Fade in:
Flat on my back in the middle of one of the most famous intersections in the world, Hollywood and Vine. Cars slalom around me. Finally, it becomes clear, like a fade-in from a bad movie: what it all means. The pictures run through my mind at twenty-four frames per second . . .
My life seemed great in college . . .
Jack MacHugo took a swig of Hammerhead Amber and said, “You’ll pay me and you’ll fucking like it, even if you have to sell off your precious . . .” He choked as his beer went down the wrong pipe, but Stan Mulalap knew J-Mack was about to say piss hole, the term he always used for the island’s ancient doughnut-shaped stone money. The worthless sot always repeats himself, thought Mulalap. Like a parrot with Alzheimer’s . . .
“Baby, don’t go,” he says as she gets out of the bed—that same bed they’ve shared a dozen times or more. She slips on the tight mauve dress and slides her feet into her leather pumps. He’s pleading with her not to go, not to leave him here. But she doesn’t listen . . .
She knew she was not his first. The concrete room contained evidence of several that had been here before her: photos, locks of hair, single earrings, fingernails . . .
As usual, I detected the Keeper before he unlocked the gate; a waft of plum brandy and rotting gums announced him through the solid oak . . .
“Anna.”
Maribelle froze. Maybe she had imagined the word. Maybe it had come in on the ocean breeze that drifted through the curtains covering their open balcony doors . . .
He walked down Telegraph Avenue toward campus, stepping around street kids, doped up and dirty . . .