lied he was telling her too much.

They walked along the canal, past the houses. Jean had taken off her shoes. It usually cooled down at night in L.A., particularly on the water, but this night was as warm as the afternoon had been and the canal stank a little. Every once in a while there would be a flash of white over their heads, a gull reeling. Maybe they fed at night. Most of the living rooms were open to the walkway, drapes drawn back, shutters open. People read in chairs or watched TV. They would look up at the movement outside, unconcerned when they saw that it was a young man and a young woman. Some of the houses flew their own bright flags on angled poles, picto graphic statements about the people within, crests and flowers and boats and too many rainbows. One banner brushed across their heads as they walked under it, like a magician’s scarf.

“When I was a little girl,” Jean said, “I used to wonder what it would be like if your footprints could be seen everywhere you’d ever gone. A path of them. My little footprints would be up and down this walk, I guess. It’s almost too much to bear.”

They passed three more houses. The wind changed direction suddenly and the temperature dropped ten degrees, a gift.

Somewhere along the way, she took his hand.

A rat watched them from under a painted cement mushroom.

“This is odd,” she said, “letting someone into your life so quickly. You already know things about me no one else knows. And you’re strange.”

“I think you said that already.”

“What did you think when you first saw me?”

“That you were beautiful.”

He thought better than to tell her his idea about a beautiful woman and a beautiful car, how its time was gone already even as you looked at it.

At this moment, she seemed very present.

“That’s what men always say,” she said. “I guess it gets the desired response.”

“I also thought you looked sad,” Jimmy said. “In the eyes. Maybe from thinking the same sad thing over and over.”

He thought she would let go of his hand but she didn’t and they walked on without either of them saying anything. Steps climbed up and over the haunches of a bridge and there was just another short block.

And then they were in front of 110 Rivo Alto Canal.

Now Jean let go of his hand and held herself, like the girl on Sunset after she’d kissed Jimmy and felt a chill run through her. The watchful neighbor across the canal was away or asleep and the house of the Abba neighbor was dark, too. They were alone, or at least as alone as Jimmy’s worldview allowed.

She was about to say something, to fill the silence.

“There’s a woman living in the back bedroom,” Jimmy said.

Jean didn’t look away from the house. Even in the dim light he could tell she was trying not to react, or at least not to show it.

Jimmy said, “I don’t know if she lives there all the time or just comes and goes.”

Jean turned away from the house.

“Have any idea who she is?” Jimmy said.

“No.” Then she said, to try to put a period on it, “It doesn’t matter.”

Jimmy wasn’t going to let it go. “Gee, it seems like it would,” he said. “Maybe she bought it after—”

Jean looked at him.

“I own the house.”

He really hadn’t thought of that.

“It sat empty while my father was in prison during the years of appeals. Then it went to my brother Carey and he didn’t want to have anything to do with it and needed the money, so I bought it from him.”

“Why?”

“He needed money.”

“Why did you want it?”

“I don’t know. I guess I thought the answers were there. Here.”

“When was this?”

“When I was at Stanford.”

She made herself turn and look at it again, or to let him know she wasn’t afraid to.

“What’s it like inside?”

“You’ve never been back?” Jimmy said.

She shook her head. “My business manager pays the gardeners, the electricity.”

“It’s like a museum, like a World’s Fair exhibit from 1977.”

Another chill ran through her.

“A little creepy,” Jimmy said. “So who is the woman?”

“I said I don’t know. I guess a transient. I should sell it, tear it down.”

Jean stared at the dark face of the house for a long moment.

“Are your parents alive?” she said.

The question knocked him off balance.

“No,” he said.

Her eyes were fixed on the house, as if waiting for the front door to open, as if she’d knocked.

“If