“. . . I mean,” Milo was saying as I drove up San Vicente toward Sunset, “straights like my mother and her old man are what’s holdin’ everybody down. They’re the ones cause this war and racism and private property bullshit. That’s what’s holdin’ everybody back from their potentials. It’s meditation and mind-altering chemicals can bring us to another level completely . . .”

Sitting in a moving car turned him into a different person. At the office he was brooding and dour, but in the passenger seat he climbed up into the pulpit of his mind and preached. He’d been talking ever since we left the curb. The only time he’d stop was either to light a cigarette or suck on one.

“. . . take you and me, for example,” he said. “We’re the same. Blood and bone, history and heart. We got the same problems and we all need the same answers, ask the same questions. It’s just—”

“Hold up, youngster,” I said, intent on stopping the flow of palaver.

“What?”

“You think we’re the same, you and me?”

“Yeah,” he asserted. “Marx and Lenin, Jesus too. They all—”

“It’s my turn, Milo. Let me talk a minute, okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, “sure.”

I got the feeling that people didn’t usually get to speak once he started on a tear.

“I hear what you’re sayin’, but I see it a little different,” I said.

“You mean you believe in this capitalist bullshit?” There was actual disdain in his words.

“The way I see it is that you’n me were both in a shipwreck and we got washed up on opposite shores. Not far apart, maybe only a quarter mile or so, but the waters between us are shark infested. It looks like we’re in the same place; lotsa sand and maybe a palm tree or two. Sun is hot like hell and the saltwater so blue. We’re both stranded but there’s one big difference.”

“What’s that?” Milo Garnett asked.

“I’m on a desert island, and even though it looks like you are too, really where you washed up is a peninsula.” I glanced over at Milo and saw that he was listening again. “If I set out on my way looking for food and water, company, or just a different view, all I’ll do is walk in a circle and end up back where I started—looking at you. But you take the same walk on your side, you will end up back in the bosom of America; hot dog stands, beautiful women, and enough drugs that you’ll forget that shipwreck and the time it seemed like we were in the same jam.”

“You really believe that?”

“Test it out.”

“What do you mean, get marooned?” He had a vocabulary.