She couldn’t remember anybody’s name. In twenty years she might know some of these tanned or aged Californians, but they still would not be cousins she’d grown up with or oldsters who had seen her in a kindergarten skit or remembered her from looking through the glass in the hospital on the day she was born. Each day, she came home from work feeling that she had dragged Dirk and all the strangers around on her back for hours.

One afternoon in February, after dealing with a sixteen-year-old imbecile who wanted delivery of all his trust money immediately, and after plucking the hand of her boss from her buttocks again, she drove downtown and bought a new Mercedes diesel sedan. She needed the car the way she needed painkiller for a storming headache. Idling at the edge of the parking lot, a little wave of panic swept over her as she wondered who would like to see her new machine. Who might be impressed? She drove to Paul’s apartment for the first time since the cocktail party.

He answered the door, his finger in a small leather-bound copy of Locomotive Catechism. He was unshaven and still in his work clothes.

“What you been doing, Paul?” She pushed in past him and looked around at the plain room.

“Watching TV and counting my money. What’s your big news?”

“I got a new car. Come see.” Her hair bounced against her shoulders. It had been a long time since he had seen her excited.

When he saw the silver sedan, he said, “Ah.”

“Isn’t it gorgeous? Let’s go for a ride.” The sparkle of enamel danced in her dark eyes.

“Sure,” he said, opening a door and leaning inside, wrinkling his nose at the smell of the leather. “But first I have to change my clothes. I can’t ride in this thing dressed in coveralls.”

Soon she was twirling through Griffith Park, speeding, testing the brakes and the cornering. Shrubbery flew past the window in a green blur. At one point she charged a stop sign and Paul stomped the floor and yelled out something in French. Colette panic-stopped the car just past the sign, a puff of rubber smoke blowing ahead. “What the hell are you trying to do?” he said.

She smiled and his neck hit the headrest as the car squealed through the intersection and up the mountain, Colette trying her best to drive like the helmeted men in the commercials. On the outsides of curves, the tires droned like cellos, and when she arrived at the observatory, she saw that Paul was sweating.

She threw her right arm on the back of his seat and pulled off her sunglasses. “Well, what do you think?”

He swallowed. “Is this how you have to drive to own one of these things?”

“I’m just testing it out.”

“Babe, if you tried to drive like this back home on our roads, you’d wind up wrapped around a live oak for sure.”

She drew back her arm, but her smile stayed. “In California the roads don’t have potholes big enough to flip you into the woods.”