“No,” I said. “I’m not going to finish.”

“Are you serious? Baby, what happened?”

“A lot of people wash out,” I said tiredly. “I warned you about that before I went. Do we have to talk about it?”

“No.”

“I’m okay. I’ll be okay.”

“I know you will,” he said finally. “Sure you will.”

I’m not sure what I was expecting from the place that CJ, with his newfound wealth, would call home. Maybe a retro-Rat-Pack condo with a wet bar, or a beach house in Malibu.

Instead, he drove us up into the hills outside the city, an ascent so steep and fast it reminded me of taking off in a plane, to an area of no particular repute, where acres of land separated the houses and amateur spray paint on the road warned: SLOW! CHILDREN AND ANIMALS. On the way, his cell phone rang so incessantly that he finally shut it off.

His driveway wasn’t even paved, and as we pulled up in a cloud of dust, I looked curiously at the home he’d chosen. It wasn’t big, but somehow rambling, built of weathered wood, with old sash windows with little scrapes on them from many cleanings. A live oak tree bent toward the roof as though it wanted to enfold the whole house. There was a deck with a hot tub in it, but no landscaping. The grass that surrounded the house was natural. A Volkswagen Corrado, clearly in mid-repair, stood at a small distance. I observed all this with a growing sense of familiarity.

For as shy as he’d been about bringing people to the Mooney home of his adolescence, CJ had chosen to re-create it here. It wasn’t until I’d known the adult CJ awhile that I understood. He had to live a certain kind of life down in the city: the velvet-rope-and-VIP-room life, riding in Navigators with the talent and their entourages, getting drive-thru from In-N-Out Burger after midnight and washing it down with Cristal. But when he was ready to buy a home, CJ chose a place where he could be who he really was: someone who listened to baseball games on the radio while working on cars with his hands.