How could she have known that the Blonde had a gun? Okay everyone was supposed to be carrying a gun in LA these days, but really - had you ever actually seen one? Outside of police and shopkeepers and bartenders?

Star was in a minor suburban police station, having been discharged from the hospital, nothing but a large diamond-shaped imprint on her forehead and some minor whiplash to show for her ordeal. She still had the blanket that the hospital had given her, she was still shivering from the shock. She knew she'd been out of her mind when she rammed the Blonde's porsche, and tried to piece together what she thought she'd achieve.

I've been losing it for a while, she thought. All those joints. All those nights on the beach with the bums, listening to them tell their stories like they were real, I'd started to believe in it all. And now someone's dying, and it's all my fault!

She pictured again the tousled head of the man in the Freightliner, he'd been staring at them with the indulgent humour of a man who loves and understands women. She hadn't realised how much detail she'd taken in of the scene - from the moment she ploughed into the porsche, the world juddered into slow-mo, screen by screen. The airbag, framed by bright sunlight. The palms overhead, the blue blue sky. The candy colours of the cars, the dark eyebrows of the Blonde, her gold locks halo'ing her head, her red lips, white teeth bared. Gold sunlight glancing and refracting from that huge diamond ring. Sound does not exist in this slow-mo world, it was only later - when she'd crawled out from under the car door, when the Blonde was led away in handcuffs, that she realised her car stereo was still blasting Lucinda and the engine was still ticking in the Porsche.

Coming out from under the car, it was like being reborn. She had, for that brief moment, forgotten all the miseries and disappointments of her life. Had not been thinking in remorse of lost opportunities. Had not been dwelling angrily over the pathetic come-ons of her male yoga proteges. Had been gloriously and self-indulgently rejoicing in the beating of her own heart and the gasping of her own breath.

She didn't think she would have it in her - to move that fast, after a joint and no breakfast. Adrenaline! Adrenaline. The Blonde's shaking hand, coming out of her cute pouch bag, gun-metal grey, a click... She'd moved without thinking. She'd read - back in the days when she was still reading to learn - that the subconscious brain makes a decision milliseconds before the conscious brain is aware of it. For example, a moment before you think you've decided to speak, your vocal synapses are already firing. Star had been freaked by that info, back in the day. She'd spent weeks trying to trick herself - walking into cafes, stopping milliseconds before she went to speak. So pointless!

This must have happened at the crash - the hindbrain moving into drive before the consciousness has reflected on the outcome. The same happened with the door - she threw herself at the Blonde, hand on the car doorhandle, the glass of the half-open window catching Blondie's elbow as the stupid bitch PULLED THE TRIGGER! She was going to shoot her, over a measly car crash! It's this that really shocks Star, and keeps her shoulders huddled under her hospital blanket. The poor man in the Freightliner, with the bullet in his skull, is to her a mere curio sideline to the central event that is the threatening of Her Own Life.

'He's not actually dead', she tells herself. A bullet in the skull is nothing in these days of modern medicine, they put him in the ambulance, right? They wouldn't bother with that if he was a lost cause? She doesn't know. Not really. Here on Planet Star, this is all secondary news.

One more flashback comes to her, from her moments of heightened visual clarity in the crash. The man, as he was wheeled past her on the trolley, eyes wide open and still, red blood, redder than the movies, surreally bright, streaming from his ear - he was mouthing a word. Over and over. "Lana".....

But that wasn't what sticks in her flashback memory. The thing that sticks is the other guy - the skinny, underdressed guy that looked like a monk or something, all in dirty white and grey - he'd been crossing the road, and he'd seen the trolley go past, he'd seen the man mouthing and he'd copied, goldfish-style: "Lana".....