Everything Leads to You

“Is that possible?”


“Anything is possible.”

She takes some measurements, sketches something out, and then tells me she’s going to pick up some supplies.

“We have a friend who might be able to get a discount,” I say. “Let me see if he’s working.”

I find my phone again and see that I have a text from Ava: Finding Caroline’s death certificate. Meet me downtown?

I text back: Can’t today. I’ll call you tonight.

Then I text Jamal to see if he’s at work and he is. Any chance you could share your discount? I write.

Gotta keep this job, he responds. But I am happy to provide you with unparalleled customer service.

So I tell him to expect Morgan; tell Morgan to ask for Jamal.

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll pick up everything I need and come back. But first, come out to the truck. I have something you might want.”

Charlotte shoots me a glance from where she’s been wrapping dishes in old copies of the LA Weekly. She thinks this is a ruse to get me alone, but I ignore her and go outside anyway.

Morgan’s saying, “I thought about it after you described your ideas for Juniper’s apartment but didn’t want to bring it up in case it didn’t come through, but then this morning I got a call, and . . .”

And there is my sofa: green and gold and soft, sitting in the bed of Morgan’s truck.

“So can you use it? It’s no problem to take it back if you can’t.”

“Yes,” I say. “I can definitely use it.”

She lets down the gate and we carry the sofa into Toby’s house together, and then we set it down in the living room and I thank her as though it doesn’t mean much. Like it’s just some nice thing that anyone would do.

My phone buzzes with a new text: I have to wait two hours! Wish you were here with me.

Oh no! Wish I could be there, I write.

Morgan says, “I’ll be back in about an hour.”

“All right,” I say. “See you soon,” but I’m distracted, realizing I don’t know what Ava’s really looking for out there in whatever bureaucratic office she’s waiting in.

Tell me when you get it, I write back, even though I don’t know why she needs Caroline’s death certificate. Maybe she just wants more closure than Lenny was able to give her.

~

“Let’s hang the pots,” Morgan says hours later, after she’s been to Home Depot and back, after I’ve finished a dozen small tasks and she’s built the hanging contraption in the courtyard and installed it in the living room.

So we hang them, one after another, terra-cotta and porcelain and tin, orange and white and silver, full of all of these leafy green plants. She holds open the red string and I place the pots inside.

“Watching you work is incredible,” she says. “I can’t believe how good it’s looking in here.”

“I couldn’t do it without you.”

She shakes her head. “You’re much better at this than I am.”

“Not true,” I say.

“Yes,” she says, “I have the skills but you have the vision. If I had taken this job this would look like a normal apartment, but you’re making it look like its own world. If anyone ends up seeing this movie, you’re going to be celebrated for it.”

And I don’t say this flirtatiously; I say it straight. I look into her eyes and I thank her. Because no matter how flawed we were as a couple, as collaborators we’re perfect together.

But as good as it feels to be with her now, when Ava comes over later it will feel even better. I want her to see what I’ve made. I want to hear about her day. I want to see what’s between us now that the mystery is as over as it will ever be.

~

But when Ava walks through the doorway later, she doesn’t even look around.

“So they wouldn’t give me a copy of the death certificate but I got to see it,” she tells me. “Under cause of death it says ‘drug poisoning’ and I asked them what that means exactly but they didn’t know.”

She drops her bag and all of these papers and books on the table where we’re standing, and I try not to be disappointed that she doesn’t notice it, because as of two days ago it was a boring table I got for fifteen dollars at a garage sale and since then I’ve laid these gorgeous green and blue tiles on its surface.

“So I went to the library and did all this research.”

“The library,” I say, smiling, thinking it will remind her of the night we met, when Charlotte and I told her that the library was where we got the clues that led us to her.

“Yeah, and I found a list of reasons for death, and all of these books about causes of death, but they’re all medical books and law books so it’s, like, impossible to understand what any of them mean.”

“But doesn’t ‘drug poisoning’ just mean overdose?” I ask her. “That’s what Frank and Lenny both told us, right?”