QUOTE : People work all their life to get recognized,” Linda said. “What they don’t realize is that once they get recognized, they’re not themselves anymore. Not in public. Not to anyone else. They’re someone else. And that’s what people recognize. That’s who everyone falls in love with. That’s who they want. People like Ann are constantly changing. But the world wants just that one incarnation of them, over and over again.” We didn’t say anything for a moment. Two hummingbirds fought a few feet from us. I thought about how much I wanted to enjoy the sunshine and the hummingbirds and the flowers. Enjoying life as it unfolded was always hard. Since Constance died it seemed physically impossible. It was all just a long, infinite, blacktop of things you’d regret not enjoying later. CHAPTER 9 THE CASE OF THE INFINITE BLACKTOP Las Vegas, 2011 Las Vegas was eighty-five degrees and as dry as the desert it was but inside Nero’s Inferno the air was cool and dark and almost damp, more like a cave than a royal domain. I