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NATHAN WAS PEDALING along on Third Street at a robust twenty-five miles per hour when he spotted her, a feminine mirage in black that forced him to stop. Even before his brakes had finished squealing he began to laugh and shout. “Hey, what are you doing up there?” The woman was stuck to the top of a chainlink fence, trying to reach the sidewalk on a stretch of Third Street where Nathan never saw anyone on foot. It’s a cliché about Los Angeles that no one walks, but on that shortcut to the Westside it’s actually true. There are no pedestrians on Third Street and thus no crosswalks. The resulting fast and free flow of traffic feels like a memory of the city’s unencumbered past, and Nathan biked that stretch like a guy driving a Porsche: he was in a hurry, he cut people off, and he didn’t stop to take in the sights, except in this special case when a lithe woman in need
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