All true, again.

Late last night I was driving home from an illicit affair and I hit a deer. Before I could even manage to grasp the situation, I hit another and as I tried to remember where the brake pedal was, I hit yet another. That's when I knew I should not be driving in that field.

Short cuts are always like that for me. Oh, don't get me wrong, I am lazy and sloppy and I will probably die with a piece of pizza in one hand a remote controller in the other. In fact, now that I think about it, that is exactly how I will die if I have any say in the matter.

Palmetto Becky emailed from Europe last week. She goes way back, to my Los Angeles days, when I was cash rich and suntanned. I met Palmetto Becky one morning when I was walking home from an orgy. I almost tripped over her, she was passed out in the entryway to the parking garage near the harbor. When I stumbled over her she screamed "who the fuck are you?" and we went for coffee. She spent a week on my couch and we have been friends for a long time. She is one of those women who is so effortlessly beautiful and naturally at ease, everyone who meets her likes her, wants to be like her, wants to sleep with her, wants to know what she knows.

She owes me a lot of money. When we met, all those years ago, it was one of those points in my life where people seemed to want to shovel money at me. So I lent Palmetto Becky some cash, kind of a lot of cash, with the understanding that before too long, she would pay me back. I saw her a couple of years ago in New York and without saying a word, she gave me a hundred dollars. I am not sure of the exact amount that she continues to owe me, but 100 dollars in a very tiny percentage of the total. She handed me the folded up bill, leaned into my ear and whispered, "part of the money I owe you." That was it. One payment over 20 years or so, one payment, 100 dollars.

Palmetto Becky, red hair, even today, long limbs, a flat stomach and an angular face that screams for a Picasso setting. She is half brilliant and a quarter insane, but almost 97 percent always fascinating. I used to drive a British racing green MGB in Los Angeles, and Palmetto Becky and I would smoke cigars and put the top down and ride Sunset, to Laurel, go up to Lookout and visit Houdini. Los Angeles is a dirty city and sometimes that's just the way it should be.

Palmetto Becky used to score weed from the Mexicans. She was so proud of the fact that she would say, "we should go score some weed from the Mexicans." Once I drove her to a small stucco house in Compton, we both got out of my tiny little sports car, walked into the home, the door closed behind us, we sat in a darkened room and a fat Mexican guy named Mexican Rick. He asked us what we wanted. Palmetto Becky asked what he had for sale and Mexican Rick asked "who's the fat Jew?" I did not think he would have been referring to me, because back then, while I may have been husky, it would have been a stretch to call me fat, and I was well tanned, but hardly anyone in Southern California would have mistaken me for a Jew. I mean, seriously.

"Are you talking to me?" I asked. Mexican Rick looked over at me, "I ain't talkin to you homes, I'm talkin to Palmetto Becky, you look like a Jew cop." That was actually true, I did look like a cop back then. Short hair, clear blue eyes, a healthy outlook and a decent diet. I looked over at Palmetto Becky, but she was looking at the table, where a giant bong was sitting. "He is most certainly not a cop," Palmetto Becky said, without breaking her gaze, "but I think he's a Jew." She grabbed a baggy, filled the bongs bowl and pushed it toward me. "Would a cop smoke pot?"

That day in Compton was the most fun imaginable. Mexican Rick was a great cook, or as good of a cook as one needs to be when his friends are baked. We spent a couple of hours listening to traditional Mexican music and telling stories. Palmetto Becky bought her pot and we stumbled back to the MGB, which was sitting, top down, in pristine condition, in the middle of what would have been Los Angeles most crime infested blocks. Go figure.

I accidentally got Palmetto Becky pregnant. There was a time that a woman could walk by me in a snow storm and 9 months later she would give birth, so it was no surprise that somehow Palmetto Becky ended up with child. She did not stay with child for long. A month or so in, she miscarried. It was an interesting few weeks of soul searching and some very serious adult type questions. When she lost the baby, it was the end of all those serious conversations, I believe we went surfing.

When I do hear from Palmetto Becky I never ask about the money. First, she always seems to call at a point where I am not desperate for it, and she never seems to contact me when I am. Palmetto Becky asked me if I was interested in moving in with her, somewhere in France, maybe learn to be a farmer.

I haven't responded, because really, if there is one thing I have learned about farming is this, farming is boring. Then again, my professor of microbiology once told me that "it would be a lot better if we all went back to farming and stopped trying to cure cancer so much." I did not say he was a good professor.