Crush by Phoef Sutton

shifts for a year, and Tianna did a few movies, and, somehow (Rush didn’t quite know how) they paid off the debt. Then they got married, Tianna retired, and they lived happily ever after. Until Walter Trask went and drowned himself.
    â€œWhere’s Guzman?” Rush asked Tianna when she opened her front door.
    They must have been doing well the past few years, Rush thought. This little bungalow in Manhattan Beach was close enough to the water to cost a million and change. She let him in, and they sat in the diningroom, with its white table and picture-perfect view of the ocean across two blocks of rooftops.
    They could have done a lot of catching up. Rush had always liked Tianna, and Tianna had always liked Rush, only partly because he was one of the few men she knew who didn’t put the moves on her when Guzman’s back was turned. But now wasn’t the time for a reunion.
    â€œI don’t know where he is, Crush,” she said, and he knew she was lying. She’d never been good at faking it. That was why she hadn’t made it in the movies.
    â€œTell him I need to talk to him,” he said and left.

TWELVE
    R ush sat behind the wheel in front of a rundown church on Fairfax Avenue and watched a group of middle-aged men walk out of the rectory door, chatting. One of them, with a mop of white hair above an incongruously youthful face, spotted Rush and moved to him. He moved rapidly, too, with a little skip in his step. Everything about Bill Ingol was youthful except for his age. He rapped on the window of the GTO and waited with a wry smile for Rush to roll it down.
    â€œCaleb,” he said. “Missed you at the meeting. Haven’t seen you at one in a while.” It was actually a long while, but he didn’t have to say it.
    â€œBeen busy.”
    â€œDid you get yourself a new sponsor?”
    â€œI’m kinda working the program on my own these days.”
    â€œYeah. You know what they call people who work the program on their own, don’t you?”
    â€œI know. Drunks.”
    â€œAs long as you know.” Bill was a retired screenwriter. Retired not by choice, but by the unwritten law that if you were old enough to remember seeing the original Star Trek in its first showing, you were too old to write the remake.
    â€œI’m all right. Listen—do you still sponsor Tony Guzman?”
    Bill nodded.
    â€œHow’s he doing?” Rush asked.
    â€œGood. His eighth sober birthday’s next month. Wanna come help blow out the candles?”
    â€œSo he’s not drinking again?”
    â€œNo. Somebody say he was?”
    â€œTell him I need to see him. You know, if you happen to speak to him.”
    Bill nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

    Camphor-tree branches reached toward each other across the street, and the leaves met overhead, making the road into a beautiful green tunnel, but Stegner didn’t notice that. The street in South Pasadena was so picturesque that twice a month it was invaded by film crews in search of the perfect suburban neighborhood. Stegner didn’t appreciate that either. He was too busy casing the house across the street.
    A huge Craftsman bungalow—all heavy wood beams and dark green shingles—was the address theagency had given him. Someone had spent a lot of money in the past few years restoring that big old house and, right now, a horde of eight-year-olds was doing its best to destroy it. Balloons festooned the trees, streamers entwined the porch, and a banner ran across the front of the house: HAPPY 8 TH BIRTHDAY, EVAN!!!
    Stegner felt a little pang as he watched the bounce house rock back and forth in the side yard. He hadn’t seen his own son for, what was it, three months now? Why didn’t he miss him? Was it his fault that Lydia was a total bitch, taking Richie to Connecticut without so much as a by-your-leave? What was he supposed to do? Move to Bridgeport and start over from