"Why?"

"Because you'll only make it worse."

I let her kiss me on the lips but there are statues watching us, and lights from the fountains, and behind us the moon is reflected in the horizon of the sea.

"I hear stories about you," Blair says. "I don't want to believe them."

I open the door to the apartment. The lights are off and there's a white rectangle floating low above the couch: a phone glowing in the darkness, illuminating Rip's face. Too drunk to panic I reach for the wall and the room slowly fills with a dim light. Rip waits for me to say something, lounging on the couch as if this is where he's always belonged, an open bottle of tequila in the background. Finally he mentions something about an awards show he was at and, almost as an afterthought, asks me where I've been. open the door to the apartment. The lights are off and there's a white rectangle floating low above the couch: a phone glowing in the darkness, illuminating Rip's face. Too drunk to panic I reach for the wall and the room slowly fills with a dim light. Rip waits for me to say something, lounging on the couch as if this is where he's always belonged, an open bottle of tequila in the background. Finally he mentions something about an awards show he was at and, almost as an afterthought, asks me where I've been.

"What are you doing here?" I ask. "How did you get in?"

"I have some friends in the building," Rip says, explaining something supposedly very simple. "Let's take a ride."

"Why?"

"Because your apartment probably isn't"-he squints up at me-"secure."

In the limousine Rip shows me e-mails that were received at Rain's allamericangirlUSA account. There are four of them and I read each one of them on Rip's iPhone in the limo as we cruise along a deserted Mulholland, an old Warren Zevon song hovering in the air-conditioned darkness. At first I'm not even sure what I'm looking at but in the third e-mail I've supposedly written that I will kill that f.u.c.ker will kill that f.u.c.ker-a reference to Rain's "boyfriend" Julian-and the e-mails become maps that need to be redesigned in order to be properly followed, but they're accurate on certain points and have a secret and purposeful strategy to them, though other details about Rain and me don't track, things that have nothing to do with us: the references to kabbalah, comments about a musical number on a recent awards show that I've never seen, Hugh Jackman singing an ironic version of "On the Sunny Side of the Street," my interest in the signs of the zodiac-all of them mistakes in the specifics of our relationship. I keep rereading this e-mail and wondering who wrote these things-clues that are supposed to be followed, an idea that is supposed to lead somewhere-until I realize: It doesn't matter, everything leads to me, I called this upon myself.

"Read the next one, please." Rip reaches over and skips to the next e-mail as casually as if he's flipping through a brochure. "Interesting reference about you and the missing b.i.t.c.h roommate."

In the fourth e-mail I supposedly wrote and I'll do to Julian what I've already done to Amanda Flew and I'll do to Julian what I've already done to Amanda Flew.

"How did you get these?" I ask, my hands clasped around the iPhone.

"Please" is all Rip says.

"I didn't write these, Rip."

"Maybe you did," Rip says. "Maybe you didn't." He pauses. "Maybe she did. But it's been verified that they were all sent from one of your e-mail accounts."

I keep skimming from one e-mail and then back to another.

"I'll kill that f.u.c.ker," Rip murmurs. "Doesn't sound like you, but who knows?...I mean, you can be a cold dude sometimes, but...these are actually rather heartfelt and sad." He reads from one of them: Rip murmurs. "Doesn't sound like you, but who knows?...I mean, you can be a cold dude sometimes, but...these are actually rather heartfelt and sad." He reads from one of them: "But this time there was an explosion and my feelings as a man cannot be adjusted..." "But this time there was an explosion and my feelings as a man cannot be adjusted..." He starts laughing. He starts laughing.

"Why are you showing these to me?" I ask. "I didn't write them."

"Because they could potentially incriminate you."

I back away from Rip, unable to mask my loathing. "What movie do you think you're in?"

"Maybe one of the c.r.a.ppy ones you've written," Rip says, not laughing anymore. "Well, then, who wrote them, Clay?" he asks in a forced and playful voice as if he already knew the answer.

"Maybe she wrote them to herself," I mutter in the darkness.

"Or maybe...somebody else wrote them," Rip says. "Maybe somebody who doesn't like you?" I don't say anything.

"Barry warned you about her, huh?" Rip asks.

"Barry?" I murmur, staring into the iPhone. "What?"

"Woolf," Rip says. "Your life coach." He pauses. "The one on Sawtelle." He turns to me. "He warned you about her." He pauses again. "And you didn't listen."

"What if I told you I don't care one way or another?"

"Well, then I'd be very worried for you."

"I didn't write these things."

Rip's not listening. "Haven't you gotten enough out of her?"

"How did you get these, anyway?"

"I mean, I feel for your...predicament," Rip says, ignoring the question. "I mean, I really do."

"What's my predicament, Rip?"

"You're too smart to get too involved," Rip says slowly, figuring things out for himself, "so there must be something else that gets you off...You're not stupid enough to fall for these c.u.n.ts, and yet your pain is real...I mean everybody knows that you really lost it over Meghan Reynolds...That's not a secret, by the way." Rip grins and then his voice grows questioning. "But there's something that's not tracking...You're getting off and yet what's the problem?" He turns to me again in the darkness as the limo glides onto Beverly Glen. "Could it be that you actually get off on the fact that because of how you've set things up they'll never love you back? And could it be that"-he pauses, thinking this through-"that you're so much crazier than any of us ever really knew?"

"Yeah, that's it, Rip." I sigh, but I'm shaking. "That's probably it."

"Someone doesn't like you back and never will," Rip says. "At least not in the way you want them to and yet you can still momentarily control them because of the things they want from you. It's quite a system you've set up and maintained." He pauses. "Romance." He sighs. "Interesting."

I keep staring at the iPhone even though I don't want to anymore.

"I guess the consolation is that she's not going to be beautiful forever," he says. "But I'd like to be with her before that happens."

"What are you saying?" I'm asking, the fear pushing forward. "What does any of this mean?"

"It means so many things, Clay."

"I want to get out of here," I say. "I want you to drop me off."

Rip says, "It means she'll never love you." A pause. "It means that everything's an illusion." And then Rip touches my arm. "She's setting you up, cabron." cabron."

I offer the phone back to Rip.

"I told you already I don't view you as a threat," Rip says. "You can keep doing whatever you want with her. I don't care because you're not really in the way." He considers something. "Not yet."

Rip takes the phone from me and pockets it.

"But Julian...she likes him." Rip pauses. "She's just using you. Maybe that's what gets you off. I don't know. Will she get what she wants? Probably not. I don't know. I don't care. But Julian? For some reason that I can't fathom she really really likes him. All you're doing is prolonging the situation. You're keeping this in play and she's following your lead because she thinks she's going to be in your movie. And because of this it's moving her closer to Julian." He pauses again. "You don't even realize how afraid you should be, do you?" likes him. All you're doing is prolonging the situation. You're keeping this in play and she's following your lead because she thinks she's going to be in your movie. And because of this it's moving her closer to Julian." He pauses again. "You don't even realize how afraid you should be, do you?"

Before he drops me off Rip says, "Julian's disappeared." The limousine idles in the driveway of the Doheny Plaza. On the way down Beverly Glen and all across Sunset, Rip texted people back while "The Boys of Summer" kept repeating itself on the stereo. "He's not at his place in Westwood. We don't know where he is."

"Maybe he went to find Amanda," I say, staring out the tinted window at the empty valet stand.

"Shouldn't that be Rain's job?" Rip asks, unfazed. "Oh, I forgot. She has an audition this week, doesn't she?"

"Yes," I say. "She does."

"She doesn't seem very worried about her roommate," Rip says. "At least not as much as being in your little movie."

"How worried should she be, Rip?" I ask. "Where's Amanda?" And then I breathe in before asking, "Do you know?" I stop again. "I mean, you were with her, too. After Rain left you for Kelly? I guess that's when it happened."

"Women aren't very bright," Rip says. "Studies have been done."

I can't see his face. I can only hear his voice, which is, I realize, how I want it.

"What was that about?" I ask. "Revenge? You thought Rain would care that you were f.u.c.king her roommate?"

"He's hiding," Rip says, ignoring me.

"Jesus, why don't you let it go?"

"He's hiding." Rip pauses. "I thought maybe you'd know where he is. I thought maybe you'd tell me."

"I don't give a s.h.i.t where he is."

"Why don't you ask around and then get back to me?"

"Who do you think would know this?" I ask. "Why don't you just talk to Rain?"

He sighs.

"Did you have him beaten up?" I ask. "Was that just a taste of what happens next if he doesn't leave her?"

"You have no imagination," Rip says. "You're actually very by-the-numbers."

Rip leans over and pushes a disc into the CD player. He sits back. Panting sounds, the wind and the sounds of s.e.x, someone whispering as he has an o.r.g.a.s.m, and then it's my voice and I suddenly connect images to the sounds: the bedroom in 1508 in the building looming above us, the view from the balcony, the ghost of a dead boy wandering lost through the s.p.a.ce. And then Rain's voice joins mine over the speakers in the back of the limo.

"Turn it off," I whisper. "Just turn it off."

"There's nothing of any use," Rip says, leaning over, ejecting the disc. "That's it."

"Where did you get that?"

"Oh, the common questions you ask."

"I'm not involved with any of this."

"Who knows why people do the things they do?" Rip leans back against the seat, not listening to me. "I can't explain Julian. I don't know why he does the things he does."

I reach for the door handle.

"You discover new things as you go along," Rip says. "You discover things about yourself that you never thought were possible."

I turn back to him. "Why don't you just move on? Let him have her and just move on?"

"I can't do that," he says. "No. I just can't do that."

"Why can't you do that?"

"Because he's compromising the structure of things," Rip says, enunciating each word. "And it's affecting my life."

I'm about to get out of the limousine.

"Don't worry. I won't come around anymore," Rip says. "I'm through with you. It'll play out like it's supposed to play out."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I just wanted to warn you," he says. "You've been officially implicated."

"Don't make contact with me ever-"

"I think you want him gone as much as I do," Rip says before I slam the door shut.

Later that night I dream of the boy again-the worried smile, the eyes wet with tears, the pretty face that looks almost plastic, the photo of Blair and me from 1984 he clutches in one hand, the kitchen knife he's holding in the other as he's floating in the hallway outside the bedroom door, "China Girl" echoing throughout the condo-and then I can't help myself: I rise up from the bed, and I open the door, and I move toward the boy, and when I hit him, the knife falls to the floor. And when I wake up the next morning there's a bruise on my hand from when I hit the boy in my dream.

Rain arrives wearing sweats and no makeup and she's trying to keep it together with the audition set for tomorrow and she didn't want to come over but I told her I would cancel it if she didn't and she's been fasting so we don't go out to dinner and when I first touch her she says let's wait and then I make another threat and the panic is cooled only by breaking the seal off a bottle of Patron and then I just keep f.u.c.king her on the floor in the office, in the bedroom, the lights burning brightly throughout the condo, the Fray blaring from the stereo, and even though I thought she was numb from the tequila she keeps crying and that makes me harder. "You feel this?" I'm asking her. "You feel this inside you?" I keep asking, the fear vibrating all around her, and it's freezing in 1508 and when I ask her if she's cold she says it doesn't matter. And tonight, for maybe the first time, I'm smiling at the black Mercedes that keeps cruising along Elevado, every now and then slowing down so that whoever is behind the tinted windows can look up through the palm trees to the apartment on the fifteenth floor. "I'm just helping you," I tell her soothingly, trying to calm her down, and then she's slurring her words. "Can't you think of anyone but yourself?" she asks. "Why can't you just be chill about this?" she asks when I start touching her again, murmuring how much I love it like this. "Why can't you accept this for what it is?" she asks. She pulls a towel over her body that I just as quickly pull off.

"What is it?" I whisper. I feed her another shot of tequila.

"It's just a movie that you're writing." She's crying openly now as she says this.

"But we're both writing this movie together, baby."

"No we're not," she cries, her face an anguished mask.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm only acting in it."

And when I finally notice the red message light flashing on her cell phone on the nightstand I ask, one hand on her breast, the other one lightly gripping her throat, "Where is he?"

Trent Burroughs calls me and tells me to meet him in Santa Monica after a lunch he's having with a client at Michael's. On the Santa Monica pier Trent's wearing a suit and sitting on a bench at the entrance and when he sees me approaching he looks up from his phone and takes off his sungla.s.ses and just stares at me warily. Trent mentions he finished lunch earlier than he'd planned with a skittish actor he manages, successfully persuading him to take a role in a movie for myriad reasons that would be beneficial to everybody.

"I'm actually surprised you came," Trent says.

"Why couldn't I meet you at the restaurant?" I ask.

"Because I don't really want to be seen with you," he says. "It would validate something that I wouldn't want validated, I guess."

I start walking with him along the boardwalk. He puts his sungla.s.ses back on.

"I suppose I'm more sensitive about things than I thought," he says.

"I got your client an audition today," I say, in a good mood because of how Rain responded to me last night.