I don’t know, a fucking Nissan, Toyota, Honda, that would do it, a car with no memorable appeal at all. An instantly forgettable one, what kind of car was it? Oh, I don’t remember. What colour? Oh, kind of beige, browny, kind of colour. Maybe a four-door or two-door? I don’t know. You just couldn’t remember anything about it? Nothing specific, no, not really.

That’s what he wanted. A kind of ordinary sponge-pudding-cake of a car.

He looked on Autotrader, put in the 90012 zip code for Chinatown, the price, under $2,000.

The third car that came up was perfection: a used Honda Accord EX V6 sedan in a dull, faded, red colour with 176,000 miles on the clock. Price – $1,900. A dull, sun-worn red, reminiscent of the insignificant burgundy Wagoneer he had seen the day he met Lomita. Private owner.

Perfect, but he had to email the seller to get the number. Not so perfect, he wanted no record of this sale, he was going to give a false name on taking all the paperwork, he was convinced with the right seller that money could buy blindness and disinterest; he was not going to fill in the paperwork before he did what he had to do; that gave him ten days.

He was going to have to open up a new email account, which would take minutes, Joe Smith or the like. He started the process.

It took six minutes.

*

He appeared in the kitchen, minutes later.

Lomita was eating her eggs: he declined, again, the offer of any food. Not a word was spoken after his refusal, he felt a mild embarrassment in the company of Manita, but she seemed to carry no censoriousness of any kind. He was grateful for that and thanked her for the attention she had given to his clothes. On the walk back across the big brown room he returned to the guest bedroom. Even his mother had given him the guest bedroom, he had guest bedroom knowledge; he decided he must terminate his lease – on his apartment – although, where would he go afterwards? He couldn’t face the thought of there being an after, as that would change everything, it was only the fact that the before had some sort of positivity; the after carried something that he didn’t know – he didn’t know how he would feel about not knowing, how he would feel, or how he would cope. It would be the biggest unknown ever, and he wasn’t very good at dealing with what was, what was the known, let alone the unknown.