Southland by Nina Revoyr Read Free Book Online Page B

about her grandfather’s death; was meant to show love and support. But it was hard for her to stand through it. Lately all their hugs had seemed out of proportion to the situations in which they occurred—and she didn’t feel like she deserved this one anyway.
    “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the dinner?” Jackie asked as they separated.
    Laura nodded. “Yeah. I’m tired anyway.”
    Jackie looked around. “Where’s Rodent and Amy?”
    Laura smiled, finally looking just a bit happy. “They’re both of out of town.”
    Rodent—Rodney Adams—and Amy Carillo were Laura’s two roommates, acquaintances from Stanford. Amy was a second-year student in the screenwriting program at USC. She was almost always home, working on her screenplay or groaning over other people’s, which she read part-time for an agency. Jackie preferred her, though, to Rodney, who wrote music for TV and movies. He had a huge fancy set-up in his bedroom—synthesizer, drum machine, three-foot speakers, and a set of control panels that looked like they could be used to fly a plane. Rodney often had women in his room, watching him worshipfully, as he created the theme song for a new pilot at Fox, or wrote the music for a death scene in a horror movie. He worked off and on from dawn until midnight, and Jackie always felt, when she was there, with Rodney’s music in the background, as if she and Laura were trapped in a bad sitcom.
    “ Both out of town,” she said. “How tragic.”
    “I knew you’d be disappointed. Here, come into the kitchen with me. I was just heating up some milk for hot chocolate.”
    They walked hand-in-hand, Laura pulling Jackie along.
    “Wow,” Jackie said as she sat down at the kitchen table. “It’s so quiet. Wish I hadn’t been busy all day.” She recounted, then, the more innocuous parts of the day—cancelling the AOL account, going to see the house, which was, it turned out, in horrible shape. “So obviously,” Jackie concluded, “it would have been a lot more fun to hang out here with you.”
    Laura smiled. “I wouldn’t have been very exciting. After Marie left, I actually ended up doing some work.”
    “Work?” asked Jackie. “On Saturday?”
    Laura frowned at the pot, turned down the stove, lifted off the thin membrane that had formed across the surface of the milk. “Get used to the idea, honey. In a few months you’re going to be working a lot more Saturdays than me.”
    “Don’t remind me. So what were you doing?”
    “Some stuff for Manny. He’s giving a report next month on immigration statistics, and on health and education benefits for legal immigrants. He’s trying to prove that people who were granted amnesty in ’88 are doing better financially since they’ve been eligible for services. Anyway, he’s kind of obsessed with this, which means I have no choice but to be obsessed with him.”
    Jackie nodded. Manny was Manny Jimenez, the City Councilman from the 4th District. Although he was a lawyer and wealthy entrepreneur, he still lived in one of the seedier parts of Hollywood, the same neighborhood where he had grown up. He’d been elected by an uneasy coalition of mostly poor Latinos from Hollywood and liberal Jews from the Westside, and now, in his second term, many people considered him a potential candidate for mayor. Jackie was suspicious of the man, as she was of all politicians, but she also respected what he’d done; either way, she was impressed by Laura’s proximity to him.
    “What do you have to do?” Jackie asked.
    Laura poured the steaming milk into two green mugs and stirred. “Oh, you know. Research, statistics. Some services are going to be cut, too, and I have to figure out what’s practical to fight for.”
    They went, mugs in hand, into the living room. There they settled onto the couch, with Laura’s blanket thrown over them and Rodney’s cat, Cedric, curled up somehow on both of their laps. They watched an old movie and then Saturday Night