The Proposal(46)

Hers was a very different part of L.A. than the one he’d grown up in. The part with the movie stars and the rich people that he’d always known existed, but it seemed so foreign compared to his life that it could have very well been across the country.

“This was a long way to answer your question about what kind of writing I do. I left the L.A. Times about a year and a half ago. There was a big buyout, but I was ready to go. I was getting tired of only doing celebrity stuff, as entertaining as it can be. Now I do a good combination of writing: some celebrity profiles, especially women of color. But also some investigative journalism, and other short fun pieces when I have time for them. It’s been a little scary, but also fun to craft my career in this way.”

He nodded. He’d known some of that from when he’d Googled her to find that Anna Gardiner story, but not all of it.

“What kind of investigative journalism? Who pays for stuff like that these days, other than like, the New Yorker?”

She grinned.

“I had a piece in the New Yorker last week, actually. My second piece there.”

He’d walked right into that one, hadn’t he?

“Holy shit, that’s awesome! What was the story about?”

“Thanks. This one was a celebrity piece; it was a profile of a screenwriter who has two movies coming out this summer. I was really glad to get to write about her.” Her grin lost a little of its sparkle. “I was really excited to see it in print, but I just realized I didn’t even open the magazine. It came the same day as the Dodgers game, see.”

He suddenly hated that Fisher guy. What a way to ruin the joy of her accomplishment.

He looked at their table: plates of half-eaten tacos lined up neatly, the beans and rice basically untouched on both of their plates, their drinks all empty.

“Do you want to get dessert?” he asked.

She laughed, and the sad look disappeared from her face.

“Oh my God, no, are you kidding me? I’m way too full to even think about dessert. I can’t remember the last time I said that.”

They waved good-bye to the staff as they walked out and got in his car. A few blocks down the road, she cleared her throat.

“I might be accused of being bougie by asking this, but I’m going to do it anyway: do you ever worry about your car, parking it in neighborhoods like this?”

He nodded.

“Nah, that’s just common sense. At first I barely drove it anywhere but to work and home. I was so paranoid about break-ins, or accidents, or other cars parking too close to me. I never did valet, which in L.A., as you know, made everything more difficult.”

He flicked his blinker on to turn onto the freeway, and thought about those first months after. A lot of it he barely even remembered. He only knew certain things had happened because friends had mentioned them later. Sometimes he’d searched through his emails for something unrelated and come across emails he’d sent friends, thanking them for their card or the food they’d sent or for coming to the funeral, and he had no memory not only of sending the emails but of receiving their card or food or seeing them at the funeral. It had been such a terrible time; he was glad that there was a fog over his memory of a lot of it. The car probably wasn’t the only reason he’d barely gone anywhere but to work and his mom’s house for months.

“What made you change?” she asked.

He shrugged and started to give her a bullshit answer. But the only answer he could think of was the truth.

“My friends, really. Especially my friend Drew. Some of it . . . a lot of it, probably, wasn’t about the car at all, but was about my dad.” He’d tried not to let anyone figure out what a hard time he was having with his dad’s death. He especially didn’t want his family to know. He knew he had to be there for his mom and for Angie, to be the rock they needed.

“One day at work, we were talking about a new case that had come in the day before. It was a middle-aged man who died suddenly of a heart attack, the same as my dad. When they described what happened and started asking questions for us to answer, I had to leave the room. I didn’t think anyone noticed me leave. But that night, Drew asked if I wanted to get a beer when we both got off. We didn’t talk about it, at all, but . . . it helped. And then the following week, he convinced me to join a basketball rec league. I knew he was doing it to force me out of the house for something other than work, but I did it anyway. And it helped.”

He didn’t look at her, but he could feel her watching him, listening to every word he said. She didn’t touch him, but the softness in her voice felt like a caress.

“A sudden heart attack. That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”

He nodded, very glad that they were in a car in the dark and she couldn’t see the tears in his eyes.

“Thanks. Anyway, the car. I think I mostly realized I couldn’t live in fear anymore. I mean, sure it could get broken into outside the taqueria, or I could have an accident any day to or from work. Plus, I bought the car in honor of my dad—how did it honor him for me to be afraid to go anywhere in it? Good God, I can’t imagine how ashamed he would have been if I didn’t want to go to a taqueria because I was scared of what might happen to my car, you know?”

Why the hell was he talking to her about his dad? He never talked about him, not even to Angela or his mom. He’d decided to stop talking—or even thinking, for the most part—about his dad almost six months after he’d died. It had been too hard for him to deal with otherwise.