Hollywood.
The lights of a jumbo jet cruised over the freeway on approach to LAX. Inglewood sprawled low and wild to the east, endless stucco blocks of small houses with barred windows and dead lawns.
– It's a tough little town, ain't it.
She shrugged.
– It's designed to fuck the weak is all.
– And how'd you avoid the mommy treatment?
She leaned forward and adjusted the heater.
– Dad divorced her when I was three. Seeing as she didn't want to have the responsibilities of actually raising kids, it wasn't much of a challenge for him to get custody. And by then I'd already started loathing her pretty well. I mean, Dad didn't have to run her down at all to make me not want to see her. Not that he would have done that. Still, holidays, occasional weekends, he'd pack me up and drive me over to the valley. It sucked, but it got better when I was five and she had Jaime. He was cute. And fun.
– Till he grew up and turned into a prick.
– Like I said, he had help.
– We all get help, that doesn't mean we all end up cutting guys up in motel rooms after a drug deal turns sour.
She fingered her sunglasses lower on her nose and gave me a look over the tops of the lenses.
– My, how very hard-boiled of you.
– I'm just saying.
She pushed the sunglasses back into place.
– I know what you're saying. And you're mostly right. He's definitely defective. But he's my brother. So I. You know.
– Sure.
– Anyway, it wasn't a drug deal.
– No? Stocks then? Commodities futures?
– I don't know. I mean, he does deal some stuff. Weed and ecstasy mostly. Works craft services and deals to the P.A.s and the extras. That knife, he was on set for a John Woo movie, one of the prop guys traded the knife for a few hits of X. He loves that knife. Anyway, whatever he's up to, it's not drugs. Jaime always gets into something crazy. Usually it's something having to do with movies. I don't think so this time. But movies is what it usually is. He's going to get the rights to some Hungarian sci-fi movie. He's going to manage the movie career of a Balinese pop star who's the Madonna of Indonesia. He's going to negotiate U.S. distribution for a Canadian production company that specializes in remaking Paraguayan classics. That kind of thing. Movies. He got it from my mom.
I slid into the interchange lane for the 10 West, thinking about L.L. and the movie game, and what it does to people.
She pointed at the sign for the 10.
– Where are you going?
– Take the 10 out to the PCH and up to Malibu.
She sat up and reached toward the wheel.
– No, no, don't, just. Just go.
She grabbed the wheel and shoved it to the left, sending us veering in front of a barreling SUV.
I slapped her hand.
– Hey! Hey!
The SUV cut around us, horn sounding.
She took her hand from the wheel as the exit to the 10 slipped away behind us.
– Sorry.
She put her face in her hands.
– Sorry.
She took it out and looked at me.
– I don't want to go west right now. I don't want to go home. I want. Oh fuck.
Tears were leaking out from under the lenses of the sunglasses.
– Shit, Web. Shit. My dad.
I nodded.
– Yeah, no problem.
I stayed with the 405, looking ahead to where it would climb through the Santa Monicas and meet the 101 on the other side.
– I got a place to go.
She pushed her fingers up under her sunglasses and wiped her eyes.
– Thanks.
I drove, thinking about families. Not my favorite pastime, but one I seem incapable of avoiding. I glanced at her from time to time, black hair pulled back, light olive skin flushed, muscles of her long neck taut as she bent to lean her head against the window, the sky lightening beyond her above the rim of the San Gabriels. And all that shit.
I thought to distract her from her sadness, strike a chord of shared experience. You know, cheer a girl up.
– So. Your mom's in the biz? So's my dad. Or he was. Screenwriter. What's your mom do?
She rolled her head around, pointed the big lenses at me, rolled back against the glass.
– She was a porn star. So I guess we both have parents who were whores.
I drove some more. Choosing wisely, I think, not to talk anymore.
– I suppose it was naive of me to think you were going to take me to your place and tuck me into your bed while you slept protectively on the floor, wasn't it?
I watched her as she flipped through Po Sin's binder of before-and-after photos from various job sites, sunglasses still over her eyes.
– I thought this might be more romantic.
She froze on a picture of a shotgun suicide, turned the page to a picture of the same room after it had been cleaned.
– You could play that game with these, you know:
She flipped back and forth between the two shots, the one featuring glossy pink bits that looked almost like strange candy, and the one of a scrupulously clean livingroom stripped of odd bits and pieces. Pointing to where a sofa cushion had been removed, the shade from a lamp, a square cut from the carpet, a blank spot on the wall where a piece of needlepoint used to be.
She closed the binder.
– Looking in his bedroom. No mattress. This lap blanket he used to cover his feet with when he sat up at night working in bed. He'd sit on top of the covers in a robe and drape it over his bare feet, you know. That's gone. And he always, always had a handkerchief folded on the nightstand. That's not there. Just things, they tell you someone's gone. And they're not coming back.
She put the binder back in its place on the office desk and spun around a couple times in Po Sin's chair.
– So, Web.
I sat on the bed.
– So, Soledad.
She put her feet down and stopped spinning.
– Do we have to do it this way?
– Which is to say?
She got up, took off her jacket, draped it over the chair, and walked over to the bed, where I sat scooted into the corner of the room, my back against the wall.
– Which is to say, do we have to tease this out with all kinds
She put a hand to the wall and lifted one foot and unlaced her sneaker and kicked it off.
– I hate that shit.
