“Nice to see you, Gwen,” he said. “I’m glad you decided to come!”
He was a little slick, Oscar. You could see it in his combed-back hair, his soft hands, his well-ironed clothes. Mostly you could see it in his face—handsome, friendly, but controlled. He must have worked hard to be as successful as he was, selling houses in what had long been a Latino neighborhood to nervous whites. Since he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, she saw what his long-sleeved work shirts concealed—a tattoo of a mountain lion crouching on his right shoulder, the name Lily in script across his left bicep. Yes, it must have cost him something to be so agreeable. But she knew he had a little girl and that he took good care of her, and so Gwen was inclined to give him slack.
“My stuff’s out in the car,” he said now. “Should I bring it in?”
“No, leave it out there,” Tracy answered. “Might as well just transfer the bags straight to my car.”
He glanced around the room. “Looks good in here.”
“Thanks,” Tracy said, hands on hips. “A little different than before, isn’t it?”
“The family that was here before were pack rats,” Oscar explained to Gwen. “It took them so long to clear out of here that we had to delay the closing.”
“I keep thinking about them and all their damned stuff,” Tracy said. “Better to live simple and not accumulate things, you know? You hear about people having to evacuate because of fire and they can’t figure out what to take. It’s better not to have so much to lose in the first place. I mean, what if something really bad happens? What if there’s a terrorist attack? Or the economy collapses? Or the Big One finally hits? You’ve got to be able to pick up and exit, quick.”
“Well,” Oscar said, “I hadn’t thought of all that.”
“Think about it, buddy. Think about it. And there are limited ways to get out of here, you know? Just last winter I was trying to get back into the city, from Sequoia, and the Tejon Pass was closed because of snow. The hotels before the pass all filled up quick, and people were sleeping in their cars, and the restaurants ran out of food and water. I turned around, went back up the 5 and over to the coast, and came down through Santa Barbara. Took nine hours from the Grapevine instead of ninety minutes. But hell, at least I got here.”
Gwen wasn’t comfortable with the banter, with the talk of crisis and doom. And again she felt bad about missing Sandra Gutierrez in group this week. Sandra had been an A student at King Drew Medical Magnet when suddenly, during her sophomore year, her grades began to plummet. Then it was discovered that she was cutting herself, and no one could figure out why—she had a stable home, a good mom with a steady job; they were generally better off than the other families Gwen worked with.
But then Sandra told her mother that her stepfather had been molesting her, in the evenings while her mother was at work. Her mother had locked the husband out and immediately called the police, and slowly, through intensive therapy and Gwen’s leadership group, Sandra had started to pull herself back together. She was a shy girl, soft-eyed and quiet, and when she first came to group, she sat in a folded-in, self-protective way that broke Gwen’s heart. Without her mom’s steadfast toughness and love, Sandra might not have made it through.
And now she was facing a new challenge—her stepfather’s trial was starting in a couple of weeks, and Sandra had to testify against him. That was a crisis, she wanted to say—facing someone who raped you; having to tell your story in front of strangers. Gwen felt little patience for people who had to invent or imagine disaster.
Now Tracy clapped Oscar on the shoulder again, grinning. “Hey, you want some coffee? Water? Fruit?” She was so pumped up that she was practically jumping in place. Tracy seemed to possess the secret of a fully lived life, and inhabited hers completely. Even her preparedness kick had a kind of enthusiasm mixed in with the worry. The terrorists might come, Tracy’s attitude suggested, but she would make quick work of them, and have fun in the process. Gwen was drawn to her in spite of herself.
“I’m good,” Oscar said, and then the doorbell rang again.
Tracy was at the door in an instant, pulling it open wide. “Todd!” she exclaimed. “You found us!”
Todd looked like he wasn’t quite sure what he had found. He was, Gwen thought, a pretty average-looking white guy. About 5'10", dirty-blond hair, with a broad face that, in another ten years or so, might be described as “meaty.” He seemed preppy—Ralph Lauren polo shirt, khaki shorts, expensive leather sandals. But there was something that didn’t quite hold together in all of this, as if he was dressing like his successful older brother. And at the moment, he seemed a little confused.
“Hi, Tracy. Yeah, but not without some wrong turns. My GPS sent me up a one-lane dirt road.”
“GPS and MapQuest are useless up here,” said Oscar, in a litany he must have used a thousand times with clients. “This neighborhood was designed to turn people around. There used to be speakeasies up here during Prohibition. And then it was a communist hangout.”
“Todd, this is Oscar Barajas and Gwen Foster,” Tracy said, ushering him into the house. “Oscar and Gwen, this is Todd Harris.”
Gwen saw something shift in Todd’s eyes—an acknowledgment that he was in the minority here. He probably wasn’t used to being around people of color—at least, not ones who didn’t work for him. She thought of the looks she’d gotten at REI when she’d gone shopping for supplies, and had been the only black person in the store: not hostile, not unwelcoming—in fact, a couple of the clerks were overfriendly—just simply noting the unusual fact of her presence. But Todd shook their hands firmly and met their eyes. “So we’re just waiting for the Pattersons?” he asked.
“They’re not coming, unfortunately,” Tracy said. “Carolyn is sick.”
Again, a flicker in the eyes, but he quickly recovered. “That’s too bad. They’re both great people.”
“I know. We’ll have to manage without them. But in some ways it’s easier—now we can take one car.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Todd said, still not convinced. “Hey, is it okay to leave my car here?”
“Absolutely,” Tracy answered, and Gwen had to look away. What a rarified world Todd lived in if he thought this neighborhood was iffy.
After Todd declined the offer of coffee or food, Tracy took everything back to the kitchen and led them all outside. There, they did a pack check, and with Tracy’s help, Gwen winnowed down to a single long-sleeved shirt, removed an extra jacket, kept one extra set of socks and underwear instead of two. With the extra space Gwen could fit the sleeping bag inside the pack and pile everything else on top.
Once their packs were reorganized, they loaded up Tracy’s Volvo XC60. Gwen watched Todd heave the cooler and packs into the car; she saw Oscar help figure out how to fit everything; she saw Tracy direct the whole process. The back of the SUV was soon full to the roof.
Gwen felt like a neophyte, useless. What had she been thinking? She looked at her own Honda across the street, flanked by the BMW she knew to be Oscar’s and the Audi she assumed was Todd’s, and had an urge to just make a dash for it, drive away, get out while she still could. She could drive to the office—that’s where she really belonged. Not with these people whom she barely knew. Not in the outdoors, in some remote corner of the mountains.
You just can’t do this, she thought, and the words appeared so fully formed that she realized they came from someone else: Chris, the last man she had dated. Chris was a field deputy for the local city councilman, a charismatic, talkative guy she’d met when he toured the agency. They’d had a whirlwind year of dinners, neighborhood events, Saturday brunches with his politically active family and friends. Gwen had found this all thrilling, until eight months in, Chris began to say that she worked too much, that he didn’t like her clothes, that she needed to lose ten pounds. (“What kind of self-respecting black