"Why not?"

Chapter 10

"Because he's ... difficult." He pauses. "Or don't you know that by now?"

I lean into Julian, my voice lowered. "There are people staking out this apartment, Julian. There are cars on Elevado watching this place at night. There are people breaking in and going through my stuff. I get texts warning me about shit and I don't even know what shit they're warning me about but I think they're all connected to ... " And suddenly I can't say it: your girlfriend. All I can say is "Don't lie to me. I know you're still together."

Julian slowly offers a small and noncommittal shrug. "Well, if you stop seeing her maybe the rest will stop." He considers something else. "If you don't want to see her anymore and you don't want to help her, then maybe all of that stuff will stop." He reaches for the water again. "Maybe this wasn't thought out enough. Maybe there were too many ... I don't know ... variables ... that I didn't know about."

A long silence before I say, "You're leaving something out."

"What am I leaving out?" He seems genuinely curious.

"One of the variables."

"Which one?" He almost seems afraid to ask this.

"I like her."

Julian sighs and starts to sit up. "Clay - "

"And I don't really care what other shit is going down."

"Do you really like her, Clay?" Julian asks sadly. "Or do you like something else?"

"What does that mean, Julian?"

"You've been through this before," he says, carefully choosing his words. "You know what this town is like. What did you expect? You barely know her. She's an actress."

"I'm listening to you? You're running an escort service and I'm listening to you?"

Julian sighs again. "I was just doing favors. It was small time. Come off it. Don't be so naive."

"You're pimping your girlfriend out and you're telling me shit like that?"

"Okay, look, I can see where you're at. I can see where this is all going. I just wanted to say I'm sorry." He gets up and leans on the back of the sectional for support. "I should have known that you'd react this way. I thought you would have found it, I don't know, fun ... that, y'know, you'd get something out of it and, well, she'd get something out of it and you wouldn't take it so seriously."

"That's why you were so interested in the movie, isn't it?" I say. "Because you wanted me to give your girlfriend a part?"

"Well, yeah." Julian pauses. "We thought it might work. But if you're not going to see her anymore we'll just call it quits."

"That might have to be adjusted."

"What do you mean?"

"Because I'm seeing her tonight," I say.

"I know you are," Julian says. "Because you're still going to help her, right?"

The last time Rain sees Amanda Flew is on the Sunday following the night when I stood outside of the apartment on Orange Grove and, according to Rain, Amanda spends that night in her room and everything is "fine," though because of what I saw that night, I know everything was not "fine," and that something had happened that was pushing Amanda out of town. Amanda is supposed to leave the next day to stay with Mike and Kyle in Palm Springs and just "chill" for a couple of weeks but because she sleeps late and is scattered by the reasons she has to leave L.A. she doesn't get out of the apartment on Orange Grove until after dark. Rain never wanted Amanda - a girl she has now described to me as "too trusting" - to make this drive alone, and definitely not at night, and definitely not with twenty thousand dollars in cash in one of the gym bags she's carrying, but Amanda insists to the point where she's soon threatening not to go at all, so Rain and the two guys in Palm Springs tell Amanda that the only way this will work is if Amanda makes contact with them every ten minutes whether it's with Rain or with Mike and Kyle at the house in the desert, and Amanda agrees and leaves Orange Grove at 8:45 and doesn't call Rain until she's passing through downtown L.A. at 9:15. After this initial call things seem to fall apart fairly quickly.

From about 9:30 until 10:00 Amanda doesn't answer her phone. A call is made to the house in Palm Springs around 10:15 and Amanda sounds calm and tells Mike and Kyle that she's going to be later than she thought, that she's meeting someone at a coffee shop in Riverside but it's cool, and not to tell Rain. Apparently, neither Rain nor Mike nor Kyle thinks this is cool and Mike immediately starts driving to the coffee shop in Riverside. The next call to Kyle is at eleven and Amanda says she's not in Riverside anymore but has driven to Temecula. Kyle calls Mike and warns him that she's not in Riverside, and Amanda doesn't answer any of Rain's calls or texts - This is totally f**ked, one of them reads, you're going to die - and an argument ensues about calling 911 and then is quickly dropped, and according to a waitress Mike talks to at the coffee shop in Riverside, Amanda had met two men at the entrance of the coffee shop and Amanda even kissed one of them on the cheek, though the waitress couldn't get a clear view of the one Amanda had kissed. The last call is made an hour later and Amanda is explaining to Kyle that she'll see him tomorrow, even after Kyle has warned her that Mike's leaving Riverside and on his way to Temecula. At this point someone takes the phone from Amanda and listens as Kyle starts shouting for Amanda to tell him exactly where she is, and Kyle can hear Amanda in the background whining, "Come on, stop it, give me back the phone, come on."