Let’s take the silver one, I say.

Molly tosses me the keys and a black helmet. She grins at me and pulls her own helmet on. This is trust, baby. I haven’t been on a motorcycle in years and anyone who knows me would say that’s a good thing. I tend to fly too close to the sun, when given half the chance. I tend to get distracted. I have smashed up more than my share of vehicles while daydreaming, and lately I have the headaches and blackbird visions to worry about. But my skull feels clean and clear and sometimes you have to say fuck it. The bike purrs to life and Molly climbs on behind me. Her arms slip around my waist like they belong there. I take it easy up the long driveway and I’m about to glance around and ask her which way am I going when she tells me that she’s not really so late and maybe we should just ride a while.

It’s a fine day for it, she says.

The sweetest decline is always voluntary. I cruise through the hills above Berkeley, slow and winding, and soon I’m wondering how fast this bike is and how long it would take me to kill myself on an open road. I begin to descend, with no idea where I’m going. The wind and sun are sweet narcotics and I imagine Molly’s dress whipping about her thighs and now she slips one hand under my shirt to touch my chest, and oh, the galaxies in my head. The way she kissed me last night. The way she held me when I was shaking. I was covered in sweat and she didn’t pull away from me. The pulse of sorrow and loneliness between us. The mad babble of imagined friends. The dizzy smell of her hair. I woke beside her twice in the night, drunk and still dreaming and I wanted to just eat her cold white skin. I remember how she said the bellybutton is terribly sensitive, how death is always on the wing. But I must have dreamed these things. I must have been dreaming. My skull begins to ache and my vision shimmers. Deathly, the crash preconceived. The earth forever pulls at you, gravity and all. It pulls you down. I suffer random, grasshopper thoughts. The subconscious fancy that I will lose Jude in this, that she will never be mine. That tomorrow is possibly unkind. Tomorrow is unknown and one of us may die in traffic today and I have to wake up before tomorrow comes.

The inside of my own head is a half acre of hell.

I run through a red light and the blast of a truck’s horn rips a nasty hole in my internal sky and I nearly lay the bike down.

Jesus. Are you okay?

I bring us to a shivering stop under a grove of lemon trees. My heart is hopping around in my chest. Molly yanks her helmet off and her yellow hair is wild around her face and I taste the guilt, the sour guilt of nearly killing someone I barely know and prematurely adore.

I’m fine, she says. What happened back there?

Dreaming, I say. I was dreaming.

About what?

I open my mouth and realize the answer is foolish, romantic but foolish.

Never mind, I say. I’ll tell you later.

It doesn’t matter, she says. Are you okay?

Yeah.

Molly smiles, then takes one of my cold hands in hers.

You’re none too steady, she says.

That’s normal.

If you say so.

Torn shadows and silence under the lemon trees. The motorcycle warm, ticking.

twenty-one.

THE HOWL AND SWARM OF TELEGRAPH AND HASTE. The hyper mingling of pretty little Asian girls and junk-ravaged homeless guys, gutter punks and skater kids, wealth and despair. I park the bike between a polished black Saab convertible and a snot-colored VW bus where two white guys with dreadlocks are cooking what look like seaweed burgers on a hibachi. The sun is too hot and everything is razor bright. The smell of curry and gasoline, of clove cigarettes and patchouli. There is a sign in a shop window that declares this block to be a nuclear-free zone.

Molly sighs. I hate Berkeley.

I stand on the sidewalk, smoking. She says she’s thirsty and wanders into a little café. I toss the cigarette and follow her.

Aren’t you going to be late? I say.

No, she says. I’m getting a soda. Do you want anything?

I shrug. Espresso, a double.

The girl behind the counter looks familiar. Nineteen or twenty, with short black hair falling out of a baseball cap worn backwards. Dark almond eyes and lush lips. Very thin, with big round breasts compressed into a red sports bra. She’s maybe Vietnamese.

Do I know you? I say.

Her lip curls. I doubt it.

What’s your name?

Daphne.

Scooby Doo, I say. Where are you?

Funny, she says. You owe me six dollars.

Molly is watching me closely, pale hair around her face like a hood of light. I shrug and reach for my money.

We sit at a table outside and watch the world drift by. I realize why Berkeley is so strange to me. It feels like a miniature town, like a kid’s model train set. I mention this to Molly but she doesn’t smile or respond. She drinks a lemon and vanilla Italian soda, her jaw working as she slowly chews a piece of ice. I finish off my espresso and light a cigarette. Molly takes one but does not light it. She begins to pull the cigarette apart.

Are you nervous? I say.

I have to tell you something, she says. Two things.

What?

I don’t have rehearsal today. I quit the play, in fact.

Why? I say.

Why did I quit the play? Or why did I lie?

Either, I say.

Molly stares at the sky behind me, shredding her cigarette.

I quit the play because it was a conflict. When we begin shooting the film, there won’t be space for anything else.

Are you sure you want to do this film? I say.

Yes, she says.

How old are you?

Twenty-seven. I know what I’m doing.

That’s not what I meant.

What did you mean?

I watch a guy across the street in yellow clown pants, juggling apples. I blow smoke.

Aren’t you afraid of dying? I say.

Of course. But not terribly so.

I have lost people, I say. And think of Henry. Eve. Moon. Their faces boil in my head. I tell her it rips a part of you away that you don’t get back.

Molly shrugs. I want to do this movie. And I don’t think I will be the victim.

No one thinks they will, I say. That’s the genius of this thing. Put three people in a lifeboat, tell them that a storm is coming and that one of them will be dead by nightfall, and they all think it will be one of the others.

Brief, complicated silence.

Then maybe we shouldn’t get attached to each other, she says.

I mash my cigarette out and stare at her. I remember the day I found her in the kitchen. Blue eyes dark with circles and thin lips moving, as if in prayer. I thought she was Franny Glass come to life and she’s right. If I am attached to nothing, then I have nothing to lose.

Too late, she says. Isn’t it?

Jude’s voice. John says you were quite taken with Molly.

Maybe. Why did you lie about the rehearsal?

John, she says. He wanted me to get you out of the house for a while.

I don’t like the sound of that. I look over my shoulder, then back at her.

Why? I say.

Molly hesitates. The Velvet, she says. It may not be exactly the film you think it is. It’s a little more complicated.

How so?

I haven’t read the whole script, she says. Only bits and pieces.

How? I say. How is it more complicated?

Molly never answers me. Her eyes roll away white. A vein jumps in her throat and her left arm twitches once, twice. Then clutches at nothing. For one regrettable moment I think she is playing around, fucking with me. Then she slips out of her chair and begins to jerk around on the sidewalk like a fish.

Okay. Molly is having a seizure.

I come out of my chair and fall to my knees beside her. I reach for her hand, my thoughts rattling. The cries of distant birds. Her face is so pale. The traffic noise dies and everyone on the sidewalk disappears. I’ve suffered a dozen seizures in the past five years, but I have no memory of them.