We calculate new lives for ourselves in his car, rewriting old equations and solving for possibility. Together it seems we can engineer any aspiration, and the sprawling city echos our ambitions with her own promises. It’s magic. Headlights, taillights, and the neon sign hanging in the doughnut shop window glitter like stars in the night. When he’s driving, there's even glamour in gutters and sidewalks and auto shops. And for the first time since I moved down here, I finally understand the charisma of all these palm trees.

And yet, this abundance of palm trees lining so many boulevards, conjuring such a tropical oasis, do not normally thrive in such an arid climate. No. The trees require more water in the soil—water not naturally found anywhere near Los Angeles—water self-taught civil-engineer William Mulholland had to find in Owens Valley 233 miles away—water William Mulholland siphoned through the Los Angeles Aqueduct at 5311 gallons per second. And if William Mulholland hadn’t, the city wouldn’t be the recognizable inspiration we drive by from neighborhood to neighborhood.

These long tours of the city have only one catalyst, his phone call to me—but not mine to him. And I never know what time or day or with what unknown variables he’ll call, so I abandon my last pack of cigarettes. I cannot discourage the compression of his lips to mine. I also forgo lacy or silky underwear. He doesn’t like the idea that I might be willing before he’s had a chance to convince me, so I wear cotton girlie panties, something so wholesome it feels like they’re not supposed to be seen by anyone but my mother. Those are what excite him.

When William Mulholland first turned the valve for the aqueduct, he told Los Angeles residents, “There it is. Take it.” And so they did. Rows and rows of thirsty little orange saplings shot up from the ground and grew into an army of capitalist soldiers. Los Angeles swelled with miles of asphalt, lush lawns, kidney shaped pools, studio lots, and celebrities. All the while Owens Lake shrank and shriveled and puckered into mud and then turned into dust.

I don’t pull my hand away from his when he shifts into reverse or back into drive. My knuckles turn erogenous under the friction of his thumb, as he figure-eights around their tiny peaks. I don’t tell him this. It’s my innocence he finds sexy. He wants to be the one to sully it. It’s no fun to sully something already dirty.

Yes, William Mulholland brought water to the desert and transformed the landscape into a metropolis, but the city wasn’t about to use all that water all at once. No. Though residents still wanted it waiting and ready. They didn’t want to have to think about water until the moment they found themselves thirsty. So Mulholland started building the concrete walls of St. Francis Dam, modestly at first, but then he was always susceptible to ambition. He raised the walls higher to hold more water but not any wider for the additional pressure of all that weight. And then he went and raised them higher yet again.

Sometimes we drive north on Crescent Heights which turns into Laurel Canyon which takes us into the hills. That’s how we get to Mulholland Drive where we can park on one of the many turnouts and look down at all the shimmering lights of the city. Other times we go west on Sunset but avoid Santa Monica. Stop signs don’t seem to apply to drivers there. We can get stuck at one, while three or four cars zip past theirs at the cross street. Wherever they’re going is always more important than where we’re going. But to be honest, I’m a little afraid to get to where we’re headed. I’m not sure anymore if it’s somewhere I actually want to be.

St. Francis Dam complained with loud ominous creaking. Small fissures and leaks had the operator concerned, but William Mulholland found nothing wrong during his inspection. Twelve hours later, the reservoir collapsed. Twelve billion gallons of water rushed the 54 miles to the Pacific Ocean and claimed 431 lives along its way, California’s biggest death toll since the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. An inquest concluded that the failure resulted from an error in judgement and left it at that.

He’s built a reservoir around my libido. It accumulates and stills, so he can dip himself inside it whenever he feels there might be a drought coming. The levels are too high, and I don’t know how much longer I can sustain the pressure. Each time I near climax alone in my own  apartment, the tears are so sudden and forceful that it slips away before I can finish. I worry I’m breaking, or broken, failing, and a force of twelve billion gallons will rush out and leave me a crumbled and empty shell.

I can crawl into his bed, and he wraps his long body around my outer edge. Two crescents, one contained by the inner curve of the other. He squeezes my lungs and back into his chest, forcing a gust of wind from my mouth. There’s no space for breath until his arms relax a little, but I can wait—for weeks if that’s what he wants. He presses the grain of his chin and the wet of his mouth into my neck. I stop the gasp in my throat before he has a chance to hear it. He never spoke the rules out loud, but I know better. I do not turn my head to kiss his mouth. Even though I want to take him like he’s mine, I know that I am his and must wait for his taking. I wish I could choose where he applies his pressures and textures. I employ all the telekinesis I can muster to move his hands lower down my body, but it never works.