– Yeah, moms are tricky that way.

She got her hair where she wanted it, a couple wild curls poking loose, and settled back into her seat.

– Our mom is a little more than tricky. Her special talent with Jaime was to give him anything and everything he asked for. This being the easiest way she knew to keep him occupied, and keep her from having to actually deal with him as, I dont know, a human being. Jaimes response was to ask for more and more extravagant toys, trips, parties, whatever he thought would force her to deal with him, I guess.

– Howd that work out for him?

– Well, I didnt witness much of it, not wanting to be around her myself, but the way I put it together, the more he asked for, the more she worked to make the money to see he got it, the more he got, the more he asked for, and the more she worked… and so on.

– Kind of a perpetual motion machine of familial alienation, then?

She slid her eyes at me.

– That was clever.

I rubbed my eyes.

– Yeah, clever, thats me, always doing clever stuff. Thats why Im in this van at the moment with a load of someone elses bloody sheets and all.

She went in her pockets again and came out with a pair of big black plastic film star sunglasses.

– I said it was clever, not smart.

– True.

She took off her regular narrow black-framed glasses and slid the sunglasses on.

– Anyway, Mom just worked and worked to get Jaime what he wanted, which meant she was never around to look at him, which is what she wanted. Until he turned eighteen.

– Then what?

– She kicked him out. Of course. If behavioral scientists had designed a scenario meant to create an adult utterly unequipped to provide for themselves and emotionally cope with the world, they could not have done a better job than my mom did with Jaime. And, to make it more interesting, when she set him loose, she did it in Hollywood.

The lights of a jumbo jet cruised over the freeway on approach to LAX. Inglewood sprawled low and wild to the east, endless stucco blocks of small houses with barred windows and dead lawns.

– Its a tough little town, aint it.

She shrugged.

– Its designed to fuck the weak is all.

– And howd you avoid the mommy treatment?

She leaned forward and adjusted the heater.

– Dad divorced her when I was three. Seeing as she didnt want to have the responsibilities of actually raising kids, it wasnt much of a challenge for him to get custody. And by then Id already started loathing her pretty well. I mean, Dad didnt have to run her down at all to make me not want to see her. Not that he would have done that. Still, holidays, occasional weekends, hed pack me up and drive me over to the valley. It sucked, but it got better when I was five and she had Jaime. He was cute. And fun.

– Till he grew up and turned into a prick.

– Like I said, he had help.

– We all get help, that doesnt mean we all end up cutting guys up in motel rooms after a drug deal turns sour.

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.

– Im just saying.

She pushed the sunglasses back into place.

– I know what youre saying. And youre mostly right. Hes definitely defective. But hes my brother. So I. You know.

– Sure.

– Anyway, it wasnt a drug deal.

– No? Stocks then? Commodities futures?

– I dont 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 hes up to, its not drugs. Jaime always gets into something crazy. Usually its something having to do with movies. I dont think so this time. But movies is what it usually is. Hes going to get the rights to some Hungarian sci-fi movie. Hes going to manage the movie career of a Balinese pop star whos the Madonna of Indonesia. Hes 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, dont, 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 dont want to go west right now. I dont 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 moms in the biz? Sos my dad. Or he was. Screenwriter. Whats 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 naive 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, wasnt it?

I watched her as she flipped through Po Sins 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: Whats 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. This lap blanket he used to cover his feet with when he sat up at night working in bed. Hed sit on top of the covers in a robe and drape it over his bare feet, you know. Thats gone. And he always, always had a handkerchief folded on the nightstand. Thats not there. Just things, they tell you someones gone. And theyre not coming back.

She put the binder back in its place on the office desk and spun around a couple times in Po Sins chair.

– So, Web.

I sat on the bed.

– So, Soledad.

She put her feet down and stopped spinning.

– Do we have to do it this way?

– Which is to say?

She got up, took off her jacket, draped it over the chair, and walked over to the bed, where I sat scooted into the corner of the room, my back against the wall.