The Flakes

The story of a breakup

This fiction story was edited by Bread & Circuses.

THE HOUSE WAS ON A STEEP HOLLYWOOD HILL, about halfway down Beachwood Canyon from the sign. It was a sloping-lot craftsman and from the street looked like a small single story, but it flowed downwards in a tube-like fashion so that half the foundations and one side of the basement were exposed beneath the main floor.

The “basement” was not really a basement at all, but just another smaller floor that opened out onto the hill. Inside, it was dusty and decorated in a way that Coda found appalling. She thought her grandfather, a doctor, should have had a modern, glinting home, glass and steel, or at the very least something Mid Century. Instead it had leopard print rugs and ugly yellow sofas with the plastic still on them. There were mirror paintings with tigers popping out of palm fronds and lions printed on velvet tapestries. The place felt less like a doctor’s Hollywood Hills mansion and more like a pimp’s plush dream.

The payment for Coda’s free use of it was a “caretaker” role, which meant that she and Si were to stay in the small furnished basement and keep the rest of the house in good condition to prepare for sale. Despite her dislike of the interior, Coda felt privileged to have the place, already her own hill house where she could throw parties, so she…