“So what if I am?” Her mouth tightened. “It’s still my money. Dreams need investment. That’s what he says.” She glared at herself in the mirror and took another drag on her cigarette, carefully, so as not to smear her lipstick. A speaker crackled on the wall. A male voice said, “Cinnamon—you’re on in one.”

“Gotta go,” she said brightly.

“Cinnamon,” I said. “Is that you?”

“You’re not allowed to use your own name,” she said primly. “Because of stalkers.” She checked herself in the mirror, front and back.

The girl I had seen out front came in, kicked off her heels, put on a bathrobe, lit a cigarette, and put her feet up on the makeup counter. Grimshaw introduced me as her best friend from home.

“Hey,” the girl said to me. “I’m telling Mike to close on Mondays. It’s like dancing in a fucking cemetery.”

“He won’t,” said Grimshaw.

“Shit,” the girl said. “I’d rather dance for my goldfish.”

“Well, I’m on now.” She turned to me.

“Is there any place here where a body could sleep?” I asked.

Grimshaw pointed to a pile of clothes in the corner. “There’s a mattress under there.” I lay down on lumps of sequins and feathers that smelled like sweat and other bodily fluids and sank immediately into sleep.

It takes a long time to get out of LA, but eventually we make it to the edge of the city and the beginning of nothing. The National Guard lets us out in front of a SPEED LIMIT 65 sign, where we stand until just before nightfall. Traffic is sparse.

“We’ve gotta get out of here,” Grimshaw says. “At this time of night, rattlesnakes come out of the ditches to lie in the road because it’s still warm.”

“It doesn’t sound like anything I’d do if I were a rattlesnake.”

“Mike says they do.”

A truck approaches. She runs out in the middle of the road waving both arms. It stops, and we’re picked up by a guy in an F-350 hauling a horse trailer. He’s a rider on the Indian rodeo circuit, he says, and his horse is named Mud. He takes us to a bar where Grimshaw lays five dollars on the edge of a pool table, lights a cigarette, and waits.