He follows the road up to the lookout parking lot on Santiago Peak, the easternmost of Saddleback’s two. The western one, Modjeska Peak, is a few feet lower. He gets out of the car, walks to the stone wall on the parking lot’s edge, looks down at Orange County.

There spread below him is his hometown. During the daytime it’s a hazy jumble of buildings and flying freeway viaducts, no pattern visible. Even the upper level in the Freeway Triangle, which dominates the central plain, is hard to pick out. It’s as if they brought cement trucks with their big cylindrical barrels up to this peak, and let loose a flood of concrete lava that covered the entire plain. Western civilization’s last city.

Jim recalls the view from the hilltop in Itanos.

His thoughts are scattered, he can’t make them cohere. Things are changing in him, the old channels of thought are breaking up and disappearing, with nothing new to take their place. He feels incoherent.

Depressed, he drives back down the mountain. He feels he should locate Abe, so he goes to Sandy’s. Abe is not there, and neither is Sandy. Angela has heard of the accident, and she takes Jim out to the balcony, talks to him about other things. Jim sits there dully, touched by Angela’s concern. She really is a wonderful person, one of his best friends, the sister his family didn’t provide.

Now she stares at the palms of her hands, looking troubled. “Everything seems to be going wrong,” she says. “Have you heard that Erica has broken off the alliance with Tashi?”

“No—what?”

“Yeah. She did it at last. She’s stopped coming by here, too. I guess she decided on a total change.” Angela isn’t bitter, but she does sound sad. They sit on the balcony, looking at each other. The hum of the freeway wafts over them.

“It’s no big surprise,” Angela says. “Erica’s been unhappy now for a long time.”

“I know.… I wonder how Tash is taking it.”

“It’s so hard to tell with Tash. I’m sure he’s upset, but he doesn’t say much.”

He does to Jim, though. Sometimes. “I should go see him. My God, everyone!…”

“I know.”

The doorbell rings, and through the houseplants comes Virginia. “Hello, Jim.” Quick kiss on the cheek. “I heard about your friend. I’m really sorry.”

Jim nods, touched by her concern. Seems everyone pulls together at times like these.

Virginia looks lovely in the hazy afternoon light, hair banded white gold, flashing with an almost painful brightness. It’s all part of the pattern, Jim sees. This is what it means to have friends, to be part of a functioning community. And that’s what they are; another island poking out of the concrete.…