From another stash bag, she pulled out a roll of toilet paper, a microbe-free shower curtain, a toothbrush holder that didn’t have a well on the bottom where water could collect, a brand-new shower mat, and towels. Penny arranged everything exactly the way that made sense. TP was hung in the correct direction (“over” obviously; “under” was for murderers).
When she was done, she marched back out and went for option three. “Penelope Lee, Penny,” she said, extending her hand to the girl.
The girl stood up and considered Penny’s paw with distaste until Penny was forced to lower it. Penny’s eyeline was to her boob (option one would not have been cute). “Mallory Sloane Kidder,” she said, still typing on her phone. “Though I’m in the process of changing my name to Mallory Sloane. Professionally.”
Mallory had symmetrically winged eyeliner, thick hips, and pointy metallic nails. Penny didn’t know what “professionally” implied.
“Actor,” Mallory Sloane (formerly Kidder) said briskly. She sat back down and crossed her legs. Her nails tap-danced furiously as she texted. “I’ve done off-off-off-Broadway.”
Penny wondered about the jurisdiction of off-off-off-Broadway. It probably had nothing to do with actual Broadway in New York. With enough imagination, hyphens, and prepositions, the corner of East César Chávez and Chicon could probably qualify as off-Broadway.
“Uh, rad,” Penny said.
Mallory held up a finger to indicate for her to wait.
“It’s Jude,” she said, typing into her phone. “Your roommate.”
“Cool.”
“She’s my best friend, you know.”
Tappedy, tappedy tap.
“Since we were six.”
Penny rolled her eyes. Quickly so she wouldn’t get her ass beat by this giant.
“Is everything okay?”
Mallory held up her finger again. Penny wondered how much force it would require to break it in three places.
“She wants us to meet her at a coffee shop on the Drag.”
There had to be some rule against moving to a second location with a stranger. For all Penny knew, her new roommate and this obnoxious broad could be “best friends” from a fetish message board that specialized in cutting up Asian girls for hot dogs. It was all so typical. Penny was at college ten minutes and she was already the third wheel.
“Let’s go.” Mallory set about collecting her things and then looked at a dawdling Penny as if she were stupid.
“Look, they have donuts.”
Penny grabbed her backpack.
Mallory Sloane Kidder might have been an asshole, but her argument was airtight.
SAM.
Jude smiled at Sam.
Sam smiled at Jude.
Jude’s smile was better than Sam’s.
Sam remembered the first time she’d smiled at him. It was Christmas Day a decade ago and Sam was ornery when he opened the door. Bad enough he was forced to wear itchy pants that bunched at the crotch, but to add insult to injury, his mom, Brandi Rose, made him put on a tie.
“Put on a tie,” she’d said. Just like that. She had curlers in her hair and smelled of the perfume that had appeared mysteriously in a glass teardrop on the bathroom counter.
“Hurry up.” She swatted his arm as she squeezed past in their comically snug hall. Sam studied her as she shambled into the kitchen and tried to see her as a man would, as a woman. She looked haggard. The broken blood vessels around her nose had been covered with a thick powder that aged her.
“What tie?” he shot back. At no point in his eleven years of existence had anyone thought to buy him a tie. She huffily pulled one from his dad’s stuff that was collected in Walgreens bags in the hall closet and threw it at him. It was green and maroon with musical notes at the bottom.
“Do you even know how to tie a tie?” she shouted, switching on the vacuum.
“Obviously,” he yelled back.
He YouTubed it.
It used to be that Sam’s mother spent her days off from the hotel in her room, dead to the world. But these past few weeks had been ominously different. She’d spent days baking, cleaning, and buying holiday decorations they couldn’t afford. Her nervous energy made Sam watchful, though it had been oddly reassuring to see the kolaches arranged on cookie sheets—prune and apricot. There were also spiced stars, Zimstern in German, that made the air fragrant with cinnamon, reminding Sam of happier times. Like the one Christmas they’d spent as a family with a shitty plastic tree and a few of his dad’s vinyl records wrapped in newspaper for Sam underneath.
They hadn’t celebrated the holidays for years, and he could tell from Brandi Rose’s short temper and the tremble in her hands that she was at least sober for once.
Sam loosened his tie as he answered the door. Brandi Rose wasn’t big on communication, and other than the barb about the tie and instructions to look nice, Sam didn’t know what she had planned. He hadn’t been expecting company. And certainly not a kid. Let alone a smiling blond, seven-year-old girl in a blue velvet dress and a ponytail. The kid had the same horse face as the stern, brown-haired guy next to her. His eyes were dark, as cold as holes, and behind them was Brandi Rose’s new boyfriend, Mr. Lange. He held a red satin bag aloft with a bottle of champagne peeking out of the top. His smile faltered only for a second when he saw that it was Sam.
“Merry Christmas, kiddo,” bellowed Mr. Lange.
“Hey,” said Sam.
Mr. Lange was sixty-nine years young. It’s how he’d described himself to Sam when they’d first met, grinning and waggling his eyebrows at the mention of “sixty-nine.” He was Brandi Rose’s fiancé as of a month ago. Sam had met him exactly once during their alarmingly short courtship. They’d gone out for steak dinners at Texas Land & Cattle, and the crypt keeper kept touching his mom’s knee. Sam wondered if his hand felt like twigs and dry leaves, especially since Mr. Lange had wiry white hair on his knuckles.
“She’s a spitfire this one,” he told Sam, stroking his mother again on the thigh. They’d met at the front desk of the Marriott, where Brandi Rose worked and Mr. Lange often stayed. “Old-fashioned, too. Wouldn’t give me the time of day until she saw I was serious.” He’d lifted her hand for Sam to see. A teardrop-shaped emerald sparkled on her ring finger. Her birthstone. Brandi Rose giggled, a foreign, hollow sound that horrified Sam.
“This is Drew, my son,” Mr. Lange said, patting the other man on the shoulder. “And my granddaughter Jude.” Sam nodded evenly.
“Oh,” sputtered Brandi Rose, appearing behind him. Her voice was strangled, higher pitched than usual. “You said you were picking us up . . .” She evidently hadn’t expected company either.
“You’re not Sam,” interrupted the kid. Apparently he and his mother were in the presence of three generations of geniuses. The men wore suits. Sam pulled on his tie again.
“It’s my fault,” said Drew, shooting his hand out to Brandi Rose by way of a greeting. “I insisted.”
She took it and Sam instinctively stepped toward Drew to buffer his mom.
“We were having Christmas lunch at the Driskill,” Drew explained, casually pointing out that Sam and his mother hadn’t been invited to the fancy hotel restaurant. “And as you can imagine, the notion of a complete stranger marrying my father just didn’t sit right with me. I had to see what his new lady was about.” He said this in an affable manner that belied its implication. That he suspected Brandi Rose was a gold digger.
“Oh,” said Brandi Rose again. Sam fought the urge to slam the door.
“You’re way too little to be my uncle,” whispered Jude.
It was trippy how memories worked. Sam couldn’t dredge up a solitary detail from Thanksgiving Day two years ago, or what he’d done this past New Year’s, yet he remembered everything about when he and Jude met.
The little kid wouldn’t shut up. Mr. Lange and Brandi Rose made short work of the champagne, and Drew parked Jude in Sam’s room with a plate of cookies while the “grown-ups talked.”
Jude’s family was loaded. At seven she had her own iPad and phone, as well a bag of “travel-size games.” And as much as Sam wanted to ignore her, she wouldn’t stop yammering.