“You need something to take your mind off what’s-her-name. That’s all you need.” A smile crept over Jackal’s face and he palmed himself. “Well, maybe not all . . .”

I didn’t normally stay over at his place. I hated the ritual of waking up together, getting back into my old clothes like a paid woman but with no cash in my pocket. Or, worse, Jackal fixing breakfast in the kitchen while I slept, laying out the paper, starting our morning together.

That night I let him wrap himself around me in his damp thousand-count sheets, but there was no sleep on the horizon. When I could hear him snoring, I considered grabbing his keys, driving back to my apartment. But I didn’t want to be alone again. Instead, I tossed and turned, thinking of the look on Lou’s face as Jackal and I had pulled away from Chinatown. So I’d had a few drinks. After we’d left the canyon, she’d gone back to Mr. Alibi. I’d cried for Ellen in my cold bed by myself. That counted for something.

I couldn’t sleep. Jackal kept wrapping his arms around me, and the box fan wasn’t up to the task of keeping me cool with his hairy chest pressed to my face. Around midnight, I crawled out of bed and stretched out on the couch. I turned on the TV and passed through different shows, a rerun that I could tell was supposed to be funny, the way the laugh track was yakking on and on. The lead actress was making her life more complicated than it needed to be, but weren’t we all. Flip. A channel that only half came in, tinsel hopping across the screen. Flip.

An old movie, black and white. Two women in a car with the top down, driving around winding cliffs—Italy, maybe. One of the women wore a scarf that blew in the wind behind her, and her chocolate-chip freckles reminded me of Lou. The one driving had her hands clenched on the steering wheel. Bug-eyed sunglasses covered half her face. She looked happy—she glanced over at her compatriot, and that was the word I was thinking, happy. She said something to her friend in lisping Spanish, and on the subtitles I caught the words Costa Brava. Around one turn, the unsuspecting women giggled together—lovers? in black and white?—and then the car swerved and they . . .

Flip.