His thoughts to himself in the moment – the rental on the car was running out, and was too expensive, so a cheap car fulfilled the need; collect the gun, because it was irresponsible to leave a weapon unsecured in an apartment that could easily be broken into? Was that too feeble as an excuse? The first one he knew he could pull off. Was he feeling unwell? Was the sweating in the night a result of the dream, or was he in fact ill?

The facts, then the worry – his brain on the anxiety train again: what if all the carriages crashed into one another? A pile-up.

Then there was Lomita. It had been a natural, spontaneous act which he loved. Loved her for it. Loved her. Wanted to stay with her. Wanted to be comforted by her. They had awoken for food, but he had no appetite, no sensation of hunger, no sensation of anything physical. Eggs were suggested, she was going to eat two poached eggs: he wasn’t, he had declined the offer, when Lomita had left the room.

He was left alone, alone in her room, was he accepted, was this expected to be the norm?

He didn’t want this, he didn’t want to repeat what he had done. It was done; he felt it never needed to be done again. He wanted to phone Clarissa and speak to Jacob. He wanted the life he had constructed, not be an intruder in the construct of someone else’s life, he didn’t want to be a part of a life he had not created, not built, not laid the foundations for.

He was entering at the end of her life: his life was at the beginning. He was feeling panic again, rise up through and into his bowels, then his stomach, then his throat, and then his mouth turned sour: these problems he could stop creating for himself. For all those around him.

He felt like being sick, he walked calmly, as calmly as he could, to the bathroom, knowing on his arrival he would put his head over the toilet bowl, with control, and throw up. He was right. He swilled his mouth out and sucked at the tube of toothpaste in the absence of his toothbrush. He didn’t feel he had reached the toothbrush sharing stage.

Clarissa and Jacob wouldn’t leave him, would they?

He returned and sat tentatively on the edge of the bed, feeling he had no right to get back into the bed. Her bed. He felt his intentions had changed: there was forward movement.

*

He checked out the internet as he sat.

Without the full weight of ownership, on the bed – for cars. Autotrader. Maximum price $2,000, saloon, mileage irrelevant. He looked for cars exclusively in Chinatown and Koreatown. Anonymity he thought, both of car and place. He had never had any connection to that area of LA.