Blouse buttoned the best I could manage, dark glasses on, and without another word, I walk out to the parking lot. I silently pray the MG will start without fuss, and it does. I put on my hat, stick the gear in reverse, and back the hell out of there, speeding toward Sunset, darting in and out of traffic, hoping there are no cops nearby.

Finally, on PCH, just the sight of the ocean calmed me, and I felt like I could slow down. Up ahead on the side of the road I saw a pickup truck; the hood was up and steam was pouring out of the engine. A small, forlorn woman with short-cropped gray hair stood in front of it. The least I could do was give her a lift to a gas station so that some creep didn’t come by and pick her up and try to jump her. I pulled over.

She ran up to the MG exclaiming her thanks. Then she said, “Roxanne?”

I took off my dark glasses. “Thelma?”

“My god, Roxanne, what’s happened to you? You look awful, and your blouse is all undone.”

“Oh, merde! I’m all right. Shaken. That’s all.” I gathered my blouse together.

“Who did this to you?”

“No one. Really. A total nobody. A total nobody with a gruesome orange couch. Get in. What on earth are you doing out here with this truck?”

“I work for my brother now. He owns a farm out in the Valley. I deliver produce. Or at least when the truck doesn’t overheat, I do.”

“I had no idea you’d quit Empire.”

“Oh, I didn’t quit. They fired me the same day they fired Max two years ago. Escorted me off the lot without my address book.”

“That’s so unfair! You didn’t do anything.”

“I was Max’s secretary for fifteen years. That was enough.”

“I’ve heard Max and Marian are in Mexico City with Simon and Leah.” I pulled back onto PCH and drove as Thelma told me the long, sad story of four people I had loved, how they and a whole crowd of blacklisted writers and directors who had fled to Mexico were drinking too much, running out of money, quarreling among themselves about the finer points of Communist doctrine, and nursing old grievances—in short, leading the bickering, unproductive lives of café expatriates.

“It’s really just a gawd-awful way to live.” Thelma added, “No one but Simon even speaks Spanish. Max and Marian are miserable.”

“What happened to their son, Norman?”

“They moved Norman from an LA institution to one in Riverside County so Marian’s sister could visit him.” Thelma was a tiny woman, with spindly arms and bags under her big gray eyes. “But the sister died last year so no one goes to see him now. Marian is a mess, worrying about Norman, and Max is a wreck worrying about her.”

“Heartbreaking.”