Life is never ‘all cool’. But I’m okay. Just feel like having a beer with my dad. You ‘cool’ with that?

I found myself smiling; Elise asked:

‘Good news?’

‘My daughter wants to buy me a beer.’

I could see Elise turn away, trying to mask the sadness I saw in her eyes. She finally said:

‘Lucky man.’

eleven

KLARA LIVED IN a crash-pad apartment in Echo Park. Not a bad street.

It was wide with a collection of indifferent modern houses. She was one of five people who paid $600 each per month for a three-bedroom place in a building that looked like a motel. Fifteen years back Echo Park was considered borderline no-go. Rundown. Gang warfare. Dangerous. Now it was all young professionals and arty kids who had to share a place to pay the excessive rent. Klara moved into this place just over a year ago after she’d finished her BA at UC Santa Cruz. I was proud of my girl coming out of one of the top UC schools with a cum laude degree and then choosing the social work path – working with migrants from south of the border. Privately I might have wished that she’d done the law school thing she kept telling me she would follow. But I knew that if I even hinted this to Klara it would get her back up. She’d say that I was pushing her into ‘a secure career option’ … just as my father had done before with me. I could hear her tell me: ‘I don’t want to do safe, Poppa. Just as I know you’d really like to run away from that too.’