Los Angeles Noir

THE GOLDEN GOPHERBY SUSAN STRAIGHT

Downtown

Nobody walked from Echo Park to Downtown. Only a walkin fool.

But in the fifteen years I’d lived in L.A., I’d only met a few walkin fools. L.A. people weren’t cut out for ambulation, as my friend Sidney would have said if he were here. But the people of my childhood weren’t here. They were all back in Rio Seco.

The only walkin fools here were homeless people, and they walked to pass the time or collect the cans or find the church people serving food, or to erase the demons momentarily. They needed air passing their ears like sharks needed water passing their gills to survive.

But me-I’d been a walkin fool since I was sixteen and walked twenty-two miles one night with Grady Jackson, who was in love with my best friend Glorette. I’d been thinking about that night, because someone had left a garbled message on my home phone around midnight-something about Glorette. It sounded like my brother Lafayette, but when I’d listened this morning, all I heard was her name.

Grady Jackson and his sister were the only other people I knew from Rio Seco who lived in L.A. now, and I always heard he was homeless and she worked in some bar. I had never seen them here. Never tried to. That night years ago, when he stole a car, I’d wanted to come to L.A., where I thought my life would begin.

But I had thought of Grady Jackson every single day of my life, sometimes for a minute and sometimes for much of the evening, since that night when I realized that we were both walkin fools, and that no one would ever love me like he loved Glorette.

I came out my front door and stepped onto Delta, then turned onto Echo Park Avenue. My lunch meeting with the editor of the new travel magazine Immerse was at 1:00. I had drunk one cup of coffee made from my mother’s beans, roasted darker than the black in her cast-iron pan. When I went home to Rio Seco, she always gave me a bag. And I had eaten a bowl of cush-cush like she made me when I was small-boiled cornmeal with milk and sugar.

All the things I’d hated when I was young I wanted now. I could smell the still-thin exhaust along the street. It smelled silver and sharp this early. Like wire in the morning, when my father and brothers unrolled it along the fenceline of our orange groves.

All day I would be someone else, and so I’d eaten my childhood.

When I got close to Sunset, I saw the homeless woman who always wore a purple coat. Her shopping cart was full with her belongings, and her small dog, a rat terrier, rode where a purse would have been. She pushed past me with her head down. Her scalp was pink as tinted pearls.

At Sunset, I headed toward Downtown.

Downtown, receptionists and editors always said, “Parking is a bitch, huh?” I always nodded in agreement-I bet it was a bitch for them. If someone said, “Oh my God, did you get caught up in that accident on the 10?” I’d shake my head no. I hadn’t.

And I never took the bus. Never. Walking meant you were eccentric or pious or a loser-riding the bus meant you were insane or masochistic and worse than a loser.

I had a car. Make no mistake-I had the car my father and brothers had bought me when I was twenty-two and graduating from USC. They wanted to make sure I came home to Rio Seco, which was fifty-five miles away. My father was an orange grove farmer and my brothers were plasterers. They drove trucks. They bought me a Chevy Corsica, and I always smiled to think of myself as a pirate.

I was like a shark too-or like the homeless people. I needed to walk every day, wherever I was, traveling for a piece or just home. I needed constant movement. And every time I walked somewhere, I thought of Grady Jackson. Now that I was thirty-five, it seemed like my mind placed those rememories, as my mother called them, into the days just to assure me of my own existence.

I’d have time in the Garment District before lunch. One thing about walkin fools-they had to have shoes.

I had on black low-heeled half-boots today, and flared jeans, and a pure white cotton shirt with pleats that I’d gotten in Oaxaca. It was my uniform, for when I had to move a long way through a city. Boots, jeans, and plain shirt, and my hair slicked back and held in a bun. Nothing flashy, nothing too money or too poor. A woman walking-you wanted to look like you had somewhere to go, not like you were rich and ready to be robbed, and not like a manless searching female with too much jewelry and cleavage.

Down Sunset, the movement in my feet and hips and the way my arms swung gently and my little leather bag bumped my side calmed me. My brain wasn’t thinking about bills or my brother Lafayette, who’d just left his wife and boys, or that Al Green song I’d heard last night that made me cry because no one would ever sing that to me now and slide his hands across my back, like the boys did when we were at house parties back in Rio Seco. When we were young. “I’m so glad you’re mine,” Al sang, and his voice went through me like the homemade mescal I’d tried in Oaxaca, in an old lady’s yard where only a turkey watched us.

No one I knew now, in this life, at all the parties and receptions and gallery openings, felt like that-like the boys with us back home, in someone’s yard after midnight. Throats vibrating close to our foreheads, hands sliding across our shoulder blades. Girl, just-Just lemme get a taste now. Come on.

When I was home lately, I had trouble working. I looked at old things like my mother’s clothespins and a canvas bag I used to wear across my shoulder when we picked oranges in my father’s grove.

But walking, I was who I had become-a travel writer everyone wanted to hire.

I’d written about the Bernese Oberland for Conde Nast, about Belize for Vogue, about Brooklyn for Traveler.

I passed vacant lots tangled with morning glories like banks of silver-blue coins, and the sheared-off cliffs below an old apartment complex, where shopping carts huddled like ponies under the Grand Canyon.

I looked at my watch. 8:45. I smelled all the different coffees wending through the air from doughnut shops and convenience stores. Black bars were slid aside like stiffened spiderwebs. Every morning in late summer, my mother and I would brush aside the webs from the trees in our yard, the ones made each night by desperate garden spiders. Here, everyone was desperate to get the day started and make that money.

My cell rang while I was waiting for the light at Beaudry.

“FX?” It was Rick Schwarz, the editor.

“Yup,” I said.

“So what does that stand for?” He laughed. He was in his car.

“It stands for my name, Rick.”

He laughed again. “We still on for 1:00? Clifton’s Cafeteria?”

“Sounds fine,” I said.

“So-I don’t know what you look like. You never have a contributor’s photo.”

“I look absolutely ordinary,” I said, my body lined up with a statue in the window of a botanica. “See you at 1.”

I stood there for a minute, the sun behind me, tracing the outline of the Virgen de Soledad. These people must be from Oaxaca, because this virgin, with her black robe in a wide triangle covered with gold, her face severe and impassive, was their patron saint. I had prayed before her in a cathedral there, because my mother asked me to do so each place I went. My mother’s house was full of saints.

Across Beaudry, I could see the mirrored buildings glinting like sequined disco dresses in the hot sun. My phone rang again.

“Fantine?”

“Yes, Papa,” I said. I tried to keep walking, but then he was silent, and I had to lean against a brick building in the shade.

“That your tite phone?” he said. My little phone-my cell.

“Yes, Papa.”

“You walk now?”

“I’m going downtown,” I said. “Does Mama want something? Some toys?” I could stop by the toy district today, if my nephews wanted something special.

My father said, “Fantine. Somebody kill Glorette. You better come home, oui. Tomorrow. Pay your respect, Fantine.”

Then he hung up.

No one ever called me by my name. I had been FX Antoine for ten years, since I decided to become a writer. Only my family and my Rio Seco friends knew my name at all.

That was why I’d always loved L.A., especially Downtown. No one knew who I was. No one knew what I was. People spoke to me in Spanish, in Farsi, in French. My skin was the color of walnut shells. My hair was black and straight and held tightly in a coil. My eyes were slanted and opaque. I just smiled and listened.

But Glorette-even if she’d worn a sack, when she walked men would stare at her. They wanted to touch her. And women hated her.

Glorette had skin like polished gold, and purple-black eyes, and brows like delicate crow feathers, and her lips were full and defined and pink without lipstick. She was nearly iridescent-did that fade when blood stopped moving? Now she was dead.

I bit my lip and walked, along Temple and down to Spring Street, where crowds of people moved quickly, all of them with phone to ear, or they spoke into those mouthpieces like schizophrenics. And the homeless people were talking quietly to themselves or already shouting. Everyone was speaking to invisible people.

My father’s voice had lasted only a few minutes. I don’t talk into no plastic and holes, he always said. Like breathin on a pincushion.

He’d said Glorette was dead.

I stopped at the El Rey, one of the tiny shacks with a dropdown window that sold burritos and coffee. My father, when he came from Louisiana to California and began working groves, learned to eat burritos instead of biscuits and syrup. I wanted horrible coffee, not good coffee like my mother’s, like Glorette’s mother’s, like all the women I’d grown up with on my small street. All of them from Louisiana, like my parents. The smell of their coffee beans roasting every morning, and the sound of the tiny cups they drank from even after dark, on the wood porches of our houses, when the air had cooled and the orange blossoms glowed white against the black leaves.

But the man who handed me the coffee smiled, and his Mayan face-eyes sharp and dark as oleander leaves, teeth square as Chiclets-looked down into mine. I put the coins in his palm. Pillows of callus there. I sipped the coffee and he said, “Bueno, no?”

So good-cinnamon and nighttime and oil. “Que bueno,” I said. “Gracias.” He thought I was Mexican.

Then tears were rolling down my face, and I ducked into an alley. Urine and beer and wet newspaper. Glorette was dead. I closed my eyes.

Glorette-when we were fourteen, we walked two miles to high school, and her long stride was slow and measured as a giraffe’s. Her legs long and thin, her body small, and the crescent of white underneath the purple-black iris that some-how made her seem as if she were sleepily studying everyone. Her hair to her waist, but every day I coiled it for her into a bun high on her skull. All day, men imagined her hair down along her back, tangled in their hands. I wore mine in a bun because I didn’t want it in my way while I did my homework and wrote my travel stories about places I’d made up. Always islands, with hummingbirds and star fruit because I liked the name.

Every boy in Rio Seco loved her. But I talked too much smack. I couldn’t wait to leave. If someone said, “Fantine, you think you butter, but your ass is Nucoa like everybody else,” I’d say, “Yet all you deserve is Crisco.”

Grady Jackson had fallen for Glorette so hard that he stole a car for her, and nearly died, but she felt nothing for him, and he’d never forgiven her.

Grady Jackson and his sister Hattie were from Cleveland by way of Mississippi. Grady. He hated his name. He was in my math class, though I was two years younger, and he wrote Breeze on top of his papers. Mr. Klein gave them back and said, “Write your proper name.”

Grady said to me, “I want somebody call me Breeze. Say, I’m fittin to hat up, Breeze, you comin? Cause my mama name me for some sorry-ass uncle down in Jackson. Jackson, Missippi, and my name Jackson. Fucked up. And she in love with some fool name Detroit.”

Glorette. We were freshmen, and a senior basketball player who had just moved here was talking to her every day. “Call me Detroit, baby. Where I’m from. Call me anything you want, cause you fine as wine and just my kind.”

But Detroit had no car. Glorette smiled, her lips lifting only a little at the corners, and turned her head with the heavy pile of hair on top, her neck curved, and Detroit, who had reddish skin and five freckles on top of each cheek, said, “Damn, they grow some hella fine women out here in California.”

He didn’t even look at me.

That weekend, I was on my front porch when Grady Jackson pulled up in a car. My brothers Lafayette and Reynaldo had an old truck, and they jumped down from the cab. “Man, you got a Dodge Dart? Where the hell you get the money? You ain’t had new kicks for a year. Still wearin them same Converse.”

Grady looked up at me. “Glorette in your house? Her mama said she ain’t home.”

I saw his heavy brown cheeks, the fro that wouldn’t grow no matter how he combed it out, and his T-shirt with the golden sweat stains under his arms. Should have just called himself Missippi and made fun of it, learned to rap like old blues songs and figured himself out. But Cleveland had already messed him up. I said, “She’s home. She’s waiting for Detroit to call her after his game.”

He spun around and looked at Glorette’s house, across the dirt street from mine, and said, “She think that fool gonna take her to L.A.? She keep sayin she want to go to L.A. I got this ride, and I’m goin. You know what, Fantine? Tell her I come by here and I went to L.A. without her. Shit.”

Then Lafayette said to him, “Grady, man, come in the barn and get a taste.”

My brothers had hidden a few beers in the barn. When Grady went with them, I didn’t even hesitate. I’d wanted to go to Los Angeles my whole life. I got into the Dart and lay down in the backseat.

When Grady started the car, he turned the radio up real loud, so Glorette could hear it, I figured, and then he spun the wheels and called out to my brothers, “Man, I’ma check out some foxy ladies in L.A.!” I could smell the pale beer when his breath drifted into the back. He played KDAY, some old Commodores, and then he talked to himself for a long time. I knew the car must be on the freeway, by the steady uninterrupted humming. I had never been on a freeway.

“She always talkin bout L.A. Broadway. Detroit don’t hear nothin. He don’t know how to get to L.A. He know Detroit. She coulda been checkin out a club. Checkin L.A.”

I fell asleep on the warm seat, and when the car jerked to a stop, I woke up. Grady was crying. His breath was ragged in his throat, I could smell the salt on his face, and his fists pounded the steering wheel. “There. I seen it, okay? And you didn’t. You didn’t see shit cause you waitin on some fool-ass brotha who just want to play you.”

I sat up and saw Los Angeles. The city of angels. But it was just a freeway exit and some narrow streets with hulking black buildings. I remembered one said Hotel Granada, windows with smoke stains like black scarves flying from the empty sills.

Grady looked back and said, “Fantine? What the hell you doin in here?”

I walked down Broadway, where the butt models showed off curvier jeans than you’d see on Melrose or Rodeo. No mannequins in the doorways of some stores-just the bottom half, turned cheeks to shoppers. All the stereos blasting ranchero and cumbia and salesmen calling out and jewelry flashing fake gold.

L.A. I had come here for college, and that was it. I wanted to live in an apartment with a fire escape so that I could see it all. See more than orange groves and my father’s truck and the ten grove houses set along our street. I wanted to live above a restaurant, to watch people all day long, people who weren’t related to me. I knew everyone’s story at home, or I thought I did.

Now I lived in a lovely Mediterranean castle building, and I had a lunch meeting, and I wanted shoes. I wasn’t going to think about Grady and Glorette. I walked along Broadway, turned on 8th, and then headed down Los Angeles toward the Garment District.

“No one shops downtown,” people always said to me at receptions or parties in Hollywood or Westwood. When I was at a tapas party in Brentwood the week before, someone said, “Oh my God, I had to go downtown with my mother-in-law because her Israeli cousin works in the Jewelry District. I thought I would die. Then she wanted to see another cousin who sells jeans wholesale in some alley. Nobody speaks English, people can’t drive, and we took a wrong turn and ended up in Nairobi. I swear. It was like Africa. All these homeless people on the street and they were all black.”

“African American,” someone else said smugly, holding up his martini glass.

“They were tribal. Living in cardboard boxes.”

“But is that better than dung huts in Africa?” the same guy said. “Did you know that people are so resourceful they make houses out of crap?”

I drank my apple martini. The color of caterpillar blood. Had they ever cut a caterpillar in half after they pulled it off a tomato plant?

I said, “People made houses out of shit everywhere. Sod houses in the Great Plains-back then, there must have been old poop in that grass and earth. Adobe bricks-must have been some old mastodon shit in that. Dung houses just seem more unadulterated.”

They looked at me. I thought, Where did that word come from? No adult added?

“Sorry. I’m-I’m Tom Jenkins,” the guy said.

“FX Antoine,” I said. Then the woman’s face changed.

“You’re FX Antoine? I love your stuff! I do ads for Lucky.”

I smiled. I drank my caterpillar blood and turned gracefully away while she studied me, reaching for a crusty bread round spread with tapenade.

The sidewalks were wet here, as I passed the Flower District with gladiol spears in buckets, and carnations that didn’t smell sweet. I still loved these streets, the doors sliding up to reveal roses and jeans and blankets. I slowed down in the Garment District, with rows of jeweled pointy-toed pumps everyone wanted now, and the glittery designer knockoff gowns. Usually everything looked like pirate treasure to me.

But today the voices were harsh. The men from Israel and Iran and China and Mexico hollering at the sales clerks and delivery guys, looking at me and dismissing me. I wore no veil, and I wasn’t a buyer. They wanted wholesalers, not women who were headed to work, trying to get a bargain.

I ain’t no blue-light special. Hattie had said that. I shop in Downtown L.A., she bragged to us when she came home to Rio Seco once after she’d moved here to become an actress. That was Grady’s sister’s name. Hattie Jackson. She said she’d never go to Kmart again in her life. But I still hadn’t seen her on television or in a movie.

I sat in one of the tiny burger places and called my brother. “Lafayette?”

“You heard?” he said. His radio was going, and my brother Reynaldo was singing. They must be on a job.

“Yeah.”

“Man, Glorette was in this alley behind the taqueria, you remember that one close to here? She was in a shoppin cart. Her hair was all down. Somebody had been messin with her.” He paused, but I didn’t ask, and so he told me. “Look like she had a belt around her neck. But we don’t know what got her. Or who.”

Got gotted. I hadn’t heard that for a while. She done got gotted. Damn. I said, “What about Grady Jackson?”

My brother said, “Who?”

“Grady. The one she was supposed to marry, after she got pregnant and that musician left her.”

“What about Grady? That country-ass brotha been gone.”

“I know, Lafayette,” I said. Hamburgers hissed behind me. “He lives somewhere in L.A. I should tell him.”

“Sprung fool. Only one might know is his sister. Remember? She was gon be on TV. She worked in some place called Rat or Squirrel. Some bar. I remember she said it was just part-time while she was waitin for this movie about some jazz singer. I gotta go. Naldo callin me.”

I walked back up Los Angeles Street toward Spring again. I didn’t want shoes.

All these years, I had never wanted to look up Hattie Jackson in the phone book. I didn’t really know if Grady was homeless or not-I’d just heard it when I was home in Rio Seco. Someone would say his cousin had heard Grady lived on the streets in a cardboard box, and all I could think of was being a child, in a box from my mother’s new refrigerator, drawing windows with magic marker, Glorette sitting beside me.

I had left all that behind, and I didn’t want to remember it-every memory made me feel good, for the smell of the oranges we kept in a bowl inside our box house, and then bad, for not being there to help my father during the harvest. I didn’t want to see Hattie, or Grady.

Sprung fool. Growing up, I always heard my brothers and their friends talk about fools. Man, that is one ballplayin fool. Don’t do nothin but dribble. Damn, Cornelius is a drinkin fool.

When I went to college, I heard Shakespeare. The fool. Fool, make us laugh. Go tell the fool he is needed. When I went to England, I saw the dessert Raspberry Fool. I closed my eyes, back then, tasting the cream and cake, thinking of Grady Jackson.

How you gon get sprung like that over one woman? That’s what my brothers always said to him.

He came to the barn another night, and my brothers were working on a car. I stood in the doorway, watching him hold his right hand in a rag. Grady said to Lafayette, “She over there at her mama’s? Glorette?”

Lafayette said, “Man, she told me she was movin in with Dakar soon as he got a record deal. Said they was gettin a place together. I don’t keep track of that girl.”

Grady said, “I heard him say it. Dakar. He was playin bass in a club, and I heard him tell somebody, ‘I gotta book, man, I gotta get to L.A. or New York so I can get me a deal. Tired of this country-ass place.’ So I hatted him up.”

My brother said, “Damn, fool, your finger bleedin! He done bit off your finger?”

The red stain was big as a hibiscus flower on the dirty rag. Grady said, “He pulled a knife on me. Man, I kicked his ass and told him to go. He was gon come back and then book again, leave Glorette all the time. I just-I told him to stay away.” He was panting now, his upper lip silver with sweat. “Forever.”

He pushed past me and said nothing. I had already been accepted to college, and Glorette had told me she was pregnant with Dakar’s child-I’d seen a swell high up under her breasts, awkward on her body like when we used to put pillows inside our shirts in that refrigerator house.

I left for college, and when I came back in the summer, my brothers told me what had happened. Grady had been driving a Rio Seco city trash truck for a year, made good money, and he rented a little house. When Dakar didn’t come back, and Glorette had the baby-a boy-Grady took her in and said he’d marry her. But after a year of not loving him, of still loving a man who got ghost, she left him to get sprung herself-on rock cocaine-and she refused to ever love anyone again.

I walked through the Toy District again, the dolls and bright boxes and stuffed animals from China and Mexico. Glorette’s son would be a teenager now.

Often my mother would call and say, “Marie-Therese and them wonder can you get a scooter. For her grandson. Out there in L.A.”

To everyone from back home, L.A. was one big city. They didn’t know L.A. was a thousand little towns, entire worlds recreated in arroyos and strawberry fields and hillsides. And Downtown had canyons of black and silver glass, the Grand Central Market, Broadway, and its own favela.

That’s where I was headed now. I was close to 3rd and Main. If you hadn’t been to Brazil, and you hadn’t seen a favela-that’s what Skid Row looked like. The houses made of cardboard, the caves dug out under the freeway overpasses, the men sprawled out sleeping on the sidewalk right now, cheeks against the chain-link.

Were they all fools for something? Someone?

Would Grady Jackson still be on the street? Would he be alive?

All the men-sleeping with outstretched fingers near my heels, pushing carts, doing ballet moves between cars-black men with gray hair, heavy beards, bruise-dark cheeks, a Mexican man with a handlebar moustache and no teeth who grinned at me and said, “Hey, payasa.” A man my age, skin like mine, his hair dreaded up in a non-hip way. Like bad coral. He sat on the curb, staring at tires.

I kept moving. How would I find Grady among these thousands of people? And why would he still care about Glorette?

Sprung fool.

I glanced down an alley and saw a woman standing in the doorway of a port-a-potty. She lifted her chin at me. Her cheeks were pitted and scarred, her black hair like dead seaweed, and her knees gray as rain puddles. Then a man whispered in her ear and she pulled him inside by his elbow, and closed the door.

Glorette. She wanted to go wherever Sere Dakar went. He played the bass and the flute. He played songs for her. He left when she was seven months pregnant. Nothing mattered to her but living inside a cloud, and yet she was still beautiful. The bones in her face lovelier. She smoked rock all night, walked up and down the avenues like the guys who passed me now, their faces crack-gaunt.

A man waved and hollered high above me. Construction workers were gutting one of the old banks and an old SRO hotel. I saw the signs for luxury lofts on the building’s roof. I turned on Spring Street.

Rat or Squirrel. What was Lafayette talking about? Hattie Jackson had a TV gig? I needed more coffee, and I needed to get myself together before meeting Rick, so I headed to Clifton’s Cafeteria.

As I left Skid Row, the haunted men became fewer, like emissaries sent out among the rest of us. The other thousands and thousands of homeless people had packed their tents and boxes and sleeping bags and coats and melted into invisibility because now the day was truly the day.

I tried, but had no heart for it. Rick was short, and thin, and handsome, and funny. He held his tray like a shield, and then put soup and salad on it and laughed at the greenery in Clifton’s. I put away the notebook where I’d tried to write about Oaxaca, and mole, and mescal.

Rick sat down and said, “So, since you’re a world traveler, it’s good to know where you’re from.”

“Here. Southern California.”

“L.A.?”

“No.” I picked up one fry. “Rio Seco.”

“Really?” He studied me. “Where’s that?”

“Have you been to Palm Springs?”

“Of course! I love mid-century.”

“Well, it’s on the way.” I smiled slightly. I didn’t know him well enough to explain. “Where are you from?”

Rick said, “Brooklyn.”

“What part?”

He raised his eyebrows, like black commas. “Ah-hah. Fort Greene.”

“Cool,” I said. “Nice coffeehouse there. Tillie’s.”

He grinned, all the way this time. “But I live on Spring Street now. New loft. It’s echoing, I’ve got so much space to fill.”

I looked out the window at the shoulders bumping past. “Don’t you worry about all the homeless people?”

“Worry?” He slanted his head.

“Do they bother you?”

“They keep to themselves,” Rick said. “Everyone has parameters, and most people seem to respect those parameters.”

I nodded and ate another fry. Like powder inside. Parameters and boundaries and demarcation. I could never explain that to my mother, or to Glorette.

Rick looked up under my lowered eyes. “But you know what? It’s scary when you’re walking past a guy and he looks dead. I mean really dead. Laid out on the sidewalk in a certain way.”

Without any parameters, I thought. Not even curled up properly.

“And then you see him shiver or snore.” He moved a piece of mandarin orange around on his plate. “Anyway.”

Time for work. The way Rick put down his fork meant business. He said, “Let me tell you about Immerse. People don’t want to just take a trip. They want immersion, journeys, a week or two that can change their lives. Change the way they feel about themselves and the world.”

No, they didn’t, I thought. I looked at the haze in the window. They wanted to read about me walking down an alley in Belize, me going to the Tuba City swap meet and eating frybread tacos and meeting an old woman who made turquoise jewelry. But they really just wanted a week-long cruise to Mazatlán where they never even got off the boat but once to buy souvenirs. A week in Maui where they swam on a black sand beach and then went to Chili’s for dinner at the mall near the condo complex.

A woman paused to adjust her shopping bags, and she looked straight at me in the window and smiled.

I looked like anyone. A sista, a homegirl, a payasa. Belizean. Honduran. Creole.

“How about Brazil?” Rick said. “You look like you could be Brazilian. FX.”

“Where in Brazil?”

“Not the usual. Find somewhere different.”

He was challenging me. “Have you ever been in love?” I asked him, partly just to see what his face would do, but partly because editors realized I never mentioned any Handsome Gentleman or Nameless Boyfriend who accompanied me. I was clearly alone, and because of my adventurousness and initials, mysterious.

“Twice,” Rick said, looking right at me. “In high school, and she dumped me for a football player. In college, and she dumped me for a professor. Now I’m in love with my apartment and my job.”

None of us, at the parties or lunches, were ever in love. That was why we made good money and ate good food and lived where we wanted to. And yet Grady, and Glorette, had always been in love, and they’d never had anything but that love.

“My name is Fantine Xavierine,” I said. I looked into his eyes-brown as coffee. Mine were lemon-gold. “I was named for a slave woman who helped my great-great-grandmother survive in Louisiana.”

“Okay,” he said. He glanced down, at his fork. “I like that. So you’ll be fine in Brazil.”

I walked with him for a block toward Spring Street. It was after 2:00. I could head home now. Rick said, “You know, this place was worse than a ghost town a few years back, because the ghosts were real. But now all these hip places have shown up. There’s a bar people in the office are going to lately-the Golden Gopher. I guess it was a dive before.”

Rat. Gopher.

“Thanks, Rick,” I said, and I touched his arm. Gym strong. He was shoulder to shoulder with me. “I’ll call you.”

I remembered it now. 8th and Olive. Grady had driven down dark streets for a long time, looking for it, and from the backseat, I was dizzy seeing the flashes of neon and stoplights. Then I saw through the back window a neon stack of letters. Golden Gopher.

I walked toward 8th. Grady had parked and then he’d seen me. He’d said, “I can’t leave you here. Somebody get you, and your brothers kill me. Come on.”

At Olive, I rounded the corner, and a film crew with three huge trucks and a parade of black-shirted young guys with goatees was swarming 8th Street. They didn’t notice me. They were filming the tops of apartment buildings, where a young man was looking out the window of a place he would probably never live. A place probably meant to be New York or Chicago or Detroit.

There was no neon in this light. There was only a façade of black tile, and a door, and a sign that read, Golden Gopher. It didn’t open until 5 p.m.

The security guy noticed me now. A brother with cheeks pitted as a cast-iron pot. His badge glinted in the light from a camera. “Excuse me,” he said.

“You’re in the movies,” I said, and I moved away.

Even I couldn’t walk for another two hours. I looked for a Dunkin’ Donuts or somewhere I could sit, and suddenly realized how much my feet hurt, how much my head hurt. I never felt like this in Belize or Oaxaca, because I’d be back in my hotel or in the bar, listening and watching. Now I was like a homeless person, just waiting, wanting to rest for a couple of hours.

I sat at a plastic-topped table and closed my eyes.

Hattie was twenty-two then, and Grady was eighteen, and I was only a freshman. He’d pulled me by the arm into the doorway of the club, past a knot of drunken men. One of them put his palm on my ass, fit his fingers around my jeans pocket as if testing bread, and said, “How much?”

Grady jerked me away and up to the bar, and a man said, “You can’t bring that in here. Underage shit.”

A line of men sat at the bar, and someone knocked over a beer when he stood up. Then his sister spoke from behind the counter. She said, “Grady. What the hell.”

Hattie was beautiful. Not like Glorette. Hattie’s face was round and brown-gold and her hair straightened into a shining curve that touched her cheeks. Her lips were full and red. Chinese, I thought back then. Black Chinese. Her dress with the Mandarin collar.

She pushed three glasses of beer across the counter and someone reached past my neck and took them. Smoke and hair touched my cheek. I remembered. The bar was dark and smelled of spilled beer and a man was shouting in the doorway, “I’ll fire you up!” and through an open back door I could hear someone vomiting in the alley.

“I wanted to come see you,” Grady said. Sweat like burned biscuits at his armpits, staining his T-shirt. “See L.A. The big city.”

“Go home,” Hattie said. “Right now, before somebody kicks your country ass. Take that Louisiana girl wit you.”

I looked at Hattie, her contempt. She thought I was Glorette. I said, “I was born in California. I’m gonna live in L.A. myself. But I’m not gonna work in a bar.”

I thought she’d be mad, but she said, “You probably not gonna work at all, babyface.”

Grady pulled me back out the door, and this time the hand fit itself around my breast, just for a moment, and someone said, “Why buy the cow?”

Then we were driving again in the Dart, and Grady was murmuring to himself, “They got a bridge. She said.”

He drove up and down the streets, and I said, “The full moon rises in the east. Papa said. Look.”

He drove east, and the moon was like a dirty dime in front of us, and we took a beautiful bridge over the Los Angeles River, which raced along the concrete, not like our river. Grady said, “We can’t get on the freeway again.”

“Why not?”

“Shit, Fantine, cause I stole this car, and you ain’t but fourteen. John Law see me, I’m goin to jail.”

He drove down side roads along the freeway, past factories and small houses and winding around hills. The Dart ran out of gas in Pomona.

We were on Mission Boulevard, and Grady said, “You wanted to come. Now walk.”

I walked slowly back toward 8th. It was nearly 5:00 and the sun was behind the buildings, but the sidewalks were still warm. I was carried along in a wave of people leaving work. Homeless men were already staking out sidewalk beds in alleys. Back at the bar, the blackness was like a cave, tile and door so dark it was as if someone had carved out the heart of the building. The film crew was gone. A pink curtain waved in an open window where they’d trained the camera.

A bucket slammed down on the sidewalk, and someone began to wash off the tile. A homeless guy. Green army coat, black sneakers glistening with fallen foam from his brush and rag, and black jeans shiny with wear and dirt. His hair was thin and nappy, and a brown spot showed on the side of his head, like the entrance to an anthill.

Grady. No. Uh-uh. Grady?

He’d had ringworm in Mississippi, when he was a kid, and he’d always combed his natural over that place. Grady. His hand moved back and forth over the tile, washing off fingerprints and smudges. He was missing the end of his right ring finger.

I couldn’t do it. I pressed myself against the building across the street. Hey, Grady, remember me? I wish I could get to know you again, have lunch, tapas or sushi, and then take a couple weeks before I tell you Glorette got killed by somebody in an alley, and she still only loved a guy who left her.

I watched him for ten minutes. He washed the tile, wiped down the door, and polished the gold handle with a different rag. Then he stepped back and turned to look at something above my head.

I didn’t move. His eyes crossed over me but didn’t pause. He went inside, and he never came back out.

Other people stepped in now that the door was open. Two actors from The OC. Three young women wearing heels and carrying briefcases. A guy in a suit.

I crossed the street and went inside. This was not a dive. It looked like Liberace had decorated, with chandeliers and black pillars and even little lamps with gopher shades in gold. I squinted. The jukebox played Al Green. My eyes hurt from saltwater and darkness, and I didn’t see Grady Jackson.

The bartender leaned forward and said, “You okay?” He had a two-tone bowling shirt on, and a porkpie and side-burns.

“Does Hattie Jackson work here?” I said. The bar was cool under my fingers.

“Who?”

“She’s about forty. She was a bartender here.”

A young woman-Paris Hilton-blond but with cool black roots, and a satin camisole-came up behind the bar and squinted. “She means Gloria, I’ll bet.”

Gloria was in an alcove to the side. It was like a little liquor store, and she was arranging bottles of Grey Goose and Ketel One. Her nails were red. But her lips were thin and brown. She looked old.

“Hattie?”

“Gloria Jones,” she said to me. I leaned against the wall. My hips hurt, somehow. She knew me. She said, “When I came here, you had Pam Grier and Coffy and all them. My mama named me Hattie after the one in Gone with the Wind. Who the hell want to be a maid? I changed my name long time ago. After you was here with my fool-ass brother.”

“Was that him? Outside?”

She nodded. “Comes to clean, and then he walks again. He got five, six routes a day. You know. He goes all the way along the river till Frogtown. Comes back later.” She pushed the bottles around. “I don’t get much tips over here. People don’t buy this shit till they ready to go to a private party.”

“You’ve been here all this time.”

She shrugged. “Seem like not much longer.” She wore a wig. The hairs were perfect. “After my senior year. I was fine as wine, but even the hookers in L.A. was something else. Hollywood was crazy. I came downtown to get me an apartment and wait for the right movie. Did the dancing place for a month.”

“The dancing place?”

“Over on Olympic. The men dance with you for ten dollars and they gotta buy you them expensive drinks. But they smelled. Lord, they all smelled different, and some of them, the heat comin off their underarms and neck and you could smell it comin up from their pants. Even if they had cologne, just made it worse. I couldn’t do it. I came here, and I was behind the counter forever serving drinks. The guys would tip me good, all the old drunks, and I went to the movies every night after work. Now the theaters are all Spanish. I just get me a video after work. And I sleep till I come in. I live next door.”

I didn’t know what to say. Her eyes were brown and muddy, as if washed in tea. “They were filming your building today.”

She shrugged. “Always doin somethin. Now that Downtown is cool again. Grady can’t even get his food in the alley now. Miss Thang at the bar like a hawk.”

“He comes back for dinner?”

Gloria looked around and nodded. “I used to take my plate out there early, before we got started. Take me two enchiladas and rice. Hold a extra plate under there and gave him half. Used to have Mexican food in here. Not now.” She glanced out over her counter. “Now the little old actors be out in the alley. Think they big time.”

I walked away from her alcove, past the bar, the bowling-shirt watching me with a puzzled look-What is she? Brazilian?-and out to the alley. It must have been just a place to dump trash before-but now huge couches covered with velvet and pillows lay at each end, and the OC boys were already collapsed on one, with two girls. It was cool to be in a dive, in an alley, drinking Grey Goose martinis.

“Where does he eat now?” I whispered to Hattie, to Gloria, as she marked off bottles on a list.

“In the other alley. Next door,” she said softly. “At 6:00. Every night, I take me a smoke break out there. And I take my purse.”

I waited for Grady there. I ignored the other homeless men, the drunks from down the street who stumbled past the Golden Gopher, the snide comments of one girl wearing a slinky dress who said, “Uh, the library is on 5th, okay?”

I saw him turn the corner and lope slowly toward me, steady, knees bending, arms moving easily at his sides. He stopped about ten feet from me and said, “Fantine?”

I nodded.

He said, “I been waiting for you. All this time.”

His hands were rimmed with black, like my father’s when he’d been picking oranges all night. His eyes were tiny, somehow, like sunflower seeds in the deep wrinkles around them. All that sun. All those miles.

“You told me you was gon come to L.A. And you left for college. I married Glorette. I married her.” His four top teeth were gone, like an open gate to his mouth. “Didn’t nobody know. We went to the courthouse. Me and her.”

I said, “Grady, I came to tell you-”

“I knew you was somewhere in L.A. Me and Glorette went to the courthouse after Sere Dakar was gone. He played the flute. But he wasn’t African. I seen his driver license one time. Name Marquis Parker. He was from Chicago. Call his-self Chi-town sometimes. Told me he was goin to L.A. and play in a band. Glorette was havin a baby.”

“He’d be seventeen now,” I said. “Her son.”

But Grady stepped closer, the ripe sweet smell of urine and liquor and onions rising from his coat. “No. My son. I was gon raise him. Dakar was gon leave every time. So I got him in my truck.”

I tried to remember. Grady had an old Pinto back then. “You didn’t have a truck.”

He trembled, and breathed hard through his mouth. “Fantine. All this time I waited to tell you. Cause I know you won’t tell nobody. You never told nobody about the car. About Pomona.”

I shook my head. My brothers would have beat his ass.

“I waited till Dakar came out that one bar where he played. I told him I had some clothes to sell. Then I busted him in the head and put him in the trash truck. It was almost morning. I took the truck up the hill. To the dump.”

“Grady,” Hattie said from behind me, “shut up.” She dipped a hand in her purse and brought out a foil-wrapped package. “Eat your dinner and shut up. You ain’t done nothin like that.”

“I did.”

“You a lie. You never said nothin to me.”

“Fantine-you was at the barn that night.” He held up his hand, as if to stop me, but he was showing me his finger. “Chicago had a knife. When I got to the dump and went to the back of the truck, he raised up and took a piece of me with him. But I had me a tire iron.”

I looked up at the slice of sky between buildings. Missippi and Cleveland and Louisiana and Chicago-all in California. Men and fathers and fools.

Grady tucked the package against him then, like it was a football. “I was waitin on Fantine. She can tell Glorette he didn’t leave. I disappeared his ass, and then I married her. But she left anyway. She still loved him. I don’t love her now. I’m done.” He brought the package to his lips and breathed in.

“You left him there?” I said. Sere Dakar-his real name something else. A laughing, thin musician with a big natural and green eyes. “At the dump?”

Grady threw his head up to the black sky and dim streetlamps. His throat was scaly with dirt. “The truck was full. I drove it up there and hit the button. Raised it up and dumped it in the landfill. Every morning, the bulldozer covered the layers. Every morning. It was Tuesday.” He stepped toward me. “He had my finger in there with him. I felt it for a long time. Like when I was layin in the bed at night, with Glorette, my finger was still bleedin in Dakar’s hand.” His eyes were hard to see. “Tell her.”

“She’s dead, Grady. I came to tell you. Somebody killed her back in Rio Seco. In an alley. They don’t know who. I’m going to see her tomorrow morning. Pay my respects.” I pictured Glorette lying on a table, the men who would have to comb and coil her hair. Higher on her head than normal, because she couldn’t lie on her back with all that hair gathered in a bun.

We’d always slept with our hair in braids. My eyes filled with tears, until the streetlamps faded to smears and I let down my eyelids hard. The tears fell on the sidewalk. When I looked down, I saw the wet.

Hattie went back inside without speaking to me, and she closed the black door hard. And Grady started to walk away, that familiar dipping lope that I’d watched for hours and hours while just behind him, that night.

I had to call a cab to get home. I went to Rio Seco the next morning in my Corsica. I thought I would see Grady Jackson there, or at the funeral, but I didn’t.

My father said to me, “You goin to Brazil? That far?” He shook his head. “You never fall in love with none of them place. Not one, no.”

I smiled and kissed him on the cheek. I sat all that night in my apartment, listening to Al Green, hearing the traffic on Echo Park Avenue, watching out my window as the palm fronds moved in the wind.

No one ever saw Grady Jackson again. I asked Hattie the following week, and the week after that, and then a month later. She was angry with me, and told me not to come back to the Golden Gopher. “You didn’t have to tell him,” she hissed.

“But he would have known someday,” I said.

“You know what?” she said, her fingers hard as a man’s on my wrist. “I loved my brother. I never loved nobody else in the world, but every day I saw my brother. I can’t never go back home, but he came to me. And you done took that away. You don’t know a damn thing about me or him.”

The next time I went to the bar, she was gone too.

I knew him. I figured he just started walking one day and never went back to Skid Row. Maybe he walked to Venice and disappeared under the waves. Maybe he walked all the way to San Francisco, or maybe he had a heart attack or died of dehydration, still moving.

That night, when we were young, when Grady left the car in Pomona, we walked down Mission Boulevard, leaving behind the auto shops and tire places, moving past vacant lots and tiny motor courts where one narrow walk led past doors behind which we could hear muffled televisions. Junkyard dogs snarled and threw themselves against chain-link. And we moved easy and fast, me just behind Grady. Walking for miles, past strawberry fields where water ran like mercury in the furrows. Walking past a huge pepper tree with a hollow where an owl glided out, pumping wings once and then gone.

That night, we walked like we lived in the Serengeti, I realized all those years later when I watched Grady disappear down 8th into the darkness. Like pilgrims on the Roman roads of France. Like old men in England. Like Indians through rain forests, steady down the trail. Fools craving movement and no words and just the land, all the land, where we left our footprints, if nothing else.

THE KIDNAPPER BELLBY JIM PASCOE

Los Angeles River

Change flows swiftly through L.A. like the shallow river that cuts into downtown on its way to the ocean. But in Los Angeles there are pockets, tiny whirlpools eddying in the stream, where change cannot reach. In those places, things even worse than change can find you.

Five till 7. With the taste of second-hand smoke in his mouth, he settles into a dark corner of his favorite bar in Chinatown, early for his date, ready to dope his new girlfriend. He has two beer bottles from the bar. He sets them on the wobbly square table. He looks around the place: The loud bleached-blonde harassing the bartender, the old men drinking Crown near the door, the smoking Chinese couple, all unconcerned with the packet of crushed powder he’s sifting down into the brown longneck. His eyes dart between them and his work, all the while he’s doing the male math in his head: Four dates and still no sex. Tonight makes five.

He was proud to have walked away from the first date without so much as a kiss goodnight. If you can’t get a second date, she’s not worth sleeping with in the first place. It was date three that made him nervous, caused him to question his game. He knew then she wouldn’t be easy. He even wondered if she really liked him.

Now, it’s been ten days since they last saw each other. He was kicking himself for letting an opportunity with someone so beautiful slip by. He had thought it was all over, until she called earlier today.

Why the call? Why the rush to meet? Perhaps in her mind they were just friends, and this is what friends do, how friends behave. Even if so, what does she want from him?

When she arrives, she looks pale. Sweat darkens the hair around her temples. Her hands look dirty.

“Is this for me?” Slumping into the seat next to him, she grabs the full bottle and lets it drain into her mouth. “Have you been waiting long?”

He stares at her. “No, I haven’t been here long. Are you all right?”

“There was a problem.” She finishes her beer. “I think I need your help.”

“Of course. Anything. But you’re scaring me.”

“We’ve grown close in the last month, haven’t we?”

“Sure.”

She reaches her hand out to touch his arm. Her laughter sounds forced as it cracks, turning into something like crying. Hysteria.

He waits for her to compose herself. She looks around the dark room and says, “Not here. I can’t tell you here.”

He leans back, keeping quiet. He’s being baited and wants no part of it. He is familiar with the dynamics of power, the rules of hunting. Give too much and you can’t take. Push forward and your target retreats. Remain silent and she will open up.

He knows all this. He should have slept with her weeks ago.

She gives in, speaks: “It happened in the river.”

“What river?”

“The river, the L.A. River.”

“What happened?”

“I think… I think I just killed somebody.”

He waits for the punch line, which does not come. There’s no reason for her to lie to him. He fingers the empty powder packet in his suit jacket. Slowly, like powder, his plan dissolves.

He straightens up in his chair, reaches for a new plan. “Maybe we should go back to your place. You can tell me everything there.”

“No. There’s no time.” She lowers her voice. “I’ll take you to the body. You’ll know what to do. I’m in over my head. I trust you.”

He stammers out the beginning of an argument. She is already up, heading toward the door.

Trust. If he thinks about it too much, his muscles tense.

He offers to drive, insists upon it, concerned about her staying alert enough with the substance in her system. She won’t have it. They argue. Unable to reveal why he opposes her getting behind the wheel, he concedes.

She drives east out of Chinatown. They cross the river. A dark left takes them down an industrial service road until they hit Riverside Drive. They exchange no words. She speeds and swerves. He clutches the handle above the window.

Elysian Valley. She gets out of the car, locks the door, and heads toward the entrance of a bike path that runs along the crest of cement lining the deep, empty river basin.

“Hey!” he calls after her. “I think we need a plan. You haven’t told me anything. I want to help you, but I need a little more.”

“It was an accident.” Her words slur.

“Accidents happen.”

“We should walk and talk.” She takes his hand. “He knew so much about the river, more than most Angelenos.”

“So do you.”

“Yeah, well, that’s it. I think he was stalking me. I think… I was next.”

“An old flame?” He looks over the edge of the bike path. A knee-high barrier of loose chain-link tops an almost perpendicular sheer.

“No, I didn’t know him. I mean, I hadn’t ever met him. He started posting anonymous comments on my blog. Every time I wrote an article on the river, he would add his two cents. Sometimes he’d make corrections, sometimes he’d start an argument by taking a contrary point of view. At first I assumed he was with FoLAR-”

“Friends of the L.A. River?” He remembers this detail from her site.

“Yeah. But it didn’t fit. I know most of the gang over there, and he wasn’t anyone I recognized.” Her breathing has become labored. “Later, we e-mailed back and forth. His username was Pavlov.”

“A strange handle.” His eyes adjust, searching for the body. The only light comes from across the river. She tells him the MTA uses this defunct Southern Pacific structure as a place to store their spare light rail train cars. To him it looks like an abandoned factory.

“Wait, wait a second, please. I gotta stop.” She rubs her eyes. “I didn’t realize I was so out of shape.”

He touches her between her shoulder blades. “He wanted to meet you alone at night in the river? How did it get to that point?”

She walks away from his fingers. “Didn’t you ever want something so bad that, well, it’s not that you’d be willing to do anything, it’s that each step adds up and soon you find that you’re over the line, somewhere you shouldn’t be? You’ve got to help me, Jim.”

He does not say anything. His mind is already made up.

She points to where the body is, although he has a hard time seeing it at first. He must walk several yards farther north to where the embankment is gentle enough to descend. He makes his way down, his feet sideways so he doesn’t slip.

The body lies crumpled on the bone-dry, flat edge of the riverbed, several feet away from the small swash of water tracing the center of the channel. The man is dressed in a gray sports coat and jeans. His neck is twisted. His face is down.

“Hey,” he whispers, nudging the guy in the rump with his shoe. “Hey.” He leans down to find a pulse. The guy’s neck is cold.

She whispers down the embankment. “Is he definitely dead?”

“I wouldn’t think a fall down here would kill a guy.”

“He must have snapped his neck. It was a bad fall. From here it’s almost a straight drop.”

He looks up at her.

She says, “What? What are you thinking?”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

He hears her breathing heavily through the sobbing. “He… he took her.”

“Who?”

“Before I pushed him, he, he said I could find her… through… through the six cats. Should’ve went right away, but… got scared. Thought you could help.”

“You’re crazy-you’re not making any fucking sense.” He continues to examine the body, looks in the guy’s pockets. No wallet, no ID, a few dollars in cash. “I’ll help, but you need to start filling me in.”

“What… what are you doing?” Her voice rises like helium.

He pulls something from the body’s right suit pocket. A small metal object. A bell. Caked in dried mud.

He walks to the center of the river, to the water.

“Where are you going? What are you doing?” she asks.

He tries to wash the bell. He shakes it under the water, as if ringing it. No sound comes up past the surface. The cold water is surprisingly swift, like a full-force faucet running over his hand.

“I know you want me, Jim. And I know why you think you can’t have me. Doesn’t matter to me anymore. Find her and… I’ll do anything… I’ll let you do anything.”

Something in the water touches him, something that floats around his hand, something that feels like fingers. He flinches. The bell slips from his grasp.

“Shit,” he says.

“What! What’s going on down there?”

He splashes his hand in and out of the shallow water, but he can’t locate the bell.

“Shit. That guy had something in his pocket and when I tried to clean it off in the river, I dropped it. Now I can’t find it.”

“Was it the bell? Was it?”

He turns around to look up at her. She screams, using all her energy. The effort actually deflates her. Her body withers, goes limp. Her knees strain against the short chain-link fence. It buckles. She topples.

The drug. His drug. Now is its time. Its damage, far from expected, doesn’t seem real. Had she stayed a couple feet back, he would be crawling out of the river, gathering her unconscious body, and returning her home.

But she is too close to the edge. The fence cannot hold her body when she loses consciousness. Her upper body folds over the edge, the momentum carrying her head down fast in a dive. Her feet flip over the fence, and she’s falling. He watches her as she goes down with impressive velocity. Her limp condition might have saved a more substantial body, but her delicate frame snaps when her curved neck crashes into the dry gravel at the bottom. He runs to her, stops in front of her twisted, broken form.

He can hear the river churning, flowing fast behind him; its thimble-full of water, a flood.

He hyperventilates, looks for something to hold, to steady himself. His tongue pumps piston-like into the back of his throat.

What is happening?

He doesn’t bother with a pulse this time. He is afraid to know; although he knows he knows.

He speaks out loud, hoping his voice will give truth to the lies: “This is not my fault. This is not my fault. This is not my fault.”

This is a trap, he thinks, his heart still racing. I see it clearly, this quicksand of culpability. If I do nothing, I sink. If I struggle, I go down faster. I must remain calm, go backward up along the path that brought me here, until another path presents itself. A tiny pocket. A window. An escape. If not from responsibility, from guilt.

Her dress has come up above her knees. He glances over to the man’s body. The head is cocked on its broken axis. Jim imagines the body looking back at him, even though only one eye is open. The man would say, You can look. Take a peek. It’s okay. You haven’t gone any farther than the rest of us. Don’t worry about crossing the line. I am the eraser. The line is gone.

He walks away from the bodies, climbs out of the river. He takes her purse, checking for her keys and wallet. He leaves.

It takes him almost an hour to walk back to Chinatown. All the while he repeats to himself: You can find her through the six cats.

Who is she? How can he find her? How can he help her?

He gets to his car, drives to the dead girl’s place, a one-bedroom cottage in Echo Park. With her key, he enters. He goes straight for the bedroom.

The scent of the place is familiar. It smells like her. He has been here a couple times, but never has he come into this room. He allows himself a moment to take it all in.

He opens the closet’s double doors. She has pushed a four-drawer dresser into the closet, clothes hanging on either side. On top of her dresser are two photos in stand-up frames. One is a picture of her with another girl, much younger. They are laughing, standing arm in arm. Sisters. The other is a picture of a young lady, taken at the beach. The sunglasses the woman is wearing, as well as the color and quality of the print, date it. Most likely, her mother.

Starting with the top drawer, he goes through the contents of her dresser. Bras, panties, socks, scarves, sweaters. What would have been a puerile thrill has become numerous slugs to the stomach. Still, he finishes, digging under the piles of folded fabric, knocking the four corners of each drawer, hoping to uncover a hidden relic of some sort.

Secret photos, perhaps. A bundle of old love letters. A diary.

He moves onto the shelves, finds a leather-bound volume of lined paper with less than half of its pages filled. He reads the first entry. As he reads, her voice rings in his ear.

He closes the book, looks around the room. He shakes his head and feels his forehead with the back of his hand. He’s hot.

He must not get distracted by emotions. There is a task at hand, he reminds himself. Whatever she was doing in the river remains unfinished. He owes it to her to see it through, all the way to the end. He remembers the list of clues he’s assembled: a missing girl, Pavlov, six cats, a bell.

He opens the book again. He tries speed-reading the diary to see if any of these things are mentioned. Nothing. The information is either not there or he’s too impatient to find it.

Frustrated, he turns to the last entry. Ten days ago. It’s an inconsequential write-up, but it gets him thinking: Wasn’t that the night of their last get-together?

Flipping through the pages, he searches for his name. He tries to remember the exact day of their first date. He finds it, an entry about that night. He reads her words. Her voice rings louder.

He rips the page from the book, stuffs the paper in his pocket, slams the book shut.

The ticking of a clock fills the quiet that remains. He’s concerned that he’s been in here too long. He expects a knock at the door any moment, but can’t imagine who would come calling at this hour.

He sits at her desk, digs through papers there. A good number of them are printouts of online reports: girls gone missing, kidnap suspects arrested, and alleged abductors still at large.

A picture is developing in his mind.

Her computer is already on. He moves his finger across the trackpad to wake it from sleep. He starts by pulling up her blog. Though it looks like she posted daily entries, the site has not been updated in ten days. Her previous posts were all things he had seen before: conservation issues, environmental impact discussions, and public policy debates concerning the L.A. River.

He clicks off the browser and begins reading through folders and file names on her hard drive.

An electronic ding sounds off. A flashing window appears in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.

Someone is sending an instant message.

Shepherd_79: god i’m so sick of guys

Shepherd_79: he didn’t call again tonight

He is tempted to shut the program down, make it seem like a glitch. Her friend would never think twice about it. But he doesn’t do anything, thinking it is far less suspicious to do so.

His heart is racing, and he can feel his neck and chest flushing with color. Finding it hard to concentrate on reading her folder structure, he opts to open an image viewer and browse through her digital photos.

Shepherd_79: i should just get over him, right?

The photos are grouped into categories, mostly events: parties and a couple weddings. The largest group of pictures contains shots of the river. He opens them in thumbnail view and scrubs through them, trying to differentiate one from another. They all look the same. Graffiti-covered cement. A hint of water. Chain link, barbed wire, corrugated steel.

He clicks on a couple of images, enlarging them, hoping to read the graffiti. But it’s all senseless tagging in an indecipherable alphabet.

Next are a bunch of shots of storm-drain covers spraypainted in bright, bold metallic colors. The paint looks layered on, the iterations of multiple artists on many different occasions.

There’s something familiar about the shape of these drain covers, the way the upper hinges taper off to points on either side of the large circle.

Shepherd_79: hello?

Shepherd_79: are you ignoring me too bitch!

The messages are getting to him. Someone is closing in on him, has him under a microscope.

He clicks the IM window and types, hitting the keys hard.

CAN’T TALK NOW.

A mistake? Just by typing a few words he has brought her back. A ghost in the machine. Although this ghost is thinner than smoke.

The next image of the drain covers reveals it all. The spray-painted eyes, nose, whiskers. Cats. They are graffitied to look like cats.

Another message comes through IM.

Shepherd_79: sorry… you okay? is there news about your sister?

He jumps up to her bookshelf and starts tearing through books.

Captions under key images begin to point him to a general location. Hopping back onto her computer, he starts opening documents and searching for keywords. Frogtown. Atwater Village. County Flood Control. Mural Registry. He starts sketching on the back of a piece of paper.

After much work, he has a map, a goal. He is about to leave when he notices the IM window is blinking again. He knows he will have to close the program before he leaves. Keeping it open will make for a suspicious scene, even though the books and papers he has pulled out make the ransacked place suspicious enough.

He reads the last communication.

Shepherd_79: what’s the matter?

Shepherd_79: hey! HELLO!

Shepherd_79: Who are you?

(Shepherd_79 has signed off.)

He exits the program. He imagines that Shepherd is heading here, to this house, to investigate. It hardly matters now. He won’t be here. He is heading back to the river.

He knows who she is. He knows how to find her. The rest is fate.

In the dim light of the riverbed, he has trouble seeing the graffiti on the drain covers, but he knows he’s at the right place. Six cats, six drains. The large painted faces hang perpendicular to the ground. During heavy rains they will swing up, releasing torrents of run-off into the violent river come to life. Now they are silent, each recessed into an individual hollow in the channel’s cement wall. He takes a moment for a deep, shaky breath. He twists his wrist to look at his watch, but the time doesn’t even register. His mind is on what happens next.

Really, what is he doing here?

Thoughts crowd his head. He should go to the police, he should go get help, he should just walk away and pray for this day to end. He shakes his head, pulls the paper he ripped from her diary out of his pocket. With a faint click he turns his flashlight on and reads:

In real life, stories never actually end; they simply change. If you are in a loveless marriage, you can’t just type “THE END” and move on to the next story. No, you make choices and you change, your story changes. A main character is swept to the side. A supporting character rises to take on more importance. New characters are introduced.

Nothing ever stops, not for a single moment.

Six cats in front of him. He chooses one. Kicks at the cover. Solid. He touches it hesitantly, thinking that it’s probably dirty. The slightly moist surface is cold from the night air. It says to him, Choose again.

The next cat he selects reacts differently. It gives when he touches it, making a squeaking sound not unlike a low meow. One of the top hinges is broken. The cover opens easily. Beyond is a cement tunnel, almost six feet in diameter.

He steps up. Inside. The beam of his flashlight melts into black. The entire inner surface is covered in graffiti tags of multiple colors. Catching the writing out of his peripheral vision gives the illusion that the tube is slowly rotating. He tries to concentrate on the sloppy seams of the poured concrete, concentric rings that disappear into darkness. He walks slowly at first, then with determination.

The path in front of him does not appear to end. He stops and looks back. He can’t see the entrance anymore. If he spun around he wouldn’t be able to tell which way was out, which way was in.

He keeps walking until he reaches a hole in the curved bottom of the tube. The hole is slightly smaller, maybe four feet wide. Attached to the side is a ladder. He aims the flash-light below. He cannot see bottom.

He climbs down the ladder.

The length of the descent surprises him. When he reaches the bottom rung, he extends his leg down, swinging it to feel for some ground. His shoe scrapes against something and he decides to let go of the ladder.

He lands awkwardly, almost twisting his ankle. He shines the flashlight around. Another tube, this one perpendicular to the one he came in. His choice is left or right.

There is a scratching, scurrying sound. He thinks it’s most likely a rat.

Then it sounds different. A whimper. A cry.

He looks in the direction he thinks the sound is coming from. His flashlight only goes a small distance before the beam diffuses into an off-white haze. He thinks he sees movement, but it’s up high, eye-level, not crawling across the floor.

He flinches and throws some light above him. Nothing but gray cement.

His light still pointed above him, he looks forward and sees something more clearly. He turns out his flashlight and lets his eyes adjust. Again he sees it. A flickering.

A light ahead.

He runs toward it. As he gets closer, he can’t quite grasp what it is. The first thing he sees is the reflection of his own flashlight.

Then he sees her.

He holds up his free hand, trying to wave the image away as he fights back the nausea. Looking around, he sees he’s in what appears to be a large circular room. Off to one side hangs a camp lantern that barely illuminates the scene.

In the center of the room are two large pieces of sheet glass, hung vertically. They are sealed together at the four corners with over-sized metal bolts. Between the glass is pinned a young girl, wearing only a white T-shirt, a white pair of underwear.

The glass holds her up off the ground. She is pressed together so tightly that her face is distorted, her cheek blotchy and spread wide, her lips puckered like a fish. Her eyes are closed.

“No more.” Her voice, a dry whisper. “Please, no more.”

He catches himself staring with incomprehension before he snaps out of it and rushes to her, examining the glass for some type of latch or opening. Finding none, he fights with the bolts. His hands burn at the friction of the unmovable metal.

“Please… I’ll do anything… I’ll let you do anything,” she says.

The bolts appear to have been tightened by some massive wrench. He looks around the room for it, but finds only a metal pipe.

“Just whatever you do… Don’t ring the bell anymore.”

He stops, looks at her, really looks at her. “What?”

She opens her eyelids, and her eyes searchlight the room. “Who… who are you? Where is he?” Her voice gets more and more excited, and her eyes go crazy. Except for this flurry, she is unable to move. “Get me out, get me out, get me out!”

“I’m trying. Just calm down. Everything is going to be all right.”

He tries to pry the two panes apart, first with his hands, then with his shoe. Her cries are getting louder; his blood pressure, rising.

The glass does not budge. Now a scream: “Get me out! He’s coming! He’s coming back with the bell! No no no no…”

He tries to quiet her, tell her that he’s here to help. He does not tell her that her kidnapper is dead, in the river, unable to hurt her anymore. The idea of what he did to her burns him, keeps him quiet.

Her screaming shows no sign of stopping. She screams dry, hollow, hyperventilated screams-she can’t get enough air to properly bellow out. It would be better, he thinks, if she could really let it all out. But she is so constricted. Her wheeze crawls up his spine and pools into tension.

He grabs the metal pipe.

“Look. The only way I’m getting you out is to break the glass.” He weighs the pipe in his hand. “But I think it’s too dangerous. You could really get hurt. I’m… I’m going to go for help.”

“No! He’ll come back! You have to do something!”

“He’s not coming back!”

The noise she’s making reminds him of her sister’s last sound, that final emptying scream. Could he have done more to help her? Should he have done less?

He can’t concentrate with her crying. The opportunity is slipping by. What would he be willing to do to free her? Anything? A moral lapse? No. To lapse is to fall. This is a leap. This is worth the price.

He swings at the glass with the pipe, aiming near her upper leg. The impact makes a loud reverberating bounce that echoes through the underground tunnels. The glass does not break.

“No! Stop! That hurts! Get me out of here!”

“I’m trying-”

“Get me out!”

“I’m trying!” He swings. “I’m trying!”

Again and again, until the glass shatters. She falls forward onto the shards.

He throws the pipe away and goes to lift her up. Blood has already soaked her thin shirt. She presses herself onto him, holding him, crying deeply, allowing big gulps of air to enter her lungs.

“I’ll take you somewhere safe,” he tells her, but all she can do is moan.

In his car. He drives her to the nearest hospital. She hasn’t said anything since he carried her up through the tunnels and out of the river. He continues to glance over at her, hoping she will say something, anything. When she doesn’t, he speaks just to break the still air.

“He can’t hurt you anymore.”

She looks out the window. “When I woke up in that thing, he began telling me stories. He would tell me about the horrible things he was going to do to my sister. Only, every time he would describe something really bad, he would ring a bell. At some point the stories stopped. He would just come and sit next to me and ring the bell.”

He grips the steering wheel tightly. “You know, I had it in my hands. I had the bell, and it slipped away from me.” He looks at her, her confused expression. “It’s gone now. It’s all gone.”

She puts her hand on the door handle, turns to him. “Who are you?”

“I’m a friend of your sister.” He sees a tear roll down her cheek, a tear she does not wipe away.

She says, “I think you should just let me out here.”

He turns onto San Fernando Road. “The emergency room is right there. Just let me-”

She throws the door open; he slams on the brakes. She uses the recoil of being thrown back to push herself out of the car. She gets to her feet and runs toward the hospital, flailing her arms as she goes.

There is nothing more he can do. He reengages his stalled engine. He leaves.

He puts his window down, even though the late-night air is cool. He wants to drive forever, wants the car never to run out of gas, never to stop. No acceleration, no deceleration. A constant, smooth, uninterrupted drive.

This fantasy cannot hold. He knows he needs to go home. He looks down and remembers her blood all over his clothes. He can’t go home like this. He’s too tired to want to figure things out, though he knows he needs to. But then, as ideas do, something comes to him.

For the last time tonight he heads to the river.

He finds their bodies, largely unchanged since he left them hours ago. He examines the man, stiff and cold, roughly his same build. First he takes off the man’s jacket. Then his shirt, his pants.

They fit him well enough. At least they are clean.

He dresses the man in his clothing. Now the kidnapper is wearing the blood of the sister of the dead woman next to him. For him and for now, this is enough.

As he reclaims his personal belongings from his exchanged clothing, he finds the empty powder packet in the suit jacket. He leaves it in the possession of the corpse.

“You,” he says to the dead man. “This is your fault.”

Home. He tries to be quiet as he opens the door. He closes it softly. He crosses the front room, slinks into his office and into his chair. He breathes in and out, trying to calm down. His skin is clammy from the lack of sleep.

He goes into the bedroom. His wife is sleeping. He sits down on his side of the bed, trying not to wake her. He doesn’t bother to undress.

She turns to him, still asleep. She manages to mutter, “Poor baby, always working late. You get a lot done?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s great. Mmm, I got to get up soon. Wake me up at 7, ’kay?”

“Sure.”

He pulls his wallet out of his back pocket, sets it on the nightstand next to his pillow. Does the same with his keys, his change. He reaches into the suit jacket. The right pocket. He finds it there.

The bell, washed clean by the river, traveled on its journey, has arrived here.

Maybe it’s the fatigue, but he’s not so concerned with how as he is with why. The bell demands a story, a confession.

He holds it in his hand, examines the detail.

He does not move. He stays this way for a long time, as long as he can.

His concentration broken, he looks at the clock.

Five till 7.

Everything seems to change.

He rings the bell.

CITY OF COMMERCEBY NEAL POLLACK

Commerce

The call came at 4 p.m., just when I was starting my prep for the day’s first bong hit. It had been weeks since I’d heard from my agent. I put down my gear and listened.

“Some cherry producer at New Line likes your treatment for Cedar Fever,” he said.

This was a crappy horror comedy that I’d written two years before, about people whose allergies get so bad they start turning into plants. Not exactly what I’d dreamed about when I moved here. But after a while, you’ve sleepwalked long enough so you’re not really dreaming anymore.

“No shit?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Stupid fuck read your book, and he thinks you can still write.”

Silence, as I decided whether or not to defend myself.

“You got a clean shirt, one with buttons?” he asked.

“I am still married,” I replied. “So probably.”

“Good. Because I scored you a sit-down at 3:30. Do not be late to this one…”

He bitched at me for a few minutes, then turned nice when he asked if I knew where he could get some weed. By the time I got his ass off the phone, Karen was coming in the door, looking fine as ever. Admissions of love came less and less frequently from her these days, not that I blamed her. One minute she was at a Santa Monica beach party getting felt up in a hammock by a promising novelist, and before she could hiccup, she found herself paying the mortgage on a two-bedroom condo in Glassell Park and coming home every day to an unshaven, unemployed stoner. She was as bitter as an unripe plum, so I was glad to have some good news for her. I just about fell on my ass when she threw her arms around my neck and put her tongue in my ear.

“You get this gig,” she said, “and I’ll cruise you up to Ojai for a weekend of blowjobs you’ll never forget.”

I hadn’t received an offer like that in nearly a decade. She still loved, me, maybe. But I was feeling a little jittery at that moment, and I told her so.

“Maybe I should…”

She blanched whiter than a snow leopard in February.

“No, Nick,” she said. “You’re not fucking going to the casino. Not tonight. Not before the biggest meeting of your life.”

“I’ll play a few low-stakes hands and be home by mid-night,” I said, reassuring myself as much as her.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Come on, babe,” I said. “You know it relaxes me.”

“It does anything but.”

I picked my keys off the kitchen counter and headed for the door.

“You’re going now? You’re not even going to have dinner with me?”

“The 5 can be a real bastard this time of night,” I said.

I was out the door so quickly she couldn’t possibly have jinxed my opening flop.

Before I moved to California, I played poker occasionally at basement tables with ten-cent antes, where the real object was to drink as much Old Style as possible without vomiting. Winning meant zero, and losing even less. I had no idea that I was coming to a place where poker transcended hobby, leaped above pastime, and approached something near civic religion. The first couple of home games almost turned me back toward the path of righteousness; one was full of twenty-five-year-old schmucks hatching plans to date-rape a stripper in Malibu, and the other featured new dads who were busy discussing home renovations and the difficulties of finding a reliable nanny who’d work for less than seventeen dollars an hour. Neither scene appealed much. In fact, I couldn’t think of any home game I’d enjoy, unless I were sitting around a table with nine clones of myself. Other men can be a real pain in the ass.

Then one night, a guy mentioned that he was heading out to Commerce that weekend to play in some tournament that might get him into some other tournament that might get him into the World Series of Poker. I guess it had never occurred to me that the three thousand gambling billboards I saw a week could be advertising poker rooms. And when he said that the games ran twenty-four hours a day, all year, the amateur anthropologist in me began to quiver. This, I thought, could be the ideal canvas for my art, so I went along.

City of Commerce may be the most ironically named place in America, which is saying a lot. I suppose it was once full of factories that made things. But that’s not what commerce is about in this world anymore. The only commerce now is a five-cent rake on the pot. One person in fifty goes home with a profit and one in five thousand actually makes a living. If those had been the commercial odds during the Industrial Revolution, Californians would still be riding donkeys down to the San Diego Mission. Maybe we’ll get there still.

From the moment I first walked in under the faux-gold-mirrored awning, lit with a circumferential rectangle of two-inch-wide bulbs, I knew I was sunk. This hardly represented the seamiest gambling scene I’d encountered-that honor goes to the Friday midnight riverboat blackjack cruise in Joliet, Illinois-but it was probably the most baroque. The place obviously prospered beyond measure. However, unlike Vegas patrons, these players required little frippery. The most lavish theme in the world couldn’t draw the casual gambling tourist to City of Commerce night after night. They were here to play cards.

I’ve never seen garbage on the floor. Someone’s always vacuuming the rugs or polishing the faux-marble, and there’s no sign of chipping paint. The casino has a sushi bar and a sports bar full of flat-screen TVs. Yet the place always seems suffused with a kind of jaundice; the lighting scheme encourages the shakes, and nausea. It’s ugly, almost as though the casino were deliberately trying to throw us off our game.

I prepared for my meeting, in my mind, as I whipped the Acura down the 110, and then onto I-5 as I moved through Downtown, crawling past merges like a sheep on wheels being herded off to slaughter. But by the time I was halfway to Commerce, thoughts of pitching grew cloudy, replaced by visions of flush draws dancing in my head. The landscape grew generic, sooty, industrial, less definitively L.A. to the casual observer. This town, to me, isn’t most notable for its candlelit, leather-bound nightclubs or fancy Valley gallerias. Like anywhere else, it’s the outlet malls and truck-stop Arby’s, pathetic little trees dwarfed by ten-foot freeway sound walls. I could be leaving San Antonio, or Atlanta. By the time I get to Commerce, the empty concrete lots, smokestacks, and shoddy public parks call Gary, Indiana to mind. What else can I think about in such an environment but poker?

The parking lot was as full as visiting day at maximum security. I pulled the car into a spot in the back row, between a gleaming Cadillac SUV and an Oldsmobile that looked like it hadn’t been washed since 1973. There was someone inside the Cadillac. I could see the glint of a cigarette through the tinted windows. I should probably have been looking in front of me instead. In my hurry to make it to the tables, I slammed my right big toe into the curb, sending a hot shard of pain up through my leg. It felt like I might lose the nail. Why the fuck did I wear sandals to the casino anyway? I limped to the awning, past the lifetime smokers getting their hourly fix, and into the California Games Room with its ridiculous Wheels of Fortune and lucky-hand jackpot tables. Then past the two twelve-foot-high gold plaster sphinxes, the casino’s one concession to Vegas-style garishness, and on into the main gaming hall.

Though I recognized the woman working the board, one of an interchangeable rotation of semi-attractive Filipinas who worked there, she didn’t know me from the other 1,200 low-rent fliers who’d approached her since the start of her shift, asking if there were any open spots at the 3-6 or 4-8 tables. As it turned out, the waiting list was nearly as long as that for Lakers season tickets. She did have some seats, however, at the 2-4 tables upstairs.

Why not, I thought. I’m only gonna be here a couple of hours.

On a busy night, sometimes you’ll get stuck in the overflow, a partitioned conference room on loan from the adjacent Crowne Plaza Hotel. It could have been used earlier that week for a home-equity loan officer convention, or maybe a really sad low-budget wedding. But now it was twenty tables of cheap poker, with decent coffee and tea service and complimentary plates of Chinese food on the hour. I had a five-minute wait, and then they sat me down, throbbing toe and all.

I had a pretty good night too, until the Russian showed up.

At 11 p.m., I found myself up a hundred, maybe 140 bucks. That represented a good night for me, even though I would have had to work a seventy-hour week before it started to resemble anything close to the equivalent of a decent living. Still, I’d drawn the perfect table mix of sour middle-aged Korean ladies, old dudes who bore the perfume and hairstyle of late-era William S. Burroughs, a couple of Persian frat boys from UCLA, and a pockmarked cholo who leaned so far onto a cane when he stood that he fell to a sixty-five-degree angle. Like so many doomed poker players before me, I told myself just one more hand before I leave.

The Russian sat down three players to my left. I call him Russian, though he easily could have been Ukrainian, or maybe from Georgia, something post-Soviet breakup, vaguely Caucasian. I never got a chance to ask. Regardless, he wore a red two-piece tracksuit and silver-tinted sunglasses, and a big gold chain with a Mercedes medallion around his neck. His tight-trimmed beard made him look particularly ridiculous, since he obviously got his fashion tips from a mid-’90s hip-hop magazine. He slapped down double what he needed to buy into the first hand. This, I knew, was a sure sign of a fast player; you should never, ever gamble until you understand your odds.

The dealer sent me a jack-ten, suited, worth playing if you’re near the button, which I was. The Russian, who was way out of position, raised when it came to him, probably not surprising given his brazen opening bet. I called. The flop showed a king and queen, off-suit. This was a great straight draw for me. Before I could raise, though, the Russian beat me to it, immediately folding the other two players who remained. I re-raised. He saw me, and raised me again. I called.

A nine came on the turn. My odds at winning stood at about ninety-seven percent. Yet still he raised me. And again. And then twice again on the river. He turned over his cards to reveal pocket threes. I sucked up his chips like a coin reclamation machine at the supermarket.

“Lucky man, Dodger,” he said to me, apparently referring to the Dodgers cap I always wear to Commerce, to augment my chosen posture of regular guy.

“Not so lucky,” I said. “Unlike some people, I just know what I’m doing.”

The other players at the table moaned and shifted a little. This wasn’t what they wanted to hear. But it was undeniable.

“We’ll see,” the Russian said.

I smelled profit in that conference room. My watch showed 11:15. One more hour, I told myself. I’ll milk this cow, and then it’s off to bed.

By 1 a.m., I was up several hundred bucks, no mean feat at a low-stakes table. But the Russian knew no play other than the check-raise. He may have folded one in ten openers. Other players tried to take advantage, but I had them read as well. Finally, the old dude to my right got up, cracked his bones, and mumbled off into the sooty night. The Russian immediately stood up and plunked himself in the chair.

“Now I will show you, Dodger,” he said. “Now we will play poker.”

And poker I did. His aggressive play dug him deeper and deeper holes. He did win a few hands, getting me to fold when I had bupkus. But he folded nothing himself, and I just kept adding plastic trays. By 2:30, I had nearly a thousand bucks in front of me. Karen had been buzzing my cell phone since midnight, and at one point left me a text message saying, Don’t fuck this meeting up, Nick… Even she couldn’t argue with a thousand-dollar haul.

I stood up, taking my trays with me, sliding the dealer, another anonymous, semi-attractive Filipina, a ten-dollar chip.

“Where you going, Dodger?” said the Russian.

“I’ve got a big meeting tomorrow.”

“So when do I get my money back?”

“Ain’t your money anymore,” I said, and the table exploded with laughter.

As I turned away, I didn’t see the Russian seethe, and I was too busy making a joke to the cashier about unmarked bills to notice him picking up the phone. Maybe if I’d skipped going to the can, I would have made it home that night.

I was making my way past the plaster sphinxes when a 310-pound side of Slavic beef slid into my purview.

“You took boss’s money tonight,” he said. “And boss doesn’t like to lose at poker.”

Somehow I guessed the identity of his boss, and tried to pull together an instant plan of escape in my mind. I mumbled, “Sorry,” and turned on my heels, angling toward where I thought a security guard might be seated. Instead, I whirled into another side of beef. Briefly, I felt my arms getting pinned behind me, and then something heavy on my head. A vague sensation of green digital numbers, blinking in random succession, passed before my eyes, and then I said goodbye to consciousness.

I woke with John Henry pounding rocks inside my head and the impression of dusty sunlight on my eyelids. A tentative opening revealed that I was in a hotel room, and a whiff indicated that smoking was allowed. Instinctively, I felt for my wallet. It was there, but pretty thin. My cell phone was also still with me, in my front jeans pocket. I removed it to find it out of juice. I turned my head. The clock beside the bed read 10:45 a.m. Less than five hours away from my meeting.

I sat up, and then stood, and found that the pounding wasn’t bad enough to prevent me from walking, or from taking a piss. In fact, the mirror showed me not looking any worse than usual, even a little better. Eight hours of sleep was eight hours, even if it was artificially induced. The sound of bad hotel porn was coming from beyond the attaching door. I opened it.

The Russian sat with six other guys, placidly watching some girl-on-girl action. Cigar smoke suffused the room like toxic waste. A poker table sat by the window, silently waiting to play its part. He turned to regard me.

“Our princess has awoken,” he said.

“Can I leave now?” I asked. “My wife is worried about me. You’ve proven your point, whatever that is.”

“We’ve got some poker to play,” he said.

“Haven’t we played enough?” I asked.

“Let me explain something to you,” he said. “I don’t lose. Ever. And especially not to guys like you.”

“But you did lose.”

One of his cronies stood, walked over to me, and smacked me across the mouth, drawing a little bit of blood from my lower lip. Goddamnit, I thought, I could actually fucking miss my meeting here.

“The game isn’t over yet,” said the Russian. “You took $1,000 from me, and I intend to win it back.”

He explained the rules to me. We’d each get $500 worth of chips, though my chips were, essentially, air. He got to keep the money, which was rightfully his. If I won his chips, I got to go home. If he won mine, he got to shoot me in the face. Those were higher stakes than usual, and I started to sweat.

A knock came at the door. It was a Filipina, not surprisingly, pushing a cart stacked with orange juice, eggs, and smoked salmon. If these guys were thugs, at least they were generous with the buffet. The Filipina would also, the Russian informed me, serve as our dealer for the day.

“But first,” he said, “we eat.”

I figured it wouldn’t help me to say that I was in a hurry, so I dug in. By the time we were done eating, it was nearly noon. As the first hand was dealt, I felt more jittery at the table than ever before. His cronies were playing with us, but it was obvious from the beginning that they were decoys, there to win small pots that neither the Russian nor I had a shot at; it was a two-player game, with props.

I had to make that meeting. Missing it would mean the end of my career, and maybe my marriage. So I played aggressively. This was exactly what the Russian wanted. It perfectly matched his style of play. If you re-raise a raiser when the odds are bad, or even mediocre, he will bury you. For an hour, he whittled away at my chips, and then took a huge pot when he drew an inside flush to beat my pocket kings. I looked down at my pile and realized that I was $150 away from death. That was the last thing I wanted. I took a breath and prayed patience.

By 1:45, I was back up to $500. The Russian saw what was happening, and he cursed my ability to fold a bad hand, something that he’d apparently never learned. I stayed quiet, occasionally stealing little glances at the digital clock by the bed. At this point, I knew that I was going to escape with my life, or at least assumed that I would. But if I didn’t do it soon, I wouldn’t have much of a life left. Still, I had to play carefully. It took me another forty-five minutes to get up to $800. There would be no time to go home and shower, but I could at least buy some deodorant at Walgreens before the meeting. It was time to roll ’em.

I drew a queen-nine, not the best opener, but winnable. It didn’t matter what the Russian drew, of course. He raised me regardless. I saw him, and re-raised. He did the same back, and onward until the betting was capped.

The flop revealed a second queen and some junk cards. His chance at a flush draw was nil, and a straight seemed unlikely. I’d probably flopped top pair, so I laid down a big bet. He followed, of course, and kept laying down chips. By the river, it was pretty certain that he’d bust out. The dealer called for us to show our hands. I had my queens. He had a pair of sevens, ace high.

“Well,” I said, standing up, and then backing away toward the door, “it was certainly tense, and you really proved something today-”

“Don’t fuck with me, Dodger,” the Russian said.

“Just let him win, dumbshit,” I heard a crony say, and then I felt everything go black again. Consciousness and I had a tenuous relationship that day. My world disintegrated around me, and it was night again.

I woke to the sensation of my head being dumped in a bucket of ice water, never pleasant under any circumstance. When I emerged, gasping for breath, one of the Russian’s lummoxes was holding my shirt collar. He had a huge wad of bills, which he thrust into my hand.

“Take this and go,” he said.

“What?” I said.

“Boss is asshole,” he said. “I’m tired of him doing this all the time.”

“I’m not the first?”

“You’re not the first this week,” he said.

“But why save me?”

“You’re good at cards,” he said. “I’m tired of being around people who are bad at cards.”

“At least I’m good at something,” I said. “Thank you.”

I peeled a hundred-dollar bill off the stack and slapped it into his palm.

“Buy yourself a lap dance tonight,” I said.

“Or maybe I pay rent this month,” he said.

“That too,” I said.

“They’re eating lunch downstairs,” he said. “Go now.”

I took a step forward, but that wasn’t happening until I vomited into the toilet. With that business completed, I saw that it was ten till 3:00. I wouldn’t look good doing it, but I could still make the meeting. I thanked the lummox again, and walked into the hall.

The Russian and his cronies were stepping off the elevator. I looked around. There were stairs at the end of the hall. I tore off toward them, with the Russians in hot pursuit. They might have caught me, too, if the room hadn’t been on the third floor.

A quick orientation in the parking lot showed that I was near my car, which I found easily, even though the lot was no less full than it had been when I’d pulled in sixteen hours before. The Russians kept coming. I heard the Cadillac SUV next to me beep, and I realized that it was their car. I peeled out of my spot, flipped into reverse, and then accelerated forward at an angle, aiming for the SUV’s rear taillight. It might not have done much damage, but it felt symbolic. They were far enough behind me that I was on the 5, going north, before they could figure out my direction.

Then I realized. They’d filched my wallet, so they probably knew where I lived. I needed to call Karen, to warn her. But I didn’t have a working phone. The clock showed ten after 3:00. The traffic report said that there was an accident at the 101 interchange. I wasn’t moving.

Even on an ordinary day, an overturned tractor-trailer can destroy your plans in L.A. I don’t know why I expected anything different; my meeting was never going to happen. So I formulated a plan: I’d drive to my agent’s office, so he could fire me. But I’d at least tell him the story so he could call Karen and warn her not to come home, or hire a bodyguard, or something.

Oh, man.

Was I fucked or what?

Still, I did have $1,000 in my pocket, and that was enough. I couldn’t go back to Commerce for a while, and maybe never. Who knew how often the Russian haunted those well-trod carpets? My frequent-player’s card, however, was good to go in Gardena. I’d check in there, get a room for sixty-nine dollars a night, and easily win that back at the tables, no problem. Even if I hit a bad streak, I could probably survive for a month with what I had left in my checking account. And if I ran into a really good table one night, I might even be able to win Karen back with a wad of bills and a tale of pure success. Greater women, I figured, have been seduced by less. It wasn’t the best situation in the world. But at least I had the skills to win big.

So I turned my car around at the next exit. I drove off in anticipation of a big night, and of hundreds of nights to come. Because there was nothing like a night spent playing poker: It was the great equalizer, the great humanizer, and the great eraser of differences. Except when it wasn’t. But the hope remained for every numbers nerd, every bored housewife, every laid-off trucker, every hack screenwriter, and all the other poor saps out there who woke up one morning only thinking about cards and subsequently went about overturning their lives. Like everyone else in the world, it seemed, I floated along on a current of odds. Still, I figured that a little self-understanding would make me a dangerous man at the tables. And so I drove on, along the endless highways, thinking only of flopping trips, ace high on the river.

FISHBY LIENNA SILVER

Fairfax District

Ivan Denisovich hated fish, but was obliged to buy several kilos of the rock-frozen cod. The loud and obnoxious saleswoman wrapped it in a piece of hard brown paper, her swollen red fingers with chipped nail polish barely bending from the moisture and cold. He obediently stuffed the package into the green net shopping bag, and struggled through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd, almost losing his scarf to the pressing comrades.

Outside, he meticulously rebuttoned his coat and patted the treasured fish in the bag with his lined leather gloves. He knew Sofia Arkadievna would be happy with his purchase. A fat dvornik, an old woman in a padded cotton coat and white apron, was cleaning the sidewalk, her giant spade rhythmically scraping against the compressed snow. His breath fogged around him as he walked home through the narrow Arbat streets, listening to the crisp crunch under his feet. This sound was like balm to his wounds, mitigating the repulsive inevitability of having to eat and, even worse, smell the fish for a week.

“Ivan… Ivan… wake up!” He felt his wife’s elbow poke his ribs. “Come on. Turn that damn box off. Let’s go to bed.”

Ivan Denisovich opened his eyes and stared at the fan that was slowly spinning above his head. Where was he? Boje moy! Good God! The Russian snow and the fish melted away, and instead he was sitting in Los Angeles on his brown velour couch next to his wife, Sofia Arkadievna. The television murmured something in English that he couldn’t understand. The Asian commentator smiled and glanced at him as if she was a guest in their living room.

The apartment was dark except for the flicker of the screen. He knew he was home, but it wasn’t quite right. He put on his slippers and silently shuffled behind Sofia Arkadievna to the bedroom. He didn’t want to break the spell, still hoping to return to the frosted winter day in his dream and the hated frozen cod. He yearned to follow the icy street past the familiar tram stop, across the rails and through the arch into the dirty Moscow yard, past the elderly ladies gossiping on the bench, and up the broken stairs that reeked of fried fish.

He resented that Sofia Arkadievna had interrupted his dream. Lying on his back, listening to her scratchy snoring, he stared at the trees outside through the tulle curtains. The constant summer of Southern California was gentle on his bones, but turned his heart inside out. This country gave him everything that he could dream of, except he never dreamed of it. His eyes skipped across the white-and-gold lacquer bedroom that Sofia Arkadievna bought on a layaway plan from a neighborhood store. They didn’t have to wait or get permission to buy the furniture. Just went and bought it, and it was delivered a few weeks later. Same thing with the furniture in the living room. Their daughter Sveta and her husband Alex, that red-haired putz with an idiotic smile, bought it for them when they finally moved to their government-subsidized apartment. Nothing had any history of his life imprinted on it; nothing held memory for him. It was all new and alien, and still smelled of fresh composition board. What was there to say?

He had grown into a pattern of sleeping during the day and staying awake at night, lying in bed and remembering things. It was as if he was trying to live on Moscow time. Sofia Arkadievna was mad, and Ivan wanted to go back to normal, but somehow couldn’t. Sveta said he was depressed and should see a doctor, get one of those depression pills. To hell with that. He was not taking any brain pills. What if he wouldn’t be able to remember anything? Oh no. No pills would help him with his condition. And then, who said people had to be happy all the time? How would they even know they were happy if there was no difference from one day to another? Come to think of it, being happy all the time would be just as tiring as being unhappy.

Sofia Arkadievna turned on her side and made him conform. Her soft breasts and belly cushioned and heated his aching back, the only things that were comforting and familiar in his life. He put his hands under his cheek and drifted into a restless sleep.

In the morning, Ivan Denisovich took a shower, flexing his biceps as he rinsed off the soap. His skin was sagging in a rippling sack under the arm, but his muscles beneath were still firm. Satisfied, he turned off the hot water and stood under the ice-cold jet, as he had done for fifty years, until his whole body burned in a tingle.

The sweet yeasty smell of blinis and smoldering butter wafted from the kitchen. He could hear Sofia Arkadievna bang pots, pans, and dishes in her usual morning whirlwind of activity. She was plump but not fat, and although she had changed through the years-her cheeks drooped, and her skin and eyes had lost their luster-she had not slowed down, and she kept her commanding attitude and agile walk.

“Stop admiring yourself. Breakfast is getting cold!” yelled Sofia Arkadievna through the door.

“Coming.” Ivan Denisovich looked at his stupefied face in the foggy mirror. His nose had become longer and fleshier, even bulbous. His jaw had lost definition, and jowls flapped under his mouth on both sides, reminding him of catfish whiskers. A sorry sight. He shrugged, splashed Grey Flannel over his flushed cheeks, and pulled on the blue Adidas jogging suit.

The TV was already on, Russian programming delivered via satellite right to their Southern California home.

“A nightmare!” said Sofia Arkadievna, rolling blinis onto her plate. “Look what those blood-thirsty Chechens are doing again! There’s no end to it… Sour cream or jam?”

“I’ll take the Nutella,” replied Ivan Denisovich, sitting down.

The screen flashed scenes from Grozny, where another car had been blown up and charred corpses were strewn across the pavement. Women in flowery babushkas wept, wiping away tears with dirty rags.

“Beasts. They are not human!” exclaimed Sofia Arkadievna, and sauntered over to the refrigerator. “How can they live like that?”

“It’s their home.”

“You want some juice?” She ignored his remark.

“Neh, my stomach is gurgly.” Ivan Denisovich glazed the inside of a blini with a generous layer of Nutella and slowly rolled it around the fork into a tube.

Home. What a strange word. Its meaning confused Ivan Denisovich. His mother died long ago, just before the war. And his father, after being liberated from Dachau, was sent directly to the Gulag, where he died after three months of hard labor. Funny how memory worked. The thought of home triggered the image of his exhausted father. Did he know that Ivan, then age fourteen, was also shipped to Siberia, as the son of a traitor of the people? It all seemed to have happened only yesterday, and at the same time in another life.

Ivan Denisovich remembered how after his release from the camps, he stood at a railroad station with a small backpack. The newspaper he had wrapped around his feet instead of puttees ripped inside his boots, but he was accustomed to the feeling. He had lived like that for two years, never fully warm. The sound of the approaching train pierced the Arctic silence. He bought a ticket to Kazakhstan, because it was hot, and ex-politicals were allowed to live there. He didn’t have any aspirations; he was sixteen but didn’t feel young, or excited at the long life ahead. He just wanted to be warm and have a place to sleep, any place, as long as it was only his, without cellmates.

Ivan Denisovich looked around the room, and it seemed eerie that he was sitting in Los Angeles, half the globe away from where he started.

“Ivan, where are you? I’ve been talking to you, and you’re like a zombie.” Sofia Arkadievna shook his shoulder. “What is it? Get out of your head, all I have to say. I have an assignment for you, dearie.” She pushed a piece of paper across the table. A little furry kitten with a pink bow stared at Ivan Denisovich from the top of the to-do list. Sofia Arkadievna would not allow him to sit in front of the television all day. He had what she called responsibilities. Canned tuna and oatmeal, that’s what his life had become.

“Later.” He stuffed the list into his pocket and walked over to the couch to watch TV.

“Pick up the phone, my hands are wet!” yelled Sofia Arkadievna from the kitchen. Ivan Denisovich must have dozed off again, because he didn’t hear the ring.

“Vanya?” Grigory Petrovich’s familiar baritone flowed benevolently through the receiver. “Are you decent? Davai, get down. I’m waiting. We’re going fishing in Santa Monica. My women are driving me crazy.”

Grigory Petrovich was Ivan Denisovich’s old school friend. He had a wife and a divorced daughter with two kids. They all lived together in a two-bedroom apartment in North Hollywood. Ivan Denisovich rarely visited him at night. The household was raucous, with children running and women yelling; besides, Sofia Arkadievna didn’t like Grigory’s wife, Valentina. She found her gaudy and low-class, not to mention ten years younger. Frankly, it was just as well, because Ivan Denisovich’s eyes weren’t what they used to be, and he preferred to stay home at night.

“Why fishing?” he whispered.

“Why not? Better than sitting in front of that talking box. Think: air, waves, the sun, and girls in bikinis.”

“You can’t eat that fish, the water’s polluted,” replied Ivan Denisovich, watching his wife clear the table, all the while figuring out how to escape without telling her he was going to the beach with Grigory.

“Hell you talking about? Who cares!” roared Grigory. “You hate fish anyway.”

“I was just saying.”

Grigory’s brown Oldsmobile had no air-conditioning. They kept the windows open, letting the breeze play with their messy wisps of gray hair. The oppressively hot day was unusual for January, but this year the whole winter was scorching, as if it were June. Sofia Arkadievna called it “earthquake weather.”

“Hooh, my heart goes crazy in this heat,” said Grigory Petrovich, patting his chest. He was wearing an old purple T-shirt with the yellow Lakers insignia, dark blue Adidas exercise pants, and sandals over striped socks. Round beads of sweat formed on his forehead and nose, and he wiped them off with a large crumpled handkerchief. “Live it up, Vanya. Eh, live it up! Vanya, Vanya, Vanya! What are we doing in Southern California anyway, my friend?”

Grigory pushed a cassette into the player and Gypsy music burst out the windows into the Fairfax midday traffic. “Look, look at them.” Grigory Petrovich pointed at the people crossing the street in front of them. “They don’t know how to enjoy life, how to live. Look, not one of them feels the music.”

“Turn it down a bit,” replied Ivan Denisovich, worried that they were disturbing the peace. “Stop scaring people. Not everyone likes the Gypsies.”

“You used to. What, now it’s too Russian for you?”

“Russian? You’re some Russian yourself.” Ivan Denisovich was hurt. “You couldn’t get a job because you were a Jew, and here you’re suddenly a Russian, dancing Cossatski. Tphew,” he spit in anger.

“Okay, okay. Sorry. You’re boiling over today. What’s up?”

“Nothing. Mind your own business, that’s what.”

Grigory Petrovich didn’t respond, and instead belted out at the top of his lungs, together with the Gypsies, “Eh, once, and once more, and many, many, many more…”

Ivan Denisovich loved the Gypsies. He didn’t know what had come over him. A rebellion to joy. He couldn’t explain it. He just didn’t have a taste for anything. Grigory was his best friend, now and always. Their relationship was rare and lucky for immigrants. They had lived across the street from each other back in Moscow, gone to school together, and later, when he came back from Kazakhstan, it was Grigory who helped him find a job. Even their wives’ mutual animosity couldn’t ruin their friendship. Recently, however, as Ivan Denisovich reflected on his past, he wondered if he would have been here in California had Grigory remained in Moscow, and secretly blamed his friend for ending up at the Pacific shores.

“Stop at Trader Joe’s. Sofia asked me to buy a few things,” mumbled Ivan Denisovich.

“And it’ll all sit there in the sun while we’re fishing? We’ll stop on the way back. I have sandwiches in the cooler. Mortadella and Swiss on white. Your favorite. I made them myself, didn’t want Valentina to know our plans. We’re traveling incognito.”

His constant playfulness irritated Ivan Denisovich. A grown man joking all the time. What’s so funny? Two idiots traveled all the way around the world to escape from home, almost returning on the other side, stopping short, it seemed, only because of the ocean. Just like in the old revolutionary song, “… and at the Pacific Ocean, did they finish their trek.” Now what?

They parked at the mall as usual. Grigory Petrovich rigged his little cooler, a bucket, and two folding chairs to the luggage wheels, and handed Ivan Denisovich the two fishing rods and umbrellas.

“Don’t let me forget to stamp the parking ticket at the mall on the way back.”

“Give it to me. I’ll do it now. Everything has to be on the way back.” Ivan Denisovich hated the sound of his grouchy voice, but couldn’t stop.

It was much cooler in Santa Monica, and the wind hadn’t lost its winter prickle. Their usual spot was taken by two teenagers with Chinese tattoos and pierced lips. Ivan Denisovich and Grigory Petrovich walked further, toward the end of the pier, and, disappointed, squeezed into a small space between the enormous fat lady with wild gray hair, a permanent fixture at the pier, and two chain-smoking hobos, fishing for dinner. At least no one would complain when Grigory smoked, but fish could not be expected at this proximity to the competition.

They set up the chairs. Ivan Denisovich’s umbrella kept dragging his bargain Sav-On chair with every gust of wind, no matter how he positioned it.

“Sit down, I’ll fix it when I’m done,” said Grigory Petrovich, untying the fishing rods.

“As if I don’t know how. Look at this wind. We’ll catch pneumonia here, thanks to your stupid plans,” mumbled Ivan Denisovich.

His friend ignored him, adjusting his Lakers cap that was clipped to the back of his shirt.

Ivan Denisovich ripped the umbrella off his chair. Why would he need it anyway? People know too much here. Cancer? Crap. Too much information leads to panic. He was old enough to die of natural causes before skin cancer would catch up with him.

He sat down in his chair, enjoying the view. The sun heated up his face, but it was still a winter sun, caressing, not brutal. He took off his hat and let the sun tickle his bald spot. Funny, even now with nothing left to live for, it was hard to let go of all this: the expanse of the ocean, the hazy sprawl of the beach, the seagulls, the annoying rumble of the rollercoaster at the end of the pier. It was good to be alive. No, he was not ready. He got up and covered his head, protecting it from the sun.

“Here, put some on.” He handed a tube of Coppertone to Grigory, who was already casting his rod on the water below, a cigarette hanging off his lower lip. “You should quit that crap, especially with your heart!”

“Hand me a beer. And stop being my wife.”

“Where is it? I just put the cooler right here.” Ivan Denisovich searched behind the chairs. The cooler had vanished, and so had the two hobos. He peered at the crowd and spotted the two emaciated figures in dirty clothes escaping down the pier.

“Grisha, look!”

Grigory Petrovich pulled on his glasses and immediately dashed after the hobos. “Dergy ih! Pivo! Moyo pivo!” he yelled in pursuit, his sandals flapping against his heels.

People stared at him and made way, probably thinking another nut had been prematurely released from a psychiatric hospital. The hobos were younger and faster. The cooler was the only thing slowing them down, because it had no handle. They opened it on the run, each grabbing a can of Coors and a foil-wrapped sandwich, and threw the cooler on the ground. The ice spilled onto the asphalt with a loud crashing sound that made everyone turn.

“Beer, my beer!” Grigory yelled in English, but too late. He slowed down and grabbed his chest.

The crowd disapproved generally, of both the hobos and this gibbering old fool. Ivan Denisovich watched, afraid to leave the rest of their stuff behind.

“Grish, come on, nuuh, forget the beer,” he called. “Grisha, what’s up? You sick?”

Grigory Petrovich coughed, holding his chest, then made a sign to his friend to wait. People stopped gawking and went back to minding their own business. A woman in a flowing florid dress picked up the cooler and the bottle of water that had rolled out, and together with her toddler carried them over to Grigory.

Nodding at them, Grigory searched in his pockets with one hand, and revealed an old melted Tootsie Roll. He handed it to the mesmerized boy, who automatically stretched out his hand, but the mother deftly snatched it and smiled at Grigory.

“The hell with you,” he sighed, and walked back to Ivan Denisovich.

“Grish, you all right?”

“I’m dandy,” replied Grigory, pale and still panting.

“Sit down.” Ivan Denisovich pushed forward the chair, which immediately tipped over.

“A-ha-ha-ha!” exploded Grigory, and went into another coughing fit.

Ivan Denisovich handed him the recaptured bottle of water.

“The hell with it all.” Grigory picked up the chair. “It’s just too bad about the beer. The beer was a nice touch.”

Ivan Denisovich patted him on the back. “Let’s go, Vanya,” he said. “Let’s go to Plummer Park and play chess.”

Ivan Denisovich lived near Plummer Park in West Hollywood, and he often came here to listen to the mellifluous simmer of Russian speech and the sound of dominoes slammed against the table boards. He would close his eyes and imagine he was in Russia, especially when jasmine was in bloom.

But the park was changing. Young mothers brought children here after the city had built a jungle gym. The yuppies in the area came to play tennis at the city courts, disrupting the old-country rhythms of the park with their loud laughter and dull thuds of the ball. The commanding and confusing sound of English had already subjugated the fading sounds of Russian, as adolescents, none of them Russian, mind you, gathered to watch the endless chess games that Russian retirees played on the picnic tables. They could still teach a thing or two to this underwear-flashing generation.

Grigory Petrovich and Ivan Denisovich bought lunch at the Russian market on the way back from the beach. They sat on benches across from each other at the unusually empty end of a picnic table and opened the white paper packages. The aroma of dark rye, spicy Russian mustard, and fresh Mortadella were enough to convince them that the seven dollars they had squandered was well worth it. Grigory Petrovich bit into the crunchy half-pickled cucumbers, available only at the Russian market that, for some reason, disguised itself under the enigmatic and misleading name, The European Deli. Life was good again.

“Set them up, Vanya. I’m gonna kick your butt, as they say in America.” His teeth crunched against the taut flesh of the pickle, its subtle saltiness a perfect match for the robust flavor of the sandwich.

“Black Sea and the sacred Baikal,” Grigory blasted, following his opening gambit.

Ivan Denisovich wiped his forehead and neck with a handkerchief. The weather made it hard to concentrate. He was convinced that hot weather was responsible for the collapse of many ancient civilizations. Who could think in the heat?

Grigory unwrapped the dry salted fish from the market, and, holding it by the tail, hit it against the edge of the picnic table to soften it up.

“You’re distracting me.”

“Tugodum, lighten up, you old goat. We’re not playing for money,” laughed Grigory, peeling the skin off the fish.

“Don’t you dare touch the chess pieces with those fishy fingers. It’ll make me vomit.”

“There you are again, just like Valentina. Nudge, nudge, whine, whine.”

Ivan Denisovich, nauseous from the sight of the fish, and yet feeling suddenly at home, inhaled as if it were the aroma of lilacs in spring and moved his knight to the middle of the board in what he thought was a very elegant combination. Yet as soon as he let go of the piece, he realized his mistake. How could he not have noticed that he was exposing his king? How could he be so stupid? He felt embarrassed. If Grigory didn’t see it, he would convert to Catholicism and start believing in miracles. Why was he playing chess instead of shopping for Sofia Arkadievna?

“Nuuh, Denisich, watch out! It’s over, pal.”

Grigory Petrovich grabbed his Queen, leaned back in a slow swoon, as if ready for a backstroke, and suddenly plunked back off the bench, flat on the ground. The children continued to run and giggle by the jungle gym, the chess and domino players were absorbed in their own games. Ivan Denisovich thought it was some kind of a joke again. He peeked under the table, but his friend remained on the ground, clutching the Queen in this stiff fist. Ivan Denisovich carefully slipped off the bench and stared at the lifeless body by his feet.

“Pomogite! Somebody, help! Call an ambulance!” he screamed, and dropped on his knees in front of Grigory. “Grisha, Grish! Come on! Cut it out! Look, I’m right here! Don’t go! The ambulance is coming! Grisha! Somebody, help!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, shaking Grigory Petrovich, lifting his head off the dusty ground.

The children’s laughter from the playground merged with the sharp siren of the approaching ambulance. Mothers clutched their babies as if death was contagious. A few men stopped their game of chess and surrounded the prostrate body.

Two exhausted paramedics, a man and a young woman, jumped out of the vehicle and checked Grigory Petrovich’s pulse. They ordered the spectators to step back and pulled a box out of the van. The man efficiently exposed Grigory Petrovich’s pallid chest with its flowerbed of gray hair, and attached the defibrillator pads to his skin. The girl pressed the button on the box, following her partner’s signal. Grigory’s body jolted on the ground, lifting his feet and head, and sprawled back, lifeless. He was like one of those rubber frogs that leaped when air was pumped into them through a tube. They did it again, this time his feet shook longer, but seemingly without any relationship to the rest of his body. They tried once more for good measure, but it was clear-he was gone.

Ivan Denisovich stood, paralyzed. His extremities stiffened and froze, despite the heat, and his head buzzed. He watched the paramedics load Grigory Petrovich into the van and close the door. Someone pointed to him, and the young woman in the paramedic uniform shook his shoulder. She held a pad in her hand and asked him something. He didn’t respond. She offered him water.

He pushed away the plastic cup and whispered, “Grisha.”

She handed him a pen and held her pad pointing to the empty page. He understood, and wrote, Grigory Petrovich Shurov-May 13, 1931, Moskva, U.S.S.R. He wished he could add war hero, or something important to the line, but Grigory didn’t have any distinctions, and was too young to have participated in the war.

Ivan Denisovich climbed inside the ambulance and sat across from the zipped-up plastic bag that used to be his best friend. He tried to avoid looking at the slug-shaped object laid out on the gurney, but his eyes kept drifting to the head, because the zipper was right over Grigory’s large nose, and Ivan worried about it leaving scratches on his face.

He had to tell Valentina, but how could he? He remembered a Jewish joke where a man was sent to gently deliver the news to the wife that her husband had passed away. He rang the doorbell and an attractive woman opened the apartment door. “Is widow Abramowitz home?” he asked, removing his hat. “Why widow? I have a husband,” she replied with arrogance. “Bubkas is what you have instead of a husband,” blurted out the man, and ran for the exit.

Ivan Denisovich smiled and immediately started to weep, because he knew that no one except Grigory would have understood him joking now.

The door opened and Valentina stared at him from the dim apartment. The smell of burning canola oil enveloped the two of them like a nostalgic blanket.

“Nuuh, finally. Where’s my oaf? Parking? We’ve been going crazy looking for you. Sofia called four times.” She winked at Ivan Denisovich. “Jealous.”

Valentina’s blue eye shadow had caked over her eyelids, her hair was up in soft pink rollers, and she wore white fluffy rabbit slippers. The Queen of Fucking Everything sparkled from her apron.

Ivan Denisovich had rehearsed his lines several times on the way from the hospital, but Hold yourself together, Valentina, your husband is deceased just wouldn’t roll off his tongue.

“Valyusha, our Grishka is gone,” he gushed, and collapsed on her shoulder.

“Are you drunk? Idiot.” She shook him, trying to find his face. “What the hell you’re talking about?”

“He’s dead, Valya!” slobbered Ivan Denisovich. “Something’s burning in the kitchen.”

Valentina stood there blocking the entrance, staring not so much at Ivan Denisovich as inside herself. She pushed him out of her way and dashed downstairs, her slippers flapping against her rough bare heels.

“He’s not there,” yelled Ivan Denisovich, and followed her down, holding onto the railing.

Valentina darted to the corner and looked up and down the street, then froze, watching Ivan Denisovich’s solitary figure approach her. His shoulders sank and his face turned sullen. He opened his arms to embrace her, uncertain which one of them needed to be held more.

“No. No, no.” She pushed him away. “He can’t do this to me.” She folded her arms and pursed her lips as if plotting revenge for Grigory Petrovich’s return.

“Come,” Ivan Denisovich said quietly. “Let’s go in. You’ll burn down the house.”

They sat on the sofa holding onto each other. The TV flickered with grainy images from Russian Candid Camera. A pretty young woman with fake hair glued to her back asked strangers on the beach to help her apply sunblock. Some laughed, some were disgusted and walked away, and some expressed sympathy to the poor girl, suggesting electrolysis. The phone rang ten times, but Valentina and Ivan Denisovich didn’t move, staring at the TV screen.

Ivan Denisovich suddenly felt what he hadn’t felt for a long time. He wasn’t sure if it was Valentina or the hairy woman in a bikini on the screen. He glanced at Valentina’s soft round breasts, something he had avoided for the last twenty years. That one time was a mistake, they shouldn’t have done it, and Valentina and he agreed to keep it a secret from their spouses. They didn’t even particularly like each other, but there they were. He always thought it was her fault, all that ass swish-swooshing she liked to do, and those low-cut dresses she flaunted. He used to tell Grigory Petrovich that this kind of exhibitionism wouldn’t lead to anything good, but Grisha liked it. Ivan Denisovich later wondered if his friend knew about them, and even stopped seeing Grigory for a few years. He also wondered if she ever did it with anyone else. Secretive little wench. She knew what she was doing.

Ivan Denisovich watched Valentina’s hand go up and down her thigh. It was like a tic. She hadn’t stopped for ten minutes. Just rubbing and rubbing, rubbing and rubbing. He cleared his throat. Valentina’s daughter and grandchildren were not coming back for another two hours. Was she thinking the same? Did she know what he was thinking? He suddenly wanted to undo her dress and spill her soft large body onto the sofa.

“Oy, kak pusto! Kak strashno! Oy, Vanya, why?” She tossed from side to side over the barely rumpled sheets. “So lonely… so scary. So empty… so alien…” She glanced at him, sitting on the side of the bed. “Even you,” and she wrapped her face in the pillow to muffle her weeping.

Ivan knew he should hold her, try to calm her down, but he was overwhelmed by what had just happened, and couldn’t bring himself to touch Valentina again. The thought of embracing her warm, flaccid body whose faint perspiration had a completely foreign flavor nauseated him. He turned away, and another smell, Grigory Petrovich’s dear smell, wafted from the pillow, and he noticed a few strands of his friend’s hair on it. He simultaneously wanted to throw the pillow against the wall and bury his face in it forever.

Ivan Denisovich reluctantly patted weeping Valentina on her broad undulant back and grabbed his boxers off the chair.

The sun was down and the apartment would soon fill with children’s laughter, regardless of what had happened.

“Do you want me to stay?” he asked, pulling on his pants.

“No, we’ll manage. We always do, we have to,” Valentina sniffled, wiping her nose on the discarded T-shirt. “You ain’t Grisha, don’t even try.”

She stood up and undid her rollers in front of the black lacquer vanity that had been purchased from the same store as Sofia’s. She suddenly seemed taller, more imposing, despite her bright pink bra and underwear. Her peroxide-blond hair slipped down her round shoulders in large stiff waves.

“Nuuh, what are you staring at? Haven’t seen a naked woman?” she smirked, shaking out her curls like a girl.

“No, I’m just…” and he realized he hadn’t for some time.

“Sveta, pass the fish,” said Sofia Arkadievna to her daughter. “Oy, I still can’t get over it.” She squeezed Ivan Denisovich’s arm in sympathy.

The TV was on, a low hum in the back of the room. Sveta and her husband Alex had stopped by for dinner. Ivan Denisovich noticed they always came to eat at the end of the month, probably ran out of money. No wonder. Her husband was an idiot, spending money on stupid haircuts and designer T-shirts. He was not a husband, he was a liability.

“Pap,” said Alex, chewing the fish and mashed potatoes with his mouth open.

Where did she find this treasure? Well worth immigrating for.

“I have a name.”

“Oh, c’mon, Pap, we’re all family here.”

“Grigory was family. And you…” Ivan Denisovich shook his hand.

“Stop it, Papa. What did he ever do to you?” whined Sveta.

She was not his Svetka anymore. His Svetka who used to jump and laugh until her braids were undone. She had lost her sense of humor, as if being dull meant being smart.

“To Grisha’s soul, may he rest in peace.” Sofia Arkadievna lifted her glass filled with vodka to the brim.

Ivan Denisovich thought it strange that his wife, who didn’t like vodka and rarely drank at all, was about to chug a full glass of the clear demon.

“A good man is gone.” She put down the empty glass and inhaled on a slice of brown rye. “Let’s go see Valentina. I don’t treat her right. I should give her something.”

Ivan Denisovich realized that his wife was already drunk, and acting out of character. He gazed around the room as if he had accidentally entered the wrong apartment. He searched for something familiar, something to hold onto, and was happy to see the little yellow-and-brown throw that Sofia Arkadievna had crocheted when Svetka was born. Russian newspapers and magazines were scattered on the glass coffee table, covered with fingerprints. The blue-and-white flowery china-one of the few things they brought with them when they emigrated-held the proverbial fried cod, mashed potatoes, and beet salad. Stolichnaya vodka in Czech crystal glasses with golden trim completed the setting. The curtains were drawn, shutting out the world, and on the TV screen an old black-and-white film with Katyusha missiles blasting against the night sky annihilated Nazi troops in the field. Ivan Denisovich almost believed he was back in Russia, and for a moment felt warm inside, as if the shot of vodka had spread slowly through his veins into the most remote areas of his body, pushing out the pain. He suddenly loved everyone, even his son-in-law with his idiotic spiky hair.

“Milaya.” He hadn’t called Sofia Arkadievna “my beloved” for many years. He reached for her face and noticed she was crying. “Milaya, don’t cry. It will be all right.”

“How would you know, you old goat?” She sounded just like Grigory.

“Mama?” Sveta stared at her weeping mother from across the table. “Ma, what’s wrong?”

“Ma, ma!” Sofia Arkadievna mocked her daughter. “That’s what,” and she grabbed the platter and threw it across the room. It hit the wall just below the family picture gallery, and the fish mixed with broken china slid down the wall and landed on the polished top of the bookcase.

Sveta jumped from the table, covering her mouth with both hands, as if afraid to release any sound. The men didn’t move.

On the screen, a hazy-eyed war heroine sang “Moscow Nights” to a room full of somber officers.

“I’m sorry,” cried Sofia Arkadievna, and plunked her head over her arms on the table. “I’m so sorry, Vanya. For everything.”

Sveta made a sign to her husband to help her clean up the mess. He wanted to finish his food, but she handed him a rag and a bucket to take care of the fish on the bookcase.

Ivan Denisovich remained still. Everything in his past had to be suddenly rearranged, like a Rubik’s cube when you moved one square and the whole thing collapsed and you had to start over. Only he had no time left to put it all together again. He stood up, unexpectedly sorry for himself, picked up his keys, and walked out the door.

He reached the corner. The night was cool, but jasmine filled the air. The leaning palms looked like bottle brushes against the dark red glow of the evening sky. A young couple across the street laughed, drinking out of a brown bag and smoking. Ivan Denisovich approached them and demonstrated that he wanted a cigarette. They smiled, handed him a Marlboro, and offered to light it. He nodded in gratitude and limped away, his legs rubbery from the first puff.

Cars zoomed by, up and down Fountain Avenue. An older woman with a grocery bag struggled with her keys. A black teenager coasted on his bike, hands off the bar, just like Grigory used to, back in Moscow. A Latina beauty pulled her screaming son out of a beat-up Toyota; then a paraplegic rolled past him in a motorized wheelchair and disappeared inside an apartment building.

Ivan Denisovich shivered and regretted having forgotten his jacket. He glanced at the window on the third floor that framed the orange-tinted light from his apartment. The balcony was filled with old suitcases, geraniums in clay pots, and laundry hanging from the line. Two plastic chairs, his and Sofia Arkadievna’s, stood in the middle, facing the street. They often sat there in the evenings, drinking cold tea and watching neighbors down below. He noticed that the chair cushions were still there. How many times did he have to tell her not to leave them out overnight?

He threw his cigarette on the ground, crushed it against the asphalt with his slipper, and shuffled back home.

ROGER CRUMBLER CONSIDERED HIS SHAVEBY GARY PHILLIPS

Mid-City

Roger Crumbler considered his shave. On this his fiftieth birthday, he was pleased that while his stubble became grayer each week, he still had a head of hair-and it was still dark.

The face in his bathroom mirror had held up fairly decently for half a century. Though not for the first time he considered minor cosmetic surgery to correct the bags under his eyes, a trait among the men in his family. Was it true that Preparation H reduced the puffiness? There was a kind of logic to that since hemorrhoids were what…? An enlarged vein, right? But what caused those sacks under the eyes? Fluid? He’d have to Google that. It was always good to have something new to learn.

Working the shaving gel into his whiskers, Roger smiled, mentally outlining the day ahead. At the office he had to complete a final review of the Carlson Foundation financials. There had been no major blips on the radar save for some inconsistencies on a pass-through grant from a city agency. The Carlson Foundation funded reading programs for low-income youth, and the city of Los Angeles was a partner in that endeavor. Such inconsistencies were not unusual given the accounting procedures of the bureaucrats versus the private sector. This was a minor concern, and he would resolve it with a phone call or two to his City Hall contacts.

Yet it was because of those inconsistencies that he was able to do what he’d done. For him. For Nanette.

Roger turned his head this way and the other, making sure he’d covered his face evenly as he massaged the warm foam into his pores. At one of those precious west side fundraising dinner parties saving spotted owls (or maybe it was spotted actors), a dermatologist with skin flawless as plastic told him that you should allow five minutes for your night beard to soak properly. He didn’t adhere to this advice each morning, but he wasn’t going to be fifty every morning either. This was, after all, a big day.

After reconciling the financials, there would be the regular weekly staff meeting. He’d already written and copied his report earlier this week, so there should be no surprises there either. The company, Nathanson and Nathanson, was a boutique CPA firm that nonetheless commanded more than eight million in billing last year, with a clientele that ranged from old-line family foundations like Carlson to heavy hitters in the film and music business. Roger was senior vice-president and was up for partnership.

That in itself was something, considering the firm had been started in the ’40s, when there were still a smattering of orange groves along Wilshire. Run and grown by the founder, Sig Nathanson, then turned over to one of the sons, Gabe, and nephew Martin, in the ’70s. The only other partner outside of the family had been a member of the founder’s temple, and Roger was not a member. Unlike the late Sammy Davis, Jr., he’d only joked over drinks about converting. And what about Whoopi Goldberg? She wasn’t really a member of the tribe, was she? Something else to Google.

He dutifully stroked his double blade through the foam. The reassuring sound of whiskers being loped off were the low notes accompanying the chirping of birds in the tree outside his second-story bathroom window. Post the staff meeting he’d have a light lunch at his desk. He wasn’t actually much for diets, but when he’d had the irregular heartbeat detected at age forty-five, he finally quit smoking and resolved to loose the fat.

Roger guided his razor underneath his jaw. Initially he’d hated running. He’d tried the treadmill at the gym his wife belonged to, but found that boring. Yet jogging through his neighborhood-Wilshire Vista, the upscalers called it-he had sights and sounds, and this kept him occupied. In the five years of this regime, including regular sessions with weight machines, he’d lost forty pounds. He ran a palm over his handiwork. For a man his age, his wife and girlfriend both told him amorously, he looked reasonably fit and even a little buffed.

He worked the razor on his upper lip, recalling fondly the moustache he’d also shed five, no, more like four years ago. That’s when he’d met Nanette. Finished, he toweled off the excess of lather and dabbed on aftershave, then stepped back into the bedroom.

His wife, Claudia, was up and moving about. He watched with lascivious interest as she bent over to search in her underwear drawer. Usually she wore sweats or pajama pants and a top, but this morning, this birthday, she wore only lacy purple panties.

Roger sat on the bed, picturing himself as David Niven in Raffles. “Have I mentioned how spectacular your ass is, honey?”

“You always know what to say to a woman.” She pushed him back and straddled him, nuzzling and biting his neck.

“Glad you woke me up this morning,” he said, pulling her down and kissing her full on the mouth. He was going to miss her. Yes, he certainly was.

“You didn’t do too bad for an old dog.”

“Careful, I might have to show you my double play.”

She smiled, biting her lower lip. This always got to him, even after decades of seeing it. “I’d like to, baby, but I have to hit that inventory this a.m. You know how that tight-ass Pelecanos gets.” Claudia managed a heavy-equipment rental service.

“Forget your clown boss. He couldn’t find balls in a bowling alley if it wasn’t for you.” He slipped his hand inside her panty and caressed that wondrous backside. His wife reluctantly broke free.

“Tonight we’ll have all kinds of time,” she said.

“Well, I don’t know. At my age, Lord knows, I need my rest.”

She shook a glossy purple nail at him. “You just be ready and don’t drink too much.”

He chuckled. “I won’t.” Damn, she looked good.

The phone rang. He reached for it but Claudia moved quicker and plucked the handset loose.

“Hello?” Then, “Oh, hi, sweetie.” She listened some more, glancing once or twice at her husband, frowning.

Roger languidly reposed on the bed, but a spring was winding in the base of his spine. That had to be their daughter on the phone. She attended Cal Berkeley up north. Was there some emergency? If so, what would that do to his schedule? But he had to be cool. Can’t let ’em see you sweat, he reminded himself.

“All right, honey. We’ll see you tonight.”

“Why’s she coming home?” he asked as his wife hung up. “There some problem?”

“Not really…” Claudia began.

“Not really?” he said more shrilly than he wanted. “This is the middle of the school year, Claudia.” Now what did he just tell himself? Keep it on low burn, man. Low burn. He rose, clasping his wife’s shoulders. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get all tense. You know how us pensioners get mood swings.”

Claudia Crumbler-Morris looked preoccupied, fooling with a towel. “Janice’s coming home because she doesn’t have class until Monday, and wants to talk to us about something.”

Roger wondered aloud, “Dropping out?”

“Or pregnant.”

“Aw, hell no.” He began to stomp around the room. “We’re too damn young to be grandparents.”

“No, we’re not.”

“Jesus.”

Claudia chuckled. “I don’t think she’s pregnant.”

“She’s twenty and we’ve both seen how them knotheads with their pants hanging down around their cracks drool at her.”

Claudia was heading toward the shower. “She’s not attracted to those kind of boys.”

“Even boys with slide rules like a little-”

“Roger,” she admonished.

“Taste,” he declared.

“Heathen.” She closed the bathroom door and ran her shower. He knew she wasn’t that sure Janice wasn’t pregnant, and neither was he.

And if she was with child, then what of his plans involving Nanette? It wasn’t like he could pull this off any time he felt like doing it. He finished dressing. It would be casual today, the pressed chinos, button-down shirt, sports jacket, no tie. It was his birthday and it was expected he’d be coasting once the Carlson file was closed out.

Putting his socks on, the ones with the blue hourglasses, he reveled in the simplicity and beauty of the virus he’d planted in his firm’s computers more than two years ago. At 9:24 tonight, his new life would begin.

By then he and Nanette would be heading east, toward Texas, in the used car they’d bought more than a year ago. He’d gotten the brakes fixed, the head gasket replaced and what have you, so that the vehicle was completely reliable for the getaway. And, most importantly, the final transfer of the funds he’d siphoned off, little by little, had been completed three days ago. The computer crash would cover his nefarious deeds for weeks, time enough to set up his new life with the younger woman.

Naturally, Roger would be a suspect, but he’d be gone, no forwarding. The cops and the firm would hammer at Claudia, give her a rough going over, but she was innocent. She didn’t have a clue about his plans.

“What time will you be back home? I know you’re going to have drinks with Wayne and the guys.”

“What time is Janice supposed to be here?”

“About 7:30, she said.”

“Alone?”

His wife dangled an earring from her lobe. “Good question.” She blew him a kiss. “You have such a suspicious mind.”

“I’ll be back here no later than 8.”

“All right. See you then, Rog.” She gave him a peck, then gripped his lower face in her hand. Using her tongue, but keeping her fresh carmine lips off his, she probed his mouth. “Love you.”

“Love you too.”

As she hummed and walked down the stairs, he stood at the railing, watching her go. He remained there, hearing her car start up and fade away. After tonight, he’d never see her or his daughter again. But he was resolved, he was going to spend the second half, well, really, if he was lucky and kept exercising and watching what he ate, the next thirty years with a woman twenty years his junior, plus some two and a half million dollars in ill-gotten gains richer.

That was an amount a bling bling rapper like 50 Cent or actor Tom Cruise might sneer at, hardly enough for them to get out of bed. But it was sufficient for a humble man like Roger Crumbler.

The down payment had been made through intermediaries on a condo in Port Saint Charles in Barbados. And through budgeting and living within their means, they’d be comfortable. They wouldn’t be driving Jags or Bentleys, nor vacationing on a whim, but it’s not like they’d have to subsist on Top Ramen.

And should the need or notion arise, Roger had also entertained money laundering for a select list of individuals. Certainly more than once over the years, several clients of the firm had hinted at such. Millionaires, more than the middle class, were willing to step over the line to hold onto that which they felt entitled to by birth or happenstance.

Wayne Wardlow, the Carlson Foundation’s executive director, was not a possibility in that department. Though it was Wayne who had inspired Roger.

“Hell yes, I’m tappin’ that ass,” he’d joked. Referring to a woman, a freelance writer Wardlow had met doing an article about socially involved foundations for Los Angeles magazine.

“Okay, P. Diddy,” Roger had remarked to the man whose face should illustrate WASP in the dictionary. They were in the locker room getting dressed after their basketball game and shower.

“I love black pussy-you don’t know what you’re missing, son.” Wardlow knocked him playfully in the shoulder.

“And you have lost your natural cotton-pickin’ mind,” Roger said, slipping into his trousers.

“Rog, getting some on the side at our age is cheaper than buying a sports car, and a damn sight more fun.” He then grabbed his crotch like an oversexed sophomore in high school and bucked his hips.

Okay, it wasn’t really fair to lay this at Wayne Wardlow’s doorstep. Roger was a grown man. He made the decision to kindle a romance with Nanette, who’d flirted with him that day at the Barnes and Noble in the Grove. A pretty woman like her browsing in the Social Science section, able to cite the specific failures of strongman Robert Mugabe’s policies in Zimbabwe, and argue the cultural significance of the late Rick James’s music. How could he not be hooked?

His cell phone rang, and he knew only too well the number on its screen.

“How does it feel to be a geezer who has two women panting to fuck the shit out of you?” Nanette said huskily.

“You have a way with a phrase, have I mentioned that?”

“Are you hard? Or did the old lady drain you?”

“I want you so bad.”

“Me too.”

“Everything ready?”

“Ready and steady.”

He hesitated-should he mention his daughter coming to town?

“What? Worried? Having second thoughts? That’s understandable, this is serious.”

“Don’t I know. Everything’s fine. I can’t wait to see you.” Don’t say anything, don’t put a jinx on this opportunity.

“I’ll be thinking about you all day, Roger. Wish you were here to find out how wet I am.”

“I will soon, baby.”

“You got that right.”

He pressed the cell off and nodded his head. They’d even accounted for this. For the last few months he’d been using disposable cell phones, also carrying his regular one for his wife’s calls.

Outside, Roger sat in his idling car, looking at the house he was not going to see again after today. It was far from a palace, but they’d lived in this two-story Spanish-Mediterranean since Janice had been three. The paint jobs, the patching, the lawn that needed re-seeding, staying here while Claudia took Janice to the Valley during the ’92 riots-a pint of Jack Daniel’s and a revolver he’d never fired, his false fortifications. There had been the hole in the roof beneath the tiles that had ruined their bedroom ceiling, those ornery possums prowling in the bushes in the backyard he’d chased off with a golf club, the time Janice learned to ride her bike up and down the block. The house was the touchstone to a vast chapter in his life.

He backed the car out of the driveway and made a slow tour along Curson, taking it all in as if for the first time-the old timers and the others, the newbies with their walls enclosing their front yards, the redone homes with the Southwest flare replete with landscapes of cacti and native plants-how his neighborhood, his part of Mid-City, had changed in the years they’d lived here.

Roger waved at Dorothy, one of his long-time neighbors, walking her Chow mix. He choked up, but pulled it together and moved on; there was no time for cheap sentimentality. After making a turn at the signal, he picked up speed heading east on Olympic, nearing L.A. High where he’d gone his junior and senior years, lettering in basketball and track. His folks-his dad had worked for the county as a bus dispatcher for the then Rapid Transit District, and his mom a legal secretary-had saved enough to move from what they called the east side in those days, South Central now, and bought a tidy one-story on Norton just south of Pico.

His father had died in ’99 and his mother, still active and working part-time at a senior center, had moved back to Oakland where she was from. How would what he was about to do affect her? Would it age her? Would she hate him? Blame Claudia? Take it out on Janice? No, his mother was a rational, strong woman. She’d probably denounce him from the pulpit of her church and pray for his lost, misguided soul. There’d be a round of “amens” and shaking of heads and comforting their troubled sister by the congregation. She’d done what she could to raise him right, some people are just born to be bad, they’d commiserate.

To get his mind off his mother’s pending disappointment, he turned on the radio. He was pleased to hear that the forecast was sunny and breezy, a typical day in L.A. At Highland, he went north.

At the office he reconciled the inconsistency with the Carlson financials after one phone call and a subsequent fax from his buddy at the County. In deference to his friend Wayne Wardlow, he’d also stolen money from his foundation. If he hadn’t, then Wayne would have come under suspicion and scrutiny. And that might disclose his friend’s continuing relationship with his paramour, and that would surely weigh on Roger’s conscience.

“Happy birthday, Rog.”

“Thanks, Gabe.” The son had stepped into Roger’s office.

“Just want you to know, it’s all downhill from here.” Gabriel Nathanson was twice divorced and fifty-four.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Nathanson clapped him on her shoulder. “I’ll see you over at the Bounty, I’ll buy a round.”

“That’s great, Gabe.”

“I tried to get that drip Marty to come along, but you know how he is.”

Roger dredged up a camaraderie chuckle it had taken him years to perfect. “Yes, I do.” Martin Nathanson’s idea of cutting loose was putting ketchup on his scrambled eggs.

“And next week, let’s you, me, and sourpuss sit down, okay, partner?”

“Sure, Gabe. I look forward to it.”

The son left, whistling.

There it was. Roger was going to betray a firm with a reputation for spotless honesty and forthrightness of, well, of more than sixty years. Would they recover from the taint his theft would smear them with, or sink under a sea of accusations and blame? That and the avalanche of lawsuits sure to come. And though Roger was not much of a standard-bearer for the race, there was that too. A black man, albeit middle class and middle-aged, married for over twenty years to a white woman, but a black man nonetheless, who had gained the trust of his Jewish bosses and in effect stolen from them. What would be the fallout from that? Strenuous finger-pointing at the next CPA convention, for sure.

And what of the betrayal of his wife and daughter? Wasn’t that the biggest crime of all? Running off with a younger black woman, fine as she may be? His stomach gurgled as he admonished himself. This was a time to keep his mind focused, not a time for butterflies and second-guessing. He wanted to call Nanette, wanted so desperately to hear her say how much she loved him, how she’d never felt this way about a man before.

He suppressed the urge and went about his tasks, forcing himself not to watch the clock, not to mentally count down the hours till he started anew. Never again the same old 9-to-5, mortgage-paying, block-club-going Roger. The hours eked by and finally he was sitting in the back room of the Bounty on Wilshire in what was becoming part of the growing Koreatown.

The HMS Bounty was a time warp steak-and-booze emporium left over from the days of pounding down a couple of Scotches over lunch, when cholesterol sounded like the name of a new hair color line. It was where you could find a booth named for L.A. native Jack Webb, and across the street from the ghost of the Ambassador Hotel where presidential candidate Robert Kennedy had been assassinated in 1968. The hotel was no more, and a high school and shops were being built on the grounds.

“Here’s to my ace, Roger. May the next fifty be yours for the taking,” Wayne Wardlow toasted after they’d sung an off-key but effusive “Happy Birthday.”

The waitress brought out a chocolate cake, his favorite.

“Of course, we only used five candles for symbolism’s sake, since we didn’t want to torch the joint,” Wardlow joked, getting a round of guffaws.

“Here’s to you, Roger,” Gabe Nathanson echoed.

“Thanks, gents.” Roger clinked his glass against the others’ and drank. This was his second gin and tonic and it was going to be his limit. It was seventeen past 6:00 and it was getting harder for him to laugh and seem at ease. He had to go home and find out about his daughter, a last intimacy with Claudia, he owed her that, and then Nanette. One foot right before the other, Roger. Just like walking across the street. Though you could get run over.

“What’s up, champ?” Wardlow sidled up next to him. “Looks like you got something on your mind.”

“Being fifty.”

Wardlow had more of his whiskey. “I hear that. But things change, yeah? Don’t want to look back and have a trunk full of regrets.” He upended his tumbler and signaled for another. “Getting this age, too old to be innovative but just enough juice left in the tank to try something different, it hits you, doesn’t it? You can keep doing what you’re doing, stay in that rut till you maybe make retirement, and hope you can still manage to wipe your own butt and have enough to buy a few beans and tortillas. Or take a chance on something.” He looked off, beyond the walls.

“Exactly,” Roger agreed.

Later, after the goodbyes and a promise to play nine holes with Wardlow and a couple of the fellas, Claudia called him on his cell as he headed home.

“Janice isn’t here.”

“What? She turn around and go back?”

“No. Her cell phone is suddenly disconnected. I couldn’t leave a message, and I haven’t heard from her.”

“You just now telling me this?”

“Don’t yell at me. It’s just a little past 7:30, the time I figured she’d be here.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry. Think she’s at one of her friends’ houses? Could she have stopped on the way and maybe dropped her phone and broke it?”

“Then why wouldn’t she use their phone to call?”

“Look, it’s not dire yet or anything. We should be calm.”

“I am, I’m just, you know, could it have something to do with why she came down?”

“I don’t know. We have some of her friends’ numbers. Girls from high school.”

“I’m going to call them.”

“Okay. I’ll be home shortly.” He hung up and rang Nanette to fill her in.

“Why didn’t you tell me she was coming to town?”

“I didn’t think it was going to be a big thing.”

“So what are you going to do?” she asked.

“I can’t take off till I know what’s going on with Janice.”

“I know that, I’m not the unfeeling ho,” she barked.

“That’s not what I meant. I can’t stop the virus. Anyway, everyone’s gone home, it would be my code and time stamp registered on the alarm pad if I went back to the office now.”

Her tone softened. “What about the money in the accounts? We can access the funds at any time, right?”

“Theoretically, yes. But once the hard drives are probed, I can’t be sure there won’t be traces. When they attempt to resurrect the files, they’ll dig deep. The virus was merely a way to give us the time we needed to get to the islands.”

“Then find your daughter, darling, and call me back. It still won’t make a difference if we leave tonight, tomorrow, or next week. Those computer files won’t be recovered that fast. In fact, when they go down and you’re around being all concerned, that will be even better, less attention on you.”

“Okay. Talk to you soon.”

“Okay, baby.”

Roger arrived at his house and was surprised to see his wife’s car wasn’t there. She called him on his cell as he unlocked the front door. “Janice had some car trouble, I went to pick her up. Should be back in half an hour.”

“Fine, I’ll be here.” Roger went inside, checking the time and gauging his next moves. The virus had launched, it was real now. He was elated. He was getting aroused as he fantasized about the money and his woman. Giddy, he took out his BlackBerry and punched in a code. The results on his screen sobered him. He put in more numbers, and again got the same results. Zero.

Reeling like he’d been hammered by a heavyweight’s blow, Roger dropped to his knees, fighting for air. He dropped the BlackBerry before him, as if it were a totem he could invoke favor through. The accounts in the Swiss banks and the one in the Caymans were empty. He kneeled there, blinking and kneading his hands. There was only one other person who knew about them. He rose, a man with renewed purpose.

Not fifteen minutes later, Roger Crumbler was surprised when Nanette answered her door. She lived in a duplex near Motor he’d helped her rent under a false name.

“Hi, Rog,” she said as he rushed inside.

“Well?” He held the BlackBerry in front of her face.

“Well, what?”

“The money, Nanette, the goddamn money I risked everything to steal. For us.”

“I don’t have it. Obviously.”

“Really?” He stalked through the apartment, not sure what he’d find or do as he looked in the bedroom and the closets. “You’re full of shit, baby. You must have the money. No one else knew about the accounts but you.”

“Keep your voice down, Roger.”

“Fuck that.” He was breathing hard, sweat glazing his brow. Fists balled, he blared, “You’re playing some kind of game with me, aren’t you? Think I’m stupid.”

“Roger, if I had the money, why would I be here waiting for you?”

He grabbed her arm. “You tell me.”

“Let go.” She jerked free. “So let me get this straight, you’re claiming the money is gone all of a sudden? The money from the accounts you set up, the money from the accounts you created passwords for? That money?” She glared at him, nostrils flaring.

“Oh, I see. Very clever. Make it seem like you’re the innocent here. When it’s perfectly clear you’re trying to pull some shit on me.”

“What about this, asshole. What if you planned this all along, come storming in here pretending you can’t find the Benjamins, and be all outraged and get me sucked in. Then send me off to look for the money and you take off with it. Shit,” she said, disgusted. “Without me giving you the backbone, you’d never have stolen that money. You’d keep being a glorified bookkeeper until you got your gold watch and your once-a-week handjob from your wife.”

“Shut the fuck up. I need to think.” He wanted to beat the truth out of her.

“You shut the fuck up.” She shoved him. “And get out of here. Now that I see what a pussy you really are, I wouldn’t go to the corner liquor store with you.”

He was shaking in anger. “Now you hold on.”

“Get out of her before I call the cops on your useless ass. You probably got all nervous and hit the wrong key, sending our money to some South American dictator’s account.” She laughed hollowly. “How the fuck could I have seen a future with you? You’re pathetic, Roger.”

“You’re not getting rid of me. We’re going to find that money together. This is my only chance, Nanette.”

“You’re unstable.” She moved to the door and held it open. “Leave.”

“I’m not going until I get my money.” He stalked toward her. “My fuckin’ money, understand me, bitch?”

“Oh, okay.” She slapped him hard. “Now get to steppin’. I don’t want to ever see you again. We’re through-get it, motherfuckah?” she yelled. “We’re through! Fuck you, your money, and your sorry little dreams.”

He popped her on the point of her jaw and she rocked back, dazed. He grabbed her arms with both of his hands and shook her. “I want my money!” he screamed.

She lunged forward and bit his ear as he reflexively turned his face away. He yowled in pain and let her go. Nanette ran and grabbed a screwdriver out of a kitchen drawer. “Get the fuck out of here or so help me, Roger, I’ll gut you.” Red washed her teeth and mottled her lips. The lips that all day he’d longed to kiss.

“Look, let’s-”

“Hey!” a voice called from below. “I’ve called the police on you two!” An approaching siren punctuated the warning.

“Get out of here,” Nanette repeated.

“What are you going to tell the cops?”

Her eyes were pitiless. “Get going, Roger.”

He ran from the duplex and ripped away in his car. The downstairs neighbor was out on the lawn, watching Roger go. Blood congealed in his eardrum, and some of it had dripped on his jacket and shirt. His cell phone rang, and he recognized his daughter’s number on the screen.

“Daddy?”

“Janice. Where have you been?”

“Waiting for you and Mom at the house. Aren’t we supposed to go out to dinner with your friends?”

“What?”

“Mom called me last Wednesday and said it would be good if I came down this weekend because it was your fiftieth birthday and she was having a party for you at this fancy restaurant.”

“She…” he began, but didn’t finish. “You didn’t have car trouble?”

“No. Mom told me to be home around 8:30. I got in town earlier and went and saw Ruthie and them, you know. I called her and told her that.”

Roger looked at his watch. It was 9:01. “And your mother’s not there?”

“She isn’t. I called her cell and got her answering message. Are you on your way home?”

“Yes, dear. I’ll see you in a few minutes.” They severed the connection. Roger was heading toward his house but pulled over on Venice and parked. He called their mutual friends. Nothing. Hadn’t seen or heard from Claudia. He called her friends. Again nothing. She was gone. He was sure of it. Took the money he worked so hard to steal. Roger got out of his car, dizzy and disoriented. He retched, vomiting into the gutter.

He sat on the curb, head in his hands, almost in tears. All his planning, his hope, his chance, gone. Claudia must have found out he was having an affair. She’d have searched through his BlackBerry, looking for a name or phone number. The passwords to the accounts were in the PDA. And it wouldn’t have been too hard for her to figure them out, as she’d chided him more than once that he used his mother’s maiden name, his favorite movie, or his father’s nickname way too often.

He sighed, and as if trudging through wet cement, he returned to his car. Driving aimlessly, he realized he wasn’t going home. Roger knew Nanette wouldn’t tell the cops anything since she risked trouble if he was arrested. But that nosy neighbor might have noted his license number. And for all he knew, the law was running his plate now.

He drove, alone and deliberate in his thoughts.

What if Claudia had a boyfriend? Had she run away with some young stud she met at the gym or that class she took at UCLA last year? Had she played him for the fool all along? Nanette’s phone numbers were in his PDA. Claudia was smart, she’d put it together and hadn’t given anything away. She’d waited until he’d amassed enough, and then took it from him like a vandal sacking a village.

He slowed near the 10 freeway and Fairfax Avenue. He hadn’t allowed himself to imagine the depth of the disgust she’d feel once it was known he’d stolen money and run off with another woman. But now he could be the hero. At least he could have that over Claudia.

“Your mother has done us wrong, Janice,” he told her after reaching her at home on one of his cell phones. He’d crawled through the hole in the cyclone fence to get down to Ballona Creek. It was an old tributary of water dating back to the days of the ranchos in this once small pueblo. But like everything else in this city, the creek was walled in with concrete. Ballona ran under the Fairfax Avenue overpasses from the freeway and meandered west for nine miles or so to the Pacific.

“What are you talking about?” his daughter replied. Then he heard a knock and a muffled voice. “Dad, there’s a man at the door saying he’s from the police. What’s going on?”

“Tell him your mother’s run off with another man.” Hell, maybe it was true.

“Dad, what are you-”

“It’s okay, sweetheart. She’ll get hers. I’m going to find her. I’m going to make sure she doesn’t get away with this.” He hung up and smashed both of his cell phones against the concrete walls of the creek. There were ways of tracking you with those things.

Roger started jogging through the shallow water, which barely splashed above his dress shoes. In nearby Culver City, there was a bike path that paralleled Ballona. He and Claudia and Janice had ridden it many times out to Marina del Rey. Tonight it wasn’t for recreation that he would travel it-this was his lifeline. He picked up his pace, arms pumping, legs churning. Ahead, in the dark at the curve of the concrete wall, something disturbed the water. Roger didn’t slow down. Be it a possum or human predator, he didn’t care. He was on a mission. Claudia would not escape him.

In the morning he awoke in the stale motel room with its walls bleached of color and greasy cracked windows. He took the toiletry items out of the black plastic bag from the 7-Eleven. Overhead yet another plane rattled the threadbare room. In the few pieces left of the broken mirror over the rust-stained sink, he studied his face while he lathered.

Wasn’t there more gray in those whiskers today? The bags more pronounced? And wasn’t that some gray edging into his temples? No matter. He had big things to do. Razor poised, having lubricated his stubble for the requisite five minutes, Roger Crumbler considered his shave.