The sound of churning gravel seems like something from a movie sound track as you fly out of the parking lot, barely missing the back end of an older-model Lincoln Mark IV. You’re starting to breathe more easily now, sweating still but actually feeling a little like Lee Majors saving yet another day. Or, maybe not quite that heroic, if you’re honest with yourself. No, maybe a bit more like Steve McQueen at the end of The Great Escape. Except that you are not going to fall off your motorcycle right now. No. You are going to make it home. You can feel it.

Only a flash of orange in your rearview mirror betrays this certainty—when you take a look you see the tiny figure of Timmy running behind you now, desperately moving through the tall grass that grows along the shoulder of the road in front of his family home. The sister—so alive and Gene Tierney-like in her girlish blouse a half hour ago—follows closely behind while old Herb himself waddles along as well, losing ground with every step. A distant third. You press down on the accelerator and gun your Pontiac Aztek forward, back toward the center of town. With only one signal, a single traffic light, between you and the figurative border. The Switzerland of your dreams that lies just beyond the two blocks of business district that rushes past as you grip the wheel.

Los Feliz

Tell me she’s not fucking him. Just tell me that much.