Hannah tells me again that she’s really glad to meet me, which practically assures me that she isn’t, and then says it’s time for her to turn in.

After she’s gone, I unpack my suitcase since I’ll probably be staying awhile. I don’t feel like going to sleep yet, so I tiptoe out into the hallway and make my way back to the kitchen.

Bo’s clearing dishes from the dining room table.

“Want a hand with that?” I ask.

“No, I’ll wash them tomorrow.”

I sit down at the breakfast table. The glasses of tequila are still there, and I can smell that sweet Mexican liquor.

“You want a drink, Lance?” he asks.

“No thanks.”

He clears all of the glasses except one, and fills it about two inches high.

I follow him out the back door.

Their neighborhood truly lies on the outskirts of Altadena. From the small deck, I can see beyond their fenced backyard. The town ends here. No question. Black hills rise in the distance. I wonder what this place will look like in the morning.

We sit down in these highly suburban lawn chairs and Bo takes a sip of tequila.

“It’s beautiful here,” I say, though I can’t really tell. Just seems like the right thing to say at the moment. “And Hannah, she’s very sweet.”

He touches the back of my head, ruffles my hair.

“Been a long time, hasn’t it?” he says.

“Yeah.”

“Why are you here, Lance?”

“I quit my job.”

“Really? What’d you do?”

“I was a legal assistant. Also, I’d had enough of living in that house with Mom and Dad.”

“I can understand that.”

“I should’ve called first, Bo. I’m sorry. I really am.”

“You don’t ever have to call me, man. You just fuckin’ show up. This is your house, too. You all right on money?”

“Yeah, of course.” The truth is my treasury has been greatly depleted, down to around $15K.

I look over at him, the crickets chirping, a coyote yapping somewhere in all that darkness. He sips tequila. You ought to see the way he smiles at me.

With some people, I’d feel compelled to tell them the story I’ve decided upon—how I’ve come out to LA to stay for awhile. I would want to ask them if it was all right to stay in their house until I found a job, a place to live. Not with Bo. The thing about Bo, which I’m now remembering, is he lives in the moment. He could give a shit about why I’m here. Right now, all that matters to him, is it’s a lovely night, and he’s sipping tequila, and his brother is beside him. At least I hope he feels this way.

We sit outside for awhile. Sometimes, there’s so much to say you can’t say any of it. It kind of feels like that tonight. After awhile, Bo struggles to his feet and whispers, “I want to show you something.”

I follow him back into the house, and we creep barefooted down the hallway, into a dark room with toys all over the floor.

We stop at the foot of a tiny bed. A darkhaired little boy sleeps with his blanket and a toy robot, thumb in mouth, breathing delicately.

I feel Bo’s lips near my ear.

“That’s your nephew, Sam,” he whispers. “He’s three, and I’ve told him all about you.”

I wake with the sun, but I lie in bed for a long time, listening to the movements of Bo’s family in the kitchen. Little Sam is awake. I think he’s having breakfast because Hannah keeps telling him to finish his oatmeal. But he’s more interested in somebody named Ani the Anteater who sounds a lot like Bo and talks in a highly inflective voice about counting, learning the alphabet, and eating ants. Sam has been begging Bo all morning: “Pease do Ani! Again, Daddy! Ani!” Sam knows his letters all the way up to C. I know it’s not very impressive, but he’s only three. I’m sure he’s trying his best.

Since I’m only Lance under this roof, I climb out of bed and don’t bother changing into my suit yet. The first thing I do is walk over to the window and open the blinds. I see a swing set, a picnic table, and an inflated aquamarine-colored swimming pool sitting half-full in the blazing morning sun. There are no trees. A couple miles beyond the fence, there are sage-covered hills. It’s Saturday. A chorus of lawnmowers already in full voice.

I walk down the hall into the kitchen. Bo is fixing breakfast. I smell eggs and sausage and even grits. We all exchange good mornings and did I sleep okay, and yes, beautifully. Sam is curious and shy of me. I sit down at the breakfast table across from his highchair. He’s exceptionally cute, but I guess you have to be cute at three, otherwise, you’ve got a pretty rough time ahead of you.

Bo sets a cup of black coffee in front of me and a plate of food. We eat together. It’s a comfortable meal. Bo and I eat grits. Hannah doesn’t. Sam becomes increasingly fussy.

I find out that Bo now designs video games for a living. Hannah is a psychologist, and fuck, I get a little nervous about that. I don’t know how you could live with one of those people. All the time, they’re studying you, figuring out all the things that are wrong with your brain. I’ll have to watch out for her. She’s probably already got me pegged. I mean, I don’t exactly know the details, but I’m fairly confident I’m fucked up on a whole range of levels. But that’s the thing about people—no matter what anyone says, they never think they’re crazy. I guess to be really crazy, you can’t know that you’re crazy. It’s kind of funny if you think about it.

We get to talking about our childhood, and you can tell that Hannah is pretty interested to hear what her husband was like as a boy. I tell her that Sam looks just like Bo when he was little, because you know parents love to hear stuff like that.

Then I tell about the vacations we used to take to North Myrtle Beach every August, the week before school started back, how we’d stay in the same motel every year. It was called the Windjamer, and though it wasn’t oceanfront, you only had to cross two streets to reach the beach. I can’t really tell if it bothers Bo to hear me talk about this stuff. He isn’t the biggest fan of Mom and Dad. But just when I think I’m making him uncomfortable, he pipes in about the time we got down there and a hurricane was blowing in. Dad loved hurricanes, and while every other family was getting the hell away from the coast, Dad made us bunker down in our motel room and ride the thing out. I know it sounds pretty exciting and all, but at the time, when all that wind and rain was kicking up, Mom, Bo, and I thought we were going to die.

“I never saw so much wind,” Bo says. “Oh, and you remember when Dad walked out into the worst of it and he had to hold onto the rearview mirror so he wouldn’t get blown down the street?”

He’s smiling at me, and I think we’re having one of those moments.

After breakfast, I get Bo to drive me to Exotic Car Rentals of Beverly Hills where I have a reservation for a gleaming yellow Hummer. Actually, I let him drop me at a Starbucks across the street. He shouldn’t concern himself with my need for upscale transportation.

Bo tells me he’ll pick me up in three hours (he’s going to work on a video game he’s designing), but I tell him not to worry. I’ll catch a cab back to his place.

When he’s gone, I buy a hot chocolate and cross Little Santa Monica Boulevard to the rental company and get the luxury Hummer for a week. It comes to $6,295. $895/day. $37/hour. About a penny each second.

You might think that’s excessive, but would James Jansen drive anything that had a price tag under $70,000?

I climb behind the wheel of that beautiful machine and take a drive along Mulholland, where I cruise the Santa Monica Mountains. I finally come to one of those overlooks that’s featured in practically every movie ever made about dreamful people coming to Hollywood. Usually, the scene occurs at night. We find the characters in a pivotal moment, and all of the Valley lies glittering, beautiful, and unattainable. There’ll be a tenor sax playing, or moody synthesizers. The characters will say dramatic things like, “I always wanted this” or “I never should’ve come to this city.” Crying will ensue, and hope will be lost as the lights of LA twinkle indifferently in the backdrop.