"I'm still not sure that you're not the asshole," the guy says to him.
"What can I say to convince you?"
"Very little. Do I look bad?"
"You look… rough," Richard says.
"I go in phases; right now I'm in a fight with my body. Do I smell?"
"Not from here."
"I'm on deadline." He dips his fingers into a bag of lettuce and puts some in his mouth. "Greens, very good for you." He eats them as though he craves them, as though greens are the new candy, the new Swedish Fish. "Where have you been?" he asks.
"I met a contractor at my house, to see how bad the damage is."
"And?"
"Bad."
"And before that where were you?"
"On a silent retreat."
"You a meditator?"
"Just starting."
"I don't believe in it. Used to do it myself, but you know what I think — people have to stop just sitting there and start doing something. It's a very self-involved activity."
Richard doesn't say anything.
"Can you give me a ride home? I walked over here; my car's in the shop."
"Sure, yeah. Where do you live?"
"I told you — asshole — right next to you."
"I didn't realize you lived there."
"Where did you think I lived? What would I be doing going through the trash in the dark if I didn't live there? Looking for crumbs?"
They drive back to the house.
CYNTHIA is there, waiting for him. "They said I was the ideal candidate. I start tomorrow."
"Should I go with you? Are you sure it's for real?"
"There was an article on him in Self magazine."
"And that makes it real?"
"I'm excited; can't you be excited for me?"
"I am excited for you, I just don't want you to be abducted by a psycho surgeon who puts you in a trance and performs plastic surgery on you or anything. Do you want some lunch?"
"Starving," she says, digging into the groceries.
After lunch, he gets back into the car and drives into town to see Lusardi.
"So?" Lusardi asks.
"I liked it. It was valuable, challenging in a way that nothing has been challenging in a very long time — except that everything feels strange now, nothing fits. I'm not who I thought I was."
"None of us are."
"I'm not really any different, and yet nothing is the same."
"How's the pain?"
"You know, I feel pretty good. I think I'm still in pain; I mean, I must be, right? We're all in pain, but it's not bothering me at the moment."
Lusardi presses the stethoscope to his chest. "You don't become a different person — you just learn to live with yourself — that's the hardest part." And they are quiet; Lusardi listens. "You sound fine," he says.
RICHARD DRIVES to the house and meets yet another of Billy's friends, a guy named Giovanni.
"Doesn't look like much to me," Giovanni says. "We get all kinds of ground movement. Glass pops, that's what we call them, glass pops. Anyway, we just need to give the roots of the house a little tug, maybe put in some anchors, and straighten her out — doesn't have to be a big thing."
"Around how much does not a big thing go for?"
"Hard to know for sure until you do it, but I'd figure one fifty, one seventy-five."
"So — somewhere between a hundred and fifty thousand and a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars."
"Sounds about right," Giovanni says.
"Sounds like a big thing."
"We do it all the time," Giovanni says. "Do you have the plans, the name of the person who built it, the original specs?"
"I think the electrician's name is on the circuit box downstairs, and maybe there's a plumber's name down there too, written on one of the pipes."
"I'm looking for blueprints, drawings, specific information."
As they're talking, the doorbell rings; it's the color lady, with the painter trailing behind her — ladder and drop cloths in hand. "We're here, right on time."
"I forgot you were coming," he says. "We're having some trouble with the house."
"We won't be in the way." She pushes past him and starts towards the guest room.
"I don't think it's a good day for painting," he says. "The house is falling down."
"Well, what do you want him to do?" she says, gesturing towards the painter. "It's not easy to get him to come — he's very busy."
"We may have to knock it down; no point painting right now."
"I don't understand."
"No paint."
"Are you just leaving the Sheetrock bare for another ten years?
"I'm going to figure it out," he says — trying to avoid a fight.
"Why don't I have someone come and take a look around and we'll get back to you with some hard numbers," Giovanni says.
"Hard numbers, that would be great," Richard says, sending him off.
"Well, if you can figure it out now," the color lady says, "the painter can just do his job; it won't take him long."
"Couple of days," the painter says. "I could even stay over and work really late and really early and be done in eighteen hours."
Richard is saying no, but they don't want to hear no, and at a certain point he just steps aside and they come in.
"Do you have a check for me?" the color lady asks. "We always get the check before we start."
"But I don't want you to start."
"Why did you call me if you don't want me to paint?"
"When I called you the house wasn't falling down."
"It's not my fault," she says.
"No one said it was."
"Then why are you yelling at me?"
And on and on with no end in sight, until Richard says, "I have to go now," and goes outside, gets in his car, and drives up the hill. He drives to the top of the hill and watches. He watches thinking he'll see the color lady and the painter coming out of the house, but he sees nothing. He watches and watches, and then he drives away.
RICHARD is on his way back to Malibu, his second round trip of the day, and he's in a bad mood. Traffic. For the first time he understands what everyone is always talking about. He's on the 10 and he's just standing there, there's no flow. The highway is old and imperfect, the road is crumbling concrete, asphalt. Why are the highways in the East blacktop and the ones in the West asphalt? Does it have to do with heat, with creating a reflective surface, an ugly America? He's worn out, thinking about hard numbers, knocking the house down, the color lady not taking no for an answer.
Everything is not perfect, it is ugly, scrubby, scruffy, beige like it was bleached but got dirty. Even though it is a car culture, all the ones around him are lousy: old, rusted, late-model. He's behind the wheel mentally writing his treatise, his exegesis on Los Angeles and the car, when he realizes that he's hearing SOS in his head. SOS in Morse code, repeating. SOS. Dot, dot, dot. Dash, dash, dash. Dot, dot, dot.
He looks at the car in front of him and could swear that the brake lights are flashing a distinct sequence — SOS, SOS.
The highway opens up, the speed picks up. The guy ahead of him changes lanes. The taillights show no signal except the continuing SOS, which never falls out of sequence, even during the lane change. SOS. SOS.
Someone is doing it. Someone is doing it and the guy doesn't know. Richard accelerates. The guy looks at him in his rearview mirror. Richard stares back. The guy glowers and changes lanes. Richard follows him. SOS. SOS.
Richard beeps at the car in the same dot-dash pattern. He beeps and then pauses and beeps again. SOS. SOS. The brake lights flash.
Richard beeps two short beeps. The lights flash two short flashes.