Sherri saw some shiny tall buildings that rose in the distance. She figured she’d discovered downtown, she’d arrived. Until that moment her heart had felt dead, but at the initial sight of the LA skyline, she managed to feel the smallest surge of excitement. Except then there were more clusters of buildings, and still more, and the roads didn’t lead to any one place. As someone who had grown up on a square and had spent the previous year in a town with a main street, Sherri assumed that all places had a center. Not LA. It went on and on and on and on. She felt like an imposter, surrounded by strange brown hills, palm trees, and cars, cars, cars.

She wanted to find Venice Beach because Mitch had said it was like Lake Geneva, only better. From the map it looked like the interstate 10 should take her straight there, but it turned into the Pacific Coast Highway and she missed Venice Beach completely, heading north instead. She saw signs for Santa Monica and, finally, for Ocean Avenue. She had to get out, had to pee and stretch her legs. She found a parking spot near the little shops and vendors selling drinks and ice cream. She wandered down the crowded pier. Her first feeling of greeting came from the tinkly sound of a Wurlitzer rising above the din of the crowd in the Hippodrome. She followed the noise even though it sounded out of tune, all wrong. She walked into the vast, barnlike building that housed the carousel, her eye drawn to the instrument belting out music that seemed as maniacal as she felt. There was no player, no keyboard, just a drum rolling around the belly of the unit.

She ran back outside and burst onto the wooden pier with its giant moorings. Couples walked hand in hand, children heeled their mothers. A homeless man jingled his cup. A barefoot Hare Krishna in an orange robe ran up to her and tried to give her a book. She’d only heard about them on television and worried they’d try to get her to join a cult. “No!” she said, picking up her pace, terrified. “Stay away from me!”

She returned to her car and stopped at a 7-Eleven. Mitch Spaulding: there was his name, right there in the phone book that hung off a metal chain in the phone booth. He lived on Pico Boulevard. How cute that word sounded: Pico. She imagined a mansion sitting on a bluff overlooking the ocean, a circular driveway with the Excalibur parked in front of a grand entrance. Sherri wrote down his address, went inside, and asked the attendant for directions. “Is this far away?”

“Just a few blocks east of here,” he said, pointing toward the parking lot.