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Chapter FIVE

When I drive into my parking space behind the house, I see Electra out in the garden. She is six feet tall and skinny, with a hard way of looking at you. She intimidated me when I first moved in.

But then I started hearing her music. Not what you'd expect-she's big on Janis Joplin and all those sixties guys, the Rolling Stones and the Crusaders and Marvin Gaye. Not that I knew one from the other until she started telling me. Music is her thing, and she loves classic vinyl. There are pictures of her on the walls of her house wearing dashikis and an Afro the size of the earth, looking fierce and hard with men wearing black sunglasses and leather jackets and jeans. Black Panthers, she said proudly. We did some good, back in the day.

She never says why she left Oakland and came to Colorado, but I gather some people died. She's a nurse in the emergency room. Not easy work, she says, but it makes her feel like she's doing something with her life.

"How are you, girl?" she says, straightening in the garden, shaking the dirt off her gloved hands. "I saw on the news about the restaurant and about had a heart attack."

"I should have called. I'm sorry. It was just-"

"No, no, don't apologize." She waves a hand. "You all right?"

"Yeah. My friend is in the hospital, though. I called, but they wouldn't tell me anything. She's at Penrose."

"I can probably find out something when I go to work tonight."

"That would be great." I nod toward the garden. "Need some help weeding?"

"Always." She gestures to a patch of squash plants.

I check my corn, too. She gave me a little space to plant what I wanted. I keep peering at it every day, wondering what the corn will look like, and it's more thrilling than I expected.

I also have a small plot of flowers by my front step, bachelor buttons and marigolds, and somebody a long time ago planted a climbing rose on a rickety old trellis. I noticed last night that it was starting to bud, and I glance over my shoulder now to see if I missed the flowers starting to bloom, but nothing is open.

Electra says, "Come on over and look at the tomatoes, child. It's the best crop I've had in a while."

I'm not a child anymore, but she means well. I dutifully traipse over to peer at the star-shaped yellow flowers on the plants and the green globes in clusters. In between the tomatoes she has rows of carrots, and around the perimeter of this square is basil. She says it helps keep bugs off.

"You can pick the last of the peas if you'll eat them," Electra says to me, and hands me a weathered basket. She's been feeding me things from this garden since I moved in: snow peas, crisp and fresh, from beneath a plastic tunnel, asparagus, peas, lettuce, spinach; last summer there was corn on the cob in August almost every day. I never really ate vegetables that much before, but I'm learning. She gives me tips on what to do with them, too, showing me how to stir fry or pan roast with garlic, or steam them in the microwave. Easy.

The peas are growing up a trellis next to the garage, and as I pluck the remaining pods off the vines I realize I'm feeling okay again. My shoulders have stopped aching with tension. I hear Electra humming as she hoes down the weeds in a nearby row.

I split open one of the pea pods with my thumb and pop the bright green peas right into my mouth. They're sweet and crunchy and healthy, and my brain offers a vision of me lying on my couch, reading all evening while I eat fresh peas.

I really don't want to go tonight and wish there was some way to get out of it. But even as I think about how I could maybe just call and tell Rick I can't make it, there's a rumble of a motorcycle in the alley and he roars in on his red bike, hair flying. The sun slants through the trees over him as he comes to a stop, and I straighten, thinking the whole scene looks like a commercial. His shoulders are broad beneath his jean jacket, and his face is sulky and handsome beneath the sunglasses. He smiles, raises a hand as he swings off the bike. "Hey, babe!"