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keep trashing your life!” he screamed back.
    She threw her half-full dinner plate at him. Her aim wasn’t much. It missed, sailed across the dining room, and smashed against a wall, leaving a splotch of rice. She ran upstairs. Emotional exits seemed to be a specialty of hers.
    “Sorry, Hoagy,” Sonny said, going back to his food. “She just never grew up in a lot of ways. And she never could stand me. That’s no secret.”
    “I don’t mean to be nosy …”
    “Go ahead. You’re part of the family now.”
    “Why does she live here if it makes her so miserable?”
    Sonny and Connie glanced at each other. He turned back to me.
    “Because she’s even more miserable when she’s not living here.”
    There was a plump new feather pillow on my bed, but I didn’t fall asleep the second my head hit it. Or the hour. Anyone with the approximate IQ of pimiento loaf could see that that knife was meant to scare me off. Yet neither Sonny or Vic seemed the slightest bit ruffled by it. Had Vic done it? He had warned me not to mess Sonny up. Maybe he seriously wanted me gone. Someone from the immediate family did. The grounds were secure. The knife was from Sonny’s kitchen—I’d checked with Maria. I lay there, puzzled, uneasy, wondering if I should just forget the project and go home. I’m the first to admit it—trouble is not my business. But thinking about home got me thinking about Merilee, and like I said, I was up for a while.
    I had just dropped off at about four when this ungodly wailing woke me. At first I thought it was sirens. But the more awake I became the more it sounded like twenty or thirty wild animals. I put on my dressing gown and opened the guesthouse door. It was animals all right, animals howling away in the darkness.
    Lulu nudged my bare ankle. I picked her up and held her in my arms. She gave me very little resistance. Together we ventured bravely forth.
    Wanda was stretched out in a lounge chair by the pool, still dressed in a shimmering dress and shawl from her night out. She glanced up at me, then went back to the bottle of Dom Perignon she was working on. “It’s the coyotes.”
    “Coyotes? In the middle of Los Angeles?”
    “They’re miles from here—way back in the hills. The sound carries in the canyons. Spooky, isn’t it?”
    “Maybe a little.” I put Lulu down. She stayed right between my legs. Wanda smiled at me. “You must think I’m an awful cunt.”
    “Don’t worry about it.”
    “He just gets to me sometimes.”
    “My father and I don’t get along either.”
    “I know he’s right, about my taste in men. I have … I have a kind of low opinion of myself. But I don’t need for him to tell me, you know?”
    “Yes.”
    “Nightcap?”
    “Don’t mind if I do.”
    “Champagne do?”
    “Always has.”
    I stretched out in the chair next to her. She filled her glass and gave me the bottle. I took a swig. We listened to the coyotes.
    “Don’t get too taken in by him,” she said. “He can seem nice, but he’s still as big a shit as he ever was. He’s still crazy. He’s just channeled it differently. It used to come out as meanness and destructiveness. Now it’s peace and love. He’s a bully. If you’re nice to him, he won’t respect you—he’ll run right over you. The only thing he understands is strength. How did you get this job anyway?”
    “By hanging up on him, I think.”
    “What exactly are you supposed to do?”
    “Help him tell his story. Talk to him. Try to understand him.”
    She fingered the rim of her glass. “Good luck. It isn’t easy to understand people when they don’t understand themselves. I suppose he’s trying, though. About before … I didn’t mean to be so negative, I’ll try to help you. We’ve mended a few fences, he and I. Certainly we’re better than we were. That’s something. I’ll do what I can. Just don’t expect a lot from me.”
    “Whatever you can do will be much appreciated.”
    The coyotes quieted down. It was