We’ve been driving for too long, and we’re falling into bad habits: manufacturing familiarity, revisiting dog-eared corners of shared dread. We’ve exhausted the usual talking points (thanks traffic!), and now we’re revealing intimacies we haven’t earned, confessions punctuated by quiet. Each time I tell a story, something important escapes me, floating away like pollen, bending out of recognition as it goes.

Adam and I understand that too much silence will unmask us. Terminal. I finish telling him about a disastrous summer fling.

“So you two don’t talk anymore?”

“Rarely.”

Our relationship is the kind with an expiration date — we’re stalling until the real thing comes along. A whole series of real things. But he’s prone to these half-hearted stands, raising his hands above his head in faux surrender. “The aloof one,” he calls me. Now it’s my turn.

“Have you ever gotten a girl pregnant?”

Adam grips the wheel hard and frowns. I’ve seen him make this face. It’s the same expression he wears when he’s trying to learn a difficult piece of music.

“I’m sorry. That’s none of my business.”

“No. It’s alright. Yeah. Once.”

“What happened?”

“She took care of it. I thought I told you this story already.”

“Maybe you did and I’ve forgotten.”

Adam’s car keys keep time by smacking the plastic interior between his thighs.

“How old were you?”

“Your age.”

His face contorts, and I think I’ve finally wounded him. But then I realize he’s grinning.

“Thank god for modern medicine,” is all I can think to say.

For a long moment, we ride in silence.

“My life would be miserable,” he adds. “Rachel was a cunt.”

Something moves in me, moves without my permission — a self older than me. I think of my mother, the way she used to tuck in my bra straps as a teenager. I see her tiny frame bent over votives at the feet of the Blessed Mother, her untethered anger after too much wine. I always resented her superstitions. What did I know? I didn’t know shit.

I watch as shadows move across the mountains rising up over the freeways. They look as though they’re part of a still life, cheesecloth draped over bowls of fruit, a backdrop for copies, for copies of copies. Or maybe they look like a woman — like a woman who’s emerged from the shower to find unexpected guests.

“I bet my ex-boyfriends describe me that way to their new girlfriends. A cunt.”

“You’re nothing like her.”

“You sure? I have a list of references.”

“Kat. You’re not a cunt.”

The word reverberates, highway wind slapping against my outstretched hand. I watch Adam’s jaw tighten, the distance between us growing. The space between Rachel and me shrinks.

We ascend Topanga Canyon, past iron gates and a set of Tiki statues flanking the driveway of a half-hidden estate. As we climb, a lack of order emerges; a renovated mansion sits tucked behind an old farmhouse. The adjacent cottage, indistinguishable from a thrift store, looks held up by rotted-out beams. Clay pots and old furniture litter the yard, desert light bleaching a bed frame and chair spindles in vulnerable spots. I wonder aloud about the co-existence of different kinds of hippies. Adam figures it’s only a matter of time before the wealthy buy up all the real estate.

Several ghostly children in nightgowns skip along the retaining wall, threatening to jump in front of the car. Adam is too timid rounding the turns, and we keep jolting to a halt. If we drive any slower, we risk rolling backward or careening off the ledge.

I imagine our burnt-out car, black holes like eye sockets where headlights should be. I recall news coverage of a recent forest fire — how fast the flames spread — all those photos of charred stuffed animals and family photographs strewn across an ash floor. Another incident of transplants marring the landscape.

I daydream of a vengeful Smokey the Bear. He climbs down from his perch, descending into hell to greet us. He’s got a miniature fir tree fashioned into a pitchfork. He dips his spear into the flames. Only you can prevent forest fires, only you!

People say canyon dwellers learn to drive drunk by memorizing the bends in the road. It gets into their bodies and stays there like an old dance routine. Corin’s ex told me that one night as we headed down the canyon toward the only restaurant for miles, a haven for recluses who can’t cook. We sat next to rich end-times preppers and a silver-haired woman reading a paperback with the cover ripped off. I asked if I could borrow her mustard, but she didn’t hear me or pretended not to.

On our walk back up the hill, a car swerved, barely missing us. Corin’s ex just laughed. “Looks like that guy needs more practice.”

After twenty minutes of frustration, I find the right address hidden in a stucco wall surrounding a white Spanish mansion. I knock on the garden door, but there’s no answer. The sun begins to set in sweeps of radioactive pink, and I wonder what the sunset looks like in Montana, in Indiana, in all the other places I’ve left couches and cookware. Eventually, Corin’s voice accompanies unlatching sounds.

“Sorry, guys! We got caught up in the music and didn’t hear you.”

Corin doesn’t direct us to the large house. Instead, we wind down the path until we reach a small studio apartment. Inside, our host Larry slices vegetables at a wooden counter. He extends a damp left hand and slurs an introduction, still clutching the knife in his right. It’s hard to tell whether he’s high, relaxed, or living through burnout. Larry is nearing fifty, not that much older than Adam, but looks almost twice his age.

Corin ushers us over to the seating area — a pit of floor pillows — where we make small talk as Larry bangs around in the kitchen slamming cabinet doors.

“Where’s the damn wine?” he cries. “I just saw it!”

“We brought a red,” I reply. “It’s on the counter.”

I watch Larry as he tracks Corin, scrutinizing her movements, and it occurs to me that we weren’t invited.

Allegedly, Larry is writing a novel about a psychedelic drug operation he pulled off in the 70s. “Drug dealer to the greats,” he admits. Now he owns a bunch of multi-million dollar properties and “just rents them out” while he “lives minimally” because “how much space does a bachelor need?” He looks at Corin as he says this. She doesn’t notice.

According to Larry, his deceased father was a big studio executive. But there’s no trace of Larry or his family online. When I go to the bathroom I Google him and find nothing — a bad sign. Is Larry broke? We are, so why lie? He probably rents the guesthouse from the mansion’s owner and brags about his fake money. I bet he can’t even play the banjo hanging from his wall. Everything here is decorative.

“So Larry, you and Adam are both into music.”

“How long you been playing, Adam?”

“Long.”

“What kind of music?”

“Jazz.”

Adam pours himself another glass.

“Ah. An intellectual. Cheers.”

Larry has some interesting things to say about philosophy and life and New York City, but then so does anyone with access to the Internet and good novels.

Corin has propped herself up on pillows while she chats and annotates Larry’s manuscript. She doesn’t work in publishing; she spends her days working in HR and mostly reads self-help books. Corin is beautiful and easy with people and likes to preach about synergy and ways to game your neural network. She borrowed several novels from me once and returned them soon after, saying they were too sad.

“No wonder you’re gloomy!”

Corin always packs a bathing suit in her purse or wears one underneath her clothes, “just in case we end up at the beach.” We never end up at the beach. It’s a hard place to just happen upon. The beach is a commitment. Corin makes grown-up money, and she lives for weekend trips. Sometimes she offers to take me with her, but I feel too guilty not pulling my weight, and I always make up some excuse.

Larry emerges with a platter of cheeses and sausages and sets them on a low coffee table. Adam and I try to look comfortable on the floor.

I pour another glass of wine, and another, and another until I have to step outside and collect myself. The night is damp and succulents cast deep shadows onto the walkway. I long to slip into the night. Disappear. Make like a nymph and become scenery.

In the dark, I watch a palm tree as it writhes in the wind, flooded with light despite a cloudy moon. It looks like a prop.

I make my way to the garden and sit on a huge rock. It’s been hauled in from somewhere else but it looks natural. Through the yellow windows of the main house, I watch a family having ice cream. They sit around a large farm table. Their farm table, I decide, in their house. I glance back toward the studio. Mood lighting obscures the scene inside. Above me, a helicopter scans the area. I harmonize with the wings as they beat in and out of pitch until the skyline swallows them.

When I return, Adam glares at me; I’ve left him with strangers. We take turns choosing records, and I pick an album I’ve played for Corin: cult rock recorded close to her bungalow.

“This is shit from my day,” says Larry. “I dealt to this band. I dealt to all the greats!”

“So you’ve told us,” Adam barks. “Is that a blurb from your dust jacket?”

When I played the record for Corin the first time, she was ecstatic. But now it’s clear that she doesn’t remember.

“Who is this, Kat? I love it!”

I open my mouth to remind Corin, to tell her that she’s heard it before, that we played it that night. The night we got drunk on margaritas and pinot noir and watched a silly romantic comedy and she couldn’t stop crying. The night I had to flush her sleeping pills down the toilet and I held her in my arms and we sat in the blue dark listening to the trees loud as waves. We fell asleep on the floor, all snotty noses and wine lips and un-brushed teeth, covered in cookie crumbs, coiled up like two little snakes.

Corin pulls me up to dance, and I think of Rachel, of my mother. I will quit forgetting. I will remember the things I already know. But the seasons never change here, and we lose track of things.