I was like “What?”

“Scratch a man and you get a monkey real quick” is specifically what the old man with the chalky blue eyes said, and it didn’t much matter if we were standing on the edge of a pitch and putt in Los Feliz or if he was talking about The Big One or whether he thought you would have to eat raw food because the smell of cooking might get you killed and really nothing much mattered as I shook his hand and took three steps toward the car before he turned back and said, “Maybe you’ll end up here too” and though the words that came out of my mouth were We’ll see, I was like “What?”