“Fuck if I know.”

Johona gives the musicians a dollar when they finish, and they move on to the next table. Edgar is done eating and getting restless.

“I want to play more pinball,” he says.

“We’ll get a move on soon,” Jesse says. “Hold your horses.”

“I know something else fun we could do,” Johona says.

“What?” Edgar says.

“It’s a surprise,” Johona says. “You up for a surprise?”

“I guess I am,” Edgar says, like he’s accepting a challenge.

“What about you?” Johona says to Jesse.

He feels uneasy, as if he’s wandered too far out onto thin ice. At the same time he’s not yet ready to end the night. So he’s going to ignore his misgivings and take Johona where she wants to go, spend a while longer courting Claudine’s ghost.

As they get up to leave, Edgar sings softly.

“‘I’ve been to Hollywood, I’ve been to Redwood.’”

“Hey!” Johona says.

“I know Neil Young,” Edgar says. “Jesse don’t, but I do.”

They drive out of town and wind along a narrow road up the side of a mountain. Johona has Jesse take a turnoff that ends at a wide, flat overlook with a view of the city.

“Park in the bushes in case the cops cruise by,” she says.

Jesse pulls into a hollow in a mesquite thicket where the Grand Prix will be hidden from view. He, Johona, and Edgar get out and walk back to the viewpoint. The ground is littered with cigarette butts, crushed beer cans, and McDonald’s wrappers. Broken glass glints in the uncannily bright light of a bit of moon blazing overhead. Edgar bends and comes up with an empty shotgun shell.

“People party here,” Johona says.

She leads the brothers up a short trail to a natural bench on top of a boulder. The three of them sit against the rock, which even now is still warm from the sun. Phoenix sparkles below like diamonds strewn across the desert. The night is perfectly calm, not even a tickle of a breeze. A helicopter hovers silently above downtown, tethered to the earth by the beam of its spotlight.

“I can see all the way to Monongah,” Edgar says. He tosses a rock, another, another.

“Quit it,” Jesse says.

Johona lights a cigarette. Jesse can smell the bowling alley on her behind the perfume she’s wearing.

“Tell me more about Claudine,” she says.

“What do you want to know?” Jesse says.

“How long’s it been since you two were together?”