American Girls(7)

“Are you kidding me?” I said.

“What?” Delia said. “Are you okay?”

I was not okay, not even kind of.

“My phone. My phone is dead.”

“You probably forgot to charge it.” She was doing some kind of weird facial exercise while she drove, pursing her lips and then opening her mouth as far as it would go, like she was blowing imaginary bubbles.

“It was fully charged this morning. I checked.”

“Just plug it in here.”

She passed me the car charger and I hooked my phone in. Just the black-screen flatline of a phone with no pulse. Lynette. My mom.

“Oooohmigod,” I said. “Now what am I supposed to do?”

“Well,” my sister said, and I swear she was half smiling, “phones don’t pay for themselves.”

“What if some maniac shoves me in his trunk? How am I supposed to call and let people know where I am? What if I’m drunk and at a party and need a ride? What if someone tries to date-rape me?”

“What if you can’t text your little friend twenty-four-seven?” Now she was doing her breathing exercises, blowing air out of her mouth and making a noise that sounded like a dying cicada. I pretended to cover my ears.

“I can’t live without my phone.”

“Pretend you’re a pioneer.”

“It’s not funny.”

She popped a breath mint. “I didn’t say it was funny. You can use my computer when we get home. It’s not like you’ve been dropped on some deserted island to fend for yourself. Just chill.”

We drove past billboards advertising new television shows and energy drinks that would have sounded made-up if they hadn’t been real: Kwench, Emergency, Volt, Lifeline. An actress I didn’t recognize loomed thirty feet tall in a tight-fitting tank top. A surgical mask dangled off the index finger of her right hand, and a pair of hot-pink lace underwear was half tucked behind her back with the other hand. Her eyes were wide and green, and she had that actressy look like someone had just whispered in her ear, “Pretend you have a secret,” but you knew there wasn’t any secret, not really, except maybe that the show was going to be even stupider than the billboard. The actress was naked from the waist down, and letters the same hot pink of her panties covered her lady parts with the words “GET SHOCKED!!!!! VOLT. SUNDAYS AT 9.”

“I read for that role,” Delia said, gesturing behind her. “But they wanted a blonde.”

I didn’t feel like hearing about the millionth role my sister had almost gotten. Not until we’d figured out the phone situation.

“I need my phone,” I said.

I really couldn’t live without my phone if I was going to have to be front row for the Delia-and-Roger show all morning. That was a punishment too cruel, even for Lynette. If she had ever met Roger, she would see why electronics were a necessity. Maybe I could just stare at the blank screen and ignore him while I slowly died of boredom.

We pulled in front of a hotel that looked like it should have been condemned a decade ago, and my sister parked her car next to a homeless man who appeared to have an open sore on his left arm. He sat next to a sleeping woman whose bare feet were tar-black on the bottom, and he covered her gently with what looked like a mermaid beach towel as we passed.

“Keep moving,” my sister said, not even looking in their direction.

“That guy,” I said. “He needs to go to the hospital.”

My sister shook her head and checked her phone. “This is downtown, Anna. Watch the news around here sometime. This is where the hospitals dump the people who can’t pay their bills. The hospitals won’t have him.”

Inside the building the lobby was more posh than the exterior would have suggested, but I still felt like we should be careful not to put our purses down, because any surface could have hosted a pop-up party for bedbugs. Doon got bedbugs at camp last summer, and her mother made her strip naked before she could come into the house; then her mom took all of her clothes and boiled them at the Laundromat before she would let her take them back into the house. Bedbugs can live for a year without eating. They’re the zombies of the bug world—legion, tireless, and impossible to destroy.

“Okay,” Delia said. “We’re supposed to take the elevator to the top floor, then the stairs. Roger will meet us up there. Did you know that Richard Ramirez, the ‘Night Stalker,’ used to live here? It’s like that hotel in The Shining, I think there was another serial killer here for a while as well, but I can’t remember who. Can you imagine booking a room here on purpose?”

“Great,” I said. I hated that I was more bothered by the homeless couple than by any long-gone psycho, that the thought of walking by them again made me decide against asking to go to the coffee shop on the corner. And it’s not like there weren’t homeless people in Atlanta; they just didn’t seem to be openly wounded. Or maybe I wasn’t looking as closely.

When the elevator stopped, we climbed a final flight of concrete stairs and stepped into the open air. The top of the building was dirty with bird crap and discarded cans. Three water towers sat toward the edge of the space, near a thin wall that looked like you could trip over it into the street, and about twenty feet away from us, dancing over his computer as he typed and held a hand up in our direction with a “No, no, don’t bother the genius” wave, was Roger. He had on tight black jeans, a black leather jacket, and had shaved his head into a cancer-victim crew cut.