Page 11 of The Fall Risk

“What else?” I asked.

He eyed me. “Are you just asking me to be nice? We don’t have to talk about trees.”

“No, I’m serious, what else?”

He thought about it. “Eucalyptus trees are highly flammable. It’s the oil.”

“Bummer, they smell so good.”

“I know. But they’re terrible in wildfires. California has the world’s tallest tree, the coast redwood. They can live for thousands of years, and they repel insects.”

“Really . . .”

“Yeah. And they have fire-resistant bark.”

“Wow. Thousands of years. Imagine living that long. All the things you’d see.” I looked at him. “How old are you. How long have you lived?”

“I’m twenty-nine. How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“A blink of an eye to a redwood.”

I smiled.

I gazed back out at the palm trees.

“Gotta love Southern California weather,” he said.

It really was perfect outside. Most of the US was covered in snow, and here, it was seventy degrees and sunny.

I mourned the loss of Valentine’s Day on a warm patio again.

“So you have a fish?” I asked.

“Yeah. A betta fish.”

“Oh. Does he have a name?”

“He does. Swim Shady.”

I barked out a laugh.

“Is he the real Swim Shady or . . .”

“All the other Swim Shadys are just imitating,” he said, totally serious.

He was funny.

“He was dying in a pet store,” he said. “You know how they sell them in those little cups?”

“Yeah.”

“Totally inhumane. A betta needs at least a five-gallon tank. Almost all his color was gone, he was listless. So I bought him and nursed him back to health.”

“Wow,” I said, impressed. “How’d you learn how to do that?”

“It’s easy. You join betta fish Reddit, ask an innocent question, and wait to get bullied.”