Grover Beach

It was easier to understand technology then—most people knew how stuff operated and even how it might be fixed. These days everything has a cloud or a modem-related application you have to tune, load down or whatever. Technology doesn’t even come with instructions now, it’s intuitive. If only our lives were the same. We never really understand the ways our lives can deconstruct, unravel and tangle, like cotton reels in a box, and then suddenly unspool into something beautiful.

***

I met Mika completely by accident, though she would say she knew I was coming. I decided to leave when I finally got tired of Bobby’s drinking, after he pulled out all the tape from my cassettes with a pen and made them unplayable. My mom warned me, of course, but I was only 16 when we met and he had those blue-green eyes that drew me in like the ocean. 

I took the money he hid behind his whiskey bottles on top of the fridge and I drove off from that dry desert town in New Mexico in my baby blue Ford Pinto with the one cassette I had left.

I headed toward the coast, looking for something more beautiful than Bobby’s eyes to help me forget him. I got to Los Angeles and turned north until the Pinto died on me just outside Grover Beach. I spent a gruesome night in a cheap motel and in the morning grabbed a local newspaper to look through the help wanted ads. The money I’d taken from Bobby hadn’t lasted as long as I thought it would.

As I flipped through the broadsheet, I saw a room for rent. SWF w/spare bd/bath in magical location in Berry Gardens. Call to view. Avail July 1.

I walked to a payphone and called the number for the Berry Gardens room.

“Hi, I’m calling about the room for rent. Can you tell me the cost of it?”

“Why don’t you come by and take a look, and see what you think it’s worth.”

The homeowner gave me an address and I asked someone at the corner gas station for directions. I walked the two blocks and pushed open the garden gate. The house was painted in rainbow colors and the lawn was lush with red-capped mushrooms topped with white spots, like something out of a fairytale. Berry brambles tumbled over the backyard fence. I rang the doorbell and heard two pairs of feet heading my way. I didn’t recall reading this was already a multiple occupancy.

The door opened, and a white unicorn stood in the frame of it.

“Hi, I’m Mika,” she said. “And you are the woman who called about the room for rent.”

I had never seen a unicorn before. Actually, I suspect very few sane people have. I know it was hot walking those two blocks up here but I didn’t feel faint, or confused. I thought they were imaginary or extinct, maybe. Somehow I couldn’t remember which. I thought about turning around and leaving, but then Mika nuzzled my shoulder with her horn. I felt an incredible sense of well-being ripple through my body.

“Don’t you want to come in for a tour?”

The kitchen, the living room and the bedroom that would be mine all looked like they belonged in a typical ranch-style house. At the end of the hall stood a golden door that Mika nudged her head toward.

“That one is mine,” she said. “I like to keep it private if you don’t mind. So about me. I’ve lived here for about 50 years. I’m older than I look. I’m quiet. I don’t drink. I’m vegetarian. I have friends over about once a year. Most importantly, though, I can predict the future, so I already know you are going to take the room.”

I raised my eyebrows and scrunched up my face.

“You don’t even know my name yet.”

“It’s Ashley. You’re from New Mexico. And I’m offering you the room for $100 a month, utilities included, which you can easily afford. You can stay here for free until you get a job. Which you will get next week. There is a new coffee shop opening up on Main Street. I am the last unicorn, and you, my dear, will be the first barista in Grover Beach.”

***

There were some bad seasons in my life. Mainly because I had made some bad choices. Bobby, for one. Once I met him, I didn’t spend a great deal of time in school. And ignoring my mom’s calls for years. All I knew was I was here with a unicorn, and for the first time I felt some kind of safety. The logical part of my brain was desperately trying to wire itself back up to dealing with the potential unicorn roommate dilemma. The emotional part, maybe even the child that in some ways I still was, had already moved in. Maybe I could be a barista, whatever one of those was.

I moved in. It didn’t take long. I basically had the clothes I showed up in and a small bag of items I had rescued from the Pinto. I wanted to choose a beautiful outfit to wear when I ran away. The only things I could find in my closet were as threadbare and gray as my thoughts. The cardigan with the elbow patch and the jeans that frayed at the seams, tickling my ankles. I wasn’t thinking about clothing in particular but about being inconspicuous on the trip away from home. 

I returned to the apartment with my stuff to find Mika somehow absent. I imagined she would be in her room or something and, not wanting to disturb her, went to my own room. I opened the door and gasped. 

It might have seemed unremarkable to most people. But this was the room I had dreamed of having when I was a kid, right down to the last detail. It even smelled like I had wanted it to. It was like Cindi Lauper's bubble gum. I didn’t recall it even being decorated when I first looked around, but I must have been mistaken. I had only been gone ten minutes. It had the Adam Ant Prince Charming poster, a Care Bear bedspread with a Gloworm light. Next to the bed there were even a couple of packets of E.T. biscuits, which no one even remembers except me. I loved the green ones. It was like being on the TV set of a forgotten show. The TV show I wished I could have been a part of.

Mika appeared in the doorway behind me. “Do you love it?” she said. “I really hope so.”

“It was everything I wanted, once,” I replied, a little stuck for words. 

“All I could do was listen to the dreams you used to have. It feels like it’s been a long time since you thought about yourself and what dreams you might have now.”

“It doesn’t do any good to dream,” I said, the pessimism I’d learned since my father lit off when I was eight resurfacing even in this magical unicorn’s home.

“I think you just need some time. Would you like some herbal fruit tea?”

I had no idea how a unicorn made tea. I had to see this. Two days ago, I was running away from a dark place where my controlling boyfriend would barely let me leave the apartment. Now I was having apple tea with a unicorn in the bedroom I’d dreamed of as a child. It was all getting to be a bit much and I think Mika sensed it. Her presence was always soothing. I just needed a moment to gather my thoughts.

I drank the tea she made me with two hoofs. My eyelids grew heavy. I lay down on the neon pink bedspread and closed my eyes.

***

A few days later, I walked down the main strip, passed the TV repair shop and the record store. And there, kitty-corner from the diner I’d sat in the first day in town, sat a shiny storefront with a blue and white striped awning. Just like the one that used to be at the ice cream shop back home near Ainsdale Beach. Why this memory came back all of a sudden, I can’t explain. This was before my mom had moved me out to New Mexico to a place called Truth or Consequences. There certainly had been consequences, but it had been a while since I sat with my own truth.

There in the window a sign said: Hiring now: Barista. Willing to train. Pays $5 an hour.

The guy behind the counter hired me on the spot. He looked to be about twenty-eight with blond hair and dark eyes, a George Michael look, but without the accent.

At home, Mika made me another cup of tea.

“I got a job. As a barista. You were right,” I said as I settled into an armchair in the living room. I wanted to ask her about the George Michael look-alike, if I had a shot with him.

“No,” Mika said, before I verbalized anything. “You should keep things professional with your new boss. He’s not the one for you.”

I got used to Mika answering questions I hadn’t asked. It was just her way and for some reason, it didn’t freak me out. I only wished I had some way to know more about her. She grew elusive when I asked her about her life before Grover Beach. And she never so much as let me get a glimpse into her own room. 

At my new job, I learned to make cappuccinos, espressos and macchiatos. My boss, Leo, taught me how to roast beans. His CK Obsession was strong enough to drown the smell of the coffee, but I didn’t mind. I had a huge crush on him, but I trusted Mika’s words that he was not the one because she always seemed to be right about me.

***

“Ashley, you should call your mother tonight,” Mika said. I had been living there almost six months and I had become used to her requests from nowhere.

“We don’t really talk,” I said. It had been five years since I moved in with Bobby.

“Call her tonight and tell her to take a different route to work.”

I slowly pulled each number on the rotary phone that hung on the wall until I could hear the ring on the other end.

“Mom?”

“Ashley, my gosh, are you okay? Has something happened. Did Bobby hurt you?”

“No, Mom. I’m fine. I left him. I moved to California. I’m fine.”

“Oh, thank goodness.”

“Mom, are you still working at the pharmacy on McCray Street?”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow, drive up Monroe instead of Hyde Street. Just trust me.”

Neither my mom nor I said much more and we didn’t say we loved each other. The next day on the news I saw a landslide had hit a street in my old town and caused an accident. I knew I still loved her at least. My mother avoided it, and that one call began to mend our relationship.

After work the next day, I sat with Mika at dinner while she ate a salad and I finished off a plate of fish and chips from the diner.

“Are you close with your mother?” I asked Mika.

“I don’t have any family,” she said, and wiped her brow with a hoof.

“But you must have had a family at one time,” I said.

“I have you, Ashley.”

I didn’t press, but as the months went on, I became more and more curious about what was in Mika’s room and about her past. It was a betrayal of trust, I suppose, but I had to see in that room. I returned home from work one day and the apartment seemed to be empty. I took the opportunity.

The room was piled high with random things that didn’t seem to have any purpose or order at first, and yet something was drawing me to each item. I picked up a book and recognized it as one my father had read to me as a little girl. And there was a kite I’d lost in a tree outside an apartment when I was seven. The room was filled with items from my life, but I didn’t know what any of them meant. Then I heard two sets of footsteps behind me.

“I am here to literally sort your life out,” Mika said. “I had to bring you here and keep you here for a while, just long enough to give you a break from all those things that went wrong. I’m almost there. I have reordered everything, and thrown away those days that don’t belong.” 

“But why, why keep all this stuff?”

“So you can walk out that door and start again if you want. You won’t remember me really, but I will always be there for you. I always was. And you will get the chance to grab yourself a better life.”

“Won’t I just make the same mistakes again?”

“I will steer you right this time and keep your dreams alive, Dear,” Mika said. She nuzzled into my neck.

I didn’t move.

“You can stay here if you wish,” she said finally, pouring me a cup of apple-scented tea. “It’s up to you.”

***

I woke up in a worn motel room in Grover Beach, famished and craving an apple. I tried to start up the Pinto and it turned over so I drove north on Highway 1 until I came to a farm town near the coast. There I found an apple orchard with one of those pik-your-self options. I loaded up a basket of varieties I’d never seen in a store before, hoping I had enough cash to cover it.

As I turned around, I spotted a spectacled man in a short-sleeve button down shirt. The shirt had a little rainbow-colored apple with a bite out of it on the pocket.

“Do you work here?” I asked.

“No. I work over the hill at a tech company. We’re hiring if you’re looking for a job.”

Since I woke up in Grover Beach the night after my car wouldn’t start, I’d felt like I had some insight into my life, and where things had gone wrong. Where I’d let other people’s priorities steer me. I had the chance to have the things I wanted, the life I wanted, if I followed the offer of this stranger.

“I do need to make some money. I only have one cassette in my car and I’m so over it. I need some new music.”

“Wouldn’t it be great if you could have one tape that could carry hundreds of songs?” the guy said. I nodded.