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look more like sorority girls than mother and daughter. Are you sure you’re not putting us on?”
    While the men brought three more rounds of martinis and gin and tonics for themselves and Lori, Ann Marie did her best not to make eye contact with the men. She kept her eyes either out the window, toward the black ocean or on her phone, which she repeatedly checked for no apparent reason. She burned through a half-dozen glasses of diet coke.
    After a while, the two men gave up trying to make conversation with her and became totally focused on her mother. Lori was becoming more lively with every sip of cocktail. The three of them got up from the table for the bar, leaving Ann Marie alone with her diet coke.
    While her mom was busy flirting, Ann Marie decided to step outside to be by herself. Outside the Pink Pelican, she could still hear her mother laughing over the sound of the tide. She stared out along the coastline, letting her eyes climb the hills of Palos Verdes until she saw the lights of The Asylum at the pinnacle. The lights inside the laboratory seemed to twinkle. She wondered what Dade Harkenrider was up to.
    A few minutes later, her mother stepped out of the bar, laughing with an arm draped over each of the suits. She shouted over to Ann Marie. “What are you doing, girl? Where did you go?”
    “I was bored,” answered Ann Marie without looking at them. She was still staring up at the Asylum.
    “My new friend, Donald,” Lori said as if only guessing at the man’s name, “has a house on The Hill nearby.”
    “Good for him.”
    “These two fine gentlemen have invited me for a night cap.”
    “You can’t drive,” said Ann Marie. She knew where the conversation was headed and was already annoyed.
    “Oh, Donald is going to drive me,” her mom said. “That is, if he doesn’t mind driving my crappy rental car.” Apparently, she had momentarily forgotten the other man’s name, so she said, “Handsome over here is going to follow us in his car.” The nameless man’s tiny red sports car was too small to accommodate the three of them.
    “How am I supposed to get home?”
    “Come with us,” Lori said, pulling the men in closer with her arms. “Donald has one of those pools that looks like they’re pouring out into infinity. I’ve always wanted to swim in one of those.”
    “It’s heated,” the nameless man added.
    “No thanks,” said Ann Marie, turning away from her mother and toward the empty road along the cliffs. She looked as though she intended to hitchhike.
    Lori Bandini’s mood darkened and she looked at her daughter like she was ashamed. “Fine,” she said. “I don’t know why you have to be such a little bitch about everything.” She got into the car with the man and rolled her window down to say one more thing to her daughter. “You’re not a bitch,” she added. “I shouldn’t have said that.” She turned on the man’s car stereo and happened to find a song that reminded her of her senior year of high school. Singing along, she threw her arms around the driver and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Onward and upward,” she said, laughing as both cars left Ann Marie alone in the restaurant parking lot.
    The sand and dust kicked up by the cars fell to the ground. It left Ann Marie in a short-lived silence that broke with the smack and sizzle of a wave. Tilting her head back, she stared up to the top of the hill. The lights in The Asylum were dim except at the very top. The building looked like a bizarre lighthouse, beaming out a faint red glow. She wondered about the source of the light.
    She had read on one of the internet conspiracy websites that Harkenrider lived at the top of the lab but that seemed unlikely to her. A man so high up in a major corporation would at least have a home of some kind.
    It suddenly struck her that she had no one to call. Her mom was likely in the hot tub by then, she figured. There wasn’t enough money left in her wallet for another expensive