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stories to my lonely Honda, sitting in the employee section. I opened the door with a clack that echoed in the empty underground lot.
    “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll probably see you at the hotel sometime.”
    “We can pretend this never happened.”
    “Up to you.” He touched my cheek with his fingertips, and I felt like an electrical cable to my nervous system went live. “I wouldn’t mind finishing the job.”
    “Let’s not promise each other anything.”
    “All right. No promises,” he said.
    “No lies,” I replied.
    “See you around.”
    We parted without a good-bye kiss.

thirteen
    G abby and I lived in the house I grew up in, which was on the second steepest hill in Los Angeles. When my parents moved, they let me live in the house for rent that equaled the property taxes plus utilities. I was sure I’d never need to move. I had two bedrooms and a little yard. The house had been a worthless piece of crap in a bad neighborhood when they bought it in the 1980s. Now it had a cardiologist to the west of it and a converted Montessori school that cost $1,800 a month to the east.
    The night Jonathan Drazen took me up to Mulholland Drive, I returned to find Darren sleeping on my couch. We had agreed to not leave Gabby alone until we knew she was okay, and she’d gotten no better after a week on her meds. The first blue light of morning came through the drapes, so I could see well enough to step around the pizza box he’d left on the floor and get into the bathroom.
    I looked at myself in the mirror. The convertible had wreaked havoc with my hair and my makeup was gone, probably all over Jonathan Drazen’s face.
    I still felt his touch: his lips on my neck, his hands feeling my breasts through my shirt. My fingers traced where his had been, and my cunt felt like an overripe fruit. I stuck my hand in my jeans, one knee on the toilet bowl, and came so fast and hard under the ugly fluorescent lights that my back arched and I moaned at my own touch. It was a waste of time. I wanted him as much after I came as I did before.
    My God, I thought, how did I do this to myself? What have I become?
    I needed to never see him again. I didn’t need his lips or his firm hands. If I needed to take care of my body’s needs, I could find a man easily enough. I didn’t need one so pissed at his ex-wife he’d make me fall in love with him before apologizing for leading me on. He wanted to hurt women, and nothing froze my creative juices like heartache. No, I decided as I went back out to the kitchen, anyone but Jonathan.
    Darren was already making coffee.
    “Where were you?” he asked. “It’s six thirty already.”
    “Driving all over the west side with I-won’t-say.”
    “Mister Gorgeous?” He said it without jealousy or teasing.
    “Yep.”
    “He’s nice to you?”
    “He wants to sleep with me, so it’s hard to say if he’s being nice or being manipulative,” I said. “How’s Gabby?”
    “Same.” He got out two cups and a near-dead carton of half-and-half. “She’s volatile, then deadened. She started shaking because she wasn’t playing last night. Missed opportunity and all that. Then she rocked back and forth for half an hour.”
    “Did you sit her at the piano?”
    “Yeah, that worked. We need something to happen for her.”
    “She’ll still be who she is,” I said. “She could play the Staples Center, and she’d be this way.”
    “But she could afford to get care, the right meds, maybe therapy. Something.” I nodded. He was right. They were stymied by poverty. “And Vinny? I haven’t heard a damn thing from that guy. I tried calling him and his mailbox is full.” He was losing his shit, standing there with a coffee cup in his hand.
    “We have six more months on our contract with him and we’re out,” I said.
    “She doesn’t have six months, Mon.”
    “Okay, I get it.” I held him by the biceps and looked him in the face.
    “She’s like she was the last time, when you found her. I