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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. Shit. I get it.

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 naïve 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: What's the difference between the pictures?

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.