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it was the only horse picture I had bothered to put up. The underwater pictures, parrot fish and bright yellow tangs, were still in their shipping tubes.
    The woman reporter referred to me as a sixteen-year-old victim, “in seclusion tonight, with family and friends after a close call, Dave.”
    I called Marta and asked her if she was watching Channel Five. “God, I always watch Channel Five,” she said, her way of telling me she wasn’t. Her bedding made gentle thundering noises as she groped around for the remote, and I told her to never mind.
    â€œI always watch the same news, or at least I have it on,” said Marta. Her actual name is Martina, but no one calls her that. “I watch it all the time. I found it. It’s an ad.”
    â€œTurn it off.”
    â€œI think the batteries are about dead in my remote,” said Marta. “I’m shaking it and it still doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to.”
    Cassandra just about destroyed my friendship with Marta by pointing out that Marta wasn’t very bright. I was furious, and hurt. Cass pointed out that Marta repeats the same statement four or five times, using slightly different words, bulking out her conversation so that she seems to be saying more than she is.
    It was just like Cass to needle me about a friend, but then I started to listen to Marta, and it was true. Cass is often cruel, and right. Talking with Marta drove me crazy for a while, until we both took scuba lessons together and her mom started taking us to their bungalow on Monterey Bay on weekends. There aren’t very many rules that can save your life, and one of them is: Dive with a buddy. Marta is one of those people you want to have around.
    I told her what had just been on the news, and added, “That was me.”
    For a while there wasn’t anything coming out of the telephone but things like “Oh, Jennifer” and “My God, Jennifer, are you all right?” meaning what we had all come to mean by all right .
    â€œIt’s hell around here,” I said.
    â€œIs your dad going crazy?”
    I knew what she meant, and in his own way my father was going through tremendous turmoil. But Marta’s father is artistic director for the East Bay Theater, a foul-mouthed, hotheaded guy who had suffered three heart attacks and now lived on Paxil and took long vacations at their place on Monterey Bay. When he was upset, people knew it down the block. I had heard Marta say that it was a good thing her dad was a pacifist or he would have killed someone.
    I said that my dad didn’t go crazy; he suffered. My father admired Marta’s parents and said the Emmits were “rarer than radium,” which is Dad-talk for really special. Mr. Emmit thought Dad was brilliant, buying every kind of mustard my dad recommended, even the yellow Chinese powder that tastes like ant poison. My mom thought it was a shame Mrs. Emmit couldn’t lose the weight, but Lynn Emmit was perhaps my mother’s closest friend.
    â€œHow’s your mom behaving?” Marta asked.
    I told her that Mother would have been a better detective than any of the cops.
    â€œAre you sure you’re okay?” Marta had been the first to notice that my face had taken on a gaunt, sleep-hungry look in recent weeks. Months of bad sleep were catching up with me.
    I assured her that I would survive.
    â€œYou need some downtime,” said Marta.
    That’s what scuba people call time spent on the sea floor.
    I did take a bath, and soaked in a slurry of salts and essential oils of valerian and poppy.
    Back in my half-acre room I toyed with the tape recorder Dad had given me as a stocking stuffer the Christmas before, “Just like mine.” It was top-of-the line, voice activated. Dad had given up on taking notes, and you could hear him at six in the morning, downstairs on the running machine, panting, “Cut fresh dough into half-inch squares.”
    When