“I don’t even need this picnic,” I said, hefting the bag, with its white-wrapped parcels, its bottle of wine. “I know you brought me here to say good-bye. The real good-bye, the one we’ve both rehearsed in our minds since the moment we met. Your good-bye is ‘Here’s the beautiful ocean and the cliffs and some tasty caprese sandwiches and wine,’ and you saying how much you’re attracted to me, maybe more than anyone you’ve ever met, but you’re going home, because you’re not trustworthy, and because I deserve a good life, not one dating a rural cop with a kid who needs him, and blah, blah, blah. And my good-bye is saying, ‘You’re right. I can’t leave L.A., or my new career. So go. You’re free.’ Maybe you’ll kiss me. Maybe you won’t. Maybe we’ll have great sex a few times. It’s all up to how we take the news, I guess. Maybe if I start crying, you’ll just hold me.”

Ray stared at me, stuck in the stupid black fence, his legs bent.

“Well, I’m not crying,” I said, setting the bag down. “But I might eat one of your sandwiches before I go.”

Ray gave a big push and staggered through to the other side. “Just come see it. I really want you to see it.”

Through the bars, I saw his good shoulder slumping and his face looking anxious.

“It’s called the Sunken City,” he said. “It’s a neighborhood that fell into the sea in 1929. Big chunks of road are still there. Old foundations. You love ruins,” he said. “You won’t want to miss it.”

I peered past him to a fat palm rising from some juts of square rock. Not rock. Walls. Someone’s former home, broken to pieces.

“You came all this way,” he said.

“I see it,” I muttered.

“See it with me,” he said, and he wasn’t begging, but I’d never heard such emotion in his voice, and the look in his eyes was unbearably open and true.

I knew what would happen if I went through the gap, I knew even then, and the prospect sent a tide of dread and hope through me. I nearly buckled under its force, and it felt like something temporarily wiped the backs of my eyes, making the ocean and island flicker in the distance. I circled a bar with one hand, feeling the hard, thick rod of it, wondering who had been strong enough to bend such a thing. I looked back to Ray’s car, an ordinary gray sedan perched on an ordinary California street.

Ray didn’t say anything more. He just wiped his forehead and waited, watching me.

A siren went off in the distance, an urgent sound. Another emergency somewhere. Maybe another death.