She had turned onto Echo Park and walked a block when a man had approached her, empty-handed but imposing. “Can I help you?” he’d asked.
“I’m a friend of Toni’s,” she said, and the man looked at her closely before nodding. He whistled once, loudly, and suddenly there was her brother’s girlfriend, calling from the window above.
Toni lived on the second floor of a ramshackle duplex that overlooked Echo Park’s now-drained lake. The lake’s old bridge was gone, maybe burned for firewood, as were the pedal boats. Frida had been born too late to see the lotus flowers, which had once floated across the water’s surface.
“Where is he?” Frida had asked Toni as soon as they were face-to-face. “Is he okay?”
Of course Toni wouldn’t tell her anything, at least not there, not with other Group members in the living room behind her and hanging around on the porch below.
Looking back, Frida realized the Group had established a nascent encampment, even then. Everyone on that block was a member of the Group. That guy who had whistled for Toni was protecting their space. Already they were patrolling that part of town. Already they’d put people to work to improve their surroundings. Frida had nodded to the women in the empty lake who were picking up debris with yellow dishwashing gloves on their hands. She wondered if they were the same women who flirted with her brother. Toni had only smiled at the view. “We’re all about beautification.” Then she said Frida should go.
The next day, Micah showed up at Frida and Cal’s door with a party blower in his mouth. He blew into the mouthpiece, and the striped plastic unfurled into a straight line with a crunch that made Frida’s stomach tighten.
“You aren’t dead,” she said, and let him inside.
She did not give him the satisfaction of asking about the kidnapping.
That had been a rough time, Frida thought now, not even counting the collapsing economy, the nights without power or heat. Thank God for the weather in L.A. and the tiny apartment she and Cal had moved into; they kept each other warm. It was rough because of Micah’s secretive life, and her parents’ ignorance—their denial—of it; because of Cal’s disdainful remarks about her brother, whom she felt a compulsive need to defend, and because of Toni and Micah’s arguments: the damage of those fights trailed them like a pack of hungry dogs. And then Canter’s closed, and Frida couldn’t bake anymore. And then she and Cal had even less money. The day she brought home loaves of stale bread for the last time, her hairnet balled in her back pocket like some useless currency, she’d thought it couldn’t get much worse.
But it could, and it did.
Frida pulled Cal’s pants out of the water. Without thinking, she stuffed them into the laundry bag. It was stupid—she still needed to do the socks—but she suddenly wanted to be back home. A dark puddle spread across the bag, as if it had been wounded.
She didn’t want to fight with Cal anymore.
Hilda used to say that anger was a choice. Frida could make the choice not to be angry with her husband, even if he was keeping secrets. She’d lied to him about August, hadn’t she? Cal thought August knew about the pregnancy, but he didn’t. Now he knew about Micah, and she had promised Cal she’d never tell anyone out here about her brother. She had broken that promise, and so easily. It made her sick.
She didn’t want conflict to eat them from the inside out, as it had done to Micah and Toni. After a while, Cal had refused to spend time with them as a couple, so painful was it to watch them avoid each other’s gazes, to use the other for sport.
Micah was the one to diagnose Toni with her “Jealousy Problem.” It might have been a problem, but it didn’t mean her feelings were unfounded. Toni had described to Frida what it was like to watch him with the other women in the Group. She didn’t like the way they brought him little treats; once a girl named Leanne had stolen a bag of Jordan almonds for him. “For his long hours,” Toni said, rolling her eyes. He’d eaten them in their bed as Toni tried to sleep. “I prayed he’d crack a molar.” She didn’t like the way the girls were so eager to volunteer their time for him: they’d gladly transcribe, email, or post links to go viral. And at the meetings, she said, it had gotten too much to bear. “They come earlier to get a seat in the inner circle,” she said. Apparently, metal folding chairs were set up in concentric circles like tree rings with the meeting leaders standing in the center.