Presume you are driving around, singing that Tom Petty song, Free Fallin', whose words you don't know, except for the one right before the chorus that goes "Gonna drive down, over Mullholland/Drive west on Ventura Boulevard. . ." and taking all the many twisty lefts and rights you have to take to get to your destination. So far so good. Only it's about 10 at night, and not many cars are on the road, and you have the sudden awareness that as you make a left, the big, black SUV makes a left, and the same thing happens when you make a right. In other words, the part of your brain which is prone to paranoid fantasy, starts to pipe up, saying you are being followed, and the nafarious possibilities that might explain why cycle through your head at a staggering rate. Of course there is the other part of your brain, that tries to counter offer with rational explanations, that it might just have happened that a person is heading where you are heading, making all turns you make.

This happens all the time, in some form, though ususally the following car just stays with you long enough to form the thought, then falls off. Only when it was happening last week, I was really corkscrewing through a suburban part of Laurel Canyon, where each block is only about four houses and then you come to a three or four way intersection at crazy angles and you have to choose one. So after about six turns like that, the part of me that says you are being followed is drowning out the others.

Two thoughts spring to mind: One, Sam told me he has a shotgun, which he keeps loaded and had specially modified to hold seven shells. So I could call him on the cell, presuming I get service, which I don't usually get in the region of Laurel Canyon I was in, have him come outside with his weapon drawn and then casually pull in the driveway and see what happens. Plan B, I could try and drive to a police station, though I have no idea where I might find one. And subpart 2 to Plan B is that maybe this SUV is the police, maybe they think I am a criminal, or up to no good. This being Los Angeles County, maybe they are about to stun gun me, bend me over the hood of my car and fenester me with a night stick.

This is a non story, as I arrived unscated, and the SUV executed a hasty K turn and left. Maybe it is as simple as high school kids with nothing better to do than follow cars. Maybe it is someone with human fingers in their tub, who was sizing me up to drag me into the canyon, chop off my fingers and keep my head in a jar. The only other bit of evidence for that, or any other story, is that at 5:30 in the morning someone rang the bell at the gate, and said they were there for that address. We didn't buzz them in.