All during this conversation, traffic had been crawling along, but once we were out of the city limits and moving into the San Gabriel Valley, things seemed to pick up, and we began cruising at almost-normal speeds. We were both silent for awhile, Paul keeping a careful watch on the cars around us. Now that we were actually moving, people were taking advantage of the situation by zipping in and out of traffic, trying to score that extra car length. I wondered what he thought of the immense crush of people here in Southern California. It had to be some kind of adjustment for a man who lived alone out in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico.
“Do you have an address in Fontana?” I asked, a little while after we had crossed the border between Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. “Because i
