Despite his flannel shirt with a Harley patch and his bandanna, now that I know where he is from something about him seems obviously Los Angeles, something in the way he moves and the way he speaks. He says he used to be a mechanical engineer in an auto plant. He doesn’t look like my idea of an engineer. I ask him about this and he tells me he has done a bunch of things and even used to be a working actor.

He asks me about San Bernardino. I stiffen, knowing nothing, but then think to tell him Venice is worse. He nods and seems satisfied.

Venice is a shithole, he says.

I nod.

Bunch of fucking Mexicans.

I keep quiet. In the rearview mirror I can see Tomas’s white Oldsmobile, the white painted bumpers and the black tires shining in the mountain sunlight. This guy obviously doesn’t know about Oldsmobiles. Hopefully nobody will know about them in any gas stations we might pass.

Am I wrong? he says.

It’s true.

He shakes his head, gripping the steering wheel, getting excited. Sunlight catches the little hairs on his arm and they look blond and almost reddish and I can see where the muscles move beneath. But it isn’t near as bad as San Pedro, he says. Cambodians, Vietnamese, Laotians.

I say nothing.

Am I right? he says.

Sure.

All those mute Asians won’t even learn to speak English.

My pulse beats in my neck and my temples and my fingertips. My eyes avoid the rearview mirror as a hot itchiness grows in my underarms and I want to take off my sweater. He must be blind. Maybe it’s because of my clothes and the way I now cut my hair. Outside the yellow sun hangs over the mountain range. A hazy smudge of burnt color. We pass low spindly pine trees and a wide mesa plain covered by clusters of shaggy cactus in prickly silhouette. A honking caravan of vintage cars approaches from the opposite lane—two black and three yellow—and they flash by and disappear behind us.

He taps the steering wheel with his fingertips, clicking the plastic. He begins to whistle.

After a while he looks at me: You want another root beer, Gabe? You drank the last one up pretty good.

I shake my head.

Maybe later.

I nod.

He regards me.

You know, I hope it didn’t bother you what I said about them Asians being quiet. I think it’s good you’re a quiet guy. More people should learn to listen, is what I say.

Sure.

I didn’t mean to make any judgments about quiet people, per se.

I know.

It’s just when these people come to this country and won’t learn English, how can a person like that listen? No, it’s a different thing.

Maybe I’ll have that root beer, I say.