The Night Crew

of you to mention it,’’ Anna said.
    The manager was a chunky square-faced Iranian with a black beard and an accent that combined Detroit and Esfahan: ‘‘Ain’t my building. And the owner’s an asshole. Why should he get the kid’s cash?’’
    ‘‘Right on, brother,’’ Anna said.

seven

    A long bad day, and still not over.
    On the way home, Anna stopped at a traffic light on Santa Monica, and her eyes drifted to a Mobil station on the corner.
    A man was washing the windshield on a Volvo station wagon, at a self-serve pump. He was wearing jeans and a loose, wide-sleeved white cotton shirt, like might be advertised in The New Yorker —Sea Island cotton, like that.
    The instant she saw him—his hair thinner, maybe lighter, maybe speckled with white, a few pounds heavier, but the way his hands connected to his body, something almost indefinable—the very instant she saw him, she thought:
    Clark.
    She slid down in her seat, but couldn’t tear her eyes from him. He finished with the squeegee, turned and deftly flipped the squeegee stick back toward a water can hung on the side of the gas pump. The sponge end of the stick hit and slipped perfectly through the hole in the water can: exactly as she’d seen him do it fifty times before.
    ‘‘Oh my God,’’ she said aloud.
    A car behind her honked, and her eyes snapped up to the rearview mirror, then down to the traffic light. Green. She automatically sent the car through the intersection, then pulled over and turned.
    The Volvo was still there, but Clark had gone inside. A moment later, he came back out, slipping his wallet into his pocket, climbed in the car, turned on the lights, eased into the cross street, then zipped across Santa Monica and headed the other way.
    She thought about following him.
    Thought too long, and he was gone.
    Clark.
    She drove home on autopilot, random thoughts, images and memories scrambling over each other like rats. She stuck the car in the narrow garage, slipped sideways past the front fender into the house and, without turning on the lights, went to the phone.
    She had messages waiting on the answering service: she ignored them, and dialed Cheryl Burns in Eugene, Oregon. She mumbled the number to herself as she poked it into the handset, praying that Cheryl would be in her shop. She was: she answered on the first ring. ‘‘Hello, Pacifica Pottery . . .’’
    ‘‘Cheryl? This is Anna.’’
    ‘‘Anna!’’ Pleasure at the other end. They got together every year or so, when Cheryl and her husband brought a load of their wood-fired pots from Oregon down to the L.A. basin. In between visits, they talked on the phone, once every two or three months. Anna and Cheryl shared one of the close connections that time and distance didn’t seem to affect. ‘‘How are you? How is everything?’’
    ‘‘Sort of messy right now,’’ Anna said, thinking about Clark. ‘‘A guy I work with . . . was murdered.’’
    ‘‘Not Creek!’’
    ‘‘No. A guy named Jason, he was a college kid we used part-time, you don’t know him.’’ Awkward segue: ‘‘Listen, what do you hear from Clark?’’
    There was an empty heartbeat there, then an almost masculine chuckle: ‘‘Uh-oh. Are you seeing him again?’’
    ‘‘Not seeing him, but I just saw him,’’ Anna said. ‘‘At a gas station. He’s here in L.A. I saw him on Santa Monica.’’
    ‘‘I know. He called and asked for your phone number, last month sometime. I didn’t give it to him.’’
    ‘‘He called! Why didn’t you tell me?’’
    ‘‘Because you messed each other up so bad the first two times. I didn’t want the responsibility.’’
    ‘‘Cheryl,’’ Anna said, pushing hair up her forehead in exasperation, ‘‘I can take care of myself.’’
    ‘‘No, you can’t.’’ In her mind’s eye, Anna could see her shaking her head. ‘‘Not with Clark . . .’’
    ‘‘Damn it, Cheryl . . .’’
    ‘‘. . . But I saved his L.A. address and phone number in case you called and wanted it,’’ Cheryl said, with a teasing tone. ‘‘I had the feeling you might hook up. Cosmic vibrations, I guess.’’
    A little jolt, there. Pleasure? ‘‘What’s he doing here?’’
    ‘‘He’s got an artist-in-residence gig with UCLA. Composition. Two years, he said, so . . . he’ll be around.’’ Another dead space, then Cheryl again. ‘‘Well? You want his number?’’
    ‘‘I don’t know.’’
    ‘‘I better go get it . . . then you can