In the end everything happens for a reason, and the day Ulises is out of the house is the day Zach calls Heather & invites her to lunch, so he can give her the poems & drawing Frankie made for her. He suggests they meet at a sports bar not far from the UCLA campus. Not Heather's usual kind of thing, the only sport she can talk about is soccer. He tells her he's not into sports at all, but he's familiar with this place because he used to study & drink in here when he was a student at UCLA.

It's convenient to the Indian restaurant where he made them lunch reservations. Heather's never tried Indian food, though there are tons of Indian restaurants in L.A. Adventerous girl that she is, she looks forward to trying something new.

Heather kicks Zach's butt at table soccer. She's kind of forgotten she's supposed to be grieving for poor Frankie, and she's just being Heather.

Zach obviously eats here a lot, because he knows every dish on the menu & helps Heather choose some tasty dishes. He not only knows Indian food, but he's an expert on the Hindu religions. "I did a double major in quantum physics & comparative religions," he tells her & goes on to tell her about the various gods & goddess depicted in the art around them. Zach looks like Frankie, but he sure doesn't talk like Frankie! The service is slow in this restaurant, but Heather is never bored for a second. Everything Zach says is mind blowingly interesting, though she dosn't really understand any of it.

When they finish eating, Zach gives her a parcel of Frankie's poems & drawings. Heather had almost forgotten why she was here! As he hugs her goodbye, he tells her she can call him anytime she needs someone to talk to. It's an uncomfortable parting for Heather...she enjoyed hanging out with Zach, but she really can't see him again after this. It bothers her that if Ulises asks her what she did today, she won't be able to tell him the truth. And she doesn't want to see Zach again if she can't tell him about Ulises either, and how can she tell him she has a boyfriend, when the only recently dead Frankie was supposed to be filling that role? As she drives home, she continually glances down at Frankie's parcel on the seat beside her. When she gets home, she tears open the envelope & reads Frankie's poor poems with their clunky rhymes, but which expressed a touching sentimentality that probably wouldn't have reduced Heather to tears the way they did, except for his tragic death & her feelings of guilt for not having seen him on his last day in L.A. She seals the package back up & wonders what to do with it. Keeping something like this around is just begging for trouble..Heather can just imagine her dog Bud somehow getting hold of it an tearing it up, scattering Frankie's poems & drawings at Ulises' feet.....but what kind of heartless monster could throw out the love poetry of so ardent a lover, and so recently deceased? She considers burying them in the yard for a moment & then laughs at herself: might as well just hand it to Bud. Finally, she finds an old box with some worn out boots in them: she hides the parcel under the shoes & buries it deep in her closet.

NEXT