SUN VALLEY—Maria Concepcion? To Jason, the name meant nothing. Nothing at all.

He asked, “How do you have my number?”

“You call to my house two months ago,” said the weak faint voice on his cell. “I cannot come to class because I move to Las Vegas.”

“Maria Concepcion? Maria who was on my class list? You're supposed to be dead in Vegas,” Jason said.

“I not dead. I got wed,” she said.

So that's what snoopy Gudelia had been saying, that Maria Concepcion had wed. To think that he'd lost sleep over it, over marking her down on the roster!

“I'm so happy you're alive. I thought you were dead. You're alive.” In a burst of gregariousness, Jason said, “Let me buy you and your husband a coffee.”

Immediately, Maria Concepcion mentioned the cafe famous for $5 cups of coffee and put Jason's gregariousness to the test. Already he was doing the math he'd done 1,000 times while married to Suzanne: two coffees for Maria and hubby, throw in a scone or biscotti. Dreading and anticipating the rendezvous at Laurel Canyon and Magnolia, he floored his Sentra out of the merge lane. It shook and rattled. Jason was blinded by two obnoxiously bright beams in the rear-view mirror. Out of nowhere whizzed a sleek German sedan, still with dealer plates. He gasped as they came within an inch of sheering off half of his car. Once the shock subsided, Jason felt the melancholy perception that he would never taste the youth and confidence of the smug couple inside the cherryfire red sedan. The train had already passed him by. Whatever rewards would come now, they would follow the onset of tarnished ideals, leavened by a deep knowledge of human frailty.

The couple left a wake of riotous laughter, the thump-thump of club music and the jeweled luster of the showroom-new car. He envied and hated them for an intense instant, and they zoomed by into the starless Hollywood night.

At the intersection of Laurel Canyon and Magnolia, Maria Concepcion slowly emerged from the shadows. He loved her smile. Didn't ask where her husband was: didn't care. They settled into the cafe's lawyerly surroundings, becalmed by its mocha-brown mahogany walls, and chatted tentatively. All around them noses were buried in laptops. They were the only two people in the world.

Over cappuccino, it came out that Maria Concepcion had been having a rough night. Leo, her husband, went off to get drunk with his friends. She was frustrated and wanted to get even. Jason quickly sized up his role in this scenario, swain to Leo's cuckold. Maria was angry: Leo worked too much and didn't pay enough attention to her. His hours had been cut, and he was working seven days a week to scrape together 40 hours.

It was a replay of the stuff that killed love for him and Suzanne.

“Even if you love him only a little. That bit of love is worth keeping.” He desperately tried to get it across with exaggerated gestures. “Trust me.”

“Will you ever marry again?” she asked.

Jason abandoned the exaggerated gestures and simple words.

“Holy cow, I don't know how people ever get married in L.A. You've got to be an exhibitionist or have some kind of luck or a big bank account,” Jason said.

“What means this holy cow,” she said, reaching for his hand, feeling the hairs.

Jason felt a sudden fidelity from his near-kiss with Candelaria earlier in the day. He used this unearned virtuousness to escape from where Maria Concepcion wanted to go. But quickly enough she overcame his objections and the back seat of his Nissan Sentra, amid books and papers. After it was over, Jason, feeling richly alive and his flesh restored from the spine-bending lucubrations of teaching, was bulleting down the Hollywood Freeway. Just before the Barham Bolevard exit, traffic backed up like leaves in a sewer grating. In the charcoal darkness, he made out a dim halo of yellow blinking lights. Slowly, slowly traffic creeped along. Then, out the corner of his left eye, he made out a shiny sleek German sedan, overturned, its side crushed in like an aluminum can. The wheels were in the air, and out the open windows stuck out two gauze-wrapped mummies. Sanitized, free from gore. Crimson seeped out the end and into the gauze as red from a cut, bandaged finger. Moments earlier they had been young affluent people giggling, drinking vodka shots, flirting. Livin' the life.

An emergency worker with a clipboard looked down, toed the open top (now the bottom) of the upside-down car.

Jason would have vomited if he could, but that was something you only see in the movies.

(To be continued...)

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