They push me forward again. It's like I'm drifting along in some movie, playing a part, and now I realize the fear is gone and something else has taken over my mind- it's like being asleep and awake at the same time, like being in a dream but knowing you're in one, and you can control everything if you just concentrate, make it come out the way you want.

Maybe that's what it's like after you die.

We go through the gate and start climbing up, into the trees. He's making these low wet grunting noises.

“You,” he says, squeezing my arm harder. Like I've done something wrong.

I keep my head down, seeing my shoes, his.

“Okay, come on, come on,” she says, waving her hand as we walk into the fern tangle, through the same path I took down, what I used to think was my secret.

They keep pushing me, telling me to move faster, lead me toward a big tree, not my eucalyptus, another one, also with low branches.

We go past it. Walk a ways till we're in front of another tree and it's so quiet, no one's around, even if I scream no one will hear me.

She stands to one side, still aiming the gun, looks at her camera case. Holding on to my arm, he takes out her camera and gives it to her.

“Okay,” she tells me.

I don't know what she wants, so I don't speak or move.

She walks up and slaps me hard across the face and my head spins around, but it still doesn't hurt as much as it should.

“Do it, you little shit!”

“What?” I say, but it sounds like another kid's voice. Like I'm out of my body, watching myself move around in some robot movie.

She raises her hand to hit me again, and I try to protect my face with my arm. He knees me in the back and that hurts.

“Off with the pants, Streetsmarts- let him pull 'em down, honey.”

He lets go of me as she keeps the gun on me. I touch my pants but don't pull them down. He pulls his down, lets them fall around his legs. He's wearing baggy white boxers and now he reaches into the fly hole- I turn away.

“What?” She laughs. “Something you haven't seen before? Yank 'em down, show us your good side.”

I don't move. She slaps me again. If she didn't have the gun, I'd stomp her face, twist her head off.

She laughs again. “Obey and it'll all be over before you can say ouch. A little owie, that's all.”

She makes kissy noises, and he does too.

“Sure,” that other kid's voice says. “Sure, I know what you mean. Only…”

“Only what?” She moves closer, puts the gun up against my nose. It feels cold and it smells like a gas station.

The corner of my eye sees that his boxers are all the way down, but still around his ankles, like he doesn't want to really take everything off. He's moving his arm back and forth-

“Only,” the kid says. “I… it… like I- I can do it. Sure, okay, but you- it- like now- first I've got to…”

“Got to what?” The gun waves in front of my eyes.

“You know.”

“I don't know! What?”

“Got to… shit.”

Silence.

“Hear that?” she says to him.

“Yeah,” he says, very quietly, and I'm thinking, Oh no, does he like that even better, did I just make a big mistake?

She turns and looks at him and for a second I think of running for it, but then her face is back right in front of mine and I don't know why I think this, but the way she looks, she could be a teacher, someone's mother or grandma, it's not my fault-

“So?” she asks him.

“Um… not today.”

“Okay, trash,” she tells me. “Go ahead and do your thing- use your shirt to wipe your ass, then you're gonna show us your good side.”

I pull down my pants, and even though it's a warm day, a beautiful day, a lemonade and corn day, my legs feel like stone.

“So white,” he says.

“C'mon, go, go.” Her voice is thick, and I understand: His sickness is doing it to kids; hers is being in charge. Watching.

“Undies off, goddamn you- off, off, come on, finish up.”

I pull down my shorts. Bending down, I manage to move a little farther away from her, but only inches. All around it's so quiet, so green, even the leaves don't move. It's like the three of us are part of one big photograph or maybe this is the last moment before God destroys the world, and why shouldn't He?

“Get going or I'll kill you!” The gun and the camera are aimed at me. She's going to take pictures of everything. I'm her souvenir.

The problem is, before I had to really badly but now I can't; it's like my organs are blocks of ice jammed up against each other.

“Do it or I'll shoot it out of you!”

The sound of her voice, the thought of being shot, gets my stomach going again and I do it.

Then I reach behind with one hand to catch it.

Gross, I hate doing it, but I tell myself it's just digested food, stuff that was already inside me-

“Look at that,” she says. “You disgusting little animal.”

“Disgusting,” he says. But he means something else.

I look up at her and nod. And smile. She's surprised, wasn't expecting a smile, and for a second she looks away.

I reach back, and even though I was never good at sports, I aim and throw.

Bam! Right in her face and all over her camera, over her blouse.

She's screaming and stumbling back and slapping at herself and he's tripping over his shorts, confused. He straightens up and charges me, but she's the one to watch, because she's got the gun. She's still screaming and slapping. I yank up my shorts and pants, and even before they're completely in place, I'm runrunrunning, through branches that scratch my face, through space, through green, green that never stops, time that never stops, running, tripping, flying.

Floating.

I hear a loud hand clap, don't stop, nothing hurts, I'm okay or maybe I'm not I don't feel it, can't feel anymore, that wouldn't be bad, that wouldn't be bad at all.

I throw myself through green.

Thank you, gorilla. If I could breathe, I'd laugh.

22

Just as Petra was about to call Empty Nest Pro- ductions for Darrell/Darren, another fax came through: Lisa's last phone bill.

Patsy K. was right- the woman really had hated the instrument. Fifteen calls the whole month, one long-distance, on the first, to Chagrin Falls, three minutes long. Brief chat with Mom? Just once a month. Not a close relationship?

Three toll calls, all to Alhambra. The number matched one in Petra's notes: one of Patsy K.'s friends. The rest were all locals: three to Jacopo's in Beverly Hills for takeout pizza; two to the Shanghai Garden, same city, for Chinese; one each to Neiman-Marcus and Saks.

The last four calls were to a Culver City exchange that turned out to be Empty Nest. Petra phoned it and asked for Darrell in editing. The receptionist said, “Darrell Breshear?”

“Yes.”

“One moment, I'll connect you.”

Breshear had no receptionist, just a machine. His voice was pleasant. Patsy K. had said he was forty, but he sounded like a young man. Rather than leave a message, Petra decided to call back later and ran Breshear through a superficial NCIC check. Clean. Laughing to herself, because they hadn't run Ramsey.

She phoned the county assessor and, after hassling with a snotty clerk, managed to learn that H. Carter Ramsey owned more than a dozen pieces of property in L.A., all in the Valley: the house in Calabasas, commercial buildings on Ventura Boulevard and on busy Encino, Sherman Oaks, North Hollywood, and Studio City cross streets. One in Studio City matched the address she had for Greg Balch's office at Player's Management.

Nothing in Malibu or Santa Monica, nothing that sounded like a romantic hideaway, but maybe when Ramsey got away, he really wanted distance. Go north, young woman, and if that didn't work, the eastern mountain resorts.