“Sorry. I’ve never been out of touch for this long. I guess I’m a little nervous.”

“Well, don’t be nervous about us, mijo. I’m more nervous about your trip. Why are you going off so far away, into the mountains? What will you eat? And who are these people you’re going with? Is this one of those groups from the Internet?”

“I like the mountains, Mom. You know that. And no, it’s not a Meetup group. It’s people from my gym.” Two of them were, anyway: Tracy, who taught his fitness class, and whom he’d represented when she bought her house; and Gwen, who he sometimes saw on Tuesday mornings. Another regular at the gym, a high school football coach named Eric, had laughed at the thought of Oscar making the trip. “You won’t last one night in the wilderness, pretty boy,” he’d said. Eric’s disdain was half the reason he’d decided to go.

He didn’t answer his mother’s question about what they would eat—freeze-dried meals, jerky, and trail mix would be totally foreign to her; would not even qualify as real food. And he agreed, because one thing he wasn’t excited about was his supply of “dinners”—beef Stroganoff and chicken and rice and salmon with pasta—all light, colorless, and desiccated as a block of Top Ramen, in plastic packages with pictures of landscapes that tried to divert your attention from the strange matter inside to the pretty places where you’d be consuming them. But he did like the mountains, and for that he could thank Eduardo, his college roommate from Cal State Northridge. Eduardo was a former Boy Scout who loved the outdoors, and who’d taken him hiking in Griffith Park and up in the San Gabriels. Once they even went over to Mount Baldy in winter, and he’d been amazed by the pine trees with their snow-laden branches, how they folded in on themselves, bent over like praying nuns.

“But aren’t there bears in those mountains?” his mother asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

This last exchange brought Lily running in from the living room. “You’re going to see bears, Daddy? I want to see a bear!”

Oscar scooped his daughter up and sat her on his lap. “I probably won’t see them, mija. I hope not, anyway. But we’ll go see some at the zoo sometime, okay?”

This didn’t seem to convince her. But she was quickly distracted as soon as her grandmother took the enchiladas from the oven. They sat and ate at the dining room table by the window looking out at the mountains, now hulking shapes against the darkening sky. Lily chattered on with her grandmother in English and Spanish, with a word or two of Vietnamese sprinkled in. And Oscar’s mind wandered—to last-minute preparations, to his girlfriend Claudia, and finally to the conversation he’d had with his uncle earlier in the week.

Oscar had worked for his uncle for three years. Their jobs had familiarized him with the neighborhoods where he later sold and bought houses; had given him the eye to see what improvements a property might need, and how much those changes were likely to cost. When the market collapsed, his uncle’s business still managed to thrive, as people hunkered down and improved what they’d originally thought of as “starter” homes. Now, David was sixty-three and getting tired. He’d first called Oscar a couple of months ago: would Oscar be interested in coming back and taking over? David would still handle the business end, at least for a while—negotiate with contractors, help to choose and plan jobs. But the actual projects, the day-to-day site work, would be Oscar’s.

At first Oscar had said no. Going back to his uncle’s company would feel like a step back, a step down. He couldn’t stand the idea of wearing workingman clothes again. He couldn’t stand the idea of someone treating him like a laborer. But as the weeks went by and he watched his savings drop, he thought about his daughter. Real estate was hit or miss, and he was missing more than hitting these days. By the time the market rose again, he might go bankrupt, and then where would he be? His uncle’s company wasn’t glamorous, but it was profitable and dependable. He knew that David must have had some sense of his troubles; everyone knew about the empty houses on Vallejo. When his uncle had called again a couple of days ago, this time Oscar listened.

After they finished dinner, Oscar went back out to the car and brought in the rest of Lily’s things—her pink suitcase full of clothes for the rest of the week, her Hello Kitty backpack. Then his mother handed him a plastic container of leftover enchiladas.

“Mom, I can’t take these, I’m leaving tomorrow. You and Lily can eat them.”

“We have plenty, Oscar. And maybe you’ll want a midnight snack or something to eat in the car.”

He knew it was no use arguing. He put the container down on the table and gave his mother a hug. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

Then he turned to his daughter, whose big brown eyes gazed up at him totally without guile. It made his heart melt. He’d never expected to be a father, had been surprised when Tammy, his decidedly unserious girlfriend, broke the news that she was pregnant. Initially he’d been furious and resentful, and even after Lily was born, he’d been ambivalent about his new role as dad. But now he couldn’t imagine his life without his daughter. He knelt down and hugged her tight, feeling her spindly arms around his neck. “Bye, mija. I won’t be gone long. You listen to Grandma Dulce and pay attention in school, okay?”

“Okay, Papá,” she said gravely. This self-possession just made him feel worse for leaving her.

“I’ll try to call you tomorrow from the campground, all right?”

“Okay, Papá,” she said again.

And then he left and walked outside and down the front stairs, turning once to see his mother and daughter waving at him from the doorway. He waved back, taking one last look at his girl, a knot forming in his stomach as he turned away.

He took backstreets to El Paso, over to Division, and then left up into the hills, Glassell Park on his right side, the fancier Mount Washington on his left. He avoided the street that would have taken him past his unfinished properties. Other houses he’d either helped buy or sell were sprinkled along the streets he drove: the two-bedroom, one-bath on Division, the three-bedroom with den and mountain view on Panamint. Ten years ago, when he’d bought here, the streets were quiet, and the cars parked on them were Hondas, Fords, Toyotas. Now every other car was a Volvo or BMW. He knew it was good for property values, this influx of money, but something solid and familiar was lost too. The first yuppies who’d moved in, maybe eight or ten years ago, had treated the old-time Latino families, blue-collar whites, and elderly gays with respect. The newer ones—well, they behaved differently. They complained about the bright paint on houses owned by Mexican families who’d been there fifty years. They didn’t pick up after their dogs. They sometimes turned their heads when Oscar and Lily went out for walks. Just that morning, on his daily run, Oscar had said “Good morning” to a thirty-something woman who was out walking with her toddler. She looked at him with what might have been fear or disdain, pulled her child close, and didn’t reply.

Oscar turned onto his street, pressed the button on the garage door opener tucked above the sun visor, and pulled into the safe cavern of his garage. It was good to be home. His house was folded into the hill, with the garage at street level, the living room, kitchen, and two bedrooms above, and the master bedroom and bathroom perched like a ship’s lookout on top of everything else, with a bank of windows facing the mountains. He’d been lucky to buy this place when he had, in 2003; now, even after the bubble had burst, it was worth almost twice what he’d paid for it. And he was proud to live in Glassell Park. Not like the other realtors who tried to expand the boundaries of Mount Washington. Not like the owners of the property that had just been featured in the Los Angeles Times, in an article titled, Mount Washington Eclectic—even though the house was only three doors down from Oscar’s.