“By the time I got to the hotel I was supposed to be at, the front desk staff had called to get a replacement and, of course, my boss just happened to come back from his Amsterdam trip early because his kid had a bad ear infection so he was in a foul mood and now I’m canned and in deep shit,” he says, mirroring me from last night. “Sorry I crashed your room. I’ve been telling my roommate for a while now that I’m saving up to get my own place, and I was a couple months away from being able to afford one. Now, I’m going to need to drain my savings to float myself until I can find another job.”
Ever since Mom passed, I’ve been hapless when it comes to emotions, uncertain how to handle other people’s feelings when mine were so all-consuming. Right now, though, it only feels right that I be as present for Leo as possible. He saw me at my worst last night and stuck around anyway. It’s the least I can do in return.
And I know what it’s like to not want to be home. That urge snaked through me when I rolled over the morning after the breakup to find an empty half of the bed. Confrontation can be scary, especially when the venue of that confrontation is the one place in the world you should be allowed to let your guard down.
“Is that why you came here?” I ask, finally. “You don’t get along with your roommate?”
He looks stricken. “It’s not that I don’t get along with my roommate. It’s more that it’s time that I don’t have a roommate at all. I’m twenty-six. If I don’t go out on my own now, I’ll... I don’t know.”
“I get it,” I say quickly. “I broke up with my boyfriend about a month ago. He was supposed to come on this trip with me. We’d been living together, and when we split, I didn’t have the money to swing my own place. I ended up moving in with my dad, which is a whole thing.” I don’t bring up Mom because I know if I do, I won’t be able to stop the flow of words and this isn’t about me right now. I’m only trying to relate, so he knows he’s not alone.
His eyes widen with intrigue. “I guess I can drop the wordroommatethen.”
“Huh?”
“I live with my mom,” he says resolutely. “I’m twenty-six years old and my mom is my roommate. There, I’ve said it.”
The sharp pang from last night when Leo mentioned his mom worked at this hotel returns. Despite his interest in moving out, there’s a softness to the way he saysmy mom, as if she holds prime real estate inside his heart, while mine inhabits a haunted Victorian mansion overstuffed with history.
I fight off the complicated feelings with a rueful laugh and a deflective joke: “Wow. Look at us.Thriving.”
“At least you’d moved out once.”
“You haven’t? Not even for college?”
He hangs his head. “I didn’t go to college.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m an asshole. I shouldn’t have assumed,” I say, mortified.
“It’s okay. My mom was a first-generation immigrant who never went to college, so she really wanted me to go at first but I never cared much for school and it’s not like we had the money. I convinced her we needed the income more, that I should start working full-time instead. But, I guess, maybe I should’ve gone. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so directionless if I had listened to her.” He stares wistfully into the middle distance.
“I think it’s cool that you didn’t go to college,” I say sincerely. “Making the choice to do what feels right for you means you know yourself. Not many people can say that.”
“I don’t thinkknowing myselfis a skill I can boast about in a cover letter.”
“Look, I went to college, took out a massive amount of loans, and I still feel directionless. I got a degree in communications and instead of getting a job in my field, I work in an overpriced boutique and teach cardio dance classes to women who are constantly telling me how much Islaywhile wearing shirts that sayStrong Mother Flexor, so believe me, you’re lucky not to be buried under a mountain of student debt, where your only hope to pay it off within the next ten years is competing on a TV game show and winning one hundred thousand dollars.”
Those words detangle a traitorous knot that has been plaguing my brain. All those wires have been plugged into the wrong neuroreceptors. What was I thinking, coming all the way out to Los Angeles following a pipe dream?
“Wait.” Leo’s entire body shakes as if he’s just hopped up onto a lakeside dock; I can imagine thoughts like water droplets flying into the air around us. “You win one hundred thousand dollars if you winMadness Market?”
“MadcapMarket,” I correct. “But, yeah. If you make it to the finale, you race against the clock to win the grand prize. They bring out a big check and everything.” How many nights had I spent imagining the moment when Pat Crumsky passed off that cartoonish piece of cardboard to me? When I was young, I stood beside Mom, grinning for the cameras. Then, when Mom passed, I substituted Buckley into the preexisting fantasy. Now the whole conceit feels hollowed out like a post-Halloween jack-o’-lantern, rotting and ghoulish.
Leo’s brow is crinkled. “That’s major bank. I could afford a pretty plush place with that kind of cash.”
“Yeah,” I say with a sigh. “But it’s such a long shot. Not only do you have to audition but you have to get cast, and then once you’re cast you have to beat two other teams at the mini challenges and trivia. Once you’ve done that, there’s still giant hurdles between you and one hundred grand. It’s taxing to say the least.”
Leo stands and crosses to the mirror, stops to check himself out. His expression shifts slowly from deep thought to open expectation. “Are the auditions still happening?”
“Yeah, they’re on Monday. Why?” I ask, getting off the floor and sliding onto the bed.
“Because we should audition,” he says.
I laugh, not taking him seriously in the slightest. “I thought we went over this. No more fuckingwithme, onlyfucking me.”
“No, I’m serious,” he says, voice firm and composed, a sharp change from the self-pitying rasp I heard when I arrived.
My heart shocks itself into a state of frenzy. Auditioning was the only thing I wanted to do when coming out here, but rejection after rejection dulled the sparkle of that idea. Hearing those words from someone else’s mouth causes a traffic jam inside my head.
