Kid Using Computer

The fires began the day of the appointment, and the repercussions of
both events are making it difficult for Kate to breathe. To find some
peace, she busies herself by preparing for her guests who are sched-
uled to arrive shortly. She washes the wineglasses and empties the
ashtrays. She runs the vacuum and puts clean sheets on the guest bed.
She pours a cup of coffee and walks to the front porch, where she
can see the mountains burning north of the city, mushroom clouds
of smoke that press against the atmosphere and cement into giant
hanging anvils. To Kate the anvils represent a kind of punishment
for her recent mistakes, and she would very much like to speak with
whomever is controlling the system of ropes and pulleys. She would
like to get this over with.
Phil is lost. Kate’s directions make no sense, and the afternoon sun
burns pink through the smear of the bug-splattered windshield. They
left Tulsa yesterday morning, doing eighty across the flats of North
Texas and through the scorched canyons of Arizona, finally arriving
amid the filthy, breathing traffic of Los Angeles sometime around
rush hour. It’s spring break for the kids, and Phil promised them a
week in Southern California. He promised them Hollywood and the
beach and Universal Studios, but money is tight and a curtain of fire
is closing in on their destination, so he’s a little unsure how this will all play out. “These street names aren’t even in English,” he says,
straining to read the little blue signs.
“What are we looking for?” Abby asks. Abby is sixteen and, ac-
cording to what she told her friends back home, about one month
away from celebrity. She said she was coming to LA to get headshots
and a nice tan and maybe talk with some agents her cousin Kate
knows, Kate being a pretty good actress herself.
“San something,” Phil says.
“San Rafael?” Abby asks.
“No.”
“Because I just saw San Rafael.”
“It’s not San Rafael.”
“It could be. You said it was San something.”
“Cut it, Abby,” Phil says, riffling through the mess of papers on
the dashboard. “Where are those directions, Claire?”
Claire grabs Phil’s hand and redirects it back to the steering wheel.
“Honey, keep your eyes on the road.”
“My eyes are on the road. But it doesn’t do me any good if I don’t
know where the hell I’m going.”
Phil is an impatient man with the temperament of an ostrich, and
in their twenty years of marriage Claire has learned to negotiate
his fits with the caution of a zookeeper. She hands him the Subway
napkin he scribbled directions on during lunch in Barstow.
Phil glances down at the napkin, then back at the road. “San Fer-
nando,” he says, suddenly pleased, as if remembering a song title that
had temporarily escaped him. “We’re looking for San Fernando.”