” It wasn’t true, but served the purpose as an excuse. “There’s a Mexican restaurant down the street from me, which is pretty good, if you like Mexican.” They both did, and she didn’t know any other restaurants in L.A., and neither did he. She said she’d pick him up at seven, and he agreed, and the office sent him on a long mission after that, to unload furniture off a truck. She spent the afternoon in the air-conditioned main office, collating scripts with different colored change sheets for the various sets. But at least she was cool while she worked, and felt fresher than usual at six when she left. Her supervisor liked her and felt sorry for her, so she’d created the project for her.
She drove home after work, showered, and changed quickly. She wore a turquoise sundress and gold sandals Lara had bought for her at Bergdorf in New York, and she looked clean and pretty when she drove to Jeff’s address. There were hookers walking up and down the street in front of his hotel and for a good distance on either side of it. It was exactly the kind of place her father hadn’t wanted her to live, but Jeff was in less danger than she would have been. He looked tired and rumpled when he walked out of the hotel and got in her car.
“You like my neighborhood?” he asked her, as a hooker walked by and offered them a threesome, and referred to Antonia as Little Bo Peep, because she seemed so young and innocent. She drove away and made a face. “The hooker who has the room next to me is pretty nice. She gives me leftover Chinese food once in a while, since we don’t have fridges and can’t keep it. The place is full of cockroaches and rats. And the other night, she offered me a free blow job. She’s new and said she needs the practice.” He said it as a matter of course, and Antonia was shocked. No man had referred to that with her before, as though it was an ordinary subject, and she didn’t comment. She looked upset for a few minutes, but by the time they got to the restaurant, she had recovered. Maybe he thought he was being funny, although she was not amused by the comment.
The food was even better than she’d realized, and they both ate a full meal, despite the heat of the day, and the hours he had spent unloading a truck full of furniture into a warehouse. The restaurant wasn’t air-conditioned, but there was a slight breeze that night, as they sat at a garden table and talked about their respective colleges and early lives. Jeff had two brothers and a sister older than he was, his parents were divorced, and he’d grown up in Ohio, and liked Northwestern a lot. His father worked for an insurance company and his mother was a high school chemistry teacher. He said he wanted to go to New York after he graduated, be an actor and make a lot of money. He was quick to pick up the check, which she thought was generous of him. She had thought him cocky when they first met, and a little smug about his good looks. His hair was longer than it should be, but it was sexy on him, and there was no denying he was a handsome kid, and he knew it. But he seemed nicer as they sat at dinner that night, and a little more modest than he had before. The grueling conditions of their boring job had taken a little of the starch out of him. He showed her the blisters on his hands from what he’d done that day.
“You know, maybe in a way, we’re lucky,” she said, after she thanked him for dinner and they left the restaurant. “They only hire two college interns every summer from all over the country, and we’re it. It’s kind of an honor.”
“To drag boxes around, and unload truckloads of furniture?” He looked disgusted. “More like slave labor. We’re working for free. I could have stayed in Chicago and gotten a job that paid me decently. We’re not learning anything here.”
“Humility maybe,” she said softly. “Whatever we do after we graduate, we’ll have to start from the bottom.” They were driving past her apartment as she said it, and she pointed the building out to him. “That’s where I live.”
“That’s good news,” he said hurriedly. “I’m desperate to go to the bathroom. I needed to go all through dinner, but I hate scuzzy public bathrooms. Would it be too rude to ask you to let me use yours for a minute? I’ll never make it home.”