“Do you drive?” she asked.
“Yep. An old Volkswagen.” Which was currently parked in the lot of his mom’s building, the subletter of Jack’s condo having required the use of his parking spot.
“I might be able to get Reggie to lend you a car.”
“Is that a good idea? What if I crash it?”
“Don’t tempt me.” She shot him another of those maddeningly compelling smirks as she came to a stop in the middle of the backyard. “Here we are. Main house. Pool house.” She pointed at each as she spoke.
The pool house at the back of the property was a miniature version of the main house, clad as it was in the same white stucco and red Spanish-tiled roof. There was a pool between the two structures, and it gave him pause. Its color wasn’t quite as saturated as the color of the pool he’d gotten a flash of when she’d invited him to come here, but it was close. It was surrounded by a patio of dark flagstone. He looked around to see if the lounge chair from his image was here, too. Yes. It was one of four lined up near the pool house. There was a dining table on the other side, closer to the main house.
It was uncanny. He’d always experienced his flashes as an outside observer. He’d never beeninsideone.
He conducted a second scan, looking for something to reassurehim that he wasn’t clairvoyant but just had a good imagination. There: the yard contained a third structure, a house much smaller than the pool house. It looked like a Spanish version of the Santa Claus house at the mall. That had not been in his vision.
The whole affair—the buildings, the pool, the patio—was surrounded by palm trees and other lush plants that looked foreign to his Midwestern eyes. Some of them were laden with fruit—he recognized lemons and avocados and olives.
“This door is a little finicky,” Blair said, producing a key and wiggling it in the lock of an arched wooden door. “Which is funny because the pool, and the pool house, were put in fifty years after the main house.”
The main house. She kept saying that. The very concept of a main house and an ancillary building, forget two ancillary buildings, was an indication that he did not belong here.
“What’s that?” He pointed at the Santa house.
“Changing area, bathroom. There’s a shower, too. And on the far side of it, we keep pool floaties. We call it the shed.”
“So this”—he pointed at the house they were about to enter—“is the pool house, and that”—he pointed at its little sibling—“which contains pool-related infrastructure, is the shed.”
“Yes.” She looked at him with an expression so deadpan that it must have been meant in jest, but since he wasn’t 100 percent sure, he didn’t laugh or even smile. He wasn’t a smiler anyway.
“No code here,” she said, as she pushed open the pool house’s heavy wooden door. “At the moment, I mean. There is an alarm, but it isn’t armed. I don’t really keep anything valuable out here. But we can set it up for you. Don’t want anyone leaking any more pages.”
The very idea made him shudder.
She must have noticed. “I was just kidding.” She patted his arm. Her palm hit below his rolled-up sleeve, and her skin was cool, which should have been impossible because it was so warm here.
The pool house was nice inside, he had to admit. They were standing in a tiled entryway that contained a bench and a bin filled with flip-flops and sunscreen and beach towels, and he could see the whole interior from this vantage point. The kitchen had warm wooden countertops, a backsplash made of multicolored tiles, small stainless steel appliances, and a two-person bistro table. The bed, which was covered with way too many pillows and a duvet that looked like it would be cozy in Minnesota in winter but suffocating here, looked to be a queen, but it would have to be mounted from the foot as it was tucked into an alcove that just accommodated it. The main living space consisted of two small sofas facing each other on opposite sides of a wooden coffee table that looked kind of beat up, but he couldn’t tell if it was actually beat up or if it was merely made to look that way. The cream floor tiles from the entryway continued through the whole space, but the living area was arranged atop the largest Persian rug he’d ever seen, which looked threadbare in a way that, again, might have been genuine or might have been artful. There were blankets everywhere, slung over the backs of the sofas and folded on the foot of the bed. The whole effect was very cozy. No minimalist expanses of white marble, which was what his mind filled in when he thought of LA interior design.
“I put a little desk over here,” she said as she opened a wall of curtains that hung over sliding glass doors that led to the pool, which glowed outside like a turquoise stone set in a sea of charcoal. Centered on the doors—but leaving enough clearance to come and go through them—was a small rectangular worktable and an office chair that looked as fancy as his at home but would probably do nothing for his back. There was even a small side table with a printer on it, which was above and beyond the call of duty. He was pretty sure he’d mentioned once during their texting that he sometimes printed out chapters and read them. But she hadn’t needed to subsidize his printing habit.
He reminded himself that she wasn’t. He was leaving tomorrow.
“I didn’t know if you’d want to look out at the pool,” Blair said. “If you don’t, there’s room for the desk on that wall”—she pointed—“if we scooch the sofas over a little. Are you the kind of person who likes to gaze at nature while writing or the kind of person who likes to write in a cocoon?”
“The desk is fine where it is.” Because, again, he wouldn’t be using it. And because he hoped agreement would yield an end to the guided tour.
“So youarethe kind of person who likes to gaze out at something inspiring when you write.”
“That’s not…” He’d been going to tell her writing didn’t work like that, but the wordcocoonwas giving him pause. He’d written his first novel in his old apartment, which hadn’t had much natural light. Sometimes he had even put earplugs in. But was that actually a preference, or had he merely been leaning into his circumstances? That building had been poorly soundproofed, and his immediate neighbors had had young kids whose main interests seemed to be shrieking and watching cartoons at top volume.
He had been replicating the cocoon with this second book, albeit not consciously, working almost exclusively in the small, dark interior den in his condo—and that had been going so well. And the chunk of the summer he’d spent holed up in the remote woods of northern Minnesota had yielded very little of use.
Maybe hewasa cocooner. But maybe he shouldn’t be, not only because it apparently wasn’t working this time around, but also because what in the hell was up with that flash, the vision of himself next to a pool?
“What?” she prompted, making him realize he’d trailed off awkwardly in his attempt to answer her question about his preferences for writing settings.
“I don’t actually know what I prefer.”
That answer seemed to cheer her. She crossed to the kitchen and gestured at the fridge. “I stocked you up with a few essentials. We can make a grocery run tomorrow if you want different stuff. Or there’s a farmers market I sometimes hit on Saturdays. Or I used to.” She paused. “I’m not sure if I’m the kind of person who likes going to farmers markets or the kind of person who finds them overly performative and would rather get her veggies delivered from the same store she gets her ultraprocessed protein bars that are really just candy bars with better marketing.”
