Somewhere north-northeast above Los Angeles, I'm getting sore, so I ask Tracy to let up.

And I say, "Why do you do this?"

And she says, "What?"

This.

And Tracy smiles.

The people you meet behind unlocked doors are tired of talk­ing about the weather. These are people tired of safety. These people have remodeled too many houses. These are tanned peo­ple who've given up smoking and white sugar and salt, fat, and beef. They're people who've watched their parents and grandpar­ents study and work for a lifetime only to end up losing it all. Spending everything just to stay alive on a feeding tube. Forget­ting even how to chew and swallow.

"My father was a doctor," Tracy says. "The place where he's at now, he can't even remember his own name."

These men and women sitting behind unlocked doors know a bigger house is not the answer. Neither is a better spouse, more money, tighter skin.

"Anything you can acquire," she says, "is only another thing you'll lose."

The answer is there is no answer.

For real, this is a way heavy moment.

"No," I say and run a finger between her thighs. "I meant this. Why do you shave your bush?"

"Oh, that," she says and rolls her eyes, smiling. "It's so I can wear g-string panties."

While I settle on the toilet, Tracy's examining the mirror, not seeing herself as much as checking what's left of her makeup, and with one wet finger she wipes away the smudged edge of her lip­stick. With her fingers, she rubs away the little bite marks around her nipples. What the Kama Sutra would call Scattered Clouds.

Talking to the mirror, she says, "The reason I do the circuit is because, when you think about it, there's no good reason to do anything,"

There is no point.

These are people who don't want an orgasm as much as they just want to forget. Everything. For just two minutes, ten min­utes, twenty, a half hour.

Or maybe when people are treated like cattle, that's how they act. Or maybe that's just an excuse. Maybe they're just bored. It could be that nobody's made to sit all day in a cramped packing crate full of other people without moving a muscle.

"We're healthy, young, awake and alive people," Tracy says. "When you look at it, which act is more unnatural?"

She's putting back on her blouse, rolling her pantyhose back up.

"Why do I do anything?" she says. "I'm educated enough to talk myself out of any plan. To deconstruct any fantasy. Explain away any goal. I'm so smart I can negate any dream."

Me still sitting here naked and tired, the flight crew an­nounces our descent, our approach into the greater Los Angeles area, then the current time and temperature, then information about connecting flights.

And for a moment, this woman and I just stand and listen, looking up at nothing.

"I do this, this, because it feels good," she says and buttons her blouse. "Maybe I don't really know why I do it. In a way, this is why they execute killers. Because once you've crossed some lines, you just keep crossing them."

Both hands behind her back, zipping up her skirt, she says, "The truth is I don't really want to know why I do casual sex. I just keep doing," she says, "because the minute you give yourself a good reason, you'll start chipping away at it."

She steps back into her shoes and pats her hair on the sides and says, "Please don't think this was anything special."

Unlocking the door, she says, "Relax." She says, "Someday, everything we just did will look like small potatoes to you."

Edging out into the passenger cabin, she says, "Today is just the first time you've crossed this particular line." Leaving me naked and alone, she says, "Don't forget to lock the door behind me." Then she laughs and says, "That's if you want it locked any­more."

Chapter 41

The front desk girl doesn't want any coffee.

She doesn't want to go check on her car in the parking lot.

She says, "If anything happens to my car, I'll know who to blame."

And I tell her, shhhhhhhhh.

I tell her I hear something important, a gas leak or a baby cry­ing somewhere.

It's my mom's voice, muffled and tired, coming over the inter­com speaker from some unknown room.

Standing at the desk in the lobby of St. Anthony's, we listen, and my mom says, "The slogan for America is 'Not Good Enough.' Nothing's ever fast enough. Nothings big enough. We're never satisfied. We're always improving ..."

The front desk girl says, "I don't hear any gas leak."

The faint, tired voice says, "I spent my life attacking every­thing because I was too afraid to risk creating anything ..."

And the front desk girl cuts it off. She presses the microphone and says, "Nurse Remington to the front desk. Nurse Remington to the front desk, immediately."

The fat security guard with his chest pocket full of pens.

But when she lets go of the microphone, the intercom voice comes on again, faint and whispery.

"Nothing was ever good enough," my mom says, "so here at the end of my life, I'm left with nothing …"

And her voice fades away.

There's nothing left. Only white noise. Static.

And now she's going to die.

Unless there's a miracle.

The guard blows through the security doors, looking at the front desk girl, asking, "So? What's the situation here?"

And on the monitor, in grainy black-and-white, she points at me bent double with the ache in my guts, me carrying my swollen gut around in both hands, and she says, "Him."

She says, "This man needs to be restricted from the property, starting right now."

Chapter 42

How it showed up on the news last night was just me shouting, wav­ing my arms in front of the camera, with Denny a little ways be­hind me, working to set a rock in a wall, and Beth just a little behind him, hammering a boulder into dust, trying to carve a statue.

On TV, I'm jaundiced yellow, hunchbacked from the swell and weight of my guts coming apart on the inside. Bent over, I'm lifting my face to look into the camera, my neck looping from my head down into my collar. My neck as thin as an arm, my Adam's apple sticks out as big as an elbow. This is yesterday right after work, so I'm still wearing my Colonial Dunsboro blousey linen shirt and my britches. With the buckle shoes and the cra­vat, this doesn't help.

"Dude," Denny says, sitting next to Beth at Beth's apartment while we watch ourselves on TV. He says, "You don't look so hot."

I look like that dumpy Tarzan from my fourth step, the one bent over with the monkey and the roasted chestnuts. The tubby savior with his beatific smile. The hero with nothing left to hide.

On TV, all I was trying to do was explain to everybody that there was no controversy. I was trying to convince people that I'd started the mess by calling the city and saying I lived nearby and some nutcase was building without a permit, I didn't know what. And the worksite posed a hazard to area children. And the guy doing the work didn't look too savory. And it was no doubt a Sa­tanic church.