We got into Alice in silence. As we turned right onto Santa Monica Boulevard, Nana sagged against me and rested her head on my shoulder. "Yipes, cripes, Maria," she said. "I thought it would never end."
"It wouldn't have, if they'd learned what I do for a living." I blinked over scratchy eyeballs. "Thanks for yanking my foot out of my mouth."
"I had to," she said. "You had your shoe on." She stroked my arm.
I headed north up La Cienega, on the way to Sunset and her apartment. Nana stopped stroking my arm and said, "No."
"No, what?"
"I can't go home. You know I can't go home. Do you think I could go to sleep now?"
"I know I have to. Tomorrow's going to be a year long. And that's if everything goes okay."
She twisted to face me. "Maybe you don't understand this," she said. "That was Amber back there. She wasn't some fifth-rate whore, she was my friend. I talked to her tonight. I said hello, and she said hello back. I asked her how she was, and she didn't kick me in the teeth. She lied to me, like she did every night when I asked her how she was doing, because she wasn't looking for pity. So her life was a mess. Whose isn't?"
Sunset was coming up fast, and I decided to dodge the question. "Where do you want to go?"
"Where do you think? I want to go with you. Is that so unreasonable?"
"I don't know. I don't know what you think I can do for you. I don't know what I can do for you."
"You can hold me if I start to cry again. You can wake me up if I scream in my sleep. I'm not asking for community property, for Christ's sake. But that was Amber."
"And who was Amber?" I stopped at the red light at the top of the hill. It was either right or left from here on, either east toward Nana's or west toward Topanga and home. Amber's death hadn't slowed the planet's revolution any, and four a.m. was rolling toward us.
"Amber was Amber. She was fucked up, like the rest of us, and trying to get straight, like the rest of us. Don't do this to us now, okay?"
"Don't do what?" The DONT WALK sign had started blinking, its apostrophe a casualty of bureaucratic economy.
"Don't start acting like you're dense, even if you are a man. You're not that much a man, and I'm not that much a woman. We both know."
"Know what?"
"That it's hard either way. Maybe it's impossible either way. Maybe it's all luck, and you either have luck or you don't. If you don't, maybe you end up like Amber. Or like me. Maybe you decide to check out."
The light flickered and changed to green. Nana put her hand on my wrist and dug at the skin with her nails. I turned left and pointed Alice toward the ocean, toward home. Nana sighed. The pressure behind her fingers eased.
"Like your father," I said.
"What?" Sunset was empty. The moon had gone down long ago, taking with it most of the Hollywood lights.
"Your father."
She rubbed her head slowly against my shoulder, and then she laughed. "My father. Dear old dad." She laughed again. It wasn't the most pleasant laugh I'd ever heard. "Dead old dad."
I slowed the car. "It isn't true," I said. "He didn't hang himself."
"Sheer wish fulfillment." She stroked my arm again. "You were in trouble, remember?"
"So he's alive."
"Alive and kicking. Kicking everybody in sight."
"You made all that up, that whole story. Cutting him down and everything. The magic."
"Oh, no. He really did use to do magic, when he was drunk."
I didn't say anything.
"Come on, Simeon, I told that story because you were chewing on your shoe."
"I already said thanks. Is there anything else I'm not supposed to believe?"
"I don't care what you believe. No, that's wrong, I do care. If you have to decide right now what to believe, if you can't wait a day or two, then believe that my father makes Toby's dad look like Santa Claus. My fifth-grade teacher told me once that a bad lie always comes true. You can't imagine how many people I've told that my father is dead."
"What did he do to you?"
"That doesn't matter. Anyway, he's not dead, remember? He's still trying to do it."
"Do what?"
She looked out the window. "How about we let that wait?"
"We're letting a lot of things wait."
She attempted a laugh again. It was less real, but more pleasant, than her last try. "Please," she said. "Let a girl keep a little mystery."
Sunset curved sinuously to the left, and I willed Alice to follow the dotted line. She obeyed, with the usual groan of protest from the rear axle. Two or three miles piled up behind us in a tidy, linear fashion before either of us spoke. I turned on the radio, and some deluded disk jockey threw Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" at us. It seemed like the only song I'd heard in months.
Nana beat me to the volume control, and silence reigned again. "Don't judge me," she said. "Don't pass any cheap judgments. Not yet, at least."
"I'm in the judgment business. I don't always like it, but that's what I do. I can't buy the feminine mystique. As far as I'm concerned, mystery is just sloppy business. It only means that someone hasn't asked the right questions."
She made an impatient gesture. "Questions. Can't you leave it alone for a while?"
"If you're satisfied to put Amber into the ground without talking about it, I can leave it alone."
"We weren't talking about Amber. We were talking about me."
"You're part of it. You and Amber had the same job. If I understand you a little better, maybe I'll understand Amber, too." I wasn't being entirely truthful. "She's not around to tell me about herself. I thought you wanted me to do something about Amber."
"I want somebody to burn at the stake," she said flatly.
"Then stop being Mata Hari. If you're not going to talk to me, tell me so. I don't want to hear about the feminine mystique. Like you said, it's hard either way, whether you're a man or a woman. So as one screwed-up human being to another, tell me the truth."
"I am telling you the truth."
"As far as it goes."
"If I tell you the truth," she said, "who knows how far it's going to go? Damn, Simeon. Maybe there are some things I don't want to tell you. If I want to hide something here and there, then let me. Maybe it hasn't got anything to do with Amber. What if there are things I'm ashamed to tell you?"
"Why?"
"Boy, you're simple sometimes. Maybe I care about something that doesn't have anything to do with Amber."
"Like what?"
"Like me. Like you, maybe."
"Nana, this is a job."
She straightened abruptly. "I am not a job."
"Okay," I said, "so you're not a job. So sit on your secrets. Keep them warm. Maybe they'll hatch into nightmares." Another mile passed, and she didn't say anything. I yawned. "Long night," I said conversationally.
"Don't make small talk."
"I'm not allowed to make any other kind."
She passed her fingernails lightly over the back of my hand.
"Think it'll rain tomorrow?" I said.
She settled herself resignedly into the seat. "I'm sure it will."
"Who do you think will win the Republican primary?"
"Somebody who dresses in feathers and gobbles."
"What's your favorite color?"
"Only men have favorite colors. Women choose colors that reflect their aura, and every fool knows that a woman's aura is always changing."