Southland by Nina Revoyr Read Free Book Online Page A

schools, and the most famous Jewish deli in L.A. Laura, who’d gone to Hebrew school until she was fourteen, often joked that if she had to be involved with a woman, at least she’d picked the right neighborhood to do it. To Jackie, it was the right neighborhood, period. The seventy-year-old apartment buildings were beautiful and grand, dressed with turrets, gables, red-tiled stairs and roofs, ivy winding up the fronts and the sides. Restaurants, markets, delis, banks, were all within a couple of blocks. Other than driving back and forth from school, she almost never used her car.
    Jackie walked at a leisurely pace, enjoying the fresh air, thinking about her girlfriend. It occurred to her that they hadn’t been happy for quite some time—maybe not since the summer they met. Although they were both from L.A., they’d started dating in San Francisco, two months before Jackie started law school. Laura had an internship, working for the San Francisco Community Development Department between her junior and senior years at Stanford, and Jackie, who’d just graduated the year before from Berkeley, was finishing her paralegal stint in one of the Embarcadero buildings. They were set up by a mutual acquaintance who’d gone to school with Laura at Stanford and was working as a paralegal at Jackie’s firm. Their first date had started over ten-dollar sandwiches at a downtown lunch spot, and hadn’t ended until two days later.
    They had a perfect, all-too-brief summer of bike rides, big dinners, wine-tasting in Napa Valley, long nights of conversation and sex. Every weekend they’d bike across the Golden Gate Bridge and walk down to Black Sand Beach, where they’d hold hands and stare back at the sparkling city. Then, in early September, Jackie left for L.A., and they’d spent the academic year on the phone. During breaks, Jackie would go up to Stanford or Laura would come down to L.A. Laura would split her home time between Jackie and her mother, who loved that Laura was seeing someone in L.A. because it meant she came down more often. And Laura’s mother—and Jackie—were even happier when Laura got the job with the city; she moved back to L.A. right after her graduation.
    It wasn’t clear to Jackie when things had started to go wrong. But their relationship, on this different turf, had changed somehow, the way a crop that might flourish in one kind of soil struggles simply to survive in another. When Laura first came to L.A., Jackie had visions of their one day moving in together (they both agreed they should live apart initially), having a dog, two cats, and eventually some children. But it quickly became clear that Laura was miserable. Despite the prestige of her job, she hated the stress of it. Despite how wonderful her family seemed to Jackie (Laura’s older sister was a second-year student at Stanford Business School, her mother the principal of an elementary school in Beverly Hills), Laura didn’t like being so close to them, and Jackie wondered if she resented her for also living in L.A. and being part of what had lured her back. But whatever the reason, or combination of reasons, Laura had grown increasingly depressed, and Jackie, who’d been so happy for their first year and a half together, watched with interest, then concern, and then growing despair as Laura slipped further and further out of reach.
    Jackie arrived at Laura’s door and knocked softly; Laura opened it a few seconds later. She hadn’t changed much in the two years and eight months since they’d met. She was thin, 5’4", with dirty blond hair—but her eyes were often watery now, and a little puffy around the edges. She looked very tired these days.
    “Hi,” she said, moving aside.
    Jackie held her bag out. “New York Super Fudge Chunk?”
    Laura smiled sadly and took the bag. “Thank you, sweetie.”
    Jackie stepped inside and Laura hugged her, holding on as if they hadn’t seen each other in months. This embrace, Jackie knew, was