“Good. Nothing broke down. Nobody threw anything.” We never spent much time talking about work. We didn’t really intersect there, and there were more interesting things to talk about, like what to do on the weekend, or the people we knew, or what movie we wanted to watch, or, though we didn’t say it in so many words, how lucky we were to have each other.

After we ate, I went out to water my fruit trees, apricot and plum, and the two olive trees I was nursing along. I checked the soil moisture in the rest of the plantings. The landlord had let me do over the yard with ornamental grasses and other low-water perennials. I was trying to make it into something people would notice, something that showed what I could do with my materials.

Before bedtime, which came pretty early, Aaron and I took Batman for a walk. The pavement was still hot under our feet, but the air had cooled way down. Our neighborhood was between 101 and another main road and was an unfancy mix of mobile homes and small bungalows like ours. It had ragged bits of open space along the roadways and in between developments so you didn’t feel closed in or on top of somebody else. I thought it was a fine place to live. I had just turned twenty-one and it was my first real place after moving out from my mom’s.

I was dragging as I walked. “Sorry,” I said, trying not to yawn so hard I fell over.

“You figure out what you’re going to tell Rick?”

“Yeah, my truck has an oil leak. It’s not so hard to believe.” Mrs. Boone was being charged by the job, not the hours. It wouldn’t make any difference to her.

“It’d be great if you could be your own boss,” Aaron said, in that casual way he had of sneaking up on a suggestion. He didn’t fool me for a minute.

“Then I’d have to work harder.”

“You wouldn’t have to. You’d be a better manager than him.”

“He’s not so bad at it.” I had a perverse urge to defend Rick.

“Or you could run a nursery. A greenhouse. You wouldn’t have to drive all over the Bay. I’m just saying, there are possibilities. If you want to stay in this line of work.”

“It’s okay for now,” I said. I appreciated that Aaron was looking out for me. But I didn’t want to feel like a problem everybody had to solve. You could get tired of all the encouragement.