“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Kate asked the girl.

The girl shrugged, knowing that her devil-may-care attitude was the privilege of youth. “Movie director?”

Kate snorted. She couldn’t help it. Bluto warned her with a look to Be Nice. “It was Brittany here who wanted to see you, you know. Honestly, I was just going to take her straight to Disneyland. I wasn’t even going to call.”

Kate got her purse and stood up. “You know what, Bluto? You’re sick. Fuck you.”

“Well, it was very lovely to meet you,” the girl said.

Bluto draped a protective arm over the girl and stroked her porcelain chin. It was two against one.

“I suppose it’s my fault. I talk about you way too much,” he said. “I kept telling her she reminded me of you. And so she got excited by the idea—”

“Not excited, curious,” the girl corrected him.

“Either way, she wanted to see the genuine article. So here we are.”

Kate pulled out money for her share of the food and slapped it down. “I don’t know why I even bothered to come.” She was beginning to shake. “I mean, my dog is dying at home!”

“What kind of dog is it?” the girl asked, just as Kate was walking off.

Kate turned and growled: “He’s a German shepherd.”

The girl clapped her hands. In derision, Kate thought.

“What?” she snapped.

“I’ve got a German shepherd, too,” the girl said. “What’s your dog’s name?”

“Bluto.”

The next day, Bluto phoned Kate and asked how her dog was. She should have hung up on him that second, but she’d just returned from the vet, where the other Bluto had been put to sleep. She agreed to meet him for a drink, provided the girl didn’t tag along. She picked a cheesy sports bar in Old Town, a place she was certain they wouldn’t run into anyone she knew.

She found him nursing his second beer, slouched at the counter so his shoulders formed angel wings inside his shirt.

“I thought you’d be flattered,” he said, “that I picked someone so nakedly based on you. A virtual carbon copy.”

“Obviously, all Eurasians look alike to you.”

“Very funny.” He gave her arm a little pinch. “If we’d fucked back then, we might have a kid her age today.”

“Hah!”

He laughed. “Now you sound exactly like your mother. Hah!” He took her hand and fed her a jalapeno popper. “Ah, old times . . .” He sighed dramatically. “How’s Santa Claus Lane? Still suffocating?”

“Pretty much,” Kate said, quietly. She freed her hand from his.

“And yet you never left.”

She was silent.

He tried again: “We were given legs, you know, so we can move around.”

“Why exactly did you come back here?”