Page 5 of White Lights
“Shut up, Silas,” Dez said. “Yes, we do.”
“I bet you know enough,” the skater said. He smiled, at Silas, at Dez. No teeth, just smooth, very pale, pink lips. It felt familiar, that smile … not like they’d known each other before, but like they would know each other after. Like Dez was editing this moment from the future, marking it: Cue the music, this is where it all began.
They shook hands on the terms of his casting commitment. One day of work, no monetary compensation, but beers at the end, if the bars were still open, and credit in the name of Asher Ibrahim.
Asher Ibrahim. He was twenty-seven, three years older than Dez, and a native of Ventura. He’d been skating at that park since he couldwalk. She loved the way his name sounded like he came from the other side of the world, or like somewhere even farther, somewhere Dez wasn’t yet able to imagine.
Working with Asher, filming him that afternoon, was the best experience of Dez’s life. It was a taste of what she wanted out of whatever the future held.
“Al,” a familiar voice calls, muffled through the glass door of the Dairy Barn.
Dez looks up from the sink toward the sound. She knows who it is before she sees him. Her brother. No one calls her that anymore but Moses. Her childhood nickname is short forAlbatross, because when Dez was younger, she’d take off into the desert behind their house for such long stretches of time that their mom would say she feared Dez had flown away, across the desert and over the Pacific Ocean.
Mo taps on the window. Grins.
“Fuck off,” she calls. “We’re closed.”
Dez always brings home food for Moses and her mom after work. She has tonight’s to-go sack sitting in a warmer. Onion rings for her mom, and the ignominious side salad in a separate sack on the counter. Her mother is the only Dairy Barn customer ever to enjoy the menu item Uncle Bob has the nerve to call a salad.
Mo is an extra-pickles, extra-bacon, no-sauce cheeseburger guy. He eats it standing up in the kitchen after a night of partying. Sometimes, if Dez is still up working on her laptop, and if Moses’s movements above her don’t sound too wasted, she’ll come upstairs from the garage to hang out with him, and they’ll talk like they used to. It hasn’t happened in a while.
“Hey, let me in,” he calls, banging on the door.
“If you’re in,” she calls back, “you’re on toilet duty.”
“Fine. I’ll scrub that shit.”
She expects him to flip her off, or at the very least, demand a share of her wages. But he doesn’t, just waits at the door, shifting his weight like he has to pee. Or like he’s worried about something. What did he do this time? Dez’s mind is already making a list …
“Come on, it’s a thousand degrees out here,” Mo whines.
“Okay,” she says, “keep your pants on.” She dries her hands and goes to the storage closet to get the keys.
As kids, Mo was the cute one. Even though their features look almost exactly alike—onyx hair, fair, freckled skin, small straight noses, pale blue eyes—her brother wears it differently. He’s five years younger, but his adorability lingered long after it was no longer detectable in Dez. Mo can talk to anyone, knows exactly what to say to make them pay attention to him and enjoy it, whether it’s a toddler in a sandbox, or a con man at the racetrack. Everybody likes Mo, whereas most people tolerate Dez. Her mother calls her an enigma. Even Silas says she’s an acquired taste.
Which is why it was so remarkable that Asher had come out and said it, right away, the night they met. After they finished shooting, halfway into their second Sierra Nevada, he leaned in while Dez was selecting “Drunken Angel” by Lucinda Williams on the jukebox and whispered:
“I like everything I’ve seen about you so far, Desdemona Rae. What else you got?”
She can still make herself shiver when she thinks about his breath against her neck.
When Dez and Silas left Ventura at two in the morning, with barely enough time for Silas to drop her off at the Dairy Barn for her opening shift, when Asher didn’t text and Dez didn’t either, she buried herself in her work. She told herself she wouldn’t think about their connection—couldn’t afford to think about their connection—until after she’d turned in her AFI application.
Now, walking to the Dairy Barn’s front door, Dez jingles the keys.
Mo grins, and Dez can’t help grinning back, because even if they’re only going to scrub toilets and stack Styrofoam cups, she’d rather do it with her brother than with anyone else.
“Hey, Mo,” she says when she opens the door. “What’s the drama?”
Before he even steps inside, Mo flings his arms around Dez and holds her like he’s drowning, like she’s a life raft. This isn’t the first time in recent months he’s fallen on her like this, so she knows to use the door to support herself, holding up her enormous younger brother’s weight. Mo has eight inches, fifty pounds, and their father’s alcoholic tendencies on Dez.
A sob ripples through him, into her. It cuts her heart. Oh, Mo. For all her dreams to get the hell out of Death Valley, she knows that she also belongs here, always. With her brother. With her mother. Even Uncle Bob.
“What happened?” she asks.
“Dez, I’m sorry—”
“Hey,” she coos against his chest. “It’s okay. I’m here.”
