Two kindergarten girls on a Big Wheel barrelled toward Chris. They both had sloppy pigtails, one brunette, the other blonde. The brunette hunched on the back, fingers gripping white to the plastic seat as the blonde propelled them forward. The blonde screeched backward on the pedals just before she collided with Chris’s front wheel. Stones scattered. He glanced up nervously at the stucco castle before him. The Sunset Villa. “My friend wants to know if you’ll marry her,” said the blonde, jerking a thumb at the one in back, who appeared to have little choice.Chris’s forehead furrowed. “Sure,” he said. “One condition.”He was informed, between giggles, that Laurel lived on the top floor, #48C. They led him around back, pointed to the aqua-blue walkways that segmented the bubblegum pink building into horizontal fourths: plastic flower boxes and dirty, daisy-shaped windmills; beer cases stacked up to the windowsills. Some of the windows had floral bedsheets up instead of curtains, but Laurel’s didn’t.
