Carousel Court by Joe McGinniss

girl,” he says.
    â€œI don’t know what that is.” She’s shushing her Chihuahuas.
    â€œThe hair. Your whole look. It’s working.”
    Mallory just stares at him. She’s simultaneously pale and glowing.
    â€œPromise me,” Arik whines. “Let me download you some new shit.”
    â€œI like her voice,” Mallory says, and kisses the head of one of her dogs. “I’ll turn it down.”
    â€œGoogle it,” Nick says. “Manson girls.”
    â€œI’ll do that.”
    Arik’s close-cropped blond hair almost makes him look like a skinhead, though he wears a black Bloc Party T-shirt and long green board shorts and leather bracelets and necklaces.
    â€œGod, I’m old,” Nick says.
    According to Arik, they all have to move out, and Mallory wants a place with two of her girlfriends. Nick knows this: An unfurnished four-bedroom lies vacant half a mile from campus, a mile from where they are now. It was abandoned weeks ago and, according to Boss, belongs to Bank of America and is a low-priority property. They trashed it out last week. It could sit idle for months. Mallory could be in there as soon as Nick changes the locks. Glancing at her flawless skin and the navel ring, he thinks he wouldn’t mind helping her out.
    â€¢ •
    Arik follows Nick outside and into hot, gusting winds. A woman shrieks. A man chases his trucker cap across the parking lot. Arik curses. Nick looks back and shields his eyes as he tries for one last glimpse of Mallory, but she’s gone. Arik is texting someone as he getsin the car and says, “Take the 10,” even though Nick knows this; he put the address in Google Maps before he left the house.
    Arik laughs at something he’s reading, sends another text. “ ’Shrooms from Eureka. Down with that?” he asks.
    Nick waves him off, distracted by the prospect of houses, renters, changing locks, painting and cleaning, listing. And collecting: deposits, first/last, monthly or bimonthly rent. Keys and addresses. And a time line: How long has a house been empty, and how long will it stay that way? How much risk is there, and is it worth it?
    â€œCheck it.” Arik is shoving his handheld in Nick’s face: a predictable image of Mallory making out with their other roommate, another long-haired girl, both in body paint. “Mardi Gras, dude.”
    Inhaling the scent of Arik’s body spray and the winds rocking the car and the Chromatics track drifting from the speakers, Nick sees Mallory again, in his mind, bending over. Nick is seeing the girl’s pale breasts and wondering what she smells like in the morning under the sheets.
    â€œTomorrow’s Tarzana, right? Or Friday?” Arik looks up from his iPhone.
    â€œFriday.”
    â€œNice properties in Tarzana. Unlike tonight. Rialto’s so ghetto.”
    But the houses aren’t a concern to Nick. He accelerates, changes lanes. Images of Mallory flash across his mind. The surge of adrenaline he feels is from details that converge: three or four vacant houses, collecting first and last from renters, expanding from there. Arik is turning up “Miss Murder” by AFI and Nick returns to Mallory: Maybe he’ll put her in that house.
    The thriving business of trashing out foreclosed homes sends Nick and the crew through dry canyons and out along barren freeways past endless brown walls and wilted palms and bright yellow Union Pacific cars and weed-choked rail yards until they’re in the middle of another neighborhood. AFI is pounding and the windows are down and he changes lanes without signaling and tall shadowy palms bend. The hillside recedes into the blackness of another night, and in his mind an overhead camera tracks them, zooms out, and it’s just this dirty white Subaru moving no faster than the rest of the traffic. But he knows better.
    Arik mentions yet again an idea he and Sean, an older member of the EMGo! crew,