Dennis will think he’s left because of their argument. “No!” Jim can barely see the streets, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he just tracks for home. Halfway there he goes to manual and tracks to the Newport Freeway. Southbound, under the great concrete ramp of the northbound lanes, in the murky light of the groundlevel world, in the thickets of halogen light.… He punches the dashboard, gets off at Edinger to turn back north, then returns to the southbound lanes. Where to go? Where can he go? What can he do? Can he go back up there to dinner with his parents? Eat a meal and then go blow up his father’s company? For God’s sake!—how could he have gotten to this point?

On he drives. He knows the defense industry is a malignancy making money in the service of death, in the face of suffering, he knows it has to be opposed in every way possible, he knows he is right. And yet still, still, still, still, still. That look on Dennis’s face, as he stared down at the immaculate motor of his car. Lucy, looking out the window about to cut her thumb off. “It was a good program.” His voice.

Mindlessly Jim tracks north on the San Diego Freeway. But what in the world is there for him in L.A.? He could drive all night, escape.… No. He turns east on the Garden Grove Freeway, south on the Newport. Back in the loop, going in circles. Triangles, actually. Furious at that he tracks south into Newport Beach, past the Hungry Crab which makes him feel sick, physically sick. He has fucked up every single aspect of his life, and he’s still at it. Going for an utterly clean sweep.

At the very end of the Newport peninsula he gets out of his car, walks out to the jetty. The Wedge isn’t breaking tonight, the waves slosh up and down the sand as if the Pacific were a lake.

Someone’s got a fire going in a barbecue pit, and yellow light and shadows dance over the dark figures standing around it as the wind whips the flames here and there. It’s too dark to walk very far over the giant boulders of the jetty. A part of him wonders why he would want to, anyway. The jetty ends, he would have to return to the world eventually, face up to it.

He returns to his car. For a long time he just sits in it, head on the steering switch. Familiar smell, familiar sight of the dusty cracked dash … sometimes it feels like this car is his only home. He’s moved a dozen times in the last six years, trying to get more room, better sun, less rent, whatever. Only the car remains constant, and the hours spent in it each day. The real home, in autopia; so true. Too true.