Chapter Three
Abril Valencia waves to me as soon as I walk into Perky Cups. “Emily, hello!” she calls out.
“Abril?” I ask the petite brunette with the delicately curvy figure. She’s wearing yoga pants and a hoodie, but she makes them look like the height of fashion.
“Yes, it is me, Abril.” She throws her arms around me. “You are everything Sandrine said you were and more!”
“What did Sandrine say?” I can’t help but ask.
“She said you were a camellia in a sea of carnations.”
I have no idea what that means, so I change the subject and ask, “Have you ordered?”
“I ordered a pot of hibiscus tea and lemon scones for both of us. I hope you do not mind my choosing for you.”
“Not at all,” I tell her. “That was very nice.” I follow her back to the table she’s already secured. “Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself and what you think you’re looking for.”
“I moved to Los Angeles twenty years ago for college and I loved it so much I stayed.”
“What kind of work do you do?” I ask. She looks like a kept woman and while that’s a fairly common occupation around here, I can’t imagine that’s so if she contacted me hoping to find love.
“I’m a fabric designer,” she tells me. “I create one-of-a-kind textiles for clients who wish to have something that no one else has.”
“What an interesting job,” I say. “You’re obviously single, yes?”
“I am, but I no longer wish to be. How do you say, my eggs are getting old? I want the bebés before it’s too late.”
That’s something I hear a lot of. If you have your first kid at forty in LA, you’re right on time. Unfortunately, if you’re nearing that age and you’re not in a relationship, panic can set in. “Do you have any preferences for where you want to live?” I ask her.
“Sandrine says I do not get to choose. She says you will tell me where to live.”
“Asking my clients where they’d like to live is always a good starting off point though.”
She breaks her scone in half before taking a small bite. I wait while she chews it and watch as a myriad of emotions cross her face. She looks pensive, then sad, and finally resigned. “I do not want to live in Century City,” she finally announces.
“But where would you like to live?” I persist.
“Anywhere but Century City.”
“Abril, have you just gotten out of a relationship?” I ask.
“Would that matter?”
I shrug my shoulders. “Not necessarily, I just wondered if maybe you were on the rebound. If that’s the case, I might not be able to find the right house for you. It might not be time yet.”
“Do not worry about that. It is past time. You are going to find me the perfect house and the perfect man will follow; I just know it.” She changes the subject, “How did you come upon this gift of yours?”
“I had a really bad flu when I was seventeen,” I tell her. “My fever spiked to nearly a hundred and six degrees. I can’t say for sure that’s when my gift hit, but I do know things changed for me after that.”
“How so?”
“I stopped worrying about stuff. I had this overwhelming feeling that everything would work out, and that being anxious was a waste of time. Not too many months later I went house shopping with my aunt. She was newly divorced and needed to relocate quickly. She showed me two different places and I begged her to buy the one that was her second choice.”
“Did she listen?” Abril asks expectantly.
“Nope. She bought her first choice.”
“I am confused. How do you know that the other house is where she would have found love?”
“She met a very nice man a couple of years later and started dating him.” I tell her, “He lived right across the street from the house I wanted her to buy.”
“Ah, but she found him anyway, no?”
“She did. It just took her a little longer.”
“Did you know at the time you were going to be a real estate agent?” she asks.
I blow on my tea to cool it before answering, “I didn’t know for five more years. I thought I wanted to be an architect, but it turns out I didn’t have an affinity for it, and I wound up changing my major to art history.”
“How did that lead to real estate?”
“It didn’t. Once my aunt married the man who would have been her neighbor had she listened to me, she started suggesting I accompany some of her single friends when they were looking for houses. Once a few of them listened to me and found their soulmates, I started to realize I had a gift.”
“You are like a good witch,” she says, clapping her hands together.
“I like to think that God is using me to help people out. I don’t think there’s anything magical about what I do. I just have an extra sense is all.”
“No matter what you call it, I think you are going to be a big help to me, and I cannot wait to get started.”
We spend the next forty minutes talking about what Abril would like in a home. She wants three bedrooms and two bathrooms with a decent sized yard. She’s pretty adamant that she wants mature fruit trees on the property, which should be pretty easy to find, as many neighborhoods in Los Angeles used to be orange or lemon groves.
“Give me a week,” I tell her.
“But I want to start looking right now!” she says excitedly.
“I need to study the listings that are available and then wait for the right house, or houses, to make themselves known to me.”
“Will there be more than one house?”
“There might be,” I tell her. “One of my clients had a choice of three. Her future husband lived near one of them, his daughter lived next door to another and the third was across the street from his mom.”
“So, the love is always a neighbor?”
“No. One man bought a house and fell in love with his neighbor’s maid. A female client bought a house and fell in love with the barista at the coffee shop down the street, where she bought her morning coffee. People find each other in all kinds of different ways.”
“It does not always have to do with the house then?” she asks.
“It has more to do with making sure my clients spend time in a certain area. Although sometimes the house plays an especially important role, like it did for Sandrine.”
Abril reaches across the table and takes my hands. She squeezes them and says, “Oh Emily, I cannot wait to find out where my happy ending is going to happen. I am so ready.”
There’s a sadness, an almost desperation about her that makes me wonder what her story really is. But she doesn’t seem to want to talk about it beyond telling me that she doesn’t want to live in Century City.
I promise to be in touch with her soon and advise her to keep an open mind. She assures me she doesn’t care if her future husband is a gardener or a king. She only wants love.
What in the world happened to this poor woman?