At the intersection of Highland and Sunset, huge billboards with shiny movie-star faces leer down at him. Some are in action; running from explosions, falling through white space, punching, shooting, crashing their way through plate-glass windows. Others are frozen in sweaty clinches, mouths agape, necks arched back; transcended through orgasm to plateaus of ecstasy beyond the common man. Stretch limos with tinted windows and thumping, subsonic bass lines haunt the streets with secret cargo. Coveys of hysterical, screaming girls, hair teased, tattooed and pierced in every department, run toward a nightclub framed in pulsing lavender neon, stumbling in their elevator-high platforms only to wait in line while bald bouncers frisk them.

He checks into the Tropicana with no bag, no toothbrush, no change of underwear. The night clerk has junkie eyes. Eyes that could care less what or who stands across from him. His room has nothing but a bed and a phone. It smells like bad Chinese food. He slashes open the green plastic curtains and stares out at the rippling reflections of light off the pool. The hotel logo, a red neon palm tree, dances its reflection in the deep end. A fat man wearing a black Speedo sits perched at the top of the water slide, staring down at his toes. He wriggles them as though testing for signs of life. A TV goes on in a room across the pool deck. Someone pulls their curtains shut.

He turns back into his room and snaps the light on. He goes to the phone. He has the number memorized. He’s called this number maybe a million times from every conceivable dark corner over the past two years. He’s gripped phones in every possible emotional state, awaiting the voice on the other end. The voice he’s become convinced he can’t live without. The voice he’s given everything up for.

“Hello,” the voice says, and he can’t believe it’s so simple.

“It’s me,” he says. She laughs and he feels a rush of white excitement like falling high from a rope swing into icy water.

“Where are you?” she giggles.

“I’m here. I’m right here.”

“In town?”

“Yeah. I’m at the Tropicana.”

“The Tropicana!” she squeals. “What’re you doing there?”

“I’ve left.”

“What?” she says, and stops laughing.

“I’ve left.”

“Not— Your wife you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“You told her?”

“Yeah. I did. I told her.” She laughs again but it’s different now. It has a guarded edge to it.

“Well—” she says. “So she knows all about it then?”

“Yeah. She does.”

“What’d you tell her?”

“I told her I was leaving.”

“When did this happen?”

“Today,” he says. “Just today. I drove all the way down here.”

“That’s crazy!” she says, and laughs again, but this time it hardly sounds like a laugh at all. It sounds worried.

“Can you come over?” he says. “I need to see you.”