There is no sound in the pickup except for the constant whistle of wind flitting by the window. Looking at the warm lights emanating from the Meriwether chateau, the hitchhiker can imagine the good-humored conversation lilting evenly, above and below, the gentle clinking of glassware. Above it all rises the hearty, assured laugh of a man confident in his business –the movie business, undoubtedly. Joining him might be the laughter of a woman: lighter and more self-aware, lest it seem too ardent. Together they form the natural call of Hollywood. (Hollywood, of course, does not merely denote the string of studios and production offices that line a particular Los Angeles valley, but is inclusive of the sixty-person yachts, Park Avenue mansions, and even here: perched atop a desolate hill nineteen miles from Las Vegas’s hallowed strip, a habitable sculpture of scrap metal and jagged glass).

Someone had to shell out serious studio money for a house that looks like a giant replica of a car crash; but it, or its inhabitant, is deemed worthy enough by the right crowd to draw out the Big Names from similar abodes jutting out from the hilltops over Los Angeles. This particular modernist marvel, however, is about to be descended upon by an unlikely trio in a battered pickup. In actuality, they are ascending, since the pickup has turned off onto a muddy driveway –though it hadn’t been raining- and is laboring to navigate the winding path uphill.

They come to a point where there are a number of cars blocking the way. They are all luxury sedans. There isn’t a single spec of dirt on any of them, despite the virtual mudslide that serves as a driveway.

The three are out of the car, but each stalls in his own way. No one wants to be the first to come upon…whatever it is that awaits them within this seemingly inside-out house. The hitchhiker stretches, with a labored “grrrrrrraaaaaahhhhh”, and the teenager simply stares.

“They otta pave the sonnofabitch. Or at least put some gravel down,” the driver thinks as he inspects the sides of his pickup. He can’t even see the paint. It is an even shade of shit-brown mud.

Some of the cars have drivers leaning against them, or else they are busy polishing the chrome with a rag. They don’t acknowledge each other except for the requisite nod and ‘mmmmhhhhh’. The hitchhiker isn’t all-too-familiar with the protocols of hired help etiquette, but he assumes that these chauffeurs to the rich and renowned are forbidden from talking to one another.