Encino is a San Fernando Valley setting where the novel’s intimate and criminal geographies overlap. Matt Kellner lives on a large family estate there, and its pool house becomes the recurring private setting for his relationship with Bret. At the same time, Encino falls within the area affected by the Trawler’s early home invasions, making the apparently insulated neighborhood part of a wider landscape of vulnerability.

Setting and the Kellner Estate

Matt’s family home is described as a palatial estate in Encino, with a separate pool house at the back. The pool house is furnished as a beach-themed retreat: a shellacked dolphin hangs on one wall, pastel surfboards rest against another, and a long aquarium holds fish, starfish, snails, and coral. A stereo and television connected to Z Channel sit alongside a refrigerator stocked with soft drinks, beer, and marijuana. The setting’s abundance and privacy make it a self-contained space apart from the ordinary social life of Buckley.

Matt’s cat Alex sometimes wanders into the pool house and settles in front of the aquarium. The room is therefore not only the setting for the boys’ meetings but also part of Matt’s domestic routine, populated by the animals and objects that later acquire a more disturbing significance in the account of his death.

Bret and Matt’s Meetings

Bret first begins visiting Matt in July 1980, when both boys are sixteen and attending Buckley’s summer program after failing Geometry and Science. Their tentative conversations about films and music lead to Matt inviting Bret to his home in Encino to swim and get high. Bret recognizes the possibility of sexual intimacy in the invitation, and their first encounter takes place at the pool.

The visits continue through their junior year. Bret usually drives to Haskell Avenue, parks on the street, and enters through the gate toward the backyard pool house, often without calling ahead because Matt rarely answers the phone. The repeated journey turns the Encino house into a private meeting place, where the two boys’ familiarity increasingly requires little conversation. The relationship remains largely hidden from their school social world; much later, when Bret tells Ryan Vaughn about it, Ryan responds with surprise and disinterest.

Encino and the Wider Threat

Encino is also named among the communities reached during the Trawler’s first wave of home invasions. In the summer of 1980, the intrusions spread through the San Fernando Valley, from Studio City through Sherman Oaks and Encino, before appearing briefly in Bel Air and Benedict Canyon and then becoming more scattered. The attacks seemed random, and residents had not yet connected them to the disappearing pets or to later murders.

The animal pattern eventually gives those early incidents a more coherent, frightening shape: pets belonging to targeted households, as well as animals from nearby homes, disappeared before attacks. At the time, however, the connections were not understood. Encino’s place in the invasion area therefore contrasts with the private refuge Bret associates with Matt’s pool house: the same suburban setting that permits their secluded meetings belongs to a neighborhood network already exposed to an unknown intruder.

Routes and Narrative Significance

Encino also anchors Bret’s movements through the Valley. After a conversation between Matt and Robert Mallory unsettles him, Bret follows Robert’s Porsche from Buckley, tracking its route toward Ventura Boulevard and into the Valley. In another episode, a newspaper account of a Woodland Hills home invasion prompts Bret to wonder whether the break-ins might be connected to the Riders of the Afterlife, though he has no evidence establishing that link. These episodes place Encino within a mobile landscape of school, home, and road, where observation and suspicion travel by car.

The location’s significance rests on this double use. For Bret, the Kellner estate is the beginning and habitual setting of a secret relationship; for the broader plot, Encino is part of the Valley territory through which the Trawler’s early pattern spreads. The contrast makes the apparent security of a private estate feel contingent rather than absolute.