She couldn’t really see it. She was strapped down. There was this blue light boring into her eyes. She could only see them, pretty much. The aliens. There were a bunch of them. But one alien-he seemed to be their leader.

He was the one right there, examining me. The others seemed to be… well, kind of like his helpers.

It went on and on, she said. As if she were strapped onto that table for days. She knew it couldn’t have been days, that it wasn’t possible she was there that long, but that’s what it felt like. Then it was just over.

Wren asked her if she could describe that. How it ended?

She couldn’t.

That’s the part I don’t really remember. They must’ve put me back-that’s all.

Where? Wren asked.

Somewhere dry. Somewhere people could find me. I guess they did-because I’m here, right? The lone survivor and all that? I was a big story for a day or two. Of course, if it had happened now, they’d put me on CNN. Not those days. Anyway, I was taken in by cousins in Sacramento. And I’ve never been back-not that there’s anything to see, I guess. It all washed away.

TWENTY-SEVEN

The next morning, Wren was still absent.

I walked into his cabin to return his notes and make some coffee.

I was only half-successful.

He’d gone into Fishbein for supplies, he’d said. He needed them. He was out of coffee-seemingly out of everything.

A gray mist was hovering inches above the lake. It felt like fall. I half expected to see swirling leaves carpeting the ground.

On the way back to the highway, I reached over to turn up the heat just as a panicked deer flew across the dirt road. It clipped my hood with its back hooves, then tumbled off into the brush.

I lurched to the right and stopped dead, then took a good minute or two to catch my breath.

My heart wasn’t the only thing racing. My mind was too, replaying Bailey Kindlon’s surreal story. Floating houses spinning down the street. Hundreds of dead people bobbing around the water. The part of her story that was real.

Do you believe in fairy tales?

If you did, you would have to believe in the rest of her story. Little blue aliens with no mouths. White robots with no faces. Medical exams in the bowels of a spaceship.

A fairy tale worthy of the Brothers Grimm. If they were on mushrooms maybe.

I drove straight down the PCH without stopping.

The forests thinned, the surf quieted, the steep cliffs turned into flat sand, the B amp;Bs into motels and fish fries. I found a classic rock station with a DJ named Frankie Foo and tapped the steering wheel to “Soul Sacrifice,” “Layla,” and “Brown Sugar.”

When the sun went down, I could just make out the Ferris-wheel lights on the Santa Monica Pier. It made me think of my one and only childhood visit to an amusement park. Not really a park-one of those traveling carnivals with junky rides and shoot-water-in-the-clown’s-mouth concessions. After Jimmy died. After I told the police and the caseworkers that he slipped on the ice. That he fell in the tub. That he walked into the door. What happened, Tommy? An accident. He was clumsy. At the carnival my mom took her lying son for a spin around the Ferris wheel, then threw up while we were suspended at the top. The resulting screams had nothing to do with the cheap thrill of being carted up to the stars. One sniff of her breath once we were back on the ground was enough to secure her a lecture on responsible child-rearing-this from an itinerant barker who looked like he did a fair amount of drinking himself. It was enough to swear me off carnivals forever-though not enough to swear her off Jim Beam. Do you still blame her? Dr. Payne had asked me. He meant did I blame her for being a drunk-for being verbally abusive, for fucking anything in pants. He didn’t know what I really blamed her for.

How could he?

I remained the ever-dutiful son.

I didn’t tell.

I’m not sure when I chose not to turn off to the 405, when I made the conscious decision to keep motoring straight into Santa Monica.

Maybe I wanted one more turn on the Ferris wheel-figuratively speaking. There’s 2 percent of your brain that can believe just about anything. I should know-I made liberal use of it in other people’s brains. The Children’s Protective Services caseworkers, for example, who somehow believed a 6-year-old boy could have a strange affinity for hard surfaces. My editor, for another, who swallowed stories about Jesus think tanks, con-men actors, and bomb-throwing pediatricians. It’s the same 2 percent that tells you that the beautiful woman who sat across from you in Violetta’s found you irresistible. Or at least mildly attractive. The 2 percent, in other words, where dumb hope resides.

I didn’t have a plan.

I was fairly sure I wasn’t going to fulfill my e-mail threat and park myself on the Third Street Promenade till she passed by. I had a general address and her cell number-I was kind of chicken to use it. The other 98 percent of my brain remembered her expression when I told her the good news-that she was dining with a famous liar. I remembered her good-sport attempt to keep the conversation rolling; it was more painful than silence.

I parked in the municipal parking lot on Fourth and strolled around for a while.

It was prime time on the promenade. Once, in the not-so-distant past, downtown Santa Monica had been a haven for America’s refuse-an army of strung-out, homeless, down-on-their-luck, just-released-from-a mental-asylum kind of people. After all, it was warm, and there was always a place under the piers to lay your head.

The Third Street Promenade had changed all that. It had turned downtown Santa Monica into a crowded outdoor mall, replete with street jugglers, musicians, and dinosaur topiaries.

I window-shopped, wondering who that disheveled middle-aged man was staring back at me through the window of VJ Records, and was only mildly surprised to discover it was me.

I escaped the crowds by ducking through an alley onto the next street, where there were still people milling around, but not as many. Where it was at least breathable.

I knew I was slowly working my way somewhere, even if I wasn’t exactly admitting it.

There was a coffee shop on Fifth called Java.

An Adidas store. A Blockbuster.

Two residential buildings connected by a single lobby, with wraparound terraces and what appeared to be an inner courtyard with a pool. I could just about sniff the chlorine.

On Fifth, she’d said, right off the promenade.

I stopped and took in the scenery. I admired the rhododendrons and bougainvillea fronting the buildings. I noted the new coat of black paint on the filigreed railing that lined both sides of the walkway.

The one I was strolling down toward a suddenly beckoning lobby.

It was lit by two banks of blue fluorescent lights.

There were mailboxes on either side-one per building. I casually perused them, doing a little window-shopping again, even though, okay, I might’ve, just possibly, you never know, been searching for one particular hard-to-find item.

The girl with Botticelli eyes. The one who’d made me tell the truth to her and then instantly made me regret it.

No Anna Graham listed.

For either building.

Fifth, she’d said, but Fifth stretched on for blocks.

I wandered out of the lobby, stopped short by the momentous decision of whether to turn left or right. I picked left, changed my mind, crossed the street, and drifted into Fatburger for something big and greasy.

No false advertising there. I walked out with half a cow.

I found myself in front of a playhouse. Or maybe I didn’t just find myself there. Maybe I was guided there.