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He looked around for an ashtray, couldn't find one, flicked on the carpet.

—So. I went and saw L.L.

—Man. I.

He held up a hand.

—No. Don't. Now is not the time. I mean. I went over to Chez Jay, took a look at him, man, I started to cry. And. You know, not because I was pissed. It was, man, it was so fucking good to see him, you know.

He clenched his teeth.

—And that hurt like a son of a bitch. Let me tell you it did. Talk about feeling guilty. Anyway. He turned around, saw me. Know what he said?

I nodded.

—The wrong thing.

He took a long drag.

—You got that right. Said, Ah, Chev, come to see me after all these years. What's gone amiss, son, lost the strength of your convictions?

I closed my eyes, tried to imagine he was mistaken about what my father had said, knew he was not.

I opened my eyes.

—Did you hit him?

Smoke drifted from his nostrils.

—No. I walked out. Because right there, man, in that moment, I ceased to care anymore.

He leaned forward, elbows on knees.

—The man had finally, after the, after the accident, after the shit he told us, he had finally, in that moment when something could have been done, he had finally gone too far. Man, I didn't even know there was road left to travel on that route, but he found it and drove it and that was the end of the line for me. I didn't hit him. I did not want to hit him. I just wanted gone. I walked out.

—Good.

He nodded.

—Yeah. Good. But here's the thing, man, the point.

He looked at the floor, shook his head, looked back up at me.

—Like fucking father, Web, like fucking son.

I opened my mouth.

He closed it.

—No. Wait. Listen.

I listened.

—He wasn't always like that. He was always a son of a bitch, always talked shit, but he wasn't always mean. That didn't really start till after the accident. He didn't really start forcing everyone out of his life until after the accident.

He scratched his shoulder.

—If that rings any bells.

He got up.

—So it's not about the money. Or about you seeing L.L. If my dad were still around, no matter if he'd turned out to be the biggest bastard ever, I'd want to check on him every now and then. It's not even about you hurting my new girl's feelings so bad that she doesn't want to come here and I had to go to her place and sneak in and out of her bedroom because her folks would freak out if they knew her new boyfriend was a twenty-nine-year-old rocker with a tattoo parlor.

He walked to the hallway, stopped.

—It's about you not trying to get better. It's about everyone else trying so hard that they wear themselves out and can't try anymore, and you just letting them beat themselves against you while you act like nothing fucking happened. Acting like you're no different. Like you haven't changed at all.

He turned from me.

—Web, it's about me getting tired, man. It's about, I, man, it's about I feel like I'm on that same road I was on with L.L., about thinking we're almost out of blacktop. And you just keeping the pedal to the metal, and not even trying to put on the brakes.

He put a hand on top of his head.

—And I hate that feeling, man.

He walked into his bedroom.

—I hate it.

And he closed the door.

Me, I sat on the kitchen floor and thought about how it was a good thing I'd cleaned up as well as I did. Because if Chev had known a man was killed in his apartment last night, the shit would really have hit the fan.

Then I got up, cleaned myself up a little, put on some clothes, got the keys to the Apache from Chev's jacket, and went out to go talk to a man about why the girl I'd fallen for, and, you know, already thoroughly alienated, had been kidnapped.

THE WORLD WITHOUT ME

—Cut you bad, cut you like Rambo cuts a redneck.

—Yeah, sure, I know. To avoid that, I'll stay over here.

—Cut you like I cut that other motherfucker.

I sat on the stripped mattress.

—Yeah, about him, you may find that it's in your best interest not to brag overmuch about how you cut him.

Jaime emptied his nip bottle of Malibu and added the empty to the vast array of them