At the Pacific Coast Highway I sat at the light and looked out at the flat black expanse of the sea. When the person behind me hit his horn I turned right, to the north, toward home. Toward my house and my view and my life. Toward everything I’d built for myself, intentionally and accidentally. I’d built it the way some mollusks build their shells, picking up pieces of debris here and there on the seafloor, and fitting them together to create a suit of armor that’s too rigid to be crushed, too spiky to be swallowed, and virtually impossible to shed. Collector shells, they’re called. Some of them are beautiful.
At Topanga Canyon I pulled over to the side of the road and waited until the traffic had passed so I could make the U-turn that would take me south. Toward Eleanor. Maybe she’d let me in.
