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hour ago. She punched
in a number on the cell phone and waited for the answer.
    “ Dr. Black’s service,” the operator
said.
    “ This is Beckie--I just tried to kill
myself. I put a gun in my mouth. I didn’t kill myself because of
the Chihuahua in the box.”
    “ Hold, please,” the operator
said.
    “ Beckie?” Dr. Black said. “Do I need to
call an ambulance and have them come to you? Are you in
trouble?”
    Beckie gripped the wheel and drove fast up
the southbound onramp to the massive 405 freeway. “I was in
trouble,” she said. “That is to say, I nearly killed myself but
didn’t. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I don’t know if I’m
going to kill myself or not. I almost did, and it was a lot easier
than I thought it would be. If I’m going to kill myself in the next
few minutes, I suppose it will be death by speeding into a bridge
abutment. I can take the car up to a hundred and eighty and then
just turn into the nearest pile of concrete. I guess that’s one
option.”
    “ Beckie, I’m at The Sandcastle, in
Paradise Cove, do you know the place?”
    “ Yeh, I know it,” Beckie said, “it’s
where they used to shoot The Rockford Files.”
    “ Why don’t you drive out and join me
for a drink? We can have a bite to eat and take a walk on the
beach. There’s a lovely full moon coming out. Will you join
me?”
    “ What kind of a shrink are you?” Beckie
said. “I’ve never heard of a doctor inviting a suicide case for a
drink and a walk on the beach.”
    “ I’m just a friend,” Dr. Black said.
“Can you come?”
    The freeway was lightly trafficked--the big
Mercedes would make good time.
    “ In an hour,” Beckie said. “And I’m
bringing a friend.”
    “ A friend? What’s her name?”
    “ It’s a he,” Beckie said. She blew out
a breath and broke into long, deep sobs. “He’s just a little guy
somebody abandoned. He’s sort of in-between names right now. I
guess we’re both sort of in-between nowhere and
nowhere.”
    “ I’ll see you in an hour,” Black said.
“I’m looking forward to meeting your friend.”
    “ Wait,” Beckie said. “I’m going to give
my friend a name. It isn’t right that he doesn’t have
one.”
    She looked down at the dog, who continued to
shake uncontrollably in her lap. A name drifted into her mind from
somewhere out there, and the name fit perfectly.
    “ Okay Doctor,” she said. “My friend has
a name--I’m calling him Mr. Boopers.”
    “ I’ll see you in an hour,” Black
said.
    Turning off the Santa Monica freeway onto
Highway 1, Beckie felt the glow of familiarity, enjoying the feel
of the roadster as it sailed along the ocean. Mr. Boopers continued
to shake, and do small things with his paws, twitching an ear or
two repeatedly in the process of adjusting.
    Mr. Boopers was right to be a little nervous.
After all, he’d had a tough day, and there was no telling when or
how it would end.
     
    Chapter
4
     
    “ We call ourselves WE,” Dr. Black said.
“WE is an acronym for Women Empowered--we’re a support group of
women who live in Santa Monica and the Palisades who are dealing
with issues surrounding men. We deal mainly with divorce and abuse.
We meet here at The Sandcastle once a week.”
    The fast hop down the 405 to the Santa Monica
Freeway behind her, Beckie, in the big roadster, had made record
time up the Pacific Coast Highway to Paradise Cove Road, a narrow,
winding finger of asphalt which transferred her from the bluff to
sea level and the entranceway to Paradise, the way guarded, not by
a gate of pearl or any such material, but rather instead by the
more typically hum-drum guard kiosk, where Beckie had picked up her
ticket to paradise and idled past a jumble of trailer homes and
into the parking lot of The Sandcastle, which perched at the edge
of the oceanic eternity of the Pacific, and was privy to, on this
particular night, the thundering of storm-inspired sizable waves
sparkling under a refulgent full moon. The