'My mom's gonna die. She's got cancer in her lungs. I left her to come down here 'cause I thought you and BJ were in danger. Now just give me the G.o.dd.a.m.n keys.'

Speechless, Debbie hands him what he asks for. Turning from her, Joe goes to the rocking chair where Lionel sits quietly and gets down on one knee and uncuffs the dancer. She does not move. Hopelessness petrifies, her helmet to her thighs, her arms wrapped tight as a drum, like some odd tortoise they've found.

'Isn't she beautiful, Joe?' says Black Jesus, but n.o.body answers, all stunned to hear him say such a thing. And then just like a morning glory, the girl lifts her head slowly to stare at the blind Marine, her green eyes like a question, her face framed behind the helmet's shield, her features turned fiercely exotic after a journey of wind and hurt and G.o.d only knows what else.

'Are you okay?' says Joe.

'No,' says the dancer turning to him, the sound of this one word alone a three-act tragedy.

'You poor thing,' says Joe. 'What's your name?'

'Gloria,' says Black Jesus. 'Her name's Gloria.'

'Well then, Gloria, let's get you inside. You'll need supper. And a shower. You'll be spending the night here at the Dairy Queen. Among friends. Isn't that right, Debbie White?'

Rough sea. Kids on the boardwalk. Schizophrenic on a bicycle. Tattooed lovers entwined on a picnic table under one of the paG.o.das, seagull at their feet. Warren Zevon blasting from a yellow convertible turning east on Rose, gone just as quick as he came. And all the vendors are packing up, guy with the sungla.s.ses, guy with the cotton candy, lady with the crystal ball, pretty slow for a Sunday.

Dusk on this weird beachscape. Blanket of rosy haze in the far western sky beyond the blue sea. Here is a place where vanity and beauty and desperation and love and sleaze and new beginnings are all smiling and nailed to one word like a mannequin to a plastic cross in a dream: California.

Ross Klein pays a pretty penny for his place. 13 Brooks Avenue, 2nd floor. A wide-open loft s.p.a.ce one of Frank Gehry's rogue proteges allegedly designed. Everything is brushed metal and blacks, occasionally the dangerous color. There, in a corner, lies a girl asleep on his big bra.s.s bed. Her strawberry hair all wild on the pillow, her heartbeat soft, her mouth very dry, one of her naked legs like a pale branch growing out from under his sheet, toenails red as new blood. Last night they met at an industry party. He told her his name and she blushed and took a sip of her drink. Then she swallowed and said she was a singer-songwriter from Florida, the Panhandle. He didn't know who she was. And still doesn't. And neither does anyone else.

When Ross Klein woke, his BlackBerry said 6:09 p.m. He tried but he couldn't go back to sleep. The trucks outside, the girl's breathing, the way she ground her teeth.

He threw on a robe and walked across the flat and sat with his naked a.s.s on his favorite couch, its black leather cool to the touch. On a coffee table lay his big headphones and he reached and put them on and switched on a new alb.u.m he's been putting off listening to. Some indie rockers from Montreal. His editor expects the review by morning. So he started taking notes: soph.o.m.oric, overproduced, flippant, somebody's been listening to too much Roxy Music. By track five he was sick to his stomach.

Now he's in the bathroom, his pale feet on the tiles, his robe open in front like a door to his secrets. Here in the big mirror the critic Ross Klein looks the critic Ross Klein up and down. And the two share a strange little laugh.

By the side of the sink is a simple leather shaving kit: gleaming razor and lather brush, worn leather case. Last year they put a handful of Jim Morrison's belongings up for auction online, things from the day they found him dead in that bathroom in Paris. So, being bored one day and high on c.o.ke, Ross bid on this haunted tchotchke and won, paying more for it than his cleaning lady makes in a year.

The thin steel handle of the razor has a nice curve, provocative, slight as a dancer. As the man in the mirror lifts it to his face he hears the girl he's never heard of call to him from the bed, her voice like a child faraway.

'Ross,' she coos, but he doesn't answer. Instead he talks to the mirror. 'I'm your private dancer,' he sings and his eyes are terribly wrong. 'A dancer for money, I'll do what you want me to do. I'm your private dancer, a dancer for money, any old music will do.'

'Ross?' calls the girl again. 'Come back to bed.'

What this Floridian does not know is that under the bed she finds herself in is a pair of ivory ballet slippers in a box, the pale chalk still on them.

'I'm your private dancer,' sings Ross to the mirror. 'A dancer for money,' he sings and touches the blade to his face. No lather. No matter. He digs in. Cuts in. His face a hated thing. Gouge away. You can gouge away. And down falls his bright blood as from a tap.

Waking up on a strange couch is a feeling every lost dreamer knows. Fly on your hand. The uncertain light. Fly on your dry mouth. Seven mild nightmares that run together like wet paints in a new rain, each more mundane than the next. Fly in your wild hair.

What is this place? Smells weird. All this clutter, these boxes, that clothes hanger, that mannequin, her chiffon dress and purple wig, maybe she knows something I don't. It's quiet here. Oh, but there's the sound of a car, and another out there. Now quiet again. A bird. My head hurts. Is that a soda fountain? Why do I feel like I've been here before? Who put this blanket on me?

'h.e.l.lo?' she says into the musty room, still supine on the couch, her head turned slightly, her eyes fixed on a darkened window, aluminum mini-blinds.

n.o.body answers. But soon she hears footfalls and motion above her. Must be somebody up there. She thinks of the movie Flowers in the Attic and shivers. Now she sits up, trailing her hurt leg slowly, and wraps the knitted blanket around her, its aged purples and pinks and whites giving easily to the contours of her dancer's body.

'h.e.l.lo?' she says again and cranes her neck in a way that might help her find the source of the racket overhead. Doesn't take her long to spy the hole in the ceiling and the ladder reaching down. And now the big work boots testing the air, learning the way down rung by rung. Those grey sweatpants descending. Like some kind of low-rent astronaut. Oh, but then she knows him. The guy in the rocking chair. Those same silly black sungla.s.ses. Only now not so silly. Because when he says, 'Hi, I didn't know if you'd ever wake up,' he doesn't face her, he faces straight ahead in that pitiful way she's seen acted out a hundred times on TV, the telltale hesitancy, the vague shame and disorientation of the newly blind.

'Do you need help?' she says when he reaches the bottom of the ladder.

To that Lionel White gives a smug little laugh. 'Well, that's ironical,' he says. 'Ain't you the one sleepin' on our couch?'

The girl looks at him there in the poor light, his pale hair awry, his sadness, and pulls her blanket tighter and says, 'I'm sorry. I just thought-'

'You just thought 'cause I'm blind I must be some kinda helpless r.e.t.a.r.d.'

'No. No, not at all. It just seemed like the right thing to say. Sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I guess my right-and-wrong detector's probably been out of batteries awhile. Just ask my leg.'

By reflex she runs her hand down her swollen shin and feels the heat of it, the slow rhythm of its throb, her own little drummer boy, own little war.

'What happened to you?' he asks.

'A lot of things.'

'What's wrong with your leg?'

'I broke it.'

'How?'

'Dancing in the ballet. A horse doctor told me my tibia was fractured. That was a few weeks ago, I guess. Maybe more. G.o.d, I must be losing my mind.'

'I think I know what you mean,' says the Marine, still holding onto the ladder for balance.

'Yeah?'

'Yeah.'

'Scary, right?'

He thinks about this a moment, the muscles in his jaw grinding like a motor. Both these broken kids waiting for an answer in this ice-cream-parlor-turned-warped-homestead/junkshop, outnumbered by all the cast-off things that surround them, clothes n.o.body wants to wear anymore, paintings n.o.body wants to hang up, memories better kept in a box.

'Yeah,' he says. 'I guess it is kinda scary.' Sometimes my dreams are so real and bad I s.h.i.t my tighty whities, is what he'd like to say. I don't know why I'm still alive, everything's dark and I'm all doped up and I miss what I can't see. It sounds gay, but I miss the sky. And watching the cars go by on the road. I miss my mom's face, is what he'd love to say, but he can't.

'I've thought about him a bunch since,' says Gloria.

'Who?'

'The vet who helped me out.'

'Veteran?'

'Veterinarian. Guess we're all animals when it comes down to it.'

'What kind are you?'

'Animal?'

'Yeah.'

'Not sure. I guess I'm a bird. Maybe a swan,' she laughs. 'What about you?'

'A wolf,' says the soldier.

'Really?'

'I don't know. I used to wish I was one. But that's when I was kid,' he says. 'So, what did the doctor do?'

'He put this brace on and told me to stay with him awhile but I didn't really listen.'

'Was he a perv?'

'No. He was a nice man. I just had to go.'

'How come?'

She doesn't answer right away. In her pounding head runs a dim and random montage of things seen and felt on the ragged pilgrimage she made across this land of ours. Land on the brink. Gas pump. All-you-can-eat Chinese food. Truck full of migrants. Abandoned paint factory. Train crossing. Dying bear so beautiful. Jackknife trailer. Sunset to make you cry. Ten thousand small dark birds changing shape in the air as they go like an Etch A Sketch worked by the same playful force that ends the world, same force that shaped it. Cell phone tower disguised as a giant tree. Truck stop. Rodeo. Corn forever. Cows forever. Sunburnt hitchhiker with a dog. Sunrise to challenge all you believe in. Rain. Headlights. RV center. Dirty picture cut into a bathroom wall. Cross to the sky. Big prison on a hill. Carwash. Baseball field. A million pale windmills all turning in the dark.

'I felt like someone was after me.'

'Who?'

'My boyfriend.'

'Do you think he'll find you?'

'I don't know. I'm f.u.c.ked-up in the head. Somehow I thought I'd be safe if I could just get back to the Mystery Spot.'

'It's not there anymore.'

'I know. I came a long way to find out.'

Here they both breathe and listen. Traffic's picked up out on the road, it's Sat.u.r.day, cars headed up the mountain, down the mountain. Faintly they hear Debbie outside at her noisy old cash register haggling with some shopper over G.o.d knows what amazing triviality.

'Can I come sit by you?' says Lionel out of the blue, as a child might.

'If you want to.'

'Okay.'

And like a little row boat with a hole in it, he pushes off from the ladder and gropes his way through the Dairy Queen towards her voice. With a hurting dizzy head and sleep still in her eyes she watches him come. Almost to the couch, he stumbles on a Ken doll and starts to fall. Gloria gasps out loud and reaches and grabs him just under his armpit as he crashes into the dusty arm of the couch.

'Are you okay?'

'I'm fine,' he says, not as embarra.s.sed as she feared he'd be. And she helps him onto the beat-up cushion beside her.

'Mom's got so much c.r.a.p lyin' around,' he says with a small awkward smile on his mouth.

'She sure does. Some of it's kinda cool though.'

'You might not think it's cool if you grew up with it.'

'You grew up here?'

'Yeah. No. Well, in a trailer up the road. But she's always had the yard sale. It's our bread and b.u.t.ter. That's what she calls it. Says she'd rather starve than work for The Man. I never really knew what man she was talkin' bout till I went to boot camp. Then I learnt quick.'

'Is that where you got your name?'

'Black Jesus?'

'Yeah.'

He nods and says, 'The Jar Heads named me that. Growin' up I never fit in, so it felt kinda good to have a nickname.'

'Did you fight in Iraq?'

'Sure did.'

'Is that how this happened to you?'

The boy nods his head.

'I'm sorry.'

After a pause he says, 'Don't be sorry. I don't want anybody feelin' sorry for me. A lot worse happened to other guys. If we didn't fight 'em over there we'd end up fightin' 'em at home, in our own backyard.'

The dancer hears this last slogan fall from his mouth as empty and automatic as a parrot, a priest.

'Well, I think you're brave,' she says. 'And who knows, maybe you made it home alive for a reason. Maybe there's something in store for you.'

'Like what?'

'That's the million-dollar question,' she says. 'The big mystery. What happens? Sometimes I think it's the only thing that keeps us going. If we knew every twist of the movie why would we stick around to watch?'

Maybe you've strolled down Rose Avenue on a summer's night, when they flock to this place hoping to fix a love, find a love, end a love. When it's hard to get a table anywhere. When shouts are heard. Or whistles to girls. Or ragged singing on the street corner. When gulls cry. When promises are lost in the mild riot of it all. When the light is dying. Maybe the sea was calm, or maybe it was choppy, or maybe you were too frazzled to measure the wind. No matter. Whatever the details, we can be certain of one thing, you were in earshot of Bebop Billy, the thin junky flutist of Venice.

Having hocked his good flute for dope long ago it would have been his blue recorder you'd of heard, as soft and thin as the man himself, the long notes, the trilled notes all but gone in the roar of waves and cars and cheap revelry. But it was there just the same. And so was he. With an unusual smile on his mouth, and kind, faded eyes, and the dope balloon wrapped up in his pocket, and the tie-dyed turban on his head, and the sick magic in his veins, same thing tonight as he zigzags through the alleys his kind call the speedway, down Rose Court, up Dudley, down Paloma and over to Brooks Avenue blowing tunes to rock to, tunes to heal you, to bless you, to curse your life and blow your mind. It's four in the morning or thereabouts and Bebop sways and his music is pure and he's drawn by a light in the window above. A girl there. Her face in the gla.s.s. She's lost, thinks Bebop and the notes that escape his recorder now reflect this idea. Who's she talking to? he wonders and stops and cranes his neck to watch. It's not long before he knows she's not talking at all. The girl is singing. Silent and lost on the second floor. Not a word makes it out of the locked window, but something about her face and the way she delivers the song breaks Bebop's heart. It's like she knows n.o.body'll ever hear it. Like her song's stuck there in the window for keeps, or till all these buildings are claimed by the sea. Not long now. So he blows her a junky's prayer and scratches his belly and moves on into the night, where a fix awaits, or something holy, or just another sunrise sleep in the sand.

Even though she walked in and found him carving up his face in the mirror. Even though he spat blood onto the tiles and called her a brainless wh.o.r.e and smiled and danced like a rabid gypsy into the next room with the razor aloft. Even though he hasn't showered now for a week and stinks. Even if he's locked the door. And taken the phone off the hook. And doesn't really talk to her much. But talks strange. And into thin air. And mostly it's just other people's songs he parrots, some she's heard and some she hasn't. Even though something inside tells her this might not be the safest scene in the world, Tracy, the would-be next Jewel from Florida (the Panhandle), has remained in this loft with the tastemaker Ross Klein like some breed of attending angel if angels took off their pants and did anything on earth for a shot at the big time.

Maybe this is just his process, she thinks as she hunts through the cupboard for the last box of pasta, last tin of pate. He's inspired. How else could he write those mind-blowing pieces he's so famous for? This is how real artists get their feelings out. A bit of madness to spice up the broth. Wow, I like the sound of that, did I come up with that myself? Must be rubbing off. Here I am right on the front line. I wouldn't be surprised if he writes me into his next blog. If Daddy could see me now. 'Don't you know that you are a shootin' star?' we'd sing in his truck when I was a tadpole. 'All the world will love you just as long as you are a shooting star.'

And the vintage Motown ceiling fans he bought from Berry Gordy's accountant spin round and round. And the false breezes they conjure play at the hair and face and torso of the man lying there on the floor, his spine against the oval rug, his robe wide open. Eyes wide open.

Having laid his spooky razor aside in favor of other charms, Ross has cultivated a fairly impressive beard, high to the cheekbones, all down his throat, and tawny in color. Yesterday in his pacing he pa.s.sed a framed photograph of John Lennon and Phil Spector in some black-and-white control room somewhere in time, and pa.s.sing them he saw his own face in the reflection of the gla.s.s and was startled. Because at that angle, obscured in the light that way, it was also his father's face. The mean eyes. The beard. The same way he knew him when they spent that long month on his yacht. November 1984. The date seared in the boy's mind on account of how his dad kept him up late election night by the loud crackly radio in the cabin waiting at the edge of their seats for each state to weigh in on the triumph that was to be the dawn of Ronald Reagan's second term in office.