“We’re here,” promised Jude. “I wish I could’ve grown up into some big-shot lawyer or doctor or banker or something, so you’d know you were going to be taken care of.”

“Me too,” Randy sadly agreed. “But if you’re not too ashamed of us, we’ll at least be your best friends, okay?”

Hammer dissolved into tears. The three of them hugged as Seth’s heart slowed because it could not go on, or perhaps because some part of Seth Bridges knew it was okay for him to leave just now. He coded at eleven minutes past eleven, and the cart and team could bring him back no more.

TWENTY-FOUR

West had missed the Sunset East exit deliberately. Retrieving Brazil’s BMW was not what she intended to take care of first. It was quarter past eleven, and most of the world sat in church and wished the minister would hurry up and end the sermon. West was deep inside her preoccupations. She felt a terrible heaviness that she could not explain and wanted to cry, which she blamed on the time of month, which, of course, had passed.

“You all right?” Brazil felt her mood.

“I don’t know,” she said, depressed.

“You seem really down,” he said.

“It’s weird.” She checked her speed, glancing around for sneaky state troopers. “It just hit me all of a sudden, this really bad feeling, as if something is horribly wrong.”

“That happens to me sometimes, too,” Brazil confessed. “It’s like you pick up on something from somewhere, you know what I mean?”

She knew exactly what he meant, but not why she should know it. West had never considered herself the most intuitive person in the world.

“I used to get that way about my mom a lot,” he went on. “I would know before I walked in the house that she was not in good shape.”

“What about now?”

West was curious about all this and not certain she knew what was happening to her. She used to be very pragmatic and in control. Now she was picking up extraterrestrial signals and discussing them with a twenty-two-year-old reporter she had just made out with in a police car.

“My mother’s never in good shape now.” Brazil’s voice got hard. “I don’t want to sense much about her anymore.”

“Well, let me tell you a word or two, Andy Brazil,” said West, who did know about a few things in life. “I don’t care if you’ve moved out of her house, you can’t erase her from the blackboard of your existence, you know?” West got out a cigarette. “You’ve got to deal with her, and if you don’t, you’re going to be messed up the rest of your life.”

“Oh good. She messed up all my life so far, and now she’s going to mess up the rest of it.” He stared out his window.

“The only person who has the power to mess up your life is you. And guess what?” West blew out smoke. “You’ve done a damn good job with your life so far, if you ask me.”