I had just started a new job, still in the alumni department but now Occidental College. My former coworker, Normani, recommended me for the position. We'd worked together in the alumni department at UCLA, she'd left for Occidental the previous year. I was excited by thee idea of working with her again and eager to branch out. I loved UCLA, but I'd been there my entire adult life. I wanted to learn a new community. I wanted to meet new people. Plus, it didn't hurt that Occidental's campus was breathtaking. If you're looking for a change of scenery, choose beautiful scenery.
And since I was making more money, Lauren and I decided to find a new place. When we saw a house for rent in Hancock Park, we pulled over. Sure, it looked too big for us. It looked too expensive for us. And we technically didn't need a second bedroom or a yard. But we wanted it. So Lauren picked up the phone and dialed the number on the sign.
"Hi, I'm standing outside your property on Rimpau. How much are you renting it for?" Lauren said, and then she listened intently. "Uh-huh," she said. I couldn't hear what the other person was saying. Lauren was pacing back and forth. "And is that including utilities?" I was eager to hear what number this person had given her. "We'', we can't do that," Lauren said. I sat on the hood of our car, disappointed.
"I've noticed, though, that this sign has been out for a while." She was bluffing. Lauren knew no such thing. "So I'm wondering what your wiggle room is." She listened and then looked at me, and I smiled at her. "Okay, is it open now? Can my wife and I take a look?" Lauren directed her eye to a drainpipe. "Yeah, I see it. We'll take a look, and I'll call back." She hung up, and we ran to the front door. Lauren got the key from the drainpipe and let us in.
While so much of Los Angeles is crowded roads and cramped buildings, Hancock Park is almost entirely residential, full of long, wide streets and houses set far back from the curb. Most of the neighborhood was built in the 1920s, and this place was no exception. The house was old, but it was gorgeous. Rough stucco exterior, dramatic interior archways, hardwood floors, checkered the kitchen. The rooms were small and tight but perfect for us. I saw myself brushing my teeth over the prewar porcelain sink.
"We can't afford this, can we?" I asked her. "I will make this work, if you want it," Lauren said to me, standing in the middle of the house. It was so empty that her voice traveled quickly, finding its way into the farthest corners of the room. "I will get this woman down to something we can afford." "How?" I asked. I wasn't sure what the starting number was, and Lauren wasn't telling, which said to me that it was much higher than the figure we had in mind. "Just... Do you want it?" she asked me.
"Yes, I want it. Bad."
"The I'm gonna get it for you." Lauren left the house through the front door and walked back to the sidewalk. I walked through the kitchen and opened the glass sliding doors that led to the backyard. It was small and useless, a patch of grass and a few bushes. But there was an old lemon tree in the corner. Lemons were scattered around the trunk, most of them rotting where the peel touched the earth. It looked as if no one had taken care of the lemon tree. No one had watered it or pruned it. No one cared about it. I walked out and reached high above my head to a lemon still on the branch. I twisted it off the tree and smelled it. It smelled fresh and clean.
I took it out to the front yard to show Lauren. She was still on the phone, pacing up and down the sidewalk. I stared at her, trying to decipher how the conversation might be going. Finally, she looked up at the sky and smiled, pumping her fist into the air and looking at me as if we'd won the lottery. "September first? Yeah, that works."
When she hung up the phone, I ran into her arms, jumping up and wrapping my legs around her waist. She laughed. "You did it!" I said. "You got me the house!" I handed her the lemon. "We have a lemon tree! We can make fresh lemonade and lemon bars and... other lemon stuff! How did do it?" I asked her. "How did you talk her down?" Lauren just shook her head. "A magician never tells."
"No, but seriously, how did you?" She smiled, evading me. For some reason, I liked it better that I didn't know her secret. She had made the impossible possible. It made me think that maybe other impossible things were possible. That maybe all I needed was to want it badly enough, and I really could have it.
That night, I was already looking at paint colors and thinking about packing up our stuff. I was so committed to our new house that I could no longer stand the sight of our current apartment. I was on my computer, mentally decorating and online shopping, when Lauren walked over to me and closed my laptop. "Hey!" I said. "I was looking at that!" She smiled. "Well, looks like you can't use the computer anymore," she said. "So what should we do to pass the time?" "Huh?" I asked. I knew what she was getting at. "I'm just saying... it's late, and we should probably get in there?" She wanted to have sex. She wanted me to say it. "I was looking at that, though!" I told her. My voice had bounce to it, but the truth was, I really wasn't in the mood.
"You sure you don't have anything on your mind? Anything you want to do?" Maybe if she'd say what she wanted, I might have given it to her. But it wasn't what I wanted to do. And I wasn't going to pretend it was. "Yeah, I know exactly what I want to do," I said. "I want to continue looking at curtains!" Lauren sighed and opened my computer back up. "You are no fun," she said, laughing and kissing me on the cheek before leaving the room. "But you still love me, right?" I joked, calling out to her in the other room. She popped her head back in. "Always will," she said. "Until the day I die" Then threw herself onto the floor, lying on the ground with her tongue out and her eyes shut, pretending to be dead.
"Are you dead?" I teased her. She was silent. She was freakishly good at remaining perfectly still. Her chest didn't even rise and fall with her breath. I got on the floor next to her and playfully poked her. "Looks like she's really dead," I said out loud. "Ah, well." I sighed. "That just means more time for me to look at curtains." That's when she grabbed me and pulled me toward her, burying her fingers into my armpits, making me laugh and scream. "So how about now, huh?" she said, when she was done tickling me. "What do you want to do now?"
"I told you," I said, standing up and smiling at her. "I want to look at curtains."
..............
The day after we moved in, I was still unpacking boxes and considering painting the bedroom when Lauren came in and said, "What would you say if I told you I think we should get a dog?" I threw the clothes that were in my hand back into their box and started walking into the hallway to get my shoes. "I'd say it's Sunday morning, there might be dog adoptions right now. Get your keys."
I was half joking, but she didn't stop me. We got into the car. We drove around looking for signs. We came home with Rocky, a one-year-old black German Shepherd. He peed and pooped all over the house, and he kept us up all night scratching his neck with his hind leg, but we loved him. The next morning, we renamed him Thunder.
Lauren and I installed a doggie door a few weeks later, and the minute we were done, Thunder jetted into the back yard. We watched as he ran around and around, jumped on the fence, and then settled on a spot to lie out in the sun. I was sitting on the floor, stretching, when he finally came back into the house. He walked right in and sat on my lap. He was done playing outside. He wanted to be near me. I cried for a half hour because I couldn't believe I could love a dog so much. When I finally gathered myself, I noticed there was a sticky dirt in my lap and all over his paws. He smelled clean and sweet.
It turned out Thunder liked playing with lemons.
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Sorry I've been busy!! But I hope you liked the chapter. Vote if you did!!
