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  Annabel, still smiling, said, “Sure.”

  “Hell, yes, partners!” Dale cried out. “This is epic!”

  Steve left the room and went outside to get some fresh air. He was feeling strangely hot, as if Annabel’s smile had melted his rough exterior and his heart.

  After lighting his cigarette, he walked over to the alley to get the smoke away from the front door of the studio. As usual, Tumbleweed and Pancho were standing there, talking to each other. When they saw Steve approaching, Tumbleweed started to say, “Spare a—” but Steve already had a cigarette waiting for the guy. He was in a much better mood than a couple hours earlier, having just finished a kick-ass song with Annabel.

  “Jesus, don’t these guys ever kick you out of here?” Steve asked as he lit Tumbleweed’s cigarette and gestured to Buddy’s Diner—the wall of which Pancho leaned on.

  Tumbleweed took a drag and chuckled, wisps of smoke spilling out from his nostrils. “We don’t cause no problems. Pancho hardly ever talks—it’s like they can’t even see him. They used to not notice me neither, but I dunno what happened.” He shrugged.

  After a moment of silence, Steve said, “Sorry for being a dick earlier.”

  “No worries, dude,” Tumbleweed said. “Could tell you were a little high strung.”

  Steve was about to tell Tumbleweed that “Yeah, it was because my father was just buried,” but he decided to keep it to himself. He didn’t want to make excuses, and the truth was, he’d never been close to his father. So instead, he said, “I tell you what, Tumbles, I think I got myself a winner.”

  “Oh, yeah? What, the girl?”

  “The girl. The girl, man.”

  “What’s she sound like?” Tumbleweed asked. “I never could get her to open her mouth.”

  “Like the lovechild of Stevie Nicks and Joan Baez.”

  “Damn! That good?”

  Steve smiled mischievously and nodded. “She’s something special.”

  The door to the studio opened and Dale popped his head out. “Hey!” he called, and Steve, Tumbleweed, and Pancho all turned toward the sound of his voice.

  “Bel told me to come out and get you,” Dale continued. “She says she’s ready for more!”

  Steve’s smile grew even larger. “All right, all right, all right,” he said, doing his best Matthew McConaughey impression. He took one more drag and stubbed out his cigarette on the bottom of his shoe, then headed for the door. As he left the alley he said, “Enjoy your day, boys,” over his shoulder.

  “You too, Steve. Good luck with the girl. Hope she’s a winner.”

  Steve stopped in his tracks for a moment, irked that Tumbleweed knew his name, again, but he quickly realized Annabel had probably told it to him when they were busking together. He started to walk down the sidewalk toward the studio, head bent down.

  A loud screeching noise tore through the air, erupting all the peace in the quiet neighborhood.

  It all happened so fast.

  ERRRRRT—

  Steve instinctively jerked his neck up at the grating sound.

  A car barreled down Garnet Avenue. It was on two wheels, nearly on its side like a capsizing boat.

  The frantic driver tried to correct her steering wheel. But it was too late.

  The driver overcorrected.

  Steve’s eyes bulged as the car headed straight for him and the sidewalk, wheels burning rubber and screeching, the car twisting and turning chaotically.

  He opened his mouth to shout some obscenity, then clenched his eyes shut, as if he could avoid the deadly impact if he couldn’t see it.

  A loud crash brought Steve back to his senses and his eyes shot open.

  This was a cacophonous noise.

  Steve, still as an iceberg, patted his body, unbelieving that the car that had just been right in front of him had somehow managed to swerve and avoid hitting him.

  “Sweet Jesus . . .” Dale was next to him, muttering, eyes bulging.

  But Dale was looking past Steve.

  Steve followed Dale’s eyes.

  The car had crashed into the wall of Buddy’s Diner and the opening of the alleyway.

  Tumbleweed’s body was pinned between the wall and the car, the upper half of his torso splayed out facedown on the smoking hood. Blood splattered the white brick walls around him.

  Shell-shocked, Steve’s first thought somehow flashed to his past, playing in his band, looking out at the crowd where he laid eyes on his soon-to-be girlfriend. They smiled at each other.

  Then he remembered Pancho had been leaning against that wall, pretty much right where Tumbleweed’s bloody body was located.

  And the big man still was. Pancho had somehow avoided the crash—or rather the crash had avoided him. It was almost like the car had passed through him.

  But Tumbleweed was not so lucky.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Steve stood outside, frozen and shocked, watching the carnage unfold around him. Spectators started to spring up to see what was going on. A group of yogis came from across the street, their session having gotten out just as the crash happened. The group of yoga-pants-wearing girls hugged and cried and consoled one another. A man coming out of Buddy’s Diner put his hand over his young son’s face to protect the boy’s innocence and shield him from the blood.

  It didn’t take long for harsh sirens to split the air, for an ambulance, fire engine, and cop car to arrive on the scene. The ambulance went to the driver first, who was unconscious, and threw her in the back of the van. Then they laid out Tumbleweed on the sidewalk—or what was left of him—and draped a sheet over him.

  Once the yellow tape was up and a detective arrived at the scene, Steve was the first person questioned. The detective was named Gary Richmond. He was a stern, stout fellow with the classic detective accoutrements: a thick mustache that accosted his upper lip like a hairy slug, and a very Law and Order-ish trench coat. The man asked Steve all sorts of questions: “Where was the driver coming from? Did you see anything suspicious in the street, prior to the accident? What did you do immediately after the crash? Would you like to come down to the office and talk some more? No, well here’s my card in case you can think of anything.”

  Steve took Detective Richmond’s card and stared at it like it was from a different galaxy. He was still in shock and, not knowing what else to do, he put the card in his jacket pocket.

  Finally, Dale put his arms around Steve and guided him toward the studio.

  Once inside, Steve’s hands started shaking uncontrollably. He sat on the couch in the lobby, still wide-eyed and stunned. Dale handed him a cup of coffee, presumably to calm him down, but Steve just shook his head. His heart was beating a thousand times a minute and he didn’t need coffee to bump that rate up to a million.

  “If I drink that,” Steve explained, “the coroners will be bringing two bodies to the morgue.”

  Dale nodded. With an uncharacteristically somber voice, he said, “That was gnarly, man. So gnarly.”

  “How did Tumbleweed’s buddy not get hit?” Steve wondered. “I swear he was standing right where that car crashed into the wall.”

  Dale put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “That’s the second time you’ve said that, man. What buddy are you talking about?”

  “Pancho,” Steve said, as if that explained it.

  “There was only one guy in the alley, man.”

  Steve’s eyes shot over to Dale’s face. Dale looked concerned and was staring at Steve like his brain had been scrambled.

  Steve shook his head. “No—”

  “Look, you’ve just witnessed a traumatic event. You’re probably just experiencing PTSD or something,” Doctor Dale explained. “Your adrenaline’s making your brain go haywire.”

  Annabel shuffled into the lobby from the hallway.

  Steve turned to her and asked, “Did you see him? Pancho, I mean.”

  Frowning, Annabel shook her head slowly, like she felt guilty her answer would disappoint Steve.

&nbs
p; What the hell is going on with me?

  Steve eyed the steaming coffee in front of him. He didn’t feel like drinking it, but he did feel like drinking something. That meant there was only one thing for him to do.

  He dug into his pocket for his phone and looked at the screen. It was almost noon.

  There was a meeting down the street starting in about fifteen minutes.

  He pushed a couple buttons and held the phone to his ear. Dale and Annabel watched him worriedly as he put in the call.

  A moment later, Steve said, “Henry, it’s me. Yeah, look man, some bad shit just went down and I’m trying to hit a meeting. Are you in? I’ll tell you all about it at the Club.”

  The Club was the shorthand code name for the North Shore Alano Club, a members-only halfway house that held Alcoholics Anonymous meetings every day. It was just down the street from Steve’s studio, near the beach.

  He hung up the phone and stood on wobbly legs. “I’ll be back,” he said, and started for the door.

  “I’m sorry,” a small voice from behind Steve said.

  Steve stopped in the doorway. He turned and faced Annabel. “What are you sorry about?”

  Her fingers fidgeting, she said, “That I might have killed your friend.”

  Baffled, Steve furrowed his brow. He opened his mouth to say something, then decided against it and pushed right out the door.

  STEVE MET UP WITH HENRY at the Alano Club. He parked his beat-up Lexus around the side of the ugly yellow building and saw Henry coming over from across the street. Other people were starting to file in for the twelve o’clock meeting, some of them smoking outside in preparation.

  Steve joined the smokers.

  Henry was Steve’s sponsor—first name only. He had hair as long as an afternoon in the summertime and wore a wrinkled Grateful Dead shirt with the sleeves cut off to exhibit his bulging biceps. He was a lawyer and the first guy Steve had approached after his first meeting, so he became Steve’s sponsor.

  The smokers stubbed their cigarettes out and piled in through the door, Henry and Steve the last to follow.

  “You look like death,” Henry told Steve as they walked toward the meeting room.

  “Probably because I just stared death in the face,” Steve responded.

  Henry looked alarmingly at Steve, but Steve simply said, “You’ll hear about it in the meeting.”

  “Well, I’m glad you called. How far along are you now?”

  “Day three-forty-four.”

  They came to a small room that smelled like powerful coffee and stale nicotine, and the ten meeting-goers sat on couches against the walls and straight-backed seats in the middle of the room. Contrary to popular belief, AA meetings weren’t all therapeutic circle-jerks—meaning everyone didn’t sit around in a circle and hold hands while espousing their woes. These were everyday people, sometimes doctors and lawyers even, who needed a place to talk about their experiences and lives, while sometimes sending a positive message to newly arriving alcoholics; it doesn’t need to be this way.

  A man sitting on an old musty couch at the head of the room started the meeting and began reading “How it Works”—the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

  “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path . . .” he began, and by this time Steve never failed to tune the speaker out. “How it Works” was the same thing every time, and after a few hundred meetings it started to get redundant. But it wasn’t for the benefit of Steve—a seasoned alcoholic veteran—it was for the benefit of the newcomers, the people crawling in by the skin of their teeth, the people knocking on death’s door.

  Steve and Henry sat in the back of the room. Steve turned to Henry and whispered in his ear, “Someone crashed into the diner next to my studio and killed a homeless guy. Almost crashed into me, too.”

  “Hot damn,” Henry whispered back. “When?”

  “Twenty minutes ago.”

  “Shhh,” a man interjected from the side, sitting on a la-Z-boy. Steve turned to the guy, who had bright red hair, a beard to match, and freckles dotting his face like a plague, and shrugged.

  “And it made you want to drink?” Henry asked.

  “Of fucking course it did! That among other things . . .”

  “Other things?”

  “Do you want to share, sir? Since it seems like you have so much to say?”

  The leader was staring angrily at Steve, and the other nine heads in the room spun around and faced him, too, as if he were a prisoner stepping up to the gallows. Steve hadn’t realized the “How it Works” speech was over, and the leader had already shared his story.

  “Uh, sure,” Steve said. “What’s the topic?” he asked.

  “Alcoholism,” the leader said. A couple people sniggered.

  It was a bit vague, but it was also the go-to statement when a leader had shared but hadn’t really picked a topic. It was one of the many annoying cliché sayings of Alcoholics Anonymous. Some other gems included: “One Day at a Time,” “Let Go and Let God,” “Progress not Perfection,” “Keep the Plug in the Jug,” and “If You Stick Around the Barbershop Long Enough, Sooner or Later You’re Gonna Get Your Hair Cut.”

  Steve panicked for a moment, as he usually did before he had to speak and realized he had nothing to say. Then he decided to answer Henry’s question while satisfying the leader’s interjection, all at the same time.

  “My dad died recently. It was a car crash or something like that. I don’t know all the details. We were never close. It didn’t really make me want to drink—well, that’s a lie, it kind of did.”

  People chuckled.

  “But then today, less than an hour ago, actually, a homeless guy who stays around my shop got smooshed by a car. It was a bad accident. I’m wondering what it is about cars killing people I know—is there some connection? I don’t know. I’m all shaken up. I didn’t know what to do, so I came here . . .”

  “You came to the right place,” a man exclaimed. That was another common phrase.

  “I mean, I’m almost a year sober—three hundred and forty-four days, to be exact—”

  People started clapping and snapping their fingers.

  “—And I don’t want to drink. That’s all I know. I was bad before, and I’m better now”—Steve looked up from the ground with a fearful expression on his face—“well, not better, I mean I’m still an alcoholic and this disease doesn’t discriminate . . . I’m not cured—”

  “We understand what you mean,” the leader said gently.

  “Okay. Better now than I was before. That’s what I meant. Anyway, it just sucks. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone get killed right in front of me before. But I’m glad to be around people who are as fucked-up as me.” He paused, realizing he could have phrased that a bit more sensitively, then continued, “So thank you for being here and keeping me sober one more day.”

  He didn’t know what else to say, so he just stopped there.

  Someone said, “Keep coming back!” and he received a participatory round of applause from the room. Then someone else started speaking and Steve’s thoughts immediately drifted. He tried to listen when he could, he really did, but his head was just in too many places right now.

  Whatever. He’d shown up. That’s all he could do, right?

  He couldn’t stop thinking about what Annabel had said right before he left. It was so ominous, eerie, and downright freaky it was starting to scare him.

  “I’m sorry that I might have killed your friend.”

  Was that supposed to be a joke? In that situation?

  No, Annabel didn’t seem like the joking type.

  Steve needed a cigarette. Bad. The one prior to the meeting hadn’t satiated his cancerous need. He got up from his seat and waltzed out of the meeting room—it was frowned upon, leaving during the middle of someone’s share, but what were people going to do—not let him leave? Fight him? Hmm, this was PB, so careful what you wish for and all that. But he was a grown-ass man an
d could make his own life choices.

  Outside on the stoop, he lit up and stared off toward the ocean, which was just three blocks down the road. It was still a brilliantly sunny day in San Diego. And he was still alive.

  Look at the bright side.

  Then he frowned and shook his head.

  Poor Tumbleweed . . .

  Someone had joined him outside without him noticing. He felt the person’s presence. Turning, he gave an inward groan as he realized it was not Henry, like he’d hoped. It was the fiery-headed ginger who had shushed him during the meeting.

  “Sound like y’been through the wringer, mate.” He had an authentic Irish accent, which Steve had not been expecting. The surprise must have shown on his face, because the man started chuckling. He lit up a cigarette and stuck a pale, freckled hand out. Steve shook it.

  “Name’s Aiden.”

  “Steve.”

  “Pleasure, Steve.”

  Aiden was a short man, much shorter than Steve—just a few inches over five feet. He looked like a grown man, but one that had suddenly stopped growing one day, out of the blue. Like a sunflower that hadn’t been watered properly. He also had an angry voice—or maybe that was just the accent—and Steve thought it probably came from the unfairness of his height situation.

  Steve had a tendency to make up stories about people he’d just met, regardless if his musings were true or not. In this case, Aiden was an angry little Napoleonic ginger.

  “I’ve lost everything too, y’know,” Aiden said.

  Steve tilted his head. “I haven’t lost everything . . .”

  “But I always get it all back,” Aiden continued, ignoring Steve’s comment. He smiled wistfully and showed two rows of big, pearly white teeth. “Ya just got to stay on your side of the street and keep it clean, yeah?”

  Steve nodded. He thought that meant not to get in other people’s business . . . but Aiden was currently getting in his business, so he wasn’t so sure if that’s what he meant.

  Aiden lifted his cigarette to his mouth and winked. “And watch out for the shadows in the alleys, if ya get my meaning.”