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spoke glibly—that it would be this easy between us always, or close to this easy. Of course it would. But, the problem was, easy wasn’t the word that had caused me distress.
    It was the always .
    A small, inexplicable part of me was scared, right from the start—of counting on someone, of trusting that he’d always be there for me—as much it was exactly what another part of me wanted.
    And I wondered how I had gotten here.

4
    I t wasn’t the next night, but the night after that when I decided I’d keep my promise to Jordan: I’d rejoin the land of the living. A little after five, I turned on the radio, took a piping-hot shower, and put on my makeup. Movement seemed key, so I didn’t stop to think about any of it too much. Hair drying and brushing, dangly earrings on. It felt a little like watching a video of myself when I caught a glance of my face in the mirror: Hello, aren’t you someone I used to know?
    Picking out something to wear turned out to be easier than anticipated, because I hadn’t done laundry since Nick ’s exit and there were precisely two articles of clothing left hanging in our closet: a hot-pink kimono that I had gotten at a flea market in Camden Town, which, among its other problems—like the fact that it was a hot-pink kimono—was two sizes too small. And then there was my yellow dress. Wrapped in dry-cleaner’s plastic: protected, ready. I usually reserved it for weddings or black-tie events, as I lived in fear of ruining it. It was my magic dress, as Jordan called it. The kind of dress that makes you four inches taller and ten pounds lighter, and makes your boobs look bigger. In this lifetime, if we are lucky, we each get one.
    And that night it was all I had.
    I sat down on my bed to put on my red, strappy peep-toes and to figure out where I could go that I’d be dressed somewhat appropriately. My usual bar, down on Abbot Kinney, didn’t feel like a candidate. The fanciest person in there would be wearing a clean T-shirt.
    So I decided I would drive down Ocean Avenue into Santa Monica, head to one of my favorite local escapes: a small, fancy hotel on the beach where I could sit at one of the tables on the patio, one of the five tables that gives you a view of the nicest sunset you’ve ever seen. A view that could send you a hundred miles away from anything resembling real life.
    This was the plan: a removal from real life. For the evening, at least. Until I fell asleep before putting the plan into action. Right there, on the bottom half of the bed, in my magic dress.
    I don’t remember lying down. But, when I woke up, I had one peep-toe sandal half on, my magic dress was wrinkled, and it was 12:21 A.M., which may as well have been 4:00 A.M., Los Angeles time. Most everything was shut down for the night, or well on its way to getting there. Including my beach-fancy hotel restaurant and bar. I got up anyway, grabbed my other sandal, and—before I could talk myself out of it—picked up my car keys and headed out the front door. Maybe part of it was that I wanted to be able to tell Jordan I did something constructive, or maybe it had less to do with Jordan than I understood even then, some force I couldn’t explain already at work.
    All I know is that when I walked into the restaurant and saw those twelve-foot windows leading out to the beach and the ocean and the rest of everything, it didn’t matter that the lights were down, and that the place was empty, the patio furniture long put away, the music—Bruce Springsteen’s “The Fever,” I believed—on low. Or that the sole living person still inside was a guy with curly hair: standing behind the bar, wiping it down.
    The problem was that the guy with the curly hair behind the bar wasn’t the normal bartender—the one who I’d become friendly with over the years, friendly enough that Nick and I had helped him read through lines one night for a sitcom audition he had the next day—and who I guessed was my best shot of