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“Huh,” said the owner’s buddy.

The thrift store owner looked past Max in the direction of the front doors. “Where’s the camera?”

“There is no camera. I want to work here.”

“You can’t work here.”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” The guy stared at him. “Are you serious?”

The idea he could get work had seemed reasonable at the time. From the moment he’d left the Desert Oasis Healing Center, Max had seen his escape as a second chance. He was sober for the first time in years. He wanted to make a clean break. Leave his old life behind and be a normal guy like his father was. Your average Joe. Even when he drifted in and out of awareness, that goal remained constant—his north star. Max wasn’t asking for much, just a regular job. Something he could do with his hands, maybe. No autograph seekers, no cameras, no paparazzi. No public that saw him through the prism of its own needs, wants, or desires.

But he couldn’t escape who he was. People recognized him. They gawked. They yelled his name. Took photos of him with their phones.

The funny thing? He used to pretend he was a regular citizen all the time in LA—and half the time he got away with it. But now, when Max really wanted to be anonymous, it didn’t work quite so well. Maybe it was because it meant so much to him. Maybe he was trying too hard.

So it had been raining, really coming down, and he’d gone from the thrift store to the Texaco mini-mart next door, thinking he might try there. Hard rain pelted the roof and steam rose from the pavement. He was sopping wet and shivering. He’d wait out the storm by pretending to look for items aisle by aisle.

Suddenly his ringtone blasted, howling, “Now you’re messing with a son of a bitch!” from “Hair of the Dog” by Nazareth.

He fumbled in his pocket, and the phone skated out of his wet hand and hit the floor. The kid behind the counter stared at him, his face pale under the fluorescents. Max picked up the phone and turned away, lowering his voice. “Hello?”

“Max. Ah, glad I found you.”

Jerry.

Max said nothing. He felt like the cottontails he used to shoot at when he was a kid. How they’d hunker down in plain sight and hope you didn’t see them. Their ears lit up like stained glass windows—bright pink.

“Max? You there?”

He didn’t answer.

“I have some stuff for you to sign,” Max’s business manager said. “That last little escapade of yours is costing us. Audemars Piguet is making noises about backing out of the endorsement deal, but I promised him there wouldn’t be a repeat. There’s a new clause I’m faxing over, no biggie.”

Max said nothing.

Jerry said, “Max, I can see why you’re angry.” Max didn’t reply. “I know you hate the place, and I’m sorry about that.” Max said nothing. “But you’re going to thank me later. Once this is all over, we’ll have a big laugh about it…are you listening? You didn’t lose your voice, did you? If so, we need to get hold of the vocal coach. Shooting starts in three weeks—”

“I won’t be there in three weeks.”

“What? Are you crazy? What are you saying? You have a contract!”

It went on like that for a while. First shock, then anger, then denial—skipping right over grief. Max listened, wondering why he didn’t just cut Jerry off. Shut the phone and that would be the end of it. But he couldn’t. He clamped the cell hard against his ear, every muscle tense. Maybe listening to Jerry Gold was the beginning of catharsis. Maybe he needed to remind himself what was in the rearview mirror, and why he was leaving it all behind.

Jerry was talking faster now. “You’re due on the set August first! You can’t just turn your back on this and act like it’s some kind of stupid game . This is real life, Jacko, and you’d better get that through your head right now. People are depending on you. You know how much this is costing already? So stop with the prima donna bullshit and get back with the program!”

A calmness came over him. His fingers loosened. “I quit,” he said.

Silence. Then, “You quit? You quit ?” A tirade followed. Max let the phone drop through his hands to the floor, heard the case crack.

Serenity bloomed inside him. He turned to look at the attendant, who was staring at him, eyes wide.

“Dude, you broke your phone!”

The ringtone once again filled the small mini-mart: “Now you’re messin’ with a—” beat, beat, “Son of a bitch , you’re messin’ with a—”

Max picked the phone up off the floor. Noticed the dried swirls from a mop—place was dirty as hell.

When Max answered, he heard “You are in big fucking trouble! You—”

He ended the call. It was difficult because the edges didn’t true up. The smile inside him was warm and welcoming, like a sunrise.

The phone sounded again. Max wondered if his darling wife was with Jerry right now. Wondered if she was hearing all this. If so, he hoped she was worried.

Lightning strobed the interior of the mini-mart. Thunder crashed.

The phone stayed quiet in his hand.

“Dude, I mean, seriously…” The kid trailed off. “Hey, man, I seen you before?”

Outside, headlights flared up behind the needles of rain. Water funneled off the windshield of a dark car with a menacing grille. Windshield wipers slashed.

The kid behind the counter said, “You’re…Hey, man, I know you…”

Max stepped toward the door and peered outside. He suddenly became aware how completely soaked he was. When he moved, his jeans rasped together like sandpaper.

No one got out of the car in front. The windshield wipers whipped back and forth, sluicing off the buckets of water coming out of the sky. Max couldn’t see past the wipers, past the water brimming on the windshield, but he could almost feel whoever it was peering out at him, peering into the brightly lit store.

The glare of the overhead lights was getting to him. He felt exposed in here.

There were times Max was hyperalert. Times when he could tell something was wrong—a sixth sense. He’d always had it. It felt, right now, like someone had taken a comb and run it over the hairs on the back of his neck.

He felt the tingle in his belly, a low humming. A warning.

Did Jerry know where he was? Had they sent someone after him? Pinpointed his position by GPS through his phone?

“Dude,” he said to the kid behind the counter. “You got a back way out of here?”

“Yeah, sure.” He nodded at a door near the beer case. “Why?”

There wasn’t much time. Max opened the door to the rear of the store, looked up the hall to the exit, and saw the open doorway to the back room.

He returned to the front of the store just as a car door slammed outside. “Hey, man,” he said. “You got a good lock on the door to the back room?”

“Uh, sure.”

Outside, feet pelted on wet pavement. “Take my advice and go lock yourself in there now.”

“What’re you—?”

Max didn’t hear what else the kid said. He was out the back door and gone.

Chapter Four

TURNED OUT NO one had been coming for him—at least not at the mini-mart. But Max’s instincts had been right. There had been trouble brewing, he’d just mistaken the nature of that trouble.

The mini-mart was the target of a simple robbery. The robber left with the contents of the cash register and a case of beer. The kid was shaken, but unhurt. The security camera tape that they played on the news showed a guy wearing a dark hoodie. You couldn’t see his face.

Max watched the nightly news while sitting on the swaybacked bed of the Riata Motel farther south in Paradox.

The bed smelled of feet.