“Nice,” I said. It was inadequate.

“I took just about the first thing the agent showed me,” he said. “I just wanted someplace quiet.” He watched a red-tailed hawk wheel overhead a moment, then went on. “Look, I’d like to stay here tonight while you get settled in, but I have dinner plans, and actresses can be touchy about things like broken dates.”

“My, an actress. Aren’t you something?”

“Hey,” he said, “I’m gonna ask you to think twice about how you talk to someone who walked away from a meeting with two very big record label executives to drive across town to the Greyhound station to collect your stranded ass.”

“I know,” I said, chastened.

He smiled at me in the old way I remembered, eyes crinkling. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “It’s going to be good, having you around.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but it’s only for a while, until I get on my feet.”

“No hurry,” CJ said.

“No, I understand that you bought this place so you could have some privacy,” I said.

He looked at me as if I’d said something incomprehensible, and said, “Not from you.”

I lived with CJ a month, long enough to find three part-time jobs-none of them particularly interesting or challenging, but the checks cashed fine. When I’d saved enough, I put down money on a tiny studio in town. CJ tried to talk me out of leaving, and I was reluctant, too, but I couldn’t have a life that was just an offshoot of his. And I wasn’t going far, just down into the city. So he yielded and helped me move.

I wouldn’t realize until later-when I had to leave-how much Los Angeles had gotten under my skin. Mostly I’d sat out the longstanding Love L.A./Hate L.A. debate. When I’d chosen to go there after leaving West Point, my decision had been fairly arbitrary. I didn’t have roots in Lompoc anymore. Julianne had moved away during my plebe year at West Point, and even the Mooneys, CJ’s parents, had done something quintessentially Californian: They’d sold their real estate at a profit and bought a bigger, cheaper place out of state, in Nevada’s Washoe Valley. But L.A. was the nearest big city to where I’d grown up. My feeling had been, I suppose if I’m from anywhere, I’m from here.