Dear Ada,

I'll write more often, I promise. I've been incredibly busy. We moved to a new place in Venice. It wasn't much work, we don't have much stuff. But we had three gigs this week. We're all waiting tables or working two part-time jobs. And we have to audition, and when we have a gig we have to load up and go to the club and set up and play and tear it down and come home. And we practice three or four times a week, in an old warehouse (the noise). I haven't written more because I'm dog tired. Sometimes I fall asleep in the middle of writing you and the next thing I know the alarm goes off and I have to go to work. I'm sorry. I think about you every day, and I miss you all the time. It feels strange, being without you. "Being" without you doesn't feel like being at all, more like a shadow existence. But this has been my dream since I was eight, and I have to do it.

There are a lot of clubs, but there are a lot of bands, too, and it's cutthroat. Sometimes when we go to audition and they find out where we're from, they get a blank look and it's "Don't call us, we'll call you," they think we're hicks, the door in their faces closes and we're back on the pavement before we've played a note. I've never liked this side of the business, and it's probably worse here than anywhere on the planet, but it's the only way I'm ever going to make a living with my music, so I just bear up and try again.

I think you'll like L.A. There's a lot of unusual architecture and odd little neighborhoods you never would expect. It's not all homogenized, the way people think, although much of it is. There's the beach, which you would like, and the mountains, too. And the desert. You'll love the desert. Joshua Tree. It's austere.

I'm not home much, except to sleep. But a couple of times I've walked down to the beach and looked out over the ocean and watched the sun set. Lots of clouds, every kind of cloud. Puffy, streaky, you name it. And every color, including some I don't have names for. Greens and pinks and oranges and reds and blues. I watch the sun go down and I think of you.

Ada, I miss you. It's like the things I've read about a phantom limb, because I've lost my arm, and all that's left is the dull throb of its absence. I go to sleep thinking about you, and I wake up thinking about you. I remember your face, and your thin arms and hands and fingers. I remember your hair, and your pale skin, and the way that pale skin makes your lips look red, and the way you blush. I remember the birthmark on your knee. I remember how thin you are, and I worry that you don't eat enough. I remember the way you look at each bite of food before you eat it, as if you were going to ask it a question. Even without your letters I would remember your handwriting, straight up and down, not leaning to either side. I remember the way you push the toe of your right shoe against the inside of your left shoe when you're trying to choose exactly the right word. I remember the distant look in your eyes sometimes, as if you have a private world. I remember the way you look right at people. I remember the way strands of your hair come loose and hang over your ear, or beside your temples. Ada. I can hardly bear it, I miss you so. I never thought being apart would be so painful.

Look at this. I'm writing cliches. It's so corny you could boil it and eat it on the cob. But I know you understand. I know you do.

It's embarrassing to re-read this letter. I have to mail it now, I'm tempted to tear it up and try to write something more polished. You must know how I feel. I think you feel the same. Nothing can come between us if we just have faith in each other. I believe -- no, I know that we're destined to be together for life. There's more to say, but I have to mail this before I lose my nerve.

Love,

Wyatt

P.S. before I forget: Send me another picture of yourself. The one I have is smudged.

P.P.S. I can't wait to see you.

The country was huge, the numbers on the map incomprehensible. She still thought in kilometers, but even if the distances had been in kilometers the scale was unimaginable. Vast fields of corn, wheat, soybeans. Empty grasslands with nothing but an occasional windbreak, a few meadowlarks, no animals, not a human in sight except in other automobiles, and one solitary tractor. Ecclesiastic processions of clouds in an infinite sky. This was only the beginning. They had been driving since dawn, it was afternoon and they were still in Kansas. The driver, Dean, rarely spoke, staring straight ahead, his hands on the wheel. Ada was settling into the rhythm. The trick was to consign herself to the boredom of the road.

The panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas passed, and they were in New Mexico. First there was more nothing, then mountains and wastelands of rock and canyons, and mountain passes filled with pine trees and granite, sandstone and more sandstone, moonlight, a stream falling down on the right. Inhuman distances. Bleak towns with dust blowing through them and stoplights hanging above an intersection, swinging in the wind, in the middle of night. Neon signs. Everything looked manufactured -- the gas stations, the bridges, the roads -- as if made by machines. Humans were rarely to be seen.

They slept overnight in the car sitting up. The second day they reached Las Vegas. Dean made a detour to show her the Strip. She could not understand what she was seeing -- the architecture, the lights. All this, for gambling? She was astonished that large sums of money would be spent to make such grotesque monuments to waste.

They went into a casino. It was filled with bright lights and loud strange sounds, and people in every kind of clothing from sweatpants to tuxedos. They stood in line for a cheap buffet, inching along next to a row of slot machines, and she asked him how the machines worked, and he explained.

"So you put your money in," she said, "and once in a while it gives you a lot, but usually it keeps what you put in, and then you do it again?"

"That's right."

"Why?"

He shrugged.

They were both exhausted. She had to be persuaded, but finally she let him pay for a motel room, a single. She slept fully clothed in the bed and he slept on the floor, on the extra bedding. In the morning she bought him breakfast.

Then the road west again, bleak, brown, of a featurelessness she had never imagined, like driving on the moon.

They came over a pass and saw a brown haze and city as far as the horizon, which was closer than it should have been because of the soupy air, and dropped down the pass and the mountains disappeared except as a faint outline in the translucent, dirty atmosphere. More people than she had ever imagined, but they all seemed to be in their cars.

Everything looked like a movie set, unreal, worn and tired. Fake, empty. Everything existed by itself, without any relation to the things around it. A city of solipsism, saturated with loneliness, ugly and uncared for. The houses looked temporary. The city made her even more tired than she already was. Soon she would see Wyatt, but the houses, and the highways, went on and on. A hundred miles of it. Astounding.

In Santa Monica, they exited on Lincoln. She smelled something unfamiliar, unexpected, almost rank, and knew immediately that it was the ocean.

The house in Venice was a few minutes further on. She pulled the envelope from her pocket and read the address to Dean. He stopped and asked directions from a pedestrian. The answer was in Mexican-accented Spanish: "No habla Ingles". Ada asked in Spanish, listened to the answer, thanked the man and translated for Dean.

Except for the discouraged-looking banana tree in one corner of the yard, the house looked like something from an Erskine Caldwell novel. It needed a new roof and the paint was peeling. The yard was full of weeds. The front porch had a glider on it. The only thing missing was a broken-down appliance on the porch, or a rusty car up on blocks in the yard.

Dean's only words when he drove off were, "See you in a week." Ada picked up her suitcase and walked through the gate and up the sagging, rotting steps and knocked.

A girl wearing nothing but panties answered the door. Ada noticed that the girl's breasts were of different sizes and immediately transferred her attention upward. "Excuse me. I'm here to see Wyatt Packard."

"He's not here. You want to come in and wait?"

"Thank you."

Panty girl opened the door. She tipped her head toward the couch, where a body lay sprawled with a copy of Zap Comix obscuring the face. "That's Dave. Don't wake him. We had a rough night."

"I didn't introduce myself. My name's Ada."

The other nodded without bothering to give her own name. She said, "Make yourself at home. I can't stay. I'm supposed to meet my boyfriend. He gets mad if I'm late."

"Boyf -- ?", but the girl was already halfway down the hall. Ada inspected the front room, which was the width of the house. The floor was strewn with comic books and dirty clothes. The sofa Dave slept on was stained and worn, and the air smelled of mold. The linoleum had curled up in one corner of the room. Ada decided to wait on the porch. She put her suitcase behind the couch and went back to sit on the glider. The door clicked shut behind her. She tried the knob. At least she wasn't locked out. A few minutes later she heard a car start. She peeked around the corner and saw the girl pulling out of the alley in back.

She did not own a watch, but the sun had moved several degrees before Wyatt drove up in a van. She hurried down the walk as he parked, and met him just outside the gate and grasped his shirt and raised herself on her toes to be kissed. Then she pressed her face to his chest, inhaling the familiar smell of his soap and the personal odor of his skin.

"At last," she said. "At last."

They stood for minutes, their arms around each other.

"I could have started my time off today. I didn't think you'd be here this soon," he said.

"Just hold me. Don't talk." Later: "Is the ocean close enough to walk to?"

"About a mile."

She stepped back. "You look tired." She touched him under his eyes, feeling the black bags there. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot. She had never seen either of these before.

"Not enough sleep."

She embraced him again, her head in the same spot on his chest and said, "My only," her voice muffled.

"What?"

"The beach will be there tomorrow. Where's your bedroom?"

Love was long and slow and nothing remarkable, because it was for the joining and not the discharge. She locked him to her with her legs around his hips and her arms around his neck and wouldn't let him go until he said he needed to sleep. Then she released him and they closed their eyes. The last thing she remembered was saying, "This won't do," and moving her foot so it touched his.

Loud music woke her before dawn. She roused Wyatt.

"What?" He blinked and groaned.

"They're playing music. It woke me. Would you ask them to stop?"

"Why? We play music every morning when we get up. It's how we start the day."

"Doesn't it bother you?"

"I don't hear it any more. I'm used to it."

"Well, I'm awake now. Let's walk down to the ocean. I've never seen it."

They walked the empty dim streets, no sign of life except an unwatched television flickering in the front room of one house. The buzzing of a street lamp. Spray-painted graffiti on walls.

Her first view of the Pacific, her first ocean, partly by moonlight but more by the sun brightening behind her in the east. She sat and removed her sneakers and socks and felt the sand with her toes for a minute and then stood. Wyatt held out his hand, and she let him take the shoes. He brushed the sand from the back of her jeans. She walked toward the water, her feet sinking in the yielding surface of the beach. Walking was surprising work. A gull hopped out of her way, then flapped its wings and rose into the air. Ada hesitated as she approached the irregular line where the highest waves had lapped. The texture of the wet sand there was smoother and firmer, and yielded differently. She stepped back and was surprised at the sharpness of her prints; they looked like a cast of her foot. She walked forward again toward the water.

A few strands of green seaweed with odd bulbous appendages were scattered along the beach. The smell of the place was odd, and like nothing on land. The wind was against her back, and her face felt damp. A wave, almost spent, hissed toward her and she scampered back. When the water retreated, her footprints had vanished. She started forward again, and scuttled back, trying to step into the water slowly, but she couldn't find a way. After a few tries, a larger wave rushed her, splashing her legs. She raised her arms and hurried back a few feet and looked over her shoulder at Wyatt. He smiled at her. She strode into the water. It was colder than she'd expected. The water rose around her feet, above her ankles, bobbing. She walked out until it was almost to her knees. She put her hand in the water and brought her palm up, cupped, and tasted it. The saltiness was shocking.

She could not tell where the sea ended. Its horizon seemed indecipherably far. She stood gazing, thinking: Unimaginable depth, to Japan, to Australia, to Alaska. Creatures swimming in its bosom. Ships. Mountains and canyons at the bottom. Infinite. The sound of an airplane grew, then faded. A wave splashed her shirt. The weakening moon was half-hidden by cloud. She turned. Wyatt had come closer and was watching her from just above the high-water line, the sky behind him light. Another wave splashed the small of her back.

"Go for a swim?" he asked.

"No. I don't know how."

The beach was wide, the gulls few and the city, for now, more or less quiet. Except another couple far enough away to look tiny, they were alone. She looked at her lover and he looked at her and smiled, his face full of kindness and affection, and the expression there opened a door in her heart. He had a knack for that. For once, he knew enough to be silent, and they went on looking at each other. The sun rose behind his head. She went and stood next to him and they looked at the water, the sun behind them casting long shadows, which linked as she reached for his hand and held it in hers. The color of the sea changed with the movement of the water, and foam floated on the liquid. An inexact band of light wavered on the restless water that surged toward them, and surged again, and never ended. A sandpiper ran past. They stood at the edge of the continent, the vast city behind them coming to life, his house beginning to stir a mile away. She was already tired of the city and the house and his friends. She missed the evenings in his apartment, studying quietly, the striving world shut out, their love safely enclosed in the room, alone, silent, working together. She was afraid of who he was becoming, of what his friends were doing to him. She would lose him, either because he would lose who he had been, or because they couldn't stay together so far apart from each other.

"Wyatt, if you come home to Lawrence I will live with you."

"I'll be back. It can wait."

"What if you have a hit record? What if you get famous?"

"I'll come back anyway. If I have enough money, you can come out here and I'll send you to UCLA."

"You've been the realistic one. Now I'll have to be. You're fantasizing."

"This is going to work out. Just have faith."

She clutched his shirt and shook it gently. "How did this happen? I fell in love with a fool."

He said, "This can wait. I'm hungry. Let's go down to Santa Monica. There's a little diner there. You have to meet the character who owns it. He's hilarious."

They went to the tiny pink stucco diner, wedged between the street and the wide paved walk that ran along the beach. There were four tables, and four stools at the counter. Wyatt's friend had tattoos on his arms; Ada had never seen tattoos before. She wondered, but didn't ask, why anyone would do such a thing. He showed them to her, and explained that he'd gotten the vivid one in Morocco. He said the tattooing methods there were different, that they went deeper into the skin or used a different dye or something. He was sorry he'd got the tattoo. Then he changed his mind and said he should have gotten all of them in Morocco. His talk was vivid, and laced with unselfconscious profanity. He used "fuck" or "fuckin'" at least every other sentence. Ada would have left, but she didn't know the way home, and she couldn't think of a tactful way to ask Wyatt to go -- he was laughing too hard at the stream of jokes and smutty stories, most of which starred tattoo man in some improbable role. More than once Wyatt nearly coughed up his food or coffee, trying not to laugh with his mouth full. They stayed for hours while his friend cooked for the customers. When they rose from their stools, Ada's hands shook from too much coffee.

They walked outside and past a few buildings and down a dozen stairs. To their right, in a niche between the buildings and the bike path, men were playing chess at incredible speed, punching the buttons of their timing clocks. To their left, on the beach, men with very large muscles and very small bathing trunks were holding women above their heads. Wyatt and Ada walked out along the Santa Monica Pier, past the rides and the booths, to the end, where other men waited patiently, their fishing lines in the ocean.

They spent the remainder of the day driving around Los Angeles, seeing various parts of town -- the Sunset Strip, movie studios, the San Fernando Valley. It reminded her of an advanced cancer: large, undifferentiated, and out of control. When they got home, in the early evening, she said, "Have we seen it all now?" He only laughed.

They took a nap, without even bothering to make love first. Half an hour later, when they woke, they were starting to remedy the oversight when someone knocked on the bedroom door. "Wyatt, we gotta go, man."

"Shit," he groaned. "I forgot. We're playing tonight."

"But you said -- "

"I never promised. This was already arranged. Besides, we'll be back by two."

"A.M.? I'm coming. I'm not staying here without you."

Wyatt piloted the van, a rusty old blue Dodge lacking hubcaps. The drive took an hour. The club was a deconsecrated church on a block populated mostly by empty lots and boarded-up houses. The altar space had been converted into a stage. The first few rows of pews had been removed to make space for a bar and a dance floor. Ada sat in the front row while the band talked to the owner and set up their equipment.

Wyatt came over. "Let's get something to eat."

"Don't you have to play?"

"Not for a while." He turned. "I'm leaving. Anybody want food?"

"Bring me one of those giant burritos," Gregg said.

Their destination was a trolley car set between two buildings several miles away, with a row of bar stools in front, and a counter built onto the side of the trolley. There was no inside seating. Wyatt ordered the cowboy plate; Ada had the Navajo taco.

She said, "I didn't know how much I missed you until I saw you. It hurt in the pit of my stomach."

He put his hand over hers. "It's all right now. You're here."

"But it's only for a week."

"Don't think about that."

"I can't help thinking about being apart again."

"Don't."

She looked down at his hand. "Wyatt, you have to come home. This isn't good for us. This place is hurting you, and your friends are bad influences. You have to come home. I need you."

He touched her lips with his index finger. "Stop. I'm not coming home until April. I know how how you feel. I miss you, too. But my Mom didn't see my Dad for three years during the war. She didn't even know if he'd come back alive. I was a few months old when he left, and I was walking and talking when he saw me the next time. Compared to what they went through, this is nothing. You can come out before the fall semester, and I'll come back at Christmas, then April will be here before you know it. We can do this. I don't want to hear any more about it, it's the only time in my life I'll ask you for something like this. I have to do it."

She poked at the taco. "I'm not hungry."

He was silent. She kissed his cheek. He stood next to her and put his hand on the nape of her neck and kissed her forehead. and drew her face to his chest and stroked her hair. She put her arms around him for so long she forgot everything but him, and when he sat back down, their food had grown cold. She picked at hers. He ate all of his, and encouraged her to eat more, but she wouldn't, so he ate that, too, since it was paid for. She picked up the paper sack with the giant burrito and they drove back. The band had tuned up and customers were beginning to arrive. The rule seemed to be long hair, sweatshirts and jeans and surplus Army jackets: anything cheap.

"What time is your concert over?" she asked.

"Concert? Oh, you mean this." He indicated the room. "One a.m. I put my sleeping bag in the back of the van in case you get tired."

"That was thoughtful."

"Just lock the doors. This is a dangerous neighborhood. I don't have to play on every song. I'll sit with you when I can. Here." He reached in his pocket and handed her a baggie.

"What's this?"

"Ear plugs."

"How very, very odd."

"You'll thank me later."

She had the ear plugs in before the first song was half over, and left them in for the rest of the first set. It felt as prolonged as the drive from Lawrence to Los Angeles. When it was finally over, she asked for the keys to the van.

Wyatt handed them to her and said, "Don't go yet. We haven't played your song. We start the next set with it."

She sat at the table in back with the band members and listened to them talk incomprehensibly about the set as they drank beer:

"You were late after the bridge."

"I was late? You were early."

"Me and the rest of us?"

And so on. They seemed to be in the habit of bickering, in an offhanded way. There was nothing personal in it. She watched Wyatt. He had drifted into a trance, sitting next to her and holding her hand under the table.

Gregg looked at his watch. "Time," he said. They stood in unison.

Wyatt touched Ada on the shoulder and said, "Come on. You're playing tambourine."

"Oh no I'm not."

"Oh yes you are. Guys," he said, "remember, be careful."

They picked her up and carried her over their heads. She struggled and screamed.

"Don't," Wyatt said, "you'll fall," and she stopped.

They seated her on the altar and one of them put a tambourine in her hands.

"My girlfriend has come a thousand miles to visit," Wyatt announced. "Isn't she beautiful?" Cheering from the audience. "Give her a hand." Applause. "This next song is about her."

Her discomfort was physical. The song was strange, and nothing in it reminded her of herself, and it lasted much longer than it had any right to. She sat with head bowed, the tambourine forgotten, and when the song didn't give any sign of ending, she jumped down and fled and let herself into the van and locked the door.

Wyatt knocked on the window but she wouldn't look. "Ada, open the window." He waited. "I have to go back inside. When you're through sulking, come in and I'll take a break and we can talk. I didn't mean to embarrass you." He left.

Sulking? Is that what he thinks I'm doing? And what if I am? That was unfair. He should know I get stage fright.

She leaned back against the headrest and looked at the bleak ugly barren view in back of the club: empty lots full of weeds and trash. She closed her eyes.

She woke with a start to rapping on the window. The sun had gone; the only dim light was from the windows of the few houses, and a distant street lamp. Wyatt again. "Go away," she said, without turning.

"I'd like to, ma'am, but you're going to have to talk to me first."

She rolled down the window. "Pardon me," she said to the policeman. "I thought you were my boyfriend."

"I like that." He smiled. "If the job is open, I'll apply." He smiled more widely. He was very handsome, in a blond, bland, toothy way.

"It may be, soon." Did I actually say that? Am I actually flirting? This isn't me.

"Is that why you're sitting here by yourself? You had a fight with your boyfriend?"

"Yes."

"It's safer inside."

"I'd rather stay here."

"This is not the kind of neighborhood for a young lady to be alone in. If you don't go inside, then I have to stay here. And if I do that, then I'm not patrolling and catching bad guys. You don't want to be responsible for that, do you?"

The logic was absurd, but she wasn't in the mood for another argument, especially with a policeman. She got out of the van. "I certainly wouldn't want to be guilty of that," she said.

"Good."

She turned at the door and waved, and he waved back.

The noise of the music was more deafening than before, if possible. She'd lost the ear plugs. She smiled at Wyatt from the front pew. He smiled back.

"Are you all right?" he asked at the end of the song, sitting next to her.

"I'm fine."

"I wasn't trying to embarrass you. I thought it would be -- "

"Don't apologize. I panicked. It's hard for me, being the center of attention, especially from strangers."

"No, no, I -"

She shushed him, and kissed him briefly, simply to silence him. "Can you sit out the next song?"

"No, but it's the last one. Then we go."

The song was short. Wyatt thanked the audience and the band unceremoniously unplugged and started picking up the equipment and carrying it out.

Wyatt was driving, Ada in the front passenger seat. Only when they had pulled out of the parking lot did Ada notice that they had extra passengers, two girls she'd seen giggling and hanging around in front of the stage, flirting with the band members. Since no one was making any attempt to introduce her to them, she didn't speak, unwilling to risk a snub like that afternoon, when the underwear girl hadn't deigned to give her name. These girls looked so stoned they might not even remember their names. As she thought this, Dave lit a joint, inhaled, and passed it to the shorter, heavier girl.

Ada leaned over and hissed in his ear, "Wyatt."

He made a downward patting motion with the palm of his hand. "Cool it," he mouthed.

She wrapped her arms around herself and stared out the window. She almost asked to be let out, but where would she go? She leaned over again and whispered, "God grant me patience, and a simple life with people unlike these."

"Quiet," he whispered back. "They'll hear you."

She was nodding off when they pulled up in the alley, in back of the house. Wyatt told her to go to bed while they unloaded. In his room she folded her clothes but couldn't find a place to put them: no table, no chair. The few hangers in the closet were already in use. She turned her suitcase flat and set her things on top, then crawled naked between the sheets.

She couldn't fall asleep. First the noise of men tramping through the house and up and down the basement stairs, then the girls laughing, and finally, when she thought everything would be quiet, the noise of the stereo and more laughter and conversation.

Wyatt slipped in next to her. "Man, I'm tired."

"Are they going to have a party now?" Ada gestured toward the door.

"It won't last long. They'll get stoned and quiet down."

"Wyatt, this is all wrong. The marijuana, the girl in the panties -- "

"What?"

She told him about the girl. "Dave's girlfriend," she added. "I suppose. I'm not sure. Although she mentioned a boyfriend. I'm still trying to figure out what she meant -- Dave, or someone else."

"Dave doesn't have a girlfriend. Or he has a different one every week. They usually last six or eight hours. She's probably someone else's girlfriend."

"You see, that's what I mean. This is no way to live, like, like animals."

"You think I live like an animal?" he asked.

"But Dave," she said. "The girl."

"I asked you a question."

"Yes. No. You're twisting my words. Now I'm confused."

He rose and started to dress.

"Where are you going?"

"To sleep in the van. I'm tired of your crap."

"Wyatt, please don't."

"No. I'm tired. I was looking forward to your being here, but all you've done since you got here is complain and cricitize. Forget these guys. Forget what they're doing. You're here to be with me. Just be with me." He turned to face her, buttoning his jeans, shirtless. "You act like everything around us is more important than us. Why did you bother to come?"

"I didn't know it would be like this. I'm not used to this. I've never seen anything like it."

"That excuse is wearing thin," he said. "This is the United States of America, not Costa Rica. This is L.A., not Monteverde. It's fucked up here. You're going to have to get used to it." He picked a shirt from the closet and left the bedroom.

He had never spoken to her like that. She couldn't think about what he'd said, only that he'd said it, and in such a way. She rolled to her side and hugged herself. She refused to run after him. He could rot in the van, alone.

For an hour she lay awake, hearing the music from the stereo and the conversation and laughter, and then later, after these had ended, the squeaking of bedsprings in the next room and the rhythmic moaning of one of the girls, she couldn't figure out which one, that seemed to go on forever, until it rose to a series of loud "ah!"s and ended. She fell asleep after the sound ended and then woke to similar sounds from another bed and another girl in another part of the house. This series didn't last as long, but now Ada couldn't fall asleep. She dressed and went out to the van. Wyatt wasn't there.

She wandered through the darkened house, Gregg and Barry sprawled on the floor asleep. No sign of Wyatt. She heard the glider on the porch. There he was. She sat next to him and slipped her hand in his and rested her head on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"No. I am. I shouldn't have said that." Pause. "What's happening with us? I've never needed anyone, never felt what I feel with you, and then I end up walking out and sitting here alone."

"I was going to say something like that about me."

"Ada -- "

"Don't talk. Talking only gets us in trouble. Let's go back to bed."

They woke late and ate breakfast in the kitchen, Ada cleaning up as she cooked, and discussed what they should do the rest of the week. She wanted to spend the entire time in bed together, but merely nodded when he listed the sights he thought she should see. So they saw the tourist attractions instead of making love all week.

She disliked Disneyland -- the lines, the crowds, the insincerity of it, a machine to extract money from your pocket while making you feel warm. She disliked downtown -- the air made her wheeze -- but she loved the main library; the architecture was a treasure. They went hiking in some of the canyons, in the mountains -- mountains in town! She liked that, and their sandiness and dryness, so different from her mountains back home in Costa Rica. Then they went to Joshua Tree. She loved the rocks, the comic archaic shapes of the trees that were somehow like something she would expect to see in a picture of Australia, the hiking, but it was summer and she insisted on not taking a break at mid-day and then she had to be treated for heat exhaustion. The clinic kept her overnight for observation, and let Wyatt sleep on the floor next to her. She was sunburned again, too. She spent the last two days in discomfort, inside the house in Venice, as close to the air conditioner as she could sit, her skin peeling and prickly. Would she never learn? The band members popped in and out. Their work schedules seemed very irregular. She spent the time with Wyatt, who sat next to her, talking off and on as they read their books, and occasionally arguing about his friends.

Then Dean was at the door and it was time to go. She had been here a week without managing to say to Wyatt what was in her heart. Dean put her suitcase in the trunk and waited on the other side of the car, looking away, to give her privacy.

"I can't do this," she said. "It's too hard."

"I know."

"I didn't mean to complain so much."

"I know."

"I'm afraid."

"Don't be. I bought something. Here." He reached into the coin pocket of his jeans and handed her a plain gold ring. "When I come back," he said. "Will you marry me?"

"Of course. You know I will."

He put the ring on her finger. She held him. He held her. It didn't help. She knew she had to go. He would be far away again. He was evaporating from her grasp even as she held him. She clung to him.

The letter was waiting on the kitchen table, when Wyatt got home on a Wednesday evening. He would have left then, but the bank had closed for the day, and he didn't have enough cash. He would have to leave in the morning.

He was working a construction job, every minute there was sufficient light, making a lot of money from the overtime. He called his boss and asked for another week off.

"When?"

"Starting tomorrow."

"Can't. There's too much work."

"I'm sorry, it's an emergency. I really need it."

"You just had a week off. Be there in the morning."

"I can't."

"Fine by me, but if you're not there, don't come back. I'll mail you a check for the time you've put in."

Fired.

He was waiting when the bank opened in the morning. The tank was full and his sleeping bag was in the back. Ten minutes later he was on the highway. He picked up hitchhikers on the way and had them drive when he needed to sleep. He reached Lawrence at noon of the next day. Jackie opened the door when he knocked.

"Wyatt!"

"Where's Ada?"

"She has a class."

"Do you mind if I wait?"

"I guess not. Come in."

He sat in Ada's chair. "Has she said anything?"

"About what?"

He handed her the letter. She read it, then said, "So that's why she's so miserable. I've never seen her like this."

"What can I do?"

"I can't help. You'll have to figure it out yourselves."

"Fair enough. Do you mind if I lie down? I'm tired."

He was asleep on the floor and Jackie was gone when the click of the door woke him. He sat up and Ada gasped.

"Go away," she said. "Leave me alone." Her eyes were red. Wyatt felt satisfaction at the sight.

"I drove all the way here and gave up the best job I've ever had just to talk to you, and you're not going to do this, Ada. You can't."

"There's nothing to say. The letter -- "

"The hell with the letter," he said. "This is me. This is Wyatt, remember? I'm here in person. You have to talk to me. You can't hide behind a letter."

She shook her head and backed toward the door. She put her hand on the knob.

"Coward," he said. "You want to discard me. You're too weak to face me."

She stood with her head bowed and her hand on the knob. Silence.

"You're killing me, Ada. I've given you everything. Things I never thought I could give. My heart. Things I didn't even know I had until you showed them to me. I would give up anything for you. I love you more than music, and food, and the air and sun. Than anything. I'll move back. The hell with the music. I'll move back. We have to be together."

"It's too late." She started to sob, in threes -- huh-huh-huh -- between the words. "It's -- too late -- We're different -- we want -- different things."

"Ada." He took a step.

"No!"

"Ada, don't do this. You're throwing away our life. We have to be together. We have to. We don't have a choice. You know that." He took another step.

"Don't!" She opened the door.

"It doesn't have to end. It can be like it was. I said I'd come back. Isn't that what you want?"

She flung her books on the floor and ran, and he ran after her, down the stairs, and caught her in the lobby. When he tried to remember what had happened, he could get no clear picture, only a series of images: grabbing her shoulders and turning her around; seizing her wrists; the look of fear on her face; her struggle to pull her wrists free -- down, out, back and forth; her head snapping from side to side; the sound of his own voice shouting over her sobbing. Then he lost his wind, and felt the sharp blow in his solar plexus a moment later. When he had his breath back, he was facing a very large student who was asking him a question. Wyatt ran outside.

She was gone. He walked the campus for hours, going through buildings, looking in rooms, and then he drove the town until dark. He called Jackie. Ada hadn't showed up. He waited outside the dorm and watched the shadows on the blind for hours; only the long-haired shadow appeared. Ada was still in hiding. He drove the town again. He called Jackie. He slept in the car. In the morning, before the sun came up, he parked outside the dorm and watched until the light came on. Still only the long-haired shadow. He called again. Jackie was noncomittal; he couldn't be sure whether she knew where Ada was.

He kept looking for another two days, but there was no sign of her. He had called morning, afternoon, and evening. He had been everywhere he could think to look. He called Jackie again, and she told him that Ada was filing a restraining order against him.

There was nothing to be done but to make a new life, an incomplete life, nothing but to make the best of what remained. He returned to Los Angeles. The damage was irreparable; he would accept that, and continue. He would make a different life, a patched-up life. He would live without expectations. It was necessary to go on; if he'd married her and she'd died, he'd still have carried on. This was exactly the same. He would continue, somehow.