ON TUESDAY TONI MEETS HER LOVER, Gordon, for dinner at the Water Grill, downtown. They each have a martini at the bar while they wait for a table. They get seated, both order salads, she orders blackened salmon, and he orders Maine lobster. They get a bottle of chardonnay.
      They make small talk while they eat their salads. He’s fidgety and distracted. She drinks her wine and wonders what his problem is.
      The assistant waiter clears the salad plates, and then the headwaiter sets down their main courses while the assistants scuttle around pouring more water and more wine.
      “What’s up?” Toni asks when the waiter leaves. She cuts a piece of salmon and holds the steaming fish in the air on the tines of her fork. He looks at her.
      “Elaine’s pregnant,” he says. Elaine is Gordon’s wife.
      Toni puts the fish in her mouth and chews slowly, sucking in air because it’s still too hot. She stares at him while he slices his lobster, beautifully laid out on a bed of linguine.
      With her mouth full she says, “Really? And you’re the lucky daddy?”
      He reddens. “We shared a bottle of champagne followed by cognac a few weeks ago, our anniversary. That’s the first time we’ve had sex in months.” He takes a bite of lobster, chews and swallows, and says, “She wants the baby. She wants to get counseling. She knows I’ve been having an affair.”
      Toni picks up the glass of chardonnay and takes three large gulps, then wipes her mouth with her hand. The chilled wine tastes good.
      This is fine, she tells herself. This is a good thing. She’s on overtime with this dead-end trip. She’s been insane to carry on with him anyway. If the stuffy financial advisement firm she works for found out she’s been having an affair with a client—a married client—she’d be fired. Still—
      “Aw, nuts, Gordon,” she says, folding her napkin in front of her.
      She takes another long swallow of the wine. She looks at the label. Cakebread Cellars.
      She fills her glass again and cuts another piece of salmon and eats it. The Water Grill is overpriced, but the food is bliss. She’s getting dumped, and she’s not walking away hungry.
      “I’m really very fond of you,” he says, staring at his plate. “But I told her I’d try. I told her I’d go to counseling, that I’d work on the marriage.”
      “You should,” she says. “I never intended for this to go on this long anyway. I’m glad she’s pregnant,” she says. “Congratulations.” She reaches over and spears a chunk of lobster tail from his plate and pops it in her mouth. She chews, making ecstatic faces, then washes it down with a long drink of wine, and wipes her mouth with her napkin.
      “No, really,” she says, swallowing. “It’s fine. I was going to tell you it was over tonight anyway.” Which is almost true. She’s been planning to break up the last three or four times they were together; it’s just that she too is fond of him.
      The wine gives her a great buzz. She feels reckless and dramatic.
      “I’ll miss you,” she says. She raises her glass in a toast. “Here’s to great fun—just one—of those things.” She empties her glass and stands up, wanting to get out before she gets mawkish and sloppy. She picks up her purse and hardly staggers when she walks away, slowly, swaying her hips with deliberate sensuality.
      Just one of those things, Toni sings out loud, walking out of the restaurant, just one of those crazy things. It’s June but the evening is cool. A few tears well in her eyes, and she enjoys the self-pity. She’s exhilaratingly drunk. She calls her friend Lenny and asks if he’s busy. He’s a TV producer between jobs, spending his time playing video games and getting high. He also sells pot now and then, when his source in Northern California has some to unload, to make lots of extra cash. Lenny’s ten years younger, and at one time they’d toyed with romantic notions and sexual attraction but decided there would be more longevity to their relationship if they remained friends.“Well, yeah, I’m busy,” he says. “I’m kicking Nazi butt. Come over.”
       She drives to his apartment in Santa Monica in her 4Runner. She’d left her BMW Z3 Roadster at home tonight, and she’s glad. She feels safer hurtling on the freeway with the bulk of her SUV around her. She puts on Diana Krall and belts the bluesy jazz in her off-key contralto on the Santa Monica Freeway. She’s going to miss Gordon—his charm, intelligence, the fantastic sex—but she knows herself well enough to realize that much of his appeal came from the verboten nature of their relationship. They took chances—like when she fucked him in the bathroom at the Christmas party while her boss chatted up Elaine—and it was wildly thrilling.
      When she gets to Lenny’s he offers her a beer and a bong hit while he finishes playing a round of Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
      “Take that,” he says, and shuts down the game. “So what happened with Mr. Party-in-his-Pants?” he asks. She tells him.
      “Loser,” he says. “Life 101: No affairs with married men.”
      “Yeah, well.” He’s right, of course. Affairs with married men were as feckless as her former indulgence in sweaty, one-night trysts with college boys. At least she’d stopped that. She didn’t know why she had to toggle her self-destruct switch to feel alive.
      She’s not hungry but eats some of his cold pizza anyway and drinks a beer. They do a couple shots of tequila. They watch Blade Runner on Lenny’s home theater system and pass the bong. She dozes for a half hour on the sofa, her head propped on her hand.
      “I’m going to bed,” Lenny says abruptly. “Crash on the sofa.”
      “I’ve got to get home,” she says rubbing her neck.
      “You can’t drive.”
      “I’m fine. I’ve got to work in the morning,” she says, but Lenny’s already nodded off in his cushy leather recliner that does everything but his laundry.
      She gets in her car, stops at a donut shop to get coffee and an apple fritter. She drives with the windows down and lets the cold air smack her face. She gets on the 405 heading north but gets off at Ventura Boulevard because she’s weaving. She blasts a Pearl Jam CD as she carefully drives the empty streets heading east across the Valley toward Burbank, coming to complete stops and minding the speed limit. She feels wired, hopeful. She wants to meet someone and have a relationship, something healthy and decent. The break-up is an opportunity, a good thing. Decency, that’s what she needs in her life.
      The moon is out. It’s nearly one in the morning when she gets to her neighborhood. The streets are deserted, the houses dark. Only the coyotes are active, darting in the shadows.
      She heads up the narrow canyon to her house, looking forward to her bed, when ahead of her a kid shoots down a steep driveway on a skateboard, straight at her. A split second in her headlights—wide blue eyes, a blur of freckles, Spiderman pajamas—then the thick thud of impact—and he disappears.
      She throws the car into park and gets out. He’s in the gutter, head against the curb. In the amber streetlight she sees blood coming from his ears and mouth. His eyes are half-open, dead. Dark, wet tissue—with hair—hangs off the concrete.
      She shakes violently. She squats, checks for a pulse with her fingers on his neck—his head rolls—a ghastly angle—and blood and brain leak out. She gets her cell phone—no service in this part of the canyon. She runs up to the house that he came from and rings the bell and pounds the door, but no one’s there.
      She goes back to where he’s lying and tugs his pajama top down to cover his belly. “Oh honey, I’m so sorry, so sorry,” she says, her face slimy with tears and mucus. She staggers to her car, gets in, and shifts into gear. She pulls away, slowly at first, and then faster, not looking back.
      She’ll call from her house. She’ll call the police and explain everything, how he came from nowhere, how she tried to report it.
      Inside her garage, she shuts the door. She looks at the car; the boy’s body has left a slight impression on the grill. She’s wide awake—but drunk. She can taste and smell alcohol. She’s stoned on pot. What’s going to happen if she calls to report a hit-and-run?
      He’s dead. Nothing can help him. It wasn’t her fault. A sober person would’ve hit him.
      She’ll hold off calling until the alcohol clears her system. She sits, staring, seeing the boy, the broken egg of his head.
      She dozes, and now it’s dawn. She calls her office and leaves a message that she’s sick. She turns on the TV. Around eight she hears it on the Channel 4 News.
      A hit-and-run has claimed the life of nine-year-old Freddie Lasko in Burbank while he was apparently out skateboarding. The boy’s parents were out of town attending a funeral. The boy’s sister found him around three when she came home. The phone number of the Burbank police flashes on the screen.
      She should call a lawyer, but only tax and corporate attorneys come to mind. She needs a criminal lawyer—Christ. She covers her mouth with her hands. She can’t make decisions right now; she needs to clear her mind, to rest. She takes a sleeping pill and turns off the phone.
      She wakes up at four in the afternoon, disoriented. The memories start to download, and she runs to the bathroom to vomit.
      She turns on her phone and the news.
      Still no clue as to who killed Freddie Lasko some time this morning while he rode his skateboard, a reporter says, standing outside the family home . Police need your help ...
       The phone rings.
      “Hey, it’s Lenny. ’Sup? I called your office and they said you were sick.”
      “Oh God, Lenny. Something’s happened. Something awful.” Sobbing, she tells him about the accident.
      “Call a lawyer and turn yourself in,” he says.
      “I’ll lose my job. I’m up to become a partner.”
      “You killed a kid.”
      “He was skateboarding at one in the morning. His parents left him with a flaky sister. If anything, they’re negligent.”
      “I told you not to drive.”
      “He came from nowhere, down a driveway, like a shot.”
      “Tell them you were with me. Tell them we played Scrabble, drank tea. You drove home, killed him, and panicked. They don’t have to know you were drinking. Get a lawyer.”
      “Look, I’ll talk to you later,” she says.
      She slips on some sweatpants, a T-shirt, and her walking shoes. She gets her Walkman and tunes in the news. She walks down to the boy’s street.
      She gets near the house, walking with deliberate nonchalance, a decent woman out for an afternoon stroll. Police are there; the area around the curb is taped off. A media truck is parked on the street. Toni walks to where a detective stands under a tree, smoking a cigarette.
      “I heard about this on the news,” she says. “Any progress?”
      The detective looks at her, blows smoke through his nostrils, then crushes the cigarette under his foot. He picks up the butt, puts it into a baggie, and pockets it.
      “You live around here?” he asks.
      “A few blocks away.”
      “Housewife?” he asks.
      “Uh, no.” She smiles at him, but he doesn’t smile back. She regrets talking to him—what was she thinking? She’s the proverbial perp, returning to the scene of the crime.
      “Not much to go by. Probably someone local,” he says. “Whereabouts did you say you live?”
      She tells him the wrong street.
      “Humor me. Where were you between midnight and three in the morning?”
      “Me?”
      “Just doing my job, ma’am,” he says. “Where were you last night? Do you mind?”
      “I spent the night in Santa Monica. With my friend.”
      He reaches into his pocket, pulls out his card, gives it to her. “If you hear anything.”
      She takes the card and he pulls out a notebook. “What kind of a car do you drive, anyway?” he asks.
      “I kind of resent this,” she says, mustering indignation.
      “You got something to hide?”
      “I drive a BMW Z3,” she says.
      “Bet you look good in it, too,” he says. Now he smiles. “Anyone at your place drive an SUV?”
      “No.”
      “Know anyone in the neighborhood with an SUV?”
      “Maybe fifty percent, around here,” she says.
      He laughs. “Yeah, that’s about right,” he says. “Why don’t you give me your name and address, phone number too. That way we’ll know we already talked to you.”
      She makes it all up.
      “Have a nice day,” he says, touching his finger to his forehead. He puts the notebook away and pulls out another cigarette.
      She starts to walk away when a woman approaches her from one of the houses. “He gave me the third degree too,” she says. “I live across from the Laskos. I almost killed Freddy twice—see? Those are my skid marks right there.” She points to the black tire marks in the street. “That kid loved to come streaking down that driveway. I told his parents he’d get killed.”
      “It happened at night, right?”
      “His folks were in Sacramento. Jody—that’s Freddy’s sister—was out on a date or something when it happened.” The woman shakes her head. “How anyone could leave a dead kid like that is beyond me.”
      “Horrible,” Toni croaks. She’s lightheaded, nauseated. She breaks into a cold sweat.
      The woman leans in, drops her voice. “I heard the coyotes got to him. I heard his head was nearly gone—can you imagine? That poor doll finding her brother like that?”
      “God.” Toni covers her mouth. Spasms jerk her throat. She sees the detective eyeballing them as they talk.
      “Losing a kid’s gotta be the worst,” the woman says, shaking her head. She looks at her watch. “Nice talking to you.” She hands Toni a business card. “Think of me for all your real estate needs.”
      Toni gets back to her house, and there’s a message from Lenny on her voice mail.
      “Hey, give me a call.”
      The phone rings. It’s Gordon.
      “I—I need to talk to you,” he says. “Elaine’s not pregnant. She made it up. I told her I want a divorce.”
      Why is he calling? It’s like the information is stored in some archive in her brain she can’t access.
      He says, “Did you hear me? I’m leaving Elaine. I love you.”
      She lets out a shrill laugh.
      “Jesus,” he says, “I don’t see what’s funny.”
      “You love me? It’s hilarious.” She hangs up. He repulses her. She gags up a bilious mini-vomit and swallows it.
      In the garage she inspects the 4Runner again, moving her fingers over the slight dent in the polished chrome. She sees herself reflected in the curve of it, her head tiny and distant, her feet clownish and huge.
      The phone rings. It’s Lenny.
      “Have you done anything?” he asks.
      “Uh-uh.” She swallows. “It wasn’t my fault. I’d be screwed if I turned myself in now. It’s a conservative firm, Lenny. They don’t make felony man-slaughterers partners.”
      “What about your car?”
      “Slight dent,” she says. “I can bash it into a tree, get rid of it.”
      “Talk to a lawyer.”
      “I don’t want to tell anyone else about this.”
      “It’s wrong.”
      “Legally, yes. I feel bad for the Laskos, but would knowing who did it and ruining my life really help them?”
      “What if they offered a reward and I turned you in? Would that be wrong in Toni World?”
      Is he fucking with her? When she’s desperate for his support? She rotates the heel of her hand into her eye socket. “Thirty pieces of silver? You’re my friend, you bastard. I’ve trusted you with this.”
      Lenny’s quiet a moment. “Yeah, I’m fucking with you.” Another pause. “How are you going to live with yourself? At least talk to a lawyer and see what he says.”
      “You’re sure taking the moral high ground, for a drug dealer.”
      A long pause. “Maybe so.” More silence. “Look, I’ve gotta go. Think about it. Think about spending your life worrying that you’ve been busted every time the phone rings or someone comes to your door. It’s not worth it. My two cents.” He hangs up.
      She goes over everything once again. It wasn’t her fault. Why should she ruin her life over this stupid accident? She comes up with a plan to write an anonymous note and explain there was nothing she could do. She’ll put a wad of cash in it, for Jody, to get therapy. Or clothes. Whatever she needs. It’s Toni’s fault that Jody found her brother like that, with half his head eaten away by coyotes.
      Gordon. She can barely conjure an image of him.
      Lenny. He’ll get over it. Or not. If it had happened to him, if he had killed a child and fled—
      It hits her then, the furtive kick underlying her dilemma, the cool thrill of getting away with all this, duping the dour detective. She presses her head between her hands and a memory intrudes, from junior high school. She’d been cruel to a boy—Jimmy Rodriguez—with a clubfoot and a little deformed arm that curled up to his chest with a useless, stiff-fingered hand that jutted from his wrist. She’d made fun of him, imitated his gimpy walk and arm, and called him a retard. Why? He had birth defects.
      She wonders what happened to him, where he is today. She wonders if she could track him down somehow, find him, talk to him, tell him how sorry she is. She wonders, if she begged him, could he forgive her?
      She limps in circles now, in her living room, dragging her foot and folding her arm up against her chest in the Jimmy Rodriguez Clubfoot Shuffle. She sees her reflection in the polished black granite of her fireplace, and she wonders who in the world she might be.