Back there it’s all movie stars and scandals and tan blond girls in late-model Porsches who make people wonder, “Are they up-and-coming actors on shows that haven’t aired yet and if so did they buy the car themselves, or are they just so pretty they’re being kept by an older man rich and lonely enough to trade expensive presents for attention and affection?”She knew a little about such things. She’d been coming here since she was a child—although this was her first time in five years—and she heard gossip from Lion, whom she’d be seeing for dinner that night. As much as she loved him and always had, she wasn’t in the mood, would have preferred to stay home. She liked the way this landscape enclosed her, made her feel protected in a strange way, because really, what could be more dangerous than Malibu, with its earthquakes, mudslides, and wildfires? Maybe that outward danger comforted her somehow and reinforced her sense of how impermanent it all was. Just look at the Chumash people, how they had thrived on this coast for ten thousand years, as hunter-gatherers and superb boatbuilders and basket makers.
