“A little, yeah. It sounded nice, though.” Amie sat up. “You spend a lot of your time building these machines that you just take down a day or two later. Do you feel like that’s a worthwhile use of your time?”
David narrowed his eyes. “Is this an intervention?”
“No! Sorry, that sounded harsh.” Amie gestured to his machine. “I just mean, you seem pretty happy. But you spend most of your time doing this, over and over again. You don’t even film it and put it online or anything.”
“Would it be more worthwhile if I put videos online?”
“I dunno. Maybe? Don’t you ever want to share your creativity with the world?”
“Been there, done that. It was fine. Speaking of, have you started my books yet?”
Dodging the question, Amie asked, “You’re enjoying yourself, right?”
“In this conversation? I could go either way.”
“Inlife.”
David adjusted a domino that had gotten knocked out of line. “Sure. I feel like building these machines is worth my time because I enjoy it. So I suppose that means I’m happy with my life. But we’re not talking about me, are we?”
“I just think that if it works for you, then it can work for me.”
David whipped around so fast the movement sacrificed a row of dominos.
“Oh no,” he said, holding up a finger. “Do not try to make a role model out of me. I’m not perfect.”
“I didn’t say you wereperfect,” Amie retorted. “You’re far from perfect.”
“Now hang on, ‘far’ is—”
“I’m just saying that we lead similar lives.” She held out her hands palms-up. “I get the same bagel from the caféevery time I go for breakfast. You go grocery shopping at the same time every week. We stick with what we know. And we’re happy!”
David ran a hand down his face, wincing. “Sure, but … I’ve lived a lot more life than you have, kid. I know what I like best because I’ve tried a lot of things. Can you say the same?”
Frowning, Amie stared at the flamingo. “I guess not,” she mumbled. “But, okay, that brings me back to my first question. How do you know when you’re happy enough? How do you know that you’re spending your time in the best way possible?”
The oven beeped, indicating that it was finished preheating. David returned to the kitchen, put the lasagna in the oven, and disappeared into his bedroom.
Amie pulled out her phone, then stuffed it away again without looking at the screen. She wasn’t sure what would make her feel worse: seeing a text from Ziya, or seeing that Ziya hadn’t texted.
“Here.” Her vision was overtaken by a short stack of papers being waved in front of her face. She took the papers as David retreated to his work table once more.
“What is it?” Amie placed the plastic flamingo on the couch next to her and flipped through the pages. They displayed rough sketches of what looked like people and animals, with words that were even more difficult to interpret.
“I started working on that children’s book,” David said, resurrecting the domino casualties from the Great Table Bump of Two Minutes Ago. “You were right—even if Elle is too old for it now, it’s still something I want to do for her. And she’ll still appreciate it, even if it’s ten years overdue. I could agonize over what could’ve been if I hadn’t waited so long to do it, but … why spend the energy on that?”
“This issosweet.” Amie held up a drawing of what looked like a lion/car hybrid playing volleyball. “But you’re going to get an artist for this, right?”
“Okay, fuck off.”
“No!” Amie laughed. “I’m sorry. These are really great.”
“Eh, you’re right.” David turned, crossing his arms. “I can’t draw to save my life. Clearly. I’ll stick with the writing. I think it’s a cute story, so …” He shrugged. “I don’t know, I need to work on it some more.”
He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “I never considered that it was something I could still do. But I did it because you gave me the push to try something different. So thanks for that.”
“This is amazing.” Amie flipped to another page as David abandoned the domino rescue effort to sit with her on the couch. “Ziya …”Ow.“… gave me the push to try something different, too. And then I did it, and she was still unhappy. But I think that’s because I only push myself when someone else tells me it’s the rightthing to do. And she didn’t like that I couldn’t do that for myself. She wants ‘more’ for me.”
“Mm.” David laced his fingers together, resting his forearms on his thighs. “Do you think you could start doing that for yourself?”
