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“There was a line-up,” I said, feeling far beyond my own personal experience.

“We use a line-up sometimes,” he said, to let me know it wasn't an ignorant remark. “In this case we had photographs of people who have been arrested before.” I could sense him simplifying for me, keeping the information smooth.

A merchant had seen this crime and done nothing. Watched it happen and not run out into the street ready to risk everything to save my father. I had to take a deep breath and lean against the car, studying the speckles of the asphalt, the different shades of gray.

“We haven't taken anyone into custody yet,” said the detective, letting me absorb a little more of his cop talk.

“You're looking for someone,” I said. Someone with a name, a face. The sunlight was so bright I had to close my eyes.

“Our investigation continues,” he said. He said this with a little extra meaning, trying to peek out from behind the official phraseology.

“His wallet was empty, all the money gone,” I said.

“They didn't leave anything of value,” said the detective.

“That means my dad gave him the wallet.” I tried to say this all in a rush. “Handed it to him. And he shot my dad anyway.”

Detective Unruh slipped a pair of sunglasses out of his breast pocket and took a while unfolding them.

Whenever I began to think that the hospital was a regular place, a building of people engaged in ordinary activity, I would glance into a room and see a woman lying with her mouth open while a nurse tapped her arm, looking for a vein. Or a man holding his stomach like it all might come out, watching while a bag of blood was hung on a pole.

Mom fished a bagel from the crinkly paper bag.

“They'll catch him,” I said.

I didn't understand the look my mother gave me, touching a bite of bagel into her mouth.

“You specifically said blueberry,” I said.

The Sunday newspaper amounts to several pounds of nothing, instant recycling. A television schedule is usually slipped deep inside the real estate ads, the rest of it stories they could write weeks ahead of time, another tenant hotel closing, the crab catch at a record low. But I hunted through the bale of newsprint until I found it, four short paragraphs. The article did not give the titles of my dad's books.

My dad's prospective PBS special was never actually shown on television. It won third place in a film festival in Mill Valley, and then KQED had a major cutback. I thought of my father as famous, but once I saw a letter my dad had torn into pieces. I nudged the fragments together without actually taking them out of the trash can, not wanting to pry. “Who cares about spittle bugs?” someone had written in the margin of my dad's letter.

“I saw a priest,” said Sofia.

“People die here,” said Mom. Every now and then I could see Mom's eyes lose their luster and stare at Sofia in the old way. But at other times something new was developing between them.

“He was wearing his collar. He looked our way and took a step in our direction, and do you know what? I stood right in the doorway,” said Sofia, as though she would be able to block the passage of any halfway determined person. My father must have been attracted to short women. “You know how Teddy detests that sort of thing.”

“The priest didn't mean any harm,” said Mom.

Sofia made an incredulous little laugh. “What if you were stricken—” Her word choice impressed all of us.
Stricken
. Sofia blinked, had trouble maintaining her composure, and then continued, “and you looked up and saw a priest in the doorway?”

F
IFTEEN

For such a sunny person Rhonda Newport keeps her living room very dark, and even with morning light outside, I had to peer around at the framed color photos of the American West on the walls, sand dunes with sidewinder tracks, a mesa and a grazing pinto. It was Monday morning, and I felt like I was living in a rented body. I was telling Rhonda Newport what had happened to my car.

“I thought Bea could drive me down to the lot,” I concluded.

“They towed it back?” she asked in a just-checking tone.

“We left it there beside the street,” I said, feeling like I had to defend the cops.

“Hauled it right back, maybe fifty yards,” she said, showing exaggerated exasperation, letting me know how she felt.

I knew that she was just being nice, expressing sympathy, but I had put the frustration out of my mind and I didn't want to wake it up. I had dropped by the parking space the night before, prompted by Mom when I had to admit that I had lost track of my car's actual location. At first I had been certain the vehicle had been stolen again, but the cop computer showed it right back in space 209. The lot was closed at that hour late Sunday night, and I would have to come back in the morning.

“Bea's gone,” said Mrs. Newport. “She's working on the brand-new speed bag down at the Pit. One of those real tiny ones.” She indicated the dimensions with her hands, the size of a child's head. “She said she was learning to patter-punch.” She rolled her eyes as she said this: my daughter the pugilist.

The Volvo was parked in front of my house. I had made the long walk over to Bea's place, because if I drove down to the cop parking lot, I would be in possession of two vehicles. For the moment I wished all the cars in the universe would evaporate. I imagined my dad's Mercedes, an older E-class four-door, now totaled because the car had kept rolling for half a block, wiping out a line of parked cars before something stopped it. At least, this was how I pictured it. The cops had a witness, and he would detail what had happened.

What had stopped my father's car? The back of a truck, perhaps, or a fire hydrant, a white, gushing geyser. And Dad was so careful, waxing the car twice a year so the Turtle Wax would not build up and obscure the shine. Always wax on a cloudy day, or in the garage, he had taught me. Spread wax in bright sun and it dries too fast. He used saddle soap on the leather seats.

“You look like a young man badly in need of a waffle,” Rhonda Newport said. A pink bathrobe was sashed hard around her middle, and she had done something with her hair, a pink ribbon dangling. Her moccasins made no sound on the kitchen floor.

An appliance gleamed on the kitchen counter, a stainless steel jewel box with a dial on top of the lid. She released a catch, and the hinges opened silently to expose a dark grid smelling faintly of hot cooking oil. “A wedding present,” she said. “A Krup limited edition. The Rolls Royce of waffle irons.”

“What a nice wedding present,” I said, like someone learning of an ancient, exotic custom.

“If you bought one now it would be Teflon,” she said.

I made a little face: Teflon, how awful, although I didn't know anything about it.

“I have a quart of batter in the fridge,” she said, letting her hip lean into me. “And you look hungry.”

She was already unpeeling the end of a half stick of Challenge butter, the wrapper uncrinkling. She sliced off a yellow segment and poked the butter down into a coffee mug. She put it into the microwave and we both watched the mug, with its hummingbird decorations illuminated in its prison, rotating on the glass turntable as the microwave clock counted down to zero.

“You didn't tell Bea I was coming,” I said.

“Why would I keep a secret from my own daughter, Zachary?”

Any number of reasons, I almost said, before I could think. I added, “It wasn't much of a secret.”

“You could take a cab,” she said. “The phone is over there, under the corn husks.”

I tried to remember which bus line ran downtown, and if it still ran from up in the hills. There had been cutbacks lately. I could call AC Transit and ask. “I'm not sure I have enough cash on me,” I said.

“Spoken like a gentleman,” she said, painting the dark grid with a white brush she dipped into the mug. It was the kind of brush Mom used to baste turkeys, and the bristles made a soft padding whisper as the iron began to sizzle.

The corn husks were tied together at one end, a great yellow claw protecting the telephone. Rhonda Newport's tamales were admired even by my mom. They were stuffed with ground chuck and homemade tomato sauce and other ingredients you don't think of as tamale filling, white hominy and raisins.

“Get me that orange juice container out of the fridge.”

“My dad is going to be okay,” I said.

She gave me a look, tentative, hopeful. A little frill of nightie had wafted out of the bathrobe collar. “This is such a relief, Zachary.” She had avoided asking, I realized. She was being sincere, but she was being something else, too. “I kept waking in the night tossing and turning.” For some, tossing and turning is just a phrase. But I could picture Rhonda Newport punching her pillow, kicking her blankets to free them from the foot of the bed.

The container was designed for citrus, oranges and lemons. The spout and the handle of the pitcher were fuzzy, the way old plastic gets, wearing away into fine cilia. In ten thousand years it would wear out.

“Get me that ladle off the hook,” she said.

She stirred the thick stuff for a moment. She scooped a glop of batter out of the pitcher and let a few coins of it dribble onto the iron. They bubbled and firmed, instantly brown. She flicked them free with a spatula and poured a small flood of batter over the griddle. It was almost like someone making a mistake on purpose, spilling a lake of plaster over a black, pristine surface.

She swung the lid shut, and the waffle iron gave off a whisper.

“You aren't having any?” I asked.

“Not me,” she said, one hand around her coffee cup. The turquoise ring she wore tinkled against the handle of the cup.

The syrup had a cabin on the label. People used to eat this in earlier times, the label instructed us. The syrup was cold, so it flowed instead of splashing. It ran out through the streets and avenues of the waffle city, and I took some pleasure in watching it fill up all the even spaces.

“His spine wasn't injured,” said Rhonda Newport.

“No, it was,” I said. “There was some smashed bone—” I couldn't remember Dr. Monrovia's exact terminology.

Rhonda put her hand to the back of her head and parted her lips. Then she shook her head and smiled apologetically, like someone who has forgotten her question.

S
IXTEEN

“What are
you
doing here?” asked Chief.

He was folding up his road map of California. The map was so old it was separating at the folds, and he pinched it together with a red plastic paper clip. Matt Espinosa, one of the assistant shipping clerks from inside the plant, was strapping on a back brace over by the loading dock, having trouble getting the worn Velcro to grip. It was a hazy morning, sky the color of milk.

I made a show of testing knots, the yellow nylon rope making a satisfying squeak with each tug.

“You don't have to work today,” said Chief, refusing to look at me, like I wouldn't be officially there unless he acknowledged my presence.

It was Tuesday, after one day off from work, a day spent reading magazines and eating jello salads in the hospital cafeteria.

I opened the passenger door to the cab and climbed in. I was instantly surrounded by the smell of the old truck and the protective quiet. Matt hesitated and made a shrug: what am I supposed to do?

“A delivery schedule doesn't mean very much. At a time like this.” This was not like Chief at all, grim-faced, terse little sentences. “Espinosa said he'd help me out.”

“Tell Matt to go back to the shrink-wrap department.”

There was nothing I could do to speed my dad's recovery, nothing I could do to help my mom and Sofia march up and down the waiting room.

Chief shrugged. Matt gave me a wave, a show of being cheerful, both of them letting me know that whatever I wanted was okay.

Chief started the engine and drove the way he never did, about three miles an hour, pea gravel crackling under the tires. He eased the truck along so slowly it nearly stalled, so he tucked the gear back into neutral, as though actually picking up some speed might disturb me.

Even on the freeway he was driving cautiously enough to get a ticket for going too slowly. He had things to say, and he didn't know how to begin. He had even forgotten to cover up his dog-sex tattoo, wearing a T-shirt that exposed the profiles of two hound dogs mating, fading blue on his upper arm. I had thought of my dad's condition as something that had happened to me and my family, not guessing that other people would feel connected.

We drove east, out of the cool basin of the Bay Area, into increasing heat. We passed hills cut in half, farms beside the freeway, houses, mops leaning on front porches, and barns, doors open, dark interiors. The hills died out, flat land stretching in all directions. Near Stockton we left the freeway and rolled down a two-lane road, orchard on one side, empty nothing on the other, pasture, weeds.

“If you get hungry, Harriet made me an extra,” Chief said.

I felt the brown bag between us, rolled up tight, crammed with what I called bug-bread sandwiches, wheat-berry bread, bits of wheat like insect abdomens, Chief's favorite. “What is it today?” I asked. “Bacon and peanut butter?” One of his favorites, one bite and you couldn't talk for half an hour.

He gave a sharp little laugh: not so lucky. “Cottage cheese and grape jelly,” he said.

A construction site lay exposed in the heat, bare dirt, trucks glittering. I thought this was where we would turn in and find a shady parking place under one of the few trees. We passed it by, although Chief took his foot off the gas pedal to give it a look.

“You can pick up a lot of overtime working a job like that,” said Chief.

Men walked in the air, supported by the yellow skeleton of building, bare wood.

“But there you'd be,” I said.

Chief shifted gears, having trouble with the truck because of the smog device that had been repaired that morning, sucking off some of the engine's power so its exhaust would run clean.