He was driving with his left hand, which held a cigarette, and gestured with the right hand, curving his fingers and thumb to demonstrate the sideways shape of an airplane wing. Irene stared at the hand but also at Sam’s face behind it, his animated eyebrows, his blunt nose, his hair whipping about in the draft.

“And then what?” she said

“Why, then you keep on flying. You keep on pushing against that edge.”

“Which edge?”

“Between lift and gravity.”

“Which pulls you back to earth.”

He laughed. “Does it ever.”

“Aren’t you scared?”

“All the time. If you’re not scared, you’re not really alive, are you?”

“You’re not dead, either.”

“I don’t know. There are a lot of ways to be dead,” said Sam.

On Irene’s lap, Sandy curled in a ball, purring so loudly that the vibration tickled her legs. They were coasting down Laurel Canyon all by themselves, and the air smelled of cigarettes and gasoline. Already the sun was dropping behind the hills. Irene thought maybe she should ask him about the war, about the various ways you could be dead, the various things that could kill you. But that wasn’t what he meant, was it? Anyway, he didn’t want to talk about the war. He didn’t want to talk about the past, his or hers. So she asked about the future.

“And that’s it? You’re just going to fly stunts all your life, to keep yourself from getting bored?”

He crushed out the cigarette against the side of the car. “Until something better turns up. I guess I am.”

For the rest of the drive, he was silent, or almost silent, answering Irene’s questions with such a minimum of words, she gave up and played with Sandy instead, until they pulled up along the stretch of road where Irene’s Model T had sat all day. The surfboard was still there, tethered to the roof, too heavy to steal. Sam asked if she needed any help with the spark plug, and she said no thanks, she’d changed a hundred spark plugs. But he stood by anyway, propped against the side of the car, playing with Sandy. The kitten had found a loose button on his shirt. When Irene straightened from the engine, Sam straightened too. She wiped her hands on a rag and said that about does it.

Sam took his handkerchief and wiped at some smudge on her cheek. “You’re a real grease monkey, aren’t you?”

“When I have to be. Thanks for all your trouble. And the spark plug.”

“It was my pleasure,” he said gravely.

“No, it was mine. It was—it was something else.”

Over Sam’s shoulder, the sun melted into the ocean. He tucked the kitten into the crook of his elbow and took Irene’s hand. “I want to show you something.”