Leo drinking my tea and reparing my shower

or trying to.

Showers are kind of my thing. I’ll take a long, hot one and dance with my demons until I have seamlessly steamed them away (if temporarily). Most of my girlfriends have complained that my showers are too hot. I’ve only met one girl in my entire life who takes hotter showers than me. It’s a special thing to stand and clean yourself alongside someone you love, while chit-chatting. It took me a while to figure out that one of the reasons I love showers so much is because I have anxiety. The white noise and hot water quiets my thoughts and regulates my nervous system. Of course, sometimes with a loud bang of construction or a stressful phone call, the equilibrium can wear off only a few seconds later, but for a salient breath I am content.

I got to Canada recently and rented a studio apartment in my mom’s storied building. The walls were crispy white and the windows clean, but the shower did not really work. It was warm and then cold and then hot……..it was all over the place. Despite its chic exterior my bathroom was having an existential crisis. I completed a maintenance request in the elegant hundred year-old building with its elegant hundred year-old tenants. With a golf pencil I wrote on a tiny piece of paper, “My shower doesn’t really get very hot! Thank you very much for your help.”

The next morning, a Sunday, I heard a knock on the door around ten or eleven. I opened it to a bizarrely handsome boy around my age, a repairman named Leo. He had small earrings and a star face. I was wearing white cotton pajamas with my hair in a low bun and kind of felt like a pretty girl in a really nice insane asylum. Like, would he think it was weird I showered, styled my hair, and then got back into my pajamas? I asked him if he would like a cup of black tea with honey and cream, as I’d just made a whole French press of it, and he nodded. “So, you want to boil like a chicken?” he asked. I smiled. I felt seen. He tried but ultimately did not know how to fix it himself. He would have to call the plumber.

Together I sat and he leaned, and we spoke Spanglish as he is from Columbia (and I am from Los Angeles). He told me that the drink reminded him of the one his mother used to make. I told him this made me so happy. We talked about homelands and countryhood, about fresh starts and the tropical/desert climates of our respective youths. We ate fake oreos from Whole Foods and moaned as for some reason they tasted so fresh, or maybe we were just having a good time. Suddenly I felt a little less stressed about everything. Suddenly I cared a little less about the intricacies of the shower. I guess in the end what I really needed even more than a shower, was a friend.