Ten minutes later I was backing out of the parking lot. Johann sat beside me, jamming his storm trooper boots against the dashboard. He shook off my suggestion to use the seat belt. When I reminded him he was breaking the law, he snorted, “I thought America was a free country.” He strapped himself in and sank into a black mood. “My friend is not home,” he said. “I have no drugs for you. By the way, they are against the law too.”

Suddenly the Filipino parking valet was running toward us, waving his arms and shouting in his native tongue. I panicked. Had he overheard Johann's comment about drugs? “What is he saying?” I asked. Johann shrugged. Apparently, Tagalog was not one of his five languages. I kept the car sliding backward, hoping to escape. But the tiny, brown-skinned valet threw himself onto the hood.

Johann gripped my leg. “Ronnie, stop.”

I obeyed and the Filipino attendant's head clunked against the windshield. Johann gestured for me to look out the window toward the rear of the car. I saw a line of metal teeth across the parking lot entrance and one of those signs that prepares you for severe tire damage. The valet had been trying to warn me.

“I'm sorry!” I shouted. I started the car toward the clearly designated exit, tossing a twenty out the window. Johann laughed so hard he gripped his sides.

“Oh, Ronnie! Ronnie! You are crazy!” Johann squeezed my leg harder. Aroused, I turned the wrong way onto a one-way street. Johann unsnapped his seat belt. “I don't think we worry about breaking the law tonight! I will get you drugs, no problem! Maybe I will do some too. Go down to Santa Monica Boulevard,” he commanded, referring to the famous avenue that is ground zero for street hustlers. “I'm sure you know where that is.”

We cruised Fairfax toward Santa Monica , where prostitutes in cutoffs and tank shirts cluster at bus stops and fast-food joints. Johann dismissed them: “Trash. Drug addicts. They let a man fuck them without a condom for fifty bucks. Idiots. No future. No brains. No class. Keep driving east, Ronnie. I am looking for a friend who will get us drugs. He is German too. His name is Fred. I think he got out of jail last week.”

I ventured a personal question: “How long have you been doing this?”

“What?”

“Well, you know… Your work. Being a, um…”

Johann rapped his knuckles against the molded plastic dashboard. “Ronnie. I don't think you are very important if they give you such a lousy car.”

Before I could defend myself, Johann spotted his drug-dealing friend. “Pull over—that's Fred. The one on crutches.”

With Fred and his crutches in the back, we followed his directions toward Hollywood Boulevard . Fred was a scrawny kid with frizzy hair under a red bandanna, wearing a sleeveless T-shirt with the American flag. He looked as if he were going to a costume party as a 1970s heroin addict. “Yeah, yeah, I can get you powder,” he said, in an accent thicker than Johann's.

Johann made introductions. “Fred, this is Ronnie. He is a terrible driver. You will probably die tonight. I hope you have made a confession recently.”

“I never confess to anything!” Fred proclaimed. “I take my secrets to the grave. I just got out of jail. You know what happens in jail to people who confess? They get their hearts cut out with a shiv.”

Johann rolled his eyes. “Fred. It was a joke. Ronnie, turn right at the corner. But first, stop at the red light. Good boy.” I wondered if Johann spoke to everyone as if they were retarded children.

Fred directed us through the traffic of Hollywood Boulevard to a side street and a group of young black men lingering outside the Starview Hotel, which offered rooms with three adult channels.

“Give me some money, Ronnie.” I handed over two hundred dollars. Johann returned half. “Too much.”

“But I want to make sure we get enough.”

Johann held firm. “I have school tomorrow. I am sure you have to work. Let Johann take care of you tonight, okay?” He put one hundred dollars into Fred's bony hand. “One gram, Fred.”

Fred leaned close. “Listen. These are Crips. I can do business with them. I joined their gang in jail.”

Johann was delighted. “Oh, yes, I am sure you are a Crip, Fred. You are a big Crip. You are the president of the Crips, I believe.”

Fred spoke gravely. “They don't know me as Fred. I have a gang name. They call me Gestapo.” Johann put his hand over his heart as he laughed. Fred continued, “You must call me Gestapo.”

“No, I am sorry,” Johann said. “I must call you Fred. Go do business, Fred. Don't cheat me, Fred, or I will kill you, Fred. Goodbye, Fred.”

Johann shut the door and Fred hobbled away.

We were alone and I was stone cold sober. Gestapo disappeared with the crack dealers. There was a liquor store across the street from which egregiously thin locals emerged carrying pint-size brown bags. One of them puked into a trash can.

The next day's appointments stretched ahead of me: a morning notes session with studio executives for a romantic comedy set in Appalachia and, after lunch, a meeting to pitch an adaptation of a W. Somerset Maugham novel. The Maugham book had been filmed in 1934 with Greta Garbo. It was a romantic epic with a spiritual twist: A couple finds love in the midst of a cholera epidemic. I was prepared to describe the theme of my proposed adaptation as “the grace that comes with unconditional love.” I considered rehearsing my pitch on Johann, who was inspecting his fingernails in the dim light.

“You nervous, Ronnie?” Johann pointed to my hands wringing the steering wheel.

“I have appointments tomorrow. I'm in the movie business.”

Johann came alive. “Do you know any stars?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

“Do you know Veronica Azul? She has tits like this.” He held his hands around imaginary breasts the size of basketballs. “Solid plastic. Sometimes I buy coke from her. She wants me to make a movie with her, but I don't think my dick is big enough.”

Before I could explain that I worked in the real movie business, not porn, Johann patted my leg. “Don't worry, Ronnie. My dick is not small. You will get your money's worth. Veronica says I have a good look for the movies. Tough. She wants me to do a cop scene with her. She drives and I pull her over. I am dressed like LAPD. I give her a ticket and make her blow me in the car.”

“Do you prefer women?”

“Only their breasts.” He yawned and checked his pager. “Agh!” he shouted, pointing to the flashing number. “This guy always does this! Punches in his number and then 911. He is so anxious for me. He will die if I do not call him back immediately. 911. 911.” He addressed the pager directly. “Relax, my friend. You will not die if you do not hear from Johann for one hour.”

“An hour? We haven't gotten home yet. Are you leaving in an hour?”

“Ronnie. Why do you worry?” Johann dropped his voice to a growl. “Tonight you are the priority.”

The door opened and Gestapo flopped into the backseat. He opened his palm to reveal several orange-yellow pellets that resembled clumps of soap.

“No powder,” he announced. “Rock. You have a pipe?”

Finding a crack pipe in Hollywood at one a.m. is not as easy as you might think. Johann, Gestapo, and I drove past bands of hip-hop kids on street corners who appeared, to me, capable of providing assistance, but Gestapo dismissed each group with two words: “Not Crips.” He was willing to do business only with Crips. Apparently, every young man on the boulevards of Hollywood this particular evening belonged to the Bloods, mortal enemies of Crips. Gestapo declared that a Crip, such as himself, approaching a Blood to buy a crack pipe would suffer a grave penalty. “They will cut my heart out with a shiv.”

What about the Crips who sold us the crack? No, we couldn't go back to them. “What will they think of me? I buy crack, but I don't have a pipe to smoke it? They will think I am stupid. They will cut my heart out with a shiv.”

Obviously, Gestapo had acquired a favorite English expression. For as long as I knew Johann, we made each other laugh by summoning this phrase. In a Key West restaurant, brandishing a steak knife, Johann declared, “Ronnie, I will cut your heart out with a shiv.” Once, during sex in a New York hotel, I muttered the phrase as best I could while lowering my mouth onto him: “I …ill …ut y…r …art ou… wi… uh …iv.”

Johann took charge, swiveling in his seat and getting right into Gestapo's face. “Get me a pipe, Fred. Or I shove this shit”—the crack—“up your ass.”

“Throw it out the window!” The suggestion came from me, prompted by exhaustion and something else: a fantasy that Johann could elicit my love sans chemical assistance. My use of drugs and paid-for sex had developed in recent months; one fueled the other, and both seemed to be growing beyond my control. It was a time when I ought to have been happy and satisfied, and yet I was lonely, restless, and anxious. I imagined a therapist might help me understand this contradiction, but I had been raised by stoic parents who abhorred self-examination. I looked for solutions in romance and chance meetings. A new life might begin in this car, on Hollywood Boulevard , with a hustler throwing precious drugs out a window, acting on my impromptu command. Johann might rescue me.

My companions fell quiet. People who abuse drugs do not throw them out a window.

But Johann surprised me. He rolled down the window. Earlier he had declared his indifference to drugs; perhaps he was about to prove it. I felt a cold sweat cover the top of my head as I waited for him to act. But Johann, who struck me as someone who never hesitated, hesitated. I glimpsed Gestapo in the rearview mirror, his eyes fixed on Johann's clutched hand, his mouth slightly open. We drifted down the street in silence, as if we had passed the scene of an accident and spotted bodies lying on the road. Everything seemed grim and hopeless. Finally, Gestapo spoke, chastened and eager to please. “I will show you how to make a pipe!”

Johann closed the window. I turned on the radio and breathed again. I wasn't ready to be rescued.

To make a crack pipe we needed a soda can and steel wool. The soda can was acquired in a Mobil station, where Gestapo treated me and Johann to bubble gum. The steel wool posed a problem. I carried a box of Brillo pads to the counter. Gestapo tossed it at me and snapped, “What do you think we are going to do? Clean the bathtub?”

Johann explained in a whisper, “The soap, Ronnie. Not good for smoking.”

The search for soapless steel wool was a bizarre twist on the traditional Hollywood tour, led by Gestapo, from a gas station to a deli to a porn shop, wherever crackheads were likely to seek supplies. Johann leaned back and opened his legs, directing my hand to his inner thigh. I steered the rented car with my free hand. Two hours had passed since meeting Johann; I was in for three hundred dollars at this point. I opened the window and let the Los Angeles air waft over me, smelling of hibiscus and gasoline.

The steel wool was procured in a liquor store, where the proprietor kept a wad of it under the counter, selling stringy chunks for a couple of bucks. Gestapo explained the construction of the pipe, and we delivered him to the Fatburger restaurant on Santa Monica , with a tip of fifty dollars and three rocks of crack.

The drive to my agent's house in Beverly Hills was quiet. Johann closed his eyes and hummed. After a few bars, I recognized the song: “Happy Birthday.”

"Is it your birthday?"

"No. It's the only song I know how to sing."