AFTER GETTING THROWN OUT of the yacht club, I spent the afternoon and early evening at Jean Claude’s, starting to feel foolish. I was willing to blame John Sewell for genocide and global warming and every crime that incredibly stiff white men had committed since the Civil War, but I couldn’t prove he’d done anything that had led to the death of my friend. Jean was right in her own way. However great a father I’d been for the last eight years, it didn’t erase the years before that.

At about six o’clock, Jean Claude—who had a pretty good sense of when I required his intervention—came out to sit beside me. He didn’t speak for a while, just sipped his espresso. This was how he often drew me out: by sitting companionably beside me while my thoughts formed. The fact was that there had been many times when neither of us spoke, and my French friend seemed as pleased with those meetings as the ones when we talked.

“You think I should give up on finding out what happened to Terry?” I finally asked him.

“Did something happen to Terry?” Jean Claude said. “I thought that he was dead.”

“Please don’t give me the whole existential bit,” I said. “Because I can go to fucking Starbucks.”

“As a Frenchman, I’m supposed to think that Americans are fucked up about sex,” Jean Claude said. “But you’re much more fucked up about death. You’ll drop your fear of sex in a heartbeat if it helps you forget your fear of death.”

“And your point is what?”

“You want to destroy the entire planet because your best friend left you alone. Because he’s dead and he’s never going to come back. And he’s not going to be an angel in heaven, either. He’s not even going to hell. Because there is no hell or heaven.”

“Like I said, your point?”

“I’m not in A.A.,” Jean Claude said. “I could live a hundred more lifetimes, and I would never be in A.A. If you want me to, I will close the shop right now, put you in my car, and drive you up to L.A., where I will show you ways to hurt yourself that you can’t even imagine. We will drink and fuck our way across the state in such an epic fashion that they will write songs about us. And then, after a week or so, we can come back down and resume our boringly productive lives.”

I looked at him to see if he was serious. I believed he was. “I love you, too,” I said.

Jean Claude stood up from the table and seemed mildly perturbed as he took away my espresso cup. I decided that I would go home.

As I turned up Bluebird Canyon, I got a call from Emma, who was supposed to be back at my house with Troy, trying to figure out a way to organize my files. I had promised them twenty dollars an hour if they could make an improvement. It seemed like a job that Troy could handle and Emma couldn’t hurt.

“I’m almost there,” I said.

“Well, that’s good,” Emma said. “Because I’m not.”

I pulled over. I would need all my attention to coax her back from Recon. “Where are you?” I said. “I’ll come pick you up.”

“I’ve got a night’s worth of work ahead. No bivouac for me.”

“Are you … outside?”

“Define ‘outside’?”

“Are you roaming the county on foot,” I said, “tempting fate?”

“Yes,” she said. “That’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m giving fate a come-hither look.”

“Where the fuck do you go at night? Are you trying to get raped?”

“Why? Do you want to rape me?”

I laughed.

“That’s funny?” she said.

“No,” I said. “You’re funny. You’re so used to being the most fucked-up person in any room. But you forget that when you’re talking to me, I’m the most fucked-up person.”

She laughed. “That’s why I report to you.”

“Are you looking for Simon?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Because you know I want to help you with that,” I said. “I’d like to find him, too.”

By now I thought I had a sense of when Emma would hang up, but this time she didn’t. I waited without speaking while she continued to not hang up.

“I really didn’t fuck Terry,” she said. “I’m not sure why I want you to know that.”

Thank God for small favors. “You want me to know that you loved him,” I said, “the way we all did. Because you’re starting to realize that we—your pals in A.A.—are the only real friends you have left. Which is why you don’t have to roam the countryside at night. You can just come back to my house and hate the fact that you depend on us as much as we hate the fact that we depend on you.”

For a minute, she didn’t say anything. Then she hung up.

Why was it so hard to believe that Terry had destroyed his life all on his own, pure and simple? There were still too many things I didn’t like, besides John Sewell and his insurance policy. Something about the recovery house scheme didn’t sit right with me. And why was this Simon Busansky character missing in action? Why had Mutt Kelly parked outside my house? Who had made that call to Cathy? Who was the business partner who so preoccupied Terry during the birth of the child he’d always wanted? And why, when he had a woman like Cathy to come home to, was he doing anything but coming home to her?

A woman to come home to. I pulled a U-turn in front of my house and headed back toward PCH. It was almost time for MP’s Friday-evening yoga class.

I turned in to the shopping center above Pacific Coast Highway and parked in one of the slots. Eventually, MP’s borrowed white Volvo parked a few spaces away. She stayed in the car, which I decided meant she wanted me to walk over. But just as I opened my door, she got out and approached my passenger window.

She was wearing her yoga togs and a pair of Chinese slip-ons. I felt a down-low tingle that was half fear and half lust.

“I think I’ve missed this truck as much as I’ve missed you,” she said.

“Great,” I said.

She smiled. She had thin lips that puffed up whenever I kissed her long and hard. She reached through the window and took my hand, which was awkward because there was an empty seat between us.

“This truck is who you are, Randy. Almost everything that happens to you happens in this truck.”

“Almost everything.”

When she got in, she put her hand on my shoulder. “Can I just tell you something? Can I tell you one thing?”

“I want you to come home.”

“I know that,” she said.

“Then why don’t you?”

She looked down. “Can I say what I wanted to say? Maybe it will help.”

I nodded.

“I used to wake up in the middle of the night”—MP moved her hand a little farther up my arm—“and feel like my heart had exploded. I’d lie there breathing hard, and I couldn’t imagine how I was still alive. I thought that God was punishing me. I mean, at the end of the day, my name is Mary Pat Donnelly, and I’ve got all the baggage that goes with that kind of name. I thought I was going to hell, that I would spend eternity being cut off from the people I love. You don’t think it was a big deal, the stuff I did when I was drinking, but this would happen to me every night. Do you want to know how it finally stopped?”

Hoping that she wouldn’t let go of my arm, I nodded again.

“Do you really?” The rims of her eyes were watery. “You have to really want to know. Because I’ve never told anyone before.”

“I do,” I said. “I really want to know.”

“The first few times we slept together,” MP said, “I was still having those awful nights. And then the last time it happened, I woke up and looked at you sleeping next to me. I saw your back. Your head on the pillow. I listened to your snoring. And you know what I thought?”

“Please,” I said. “Tell me.”

“I thought, If a man like this could love me, then God must love me, too.”

And then she kissed my hand. And then she walked into All People’s Yoga.

Here’s another thing you learn in A.A.: when the drunk loses the woman he loves, you know you’re not at the end of the story. You know it’s going to get much worse.