‘Where did you say you were from?’ the man asked. As Suko answered, gentle fingers did something exciting to the inside of his thigh, through his ripped black jeans. The blond man’s voice was without accent, almost without inflection.

Of course, no one in LA had an accent. Everyone was from somewhere else, but they all strove to hide it, as if they’d slid from the womb craving flavoured mineral water and sushi on Melrose. But Suko had met no one else who spoke like this man. His voice was soft and low, nearly a monotone. To Suko it was soothing; any kind of quiet aimed at him was soothing after the circuses of Patpong and Sunset Boulevard, half a world apart but cut from the same bright cacophonous cloth. Cities of angels: yeah, right. Fallen angels.

They pulled up in front of a shabby apartment building that looked as if it had been modelled after a cardboard box some time in the 1950s. The man — Justin, Suko remembered, his name was Justin — paid the cab driver but didn’t tip. The cab gunned away from the curb, tires squealing rudely on the cracked asphalt. Justin stumbled backwards and bumped into Suko. ‘Sorry.’

‘Hey, no problem.’ That was still a mouthful — his tongue just naturally wanted to rattle off a mai pen rai — but Suko got all the syllables out. Justin smiled, the first time he’d done so since introducing himself. His long skinny fingers closed around Suko’s wrist.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘It’s safer if we go in the back way.’

They walked around the corner of the building, under an iron stairwell and past some garbage cans that fairly shimmered with the odour of decay. Suko’s foot hit something soft. He looked down, stopped, and backed into Justin. A young black man lay among the stinking cans, his head propped at a painful angle against the wall, his legs sprawled wide.