For example, at this time of day the sun made a great deal of her dark red hair. Had Nina known how pretty it looked, she would have taken a photo of herself, but sadly, she was thinking about pickles—sliced, whole, or relish, discuss—and missed the opportunity. In general, she wasn’t the kind of woman who turned casual heads; her looks were an acquired taste, and her resting expression suggested you weren’t going to be given much chance to acquire it. She was small and slender and gave the overall impression of a baby deer, until she spoke and you realized you’d been looking at a fox all along. As her good friend Leah once said, she wasn’t mean; she was painfully accurate.
Nina rented the guesthouse of one of the larger houses on Windsor Boulevard. It was a charming little place, completely separate from the main house, with its own entrance. Absolutely perfect for Nina. The owners were friends of Nina’s mother, and when Nina finished college had miraculously just finished renovating their guesthouse. They generously offered to rent it to Nina, who couldn’t have been happier to accept.
Her cat, Phil, was sitting on the gate waiting for her. Phil was a tabby of the brown and cream variety, with a black tip to his tail and white feet. He jumped down as the gate opened and preceded her up the stairs, the tip of his tail forming a jaunty accent like the marker flag on a toddler’s bicycle. Nina noticed he’d left a large but very dead worm on the doormat. He stood next to it casually, like, oh yeah, I’d almost forgotten, I brought you a worm. Nothing special, just a deadly worm I captured with my own paws and brought back for you. Thought you might fancy a little smackerel of something after work, you know. (He was apparently channeling Pooh Bear.)
Nina bent down and stroked his head. “Thanks, Phil. This is an incredible worm.” Phil rubbed against her legs, totally stoked with himself. Other cats might stay in all day, lounging around and licking their butts, but he was out and about Getting the Job Done. “I’m going to save it for later, though, if that’s all right with you.” Phil shrugged.
Nina opened the door and walked in, kicking off her shoes and surreptitiously placing the worm on the kitchen counter to be thrown away when the cat wasn’t looking. She looked up at the giant clock on the wall; still an hour before the trivia thing started. She turned on the kettle; time to chill and tidy. She loved her apartment, even if calling it an apartment was a bit of a stretch. It was basically one big room, with a tiny kitchenette and bathroom, but what it had in abundance was light and bookshelves, and really, what else does anyone need? Big double windows on the south and west walls filled the place with sun and color, and the shelves went from floor to ceiling. There was an oversize armchair near the window, where Nina could—and did—sit for hours and read her butt off. The Persian rug was all reds and oranges and tigers and birds, a souvenir of some trip of her mom’s, and had shown up a week or two after Nina had moved in her stuff (a bed, a chair, six boxes of books, a kitten, a coffee maker, and a large bulletin board). The note attached had read, Hey, had this in storage for years, thought you might like it. Let me know if you want the rest of the stuff.
Rest of the stuff? Nina had called her mom immediately. “Hey, Mom. Where are you?” This was her standard greeting.
“I’m in London right now, darling. Where are you?” Her mom was Australian, but her accent had softened over the years to the occasional hint. She said sockAH instead of soccer, or lollies instead of candy, but it wasn’t like she walked around in a hat with corks dangling from it.
Nina had smiled to hear her mother’s voice, the part of her she was most familiar with. “I’m in Dubai, Mom, at the top of the Burj Khalifa.”
“Really?” Her mom sounded excited. “How’s the view?”
Nina had sighed. “No, I’m in Los Angeles, right where you left me.”
“Oh.” Her mom was clearly disappointed Nina hadn’t inherited her wanderlust. She didn’t say it in so many words, but she didn’t have to.
“What’s with this carpet?” Nina had asked, poking the rolled-up rug with her foot.
Nina could hear her mom sipping tea. She had probably been doing three or four things at the same time as taking Nina’s call. One thing at a time? Where’s the fun in that? “Well, I lived in LA when I was pregnant with you, remember?”
“Of course.” Nina knew her own origin story by heart, as everybody does. Her mother hadn’t been a slut, exactly, but she hadn’t been interested in romantic relationships. Nina had asked her many years earlier why she’d chosen not to have an abortion, and Candice had laughed in her usual way.
“Because I thought it would be an adventure, and it was.” AdvenchAH.
“The rug is gorgeous. What’s the rest of the stuff like?”
“Well, I think there’s all kinds of things. Go look if you want.” She’d told her where the storage unit was, and now, as Nina looked around her happy little place, she was looking at furniture she might have peed on as a baby. A small kilim sofa, an ottoman from Rajasthan, which Phil thought was his, and as much of her mom’s art collection as she could drag out of storage. The one wall that wasn’t covered with books was covered with photographs; images by Ruth Orkin, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Inge Morath and a few snapshots Nina liked that she’d taken herself; posters and magazine covers featuring the TV shows and celebrities of her childhood; her “visualization corner,” with its bulletin board and calendar (don’t mock; you only wish you were as organized as Nina); photos of Nina’s mom and Phil as a kitten. A single Malm bed from IKEA—with the optional storage drawers, please note—was tucked against a wall. By the way, the plural of Malm is just “Malm,” like deer; “Malms” sounds wrong, although it also sounds like a delicious marshmallow candy—ooh, are those chocolate malms?
Stooping to pick up the mail, Nina fed Phil and poured herself a glass of wine. Then she wandered over to her visualization corner and stood there, frowning at her bulletin board, with its inspirational images, quotes, and life hacks she never actually put into practice. She enjoyed being organized but always felt there was so much room for more. She loved having color-coordinated folders and lists and spent half an hour each morning reviewing her planner, setting her goals and intentions for the day, and generally pondering. This was time she had, of course, set aside for that purpose in her planner. She only wished there was more to actually, you know, plan. She sometimes made lists of things she’d already done solely so she could cross them off, which she couldn’t help feeling was pretty pathetic but strangely satisfying.
She’d graduated from UCLA with a useless but interesting degree (Art History, thanks for asking) and took the job at Knight’s while she worked out what she wanted to do now that she was grown up. She spent the next few years actually growing up; having short-lived love affairs and one slightly longer love affair and then some more short ones, and Getting in Shape and Being Vegan and Paleo and then Giving Up And Eating Everything Again. She took up yoga, then Spinning, then a combination yoga and Spin class she inwardly referred to as Spoga, then decoupage and knitting and a series of those evenings where you drink wine and paint, but she had a niggling suspicion she was underperforming in some way. Surely her purpose in life wasn’t simply to read as many books as possible?