K at came home from the hospital before dawn, collapsed onto her couch, and fell asleep. Hours later she woke up ravenous, found some rigatoni, boiled it and added canned sauce, then wolfed down several bites standing at the counter like a pathetic, lonely person.

On the plus side, nobody was around to shame her into a normal breakfast.

Her phone rang. She checked the clock. “Kat here,” she said. “It’s seven-thirty in the morning and you better be calling with good news or else, Raoul.”

“Hiya, it’s me.”

“You’re up at the crack, Zak. I’m not sure I approve.”

“So are you. Or were you sleeping?”

“Well. No.”

“I work out before work. Did we have a date last night? Or was that just magical thinking on my part?”

“We did? We did!” She thought guiltily about also making arrangements with Ray. “But my sister had a baby instead.” She told him about her evening.

“Ah, good. Then it’s not my choice of movie. Or that I wore an ugly shirt or have hair growing on my neck.”

She detected a tentative note she found most gratifying.

“I like you, Zak, although now I’ll have to take a closer look at your neck next time we meet.”

“How are your ankles?”

“Totally recovered.”

“Ah, good. You need those to walk, I’m told. You’re beautiful on skates, by the way,” he said. “Graceful.”

“For someone who trips as much as she glides.”

“You’re just-beautiful.”

Oh, so now, at dawn, he was flirting. She heard a horn. “You’re on your way to work?”

“Yeah, and someone cut me off.”

“So you’re gonna show him?”

“Nah.” He paused. “I moved right and let him win.”

“His SUV’s bigger than your SUV?” she guessed.

“Right.”

“I bet Raoul’s gonna load you up with extra tasks because he has a new baby and you don’t.”

He laughed. “No doubt. So, how about tonight?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? I could come to your place.”

“Probably not. Sorry.” She’d have to reschedule with Ray first.

“So you lied. You did notice the neck hair, didn’t you? You noticed, and now you’ve judged me. You’re thinking, he’s a man who needs a better barber, and that’s not good enough for me.”

“I’m sorry I have to pass on the dinner tonight, Zak. But I swear to God, I am enthusiastic. Soon, okay?”

Her phone getting warm in her hand, she called Jacki at the hospital.

“These places are for sick people, for dying people,” Jacki said. “I want to go home.”

“They’re taking excellent care of you, Jacki,” Kat said, scared at the thought of Jacki coming home with a baby, unable to walk for a couple of weeks.

“Raoul says he can only take a week off. He’s got some gigantic, important, earthshaking business he must attend to after that.”

“My job,” Raoul said faintly in the background.

“He wants to hire someone!” Jacki’s tone was scornful.

Kat said, “Sounds practical to me.”

“I don’t want a stranger in my home.”

Kat took this in, ate another spoonful of rigatoni, and felt a strong desire to hang up. “What are you saying?”

“I have alternatives. Family. You could move in, for example.”

Certainly, she could. She, who had no life to speak of would be absorbed by their vigorously alive family. It was the Buddhist thing to do. Take a leave from work, since Raoul couldn’t. Be good, saintly even. The Buddhists had lots of saints, but they had a hell realm, too.

“When hell freezes, Jacki.”

“Why not?”

“Put Raoul on.”

The phone thunked.

“Yes?”

“I’ll help you find someone,” Kat said.

“Oh, that’s great. I’ll be home all next week, so let’s try to set up some interviews.”

“Jacki’s going to be mad at me, so I’m going. Tell her I have a call on another line.”

“You don’t have another line.”

“Use your creativity, Daddy. You’re going to be needing it. Bye, now.”

She called Ray Jackson.

He didn’t answer his phone. He never answered his phone, and at his office she always got some hard-ass named Denise who wouldn’t leave him a message.

She dressed hurriedly, and drove to her own office.

That morning, still weary from her almost-all-nighter at the hospital, she soldiered through a court appearance that left everyone in the room chilled by the behavior of the disputing parties, a pair of senior-citizen brothers this time, sparring over their deceased parents’ homestead. The handicapped one wanted to continue living there but he wasn’t able to afford to buy out his brother. Unfortunately, you couldn’t fake comps; you couldn’t make a property in Pacific Palisades a property in La Habra, in spite of the similarity between buildings.

Hearing Kat’s figures, the currently resident brother emitted an actual sob, which earned him a frown from the judge and only made the situation worse. The hale brother, stoic up to now, jumped up suddenly. His attorney tugged at his arm while he stood, shaking, shouting, “Get over it. Get on with it!”

Kat sighed as she packed up her briefcase during the afternoon break and slunk out the courtroom doors. It wasn’t always like this. She loved her job. She enjoyed every new property. When first her father, and later his partner, had hired her, she had stuck to filing. Then, she helped compile lists of the houses, which included photographs. At her desk, sticking pictures onto pages that went into binders, she dreamed she lived in these homes. In one life, she drove the V10 truck in the driveway, had a view of the ocean from a top-floor Manhattan Beach condo, and enjoyed a Viking cooktop. In another life, she occupied a shabby thirties bungalow in downtown L.A. next door to screaming neighbors who beat up on each other.

She opened the back door of the Echo, tossing her case into the back seat. She didn’t want to see it again, think about that poor old man whose life had just descended like a kid on an amusement ride, from the airy heights to the brutal lows. He had lived in that house for forty years.

He could move out of the Los Angeles area and buy a house in the Midwest for one-fourth of the money he could make on his half of that unhappy house in Pacific Palisades. Or he could move thirty miles to the Inland Empire, the tentacle of the city that stretched into the superheated San Gabriel Valley, once considered almost uninhabitable with its broiling sun and lack of water, now getting hotter, value-wise, by the day.

Many people commuted from there to L.A. proper every morning. They still came, as they had for sixty years, for the weather, the jobs, the ocean. They stayed because, like addicts, they took sick pleasure in the highs and lows, took pride in the daily stresses. They felt muscular and fit, meeting the challenges of rush hour. Maybe they cut five minutes off their commute by finding a handy side street. Maybe they lived in crowded conditions, but the sun shone and they might make it to the beach one fine summer Saturday.

They all lived as if L.A. was still the paradise it must have been once before they all lived there.

She slammed the door, automatically turned up the fan and hit the a/c button, then hit the freeways, such a lovely name for places where nobody moved, everyone felt trapped, and, rich or poor, you heard traces of the same beautiful, evil siren’s song.

At the office, Ray could not avoid Martin who, wearing a starched shirt and fancy tie as if dressed for executive combat, stood sentry behind Suzanne, awaiting Ray’s arrival.

“Any mail?” Ray asked Suzanne.

“Overnight.” She looked a little flushed.

“Good. Antoniou.” He held an envelope up to the light.

“Did he sign or not?” Martin asked.

Ray, who had hoped to savor the moment privately, found himself frowning. He picked up the letter opener on Suzanne’s desk, the one shaped like a dagger, and ripped it open.