“How?”
Marisa struggled to find an answer.
“What was he doing here?” Omar mumbled behind them, slowly standing up as the Daimyo turned a corner and disappeared.
“Jealous, Omar?” asked Bao.
“ándale, gringos!” shouted Anja from her doorway. The waifish blonde was dressed eclectically, as usual: instead of a club dress she wore a pair of slim vinyl pants, black with a dark blue stripe on each leg and bright metal rivets running down each side; her shirt was gray and loose and sleeveless, an almost shapeless bag that somehow worked perfectly to accentuate the figure it looked like it was hiding. Her boots were patent leather, with platforms at least two inches high. She wore two metal chains around her neck, but whatever was hanging from them was tucked inside her shirt.
“I’ve told you before,” said Marisa. Up close she could see Anja’s fake eye—not a cybernetic enhancement, like Marisa’s, but a full replacement, just different enough to freak you out if you weren’t expecting it. And Anja loved getting close to people who weren’t expecting it. Marisa gave her a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. “You’re completely misusing that word.”
“You’re a fourth-generation American, gringo,” said Anja, shaking her head sadly. “It’s time to face the truth.”
“Second-generation on my father’s side. That still counts as Mexican.”
“Whatever. Get in here already. Willkommen a mi casa.”
Marisa stepped into the opulent foyer, trying not to feel overwhelmed by the profound sense of wealth. Sahara and the boys followed her in; Anja wrapped herself around Omar and tried to pull him into a kiss, but he politely pecked her on the cheek and nodded to Anja’s father on the couch in the living room.
“Good evening, Mr. Litz.”
The man looked up, surveyed them, and nodded curtly before turning back to his tablet; he wasn’t rude, Marisa knew, just very . . . efficient. Anja laughed and grabbed Omar’s face.
“He doesn’t care, baby, come on; give it up.”
Omar gave her a longer kiss this time, full on the mouth, and Marisa turned away with a faux gag. “This is going to be a wonderful night,” she said, “I can tell already.”
“Let’s head out back,” said Bao, holding up the noodle boxes and gesturing toward the wide picture windows at the other end of the room. Beyond them was the back patio, the pool glowing blue in the fading light, and beyond that an intoxicating view of LA. Marisa followed him out, finding the side table already stocked with drinks—most of them alcoholic, as Mr. Litz never seemed to care what his daughter drank—and an array of snacks, mostly Chinese and Korean. Marisa picked through the bottles until she found a Lift, preferring caffeine to alcohol, and popped off the bottle cap on the corner of the table. Bao tried to do the same, and Marisa let him fail a few times before laughing, taking the bottle from his hands, and expertly levering off the cap.
“Thanks,” said Bao, taking a swig. “I’m glad we got my inevitable emasculation out of the way early tonight.” They walked around the pool and sat down, sipping softly from their bottles and staring out over the city.
“This house,” mused Bao, “all by itself, is worth more than . . . any given house you can point to down there. I mean honestly, right? Pick a point of light down there in the valley and the odds are this house is worth at least twice what that one is.”
“So I could pick two points of light,” said Marisa.
“Okay, you just made this more interesting,” said Bao. “Two is definitely too low, now that I’m really thinking about it. Taken as a unit of currency—one average lifestyle per light in the city—how many lights is this house worth? I think we’re talking double digits.”
Marisa looked out, watching the city come to bright, electric life as the sky faded to a deep blue-black. The color of Anja’s pants, she thought, and the rivets on the sides were the stars. “Are we averaging everything together?” she asked. “The high-rises and the beach homes and the shantytowns?”
“All of it,” said Bao. “From Bel Air to . . . well, as far as the eye can see, I guess. Mexico.”
The city of Los Angeles had grown wildly over the decades, urbanizing every scrap of land until the street lights and pavement stretched in an unbroken tide from the beach to Moreno Valley, from Santa Clarita to the southern fringes of Tijuana. If you ignored the US-Mexican border—and most people did—the city was bigger than some entire states. Marisa didn’t know who made the official measurements, but some of the crazier clubs had held a party when LA passed Connecticut in landmass.