CHAPTER ONE
I landed, he texts me, and I feel the ground underneath my feet once again. It’s 4:00 a.m. in Los Angeles, both too late and too early, but in the four years we’ve been together—three of them married—I’ve never been able to sleep while Leo is in the air.
For the past hour I’ve been standing in our dark kitchen, refreshing the screen of my cell phone and bathing the room in harsh blue light.
Exhale.
I pull my robe more tightly around me. I love this bungalow—built in 1958, updated in 2010; it’s charming and bright. Big windows, a sliver of a garden, walking distance to Melrose Place. But there’s no functional heat.
When I first moved in, six and a half years ago, the walls were green and burnt orange and the light fixtures were all brass, but over time I painted the walls white, wallpapered the bathroom, regrouted the kitchen, and decorated the space with a colorful mix of Rose Bowl Flea Market finds and Crate & Barrel sales. It’s charming, and organized. Despite Leo’s piles of things, I am not someone who finds clutter to be cheerful.
Go back to bed, Lauren, he writes, and I smile.
I love you.
I feel my shoulders slacken. The whirling in my stomach settles to a casual rinse cycle. He’s fine.
When I was fifteen years old, my father died in a car crash. He was driving down Mulholland in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, slightly before rush hour. He was not speeding. A teen driver in the oncoming lane was on his cell phone. Both drivers died on impact.
I flip on the electric kettle and scoop some dark roast into the pot before my eye settles on the mail stacked on our counter. Leo forgot to go through it before he left. I fan out the letters. Insurance forms for Leo, some Ralphs coupons, and a thank-you note from my friend Delia for her baby shower. We got her a bottle warmer. I run my hand over the embossed stork and then deposit the paper into the trash can.
Leo is traveling to interview for a new job. He’s a DP, or director of photography. He started as a lamp operator on film sets and then got his (small) break when his old mentor from college asked him to be DP on an indie project last summer. He loved it. Today he’s flying out to meet Grayson Baldacci, the wildly prolific television writer, about his new show,Big Guys, an office drama that will shoot in New York. If Leo gets this, it’ll change the game for him. A steady gig, a regular income.
I’ve been an accountant for the past decade, and before that I did bookkeeping for individual clients, one of whom I still help on the side. I work at a small firm with only two other CPAs. We mostly handle retired clients living on a fixed income. The work isn’t particularly glamorous, but I enjoy the steadiness of it, the reliability. And I like the business of helping people budget theirlives. The obvious: It gives me great pleasure to avoid catastrophe both personally, and professionally, even if professionally I’m not following my passion.
Leo is another story. He lights up when he talks about film. Whenever we watch a movie together, he wants to run me through the cinematographer’s shot list—why they chose a crane there or a wide here. I zone out, mostly, but I love how he sees the world: like a canvas waiting to be painted or captured ortold.In Leo’s universe, it’s all already there; he just needs the right lens.
Water in hand, I walk over to the couch. The sunset image hanging behind it was painted by my grandmother Sylvia. It’s the view at our house in Malibu—the same one I grew up in.
Did he land?
My mother. We share the same history.
Yes.
Go back to sleep.
I imagine her right now, in her frayed Ralph Lauren robe, looking out at the silver water. She isn’t an early riser, my mom. That was always Dad.
My cat, Pea, stretches into the room. She looks at me wearily—This again?—and then abruptly leaves. She showed up on my doorstep four years ago, half a day before the biggest rainstorm Los Angeles had ever seen. I found her scratching at the glass. She was barely six weeks old, had all kinds of health issues, and no tag.
I’d never had an animal before, I wasn’t even sure if I should let her inside, but Leo insisted. “The rain will kill her, Lauren,” he said. “We’re bringing her in.”
She explored every nook and cranny of our bungalow and then promptly fell asleep on the rug. I knew before I went to bed that night that she was ours.
I start to smell the beans, and look down to see my cell phone vibrating on the counter. Leo is calling.
“You’re not sleeping,” he says.
I can always tell what kind of mood he’s in by his voice. Leo is gregarious by nature—far more social than I am—but when it comes to our relationship, he’s soft-spoken and gentle. Right now he seems chipper. But then again, it’s almost 8:00 a.m. where he is. I imagine him rolling off the flight in his sweatpants and black T-shirt, his backpack on his back, duffel in hand, a hoodie slung over his shoulder. Some bagel dust down his front. He’ll have slept, too. Leo can sleep anywhere.
“You’re the one calling,” I say.
Truth be told, I’m surprised. Leo is never on his phone. At home, that makes him a great husband—super present, rarely distracted. But when he’s gone, he’s often hard to get ahold of. When we first started dating I was convinced he wasn’t interested because I wouldn’t hear from him for days, sometimes weeks. Then he’d resurface, pick me up at my house, and look at me in a way that let me know he never forgot.
“True. Guess what? The guy next to me had never been on a plane before.”
“Really?”
