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piece about Chris Pine hurting his hamstring doing a stunt for the next
Star Trek
.
    “Oh, no,” gasped Brick. “He can’t play the second lead in
Avalanche!
if he can’t climb!”
    Brick whipped out his BlackBerry, then boomed frenzied instructions at whatever poor sap from his office was unlucky enough
     to have answered his call. So she wouldn’t sit there and just stare dumbly at her father, Molly gazed out the window. It was
     a relief to see L.A. had McDonald’s and Starbucks and supermarkets and crappy bumper sticker–covered cars, just like West
     Cairo. But it also had a brilliant azure sky unmolested by anything except sky-high palm trees ruffling in a gentle breeze—so
     Californian that it almost seemed fake—and about ten tons more traffic. It was 2 p.m. on a Monday. Didn’t anybody have a job?
     Where were all these people
going
?
    After about an hour, during which Brick made four more phone calls and arranged to send a ham to Chris Pine, the car exited
     onto Sunset Boulevard. The concrete jungle vanished, replaced by a winding, tree-lined road dotted with palatial houses lined
     up like beads in a necklace, broken only by UCLA’s redbrick campus. Eventually, the Escalade pulled up to a huge set of wrought-iron
     gates set between two tiled outbuildings, one of which was marked in cursive with the words
Bel Air
. A man inside the security kiosk waved them through with a smile.
    “Almost home,” Brick chirped, stowing his phone back in his pocket. “Look, that’s the country club. Maybe I should send
them
a ham. They think I use my phone on the golf course too often. Crazy!”
    The car began its climb up a curving road. Molly hadn’t realized the term
Hollywood Hills
was actually
descriptive—
for some reason, in her mind, the city was all sand and blazing heat bouncing off flat pavement. But Bel Air was lush and
     green and rolling.
    “That’s where the crown prince of Saudi Arabia used to live,” Brick said, pointing at yet another gate, behind which was a
     driveway so long Molly couldn’t see the house at the end of it. Her nosy days of staring out her bedroom window at the neighbors
     across the street were probably over, which was a shame, as these neighbors were doubtless way more interesting. No offense
     to Danny.
    “That guy threw the craziest parties,” Brick said wistfully. “But my pool is nicer.”
    They pulled up to an ivy-covered brick wall and robust fuchsia bougainvillea bushes. The gate swung open to reveal a gravel
     driveway running through a tunnel of trees and across a green and perfect lawn, up to a white house larger than Molly’s high
     school in Indiana. As they parked, someone wearing a gray workman’s jumpsuit hurried past toward a spherical chrome-and-glass
     greenhouse that looked suspiciously like the bad guy’s laboratory in
Rad Man.
    Whoa
, Molly thought. This place was no house. It wasn’t even a mansion. It embarrassed mansions.
    Brick hopped out and opened Molly’s door with a flourish. “Welcome to Casa Berlin!”
    Molly slowly climbed out of the car, making the most of this first chance to take in all of her father in one go. Divested
     of his disguise, Brick was even better-looking than he was on-screen: well north of six feet tall, with thick red-brown hair
     and familiar hazel eyes surrounded by long lashes Molly wished she’d inherited. They crinkled warmly at the edges when he
     smiled, like the kind of candy wrapper his muscles suggested he hadn’t actually untwisted in years. He also had the whitest
     teeth Molly had ever seen.
    I am Brick Berlin’s daughter
. Somehow, standing right in front of him, it was both easier and harder to believe than when she was back in Indiana.
    Molly followed Brick up the steps, through a midnight blue front door with a snarling half-man, half-lion doorknocker, and
     into a marble foyer flanked by two identical wide, curving staircases, meeting underneath a crystal chandelier. It made her
     feel very