As he lay there, Lomita was aware of the effort she had been forced to expend in helping Manita, who did most of the work, in getting him to the bed. She felt exhausted and would have liked to enjoy the comfort of lying by his side. She looked at him, his eyes were now closing as a result of the benzodiazepine; she wondered what it was that brought people to this city that destroyed more than it created.

For her, it was clearly an ambition to be an actress, a conviction that she would be one of them, the goddesses, the ones that had reached for the moon and held on. For Ever, his ambition was to fulfil an intention in a more altruistic way, to make something of his father in his own mind after his death. To give him a memory that his thwarted ambition, his failure had never allowed. Ever wanted to place him on a pedestal of worth. To make the sacrifice: to make him great.

A selfless act by a son, but then this son was not of sane mind, by his own admission. He had lived in the shadow of his father, and was obsessed with the agony of his father not becoming the man he was convinced he should have been.

Her situation was different, she was the wronged party, the woman not recognised for her talent, but abused; with a husband who adored her and had tried to give her life a quality that it might not have deserved. A dream that might have had no right to have been dreamt. Built on stuff of nothing.

Maybe they both had no talent.

Maybe the people who do make it in this City of Angels have talent and the Angels fly with them, guard them, look after them, and keep them from wrong. For a while anyway.

But maybe those that come here and shouldn’t have are punished. Severely.

Lomita listened to his breathing: anxious, irregular intakes.

What was she going to do with him, shatter his dream and minimise his father’s talent, attempt to show that maybe he was just ordinary, and revenge would change nothing.

Lomita stood to ease her cramp; she was dealing with her own thoughts about herself. She knew nothing about Ever’s father or the quality of his work. She just knew that in her own mind and to the world she had been turned into a piece of trash. Nothing could have changed that. Nothing ever has.

Is that what happened in the City of Angels, why were they all here? Why didn’t they all leave the place that housed the most horrible people on the planet and some of the most talented?