“How is he feeling in the yard? And remember—it’s all projection.”

“Really?”

“Maybe not all, but you’d be amazed.”

“Well, it’s him. He’s disappointed. Bitter. Life hasn’t worked out as he’d hoped. He…it’s all been a—” Big breath. “But me in particular, I’m—”

“Yes. You.”

“I’m like, a symbol of—”

“Say it.”

“Disappointment.”

A deep sob filled me, without tears, ricocheting in the zilliondollar room. Bahari smacked his hands together.

“So you’re a symbol,” he said, the way a comedian might set up a joke. Then he laid out the punch line as flat and as matter-of-fact as a waitress repeating an order at IHOP: “A symbol of someone else’s…failure.” He thumbed the phone and the lights faded up. “Our work for the evening is done.”

Bahari stood and turned and I straightened myself out, still high, bewildered.

The roof door creaked open. Marco traipsed down the red velvet stairs in tony orange sweats and black Nike slippers.

“Marco,” Bahari said, “I want you to apologize to this young person for manhandling him. It just so happens he’s a dear friend of the family.”

“Yeah, well, Junior should have explained that,” Marco snapped, then turned to me and said, “Sorry ’bout that,” with supreme fakeness.

“I’ve enjoyed our chat tremendously, Adam. I know you didn’t get exactly what you’re looking for, but maybe in time you’ll see that I have given you something of value in its place. I will never discourage you—but you deserve my candor, you’ve earned it. The bitter truth is, I’m not sure you can solve this riddle. I wish you could, but apparently, nobody can. I’ve tried for thirty years, others have too, and…nothing. Innocent teenagers died; it happens every day. We’ll never let it go—but maybe we both need to…put it in its place.”

I shook my head in groggy protest, weepy, bitter, spun out, disgusted, depleted, slashed up on the inside.

“It won’t be long,” he went on, “before Charles Elkaim is dead. It probably won’t be long before Marj Persky is dead. And it certainly won’t be long before I am dead. You, on the other hand, have yet to learn how to live. Marco, give this guy something to help him sleep. Then get him off the hill—I don’t want anyone sniffing around up here looking for him.”

In one swift move, Marco was at me with a hypo in his hand. I got up to protest but Bahari held me back at the shoulders—either he was damn strong for a feeble-looking old man or I was still too buzzed to fight—I tried to kick, spit, wriggle, but nothing could hold back the needle; it hit my arm and pain spread like a bursting sun.

I glared at their unsmiling faces.

My eyes spun like Lotto balls.

The room tilted west.

California was falling into the jet-black ocean.

But the ocean was a warped LP, spinning forever and ever like a whirlpool of glossy vinyl blackness—

Put the needle on the record—I spun sideways, down into a whirlpool dream.

In this crazy dream, people were clocks.

Only they didn’t know they were clocks.

That measured time by the half-life of the heart.

A new relativity—soul math.

36

Backseat, fetal. Parked in grass, a field at the edge of a marsh, ocean stretching out forever.

I know this stretch—north of Oil Piers?

Cool of morning. And warmth of sun.

My head throbbed again from the inside just as I caught my reflection in the car mirror: whoa, that’s a hobo. Then I felt it in my grip—the keys, like I’d been clutching them all night. Smart man, clutch those bitches. Phone and wallet on the passenger seat. Some kindly soul put them there—remember to send thank-you email. Or text. No. Text too informal. Then again, happy as I was that they were there, I’d have to either stretch forward to get ’em, which was out of the question, or actually open the door, get out of the backseat and get behind the wheel, also out of the question.

Close eyes instead, more productive.

Something less than memory hovered. Bahari’s theater—then, dragged somewhere, even carried, over a shoulder like a prize deer. Tennis court. Oh yeah.

Sudden pressure killed memory—I had to vomit. Like, now. Not on the seat, for fuck’s sake, you drive Lyft for a living—that I remembered.

I threw the door open and leaned, let it rip. No tears left, eyes stung by salty sea air.

Wiped face, lean up, eyes closed again.

Try to remember—but it hurt my head, flashes getting lost in blackness.

I reminded myself that my phone and wallet and keys were keeping me company.

They would be by my side the whole way home. Strange comfort.

I let my burning eyes rest on the ocean sunlight, soak up its battery life.

Time passed—ocean time. It’s slower. Somehow, some way, I made it out the door, into the driver’s seat, behind the wheel. One random strange thing hit me as I tried to fasten my seat-belt—from nowhere.

Mickey Sandoz had been kicked out of the group—that I didn’t know.

And I wasn’t sure he did either.

Then, certain basic questions arose like trains running late: Who got me to my car? And who got the car here? And where was here exactly?

I opened Google Maps to see: marshes off Ventura—spitting distance to PCH. Hour and a half home.

I hit the ignition and drove carefully onto the highway, south along the whipping, merciless ocean. Pushing through an empty consciousness, I made the drive in just under an hour, heading for Tent Town, with Bahari’s glow, his gait, his manner, his riches, his palace, his wine, his video, his words, his hypnotics all still ringing in what was left of my head.

The worst part was I knew he hadn’t done it.

I parked a block from the 405 on-ramp and hoofed it to Tent Town, bracing myself for the dank angry eyes, the edgy hustle of it, but when I turned the corner—