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“Sure. I can tell you where to bring her—”
“No. I don’t wanna know.”
“You into something serious?”
“Kinda.”
I told her about the meeting in the woods and the general plan.
“Sounds like flying by the seat of your pants.” Olo had once told me that her approach to learning a new language was to collect the aphorisms and curse words that the common people used.
“You have any suggestions?”
“Maybe a few. Do you have an in at this Carnelian Oyster place?”
“Yeah.”
30.
THE NEXT DAY Leaf and I spent as if we were on holiday, or even a honeymoon. We walked up and down Abbot Kinney Boulevard, stopping into furniture stores and a silversmith jewelry shop. She bought me a ridiculously large belt buckle of silver, onyx, and turquoise. I got her an opal nose stud that she promised never to install.
In Santa Monica, on main Street, we stopped into a French restaurant for a three-course lunch.
“Look, honey,” I said at a moment when we both reached for our wineglasses. “I want this to work.”
“The plan to take down the rapist guy?”
“No. I mean, yeah, of course, but that’s another thing. What I’m talkin’ about right now is you and me.”
“We have to go to work?” she teased.
“This has been a wonderful day,” I said, switching convo lanes. “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier even though so many hard things are going down around us.”
Her smile was like the far-off glimmer of the sun through a dense pine forest, at dawn; a hint of what the day might have to offer.
“Look, Joe, I… I lost the woman that saved me after my mother died. I never thought I could feel that bad again. Never. And you, honey, you’re putting your life on the line. You could die and I’d never see you again.” Her eyes got misty for a few seconds and then cleared. “I wanna ask you not to do it, not to go. But I know that you have to do what you’re doing. You have to.”
“Um, does that have something to do with us working?”
“We will work until we don’t,” she pledged. “Either you or I will need something else, or you won’t come back tonight, or some other night. That’s who we are, right?”
I agreed with her, and wanted to say so, but superstition kept me from uttering the words.
“It’s just like everybody else,” she went on. “The only difference is that we know how uncertain life is. We both know what you’re doing tonight. We both know how fickle our hearts can be.”
I think she wanted to say more, but just then someone said, “Hello.”
It was Olo.
“Is it four already?” I asked.
“Four thirty-seven.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“We were supposed to meet, right?”
“Have a seat,” was my answer.
