thing when I climbed into Theon Pinkneyâs car but he tamed me with just a few words. When I woke up the morning sun was streaming into the polar bear room. There was drool down the side of my face and my crotch itched. In the bathroom I peered into the mirror, half expectingto see white roots coming in at the baseline of my brown hair. I brushed my teeth and ran a comb through the short dark brown mane. There were three messages on the answering machine. I wondered if I had missed them when I got home, or maybe the phone had rung in the night but I was too deep asleep to hear it. Marcia Pinkney had called again. She said that sheâd be home for the entire day tomorrow and would be happy to see me at any time. I wondered again at the time of her call. It was ten in the morning and Marcia was an early riser. If the call had come in on Thursday then she meant for me to drop by today; if it was this morning that she called sheâd be expecting a Saturday visit. This displaced feeling fit perfectly with my state of mind. I was lost in time, experiencing the past as clearly as (in some cases more so than) the present. For long minutes I considered Marcia Pinkneyâs call and its origins. It didnât occur to me to call her. Marcia had never spoken to me directly. When Theon brought me to her home, on the occasion of his brotherâs death, she had said to Theon, âPlease tell this woman that she is not welcome in my home.â Finally I moved on to the second message. âYouâre fired!â Linda Love shouted, and then she slammed her receiver down. âCoco Manetti here,â the third caller said, his voicesmooth and somewhat sinister. âIâm an associate of Richard Ness.â¦â He left a number and said that he hoped I would call him. I knew of Coco. Iâd have to shoot him if ever I brought out my fatherâs piece. A pang of hunger made its presence known. I was starving. This feeling confused me. For so long I went hungry by choice. LeRoyâs Chicken and Waffle House was on Venice Boulevard very near the ocean. Absolutely everybody ate there at one time or other. I had the pecan waffle with two spicy thighs and a side of hash browns along with coffee and orange juice. I sat at an outside table that faced in a westerly direction but did not afford the view of the ocean; it was just that much too far away. The sky was clear and vacant like nearly every day in Los Angeles, like most of the people who came to California. The feeling of Los Angeles is that of free fall , I wrote in the little journal that I pilfered from our housekeeper. Thereâs nothing to grab onto but itâs beautiful if you could only stop and appreciate the view . It felt good eating all that food and sitting outside in the stupid but beautiful day. No one came to talk to me because of my dress and shoes. It was the perfect disguise in that part of L.A., the shabby, faded look. Hey, Debbie , I remembered a male fan once shouting atan adult film event, I just wanna fuck that red dress, baby, thatâs all . Kip Rhinehart lived in a converted schoolhouse way up a steep driveway deep in Malibu Canyon. It was a horseshoe-shaped building with the hump facing toward the entrance drive. The arc of the front of the building was two stories high. Kip had an apartment on the second floor. The rest of the place was composed of single-story classrooms. These were leased by the day or week to people in various businesses, including my own. I parked behind Kipâs red pickup in the circular area in front of the informal business. Then I rang the doorbell and waited patiently. You could smell the ocean up thereâsomething to do with the wind currents. There was a wildness to that particular section of the canyon that almost made it seem aliveânot filled with life but like a huge creature with a single mind and a long, long life span. âCan I help you?â a man called