She shook her head.

“‘Station Island’ by the great Seamus Heaney. Some say it’s his best poem. It’s about the nature of inspiration.” He looked at her. “I’m headed off to Station Island myself. County Donegal, Ireland. I leave tomorrow morning.”

This was news. It left her gasping, the victim of a senseless mugging perpetrated in broad daylight.

“It’s only for a few weeks. I’m going to visit my dream temple at Lough Derg, better known as St. Patrick’s Purgatory.” He saw the stricken look on her face. “I need inspiration, Rose.”

The San Gabriels loomed purple and heathery above them as they ascended Lake, the avenue that ran straight up and up until it lost conviction at the base of the mountains. Rosemary mused on the word purgatory and its implications.

“Know what a dream temple is, Rose?”

She braced herself for another hurt-making answer.

“The ancient Greeks built monuments to sleep, where they sacrificed rams, drank their blood and slept in their fleece. And there they waited for messages from the gods to appear in their dreams. On Lough Derg, there’s a cave that pilgrims in the Middle Ages slept in for six days and six nights, to get what they believed was a sneak preview of purgatory. They received visions, premonitions—perhaps due more to poor ventilation and hysteria than anything else.” He threw her a grin to see how she was doing. “But generation after generation, pilgrims continued to go in there and they continued to emerge with ideas and visions. Many of them were writers with writer’s block. I wouldn’t be surprised if Seamus Heaney was one of them.”

“I didn’t think you were religious.”

“Religious inspiration isn’t the only kind of inspiration, you know. You should read some Heaney.”

She waited a while before she tried to bring it up again. “About Arik . . .”

“I’m warning you. Say that name again and I’ll throw you out of the car.” He turned to watch her reaction, then to shape it. “I’m not his biggest fan. As you know.”

He stopped the car at the top of Lake, outside a gated pathway that led up to the Angeles National Forest, its entryway littered with energy-bar wrappers and empty green tea bottles. It was the highest point a civilian car could go. From there, one could look back and see all the way across the valley—Pasadena, Alhambra, the skyscrapers of downtown LA and even the sliver of silver that was the Pacific Ocean.

“Let’s get out of the car for a moment,” said Mr. Z. They stepped into the biting chill. He threw on a green Polartec vest and she braced her arms around her cotton sweater, nodding that she was warm enough.

“As long as we’re not going for a walk,” she said.

“We’re not going for a walk.”