The Martini Shot

The Martini Shot

I was up in my suite in a residence hotel, where the production housed out-of-town talent and department heads, when I heard a knock on my door. It was late, around two in the morning, but we had wrapped less than an hour earlier, and crew kept different hours than straights. Few of us went to sleep as soon as we got home. We had to have a snack, or a couple of drinks, or some smoke, a little television, sex if we could get it. Anything to make us feel normal at the end of the day. Anything that would make us feel that we led normal lives.

I looked through the peephole. Annette was standing out in the carpeted hall. She’d called me minutes earlier on the house phone and asked if I wanted some company. I was expecting her, but still, I liked to watch her out there, waiting for me to open the door. It made my pulse run. Both of us had been single for a long while, but our relationship was private.

I let Annette in and closed the door.

“Hi,” she said, her mouth curved up in a sweet smile. She stepped out of her sandals.

“Hi.”

I kissed her soft lips, held her and stroked her bare arms. She was warm to the touch. She wore tailored velour sweats and a cutoff tee, and her copper-and-brown hair was up and back in a soft band. She was in her early forties, a large-featured woman with green eyes. She was curvy, big-breasted, thick in the thighs, and generous in back. She was olive-skinned and exotic, a Mediterranean girl built like a black woman. She was exactly what I like.

“Good day?” she said.

“Fourteen hours. The director shot too much stuff we’ll never use. Anyway, we got the pages. You?”

“A little rough.” It was all she needed to say. I knew she was under the gun. “I could use a glass of wine.”

I opened a bottle of Rodney Strong, a good everyday Merlot that Annette liked, poured it into two short hotel-issue glasses, and took it over to the living room couch, where we had a seat. I lit a couple of candles and programmed my phone to play some tunes through a Bluetooth speaker I took from job to job. The phone and speaker arrangement was my portable stereo. Everything I owned was portable: the push-up stands, my shaving kit, my fold-up Beats, my Swiss Army knife. Everything. I owned a condo in a Mid-Atlantic city, but I lived in hotels.

Annette and I drank wine and talked about our day. We laughed about the bosses, though she was a department head, and technically, I was management, too. Typically, I was on set call-to-wrap, and she popped in at various locations before rehearsal to check out the work of her crew. Then she’d go off to prep the next episode. Seeing her arrive on set wearing one of her many cool, understated outfits was always the highlight of my day. Hats were her trademark. She walked like a cat. She was smart and talented, a true artist. Annette was our art director and she had style.

“You mind if I take this off?” she said, her hands going up under her shirt. “It’s too tight.”

“I like tight things.”

“Stop.”

She unfastened her bra, produced it like a magician, and dropped it on the carpet beside the couch.

“Don’t forget this.” I took liberties and pulled her T-shirt up over her head.

“You too, Buster.”

“Don’t call me Buster. That’s a name for a dog.”

“Come on.”

I removed my shirt. We embraced and kissed, both of us naked above the waist, skin to skin. I caressed her and squeezed one of her dark nipples, rolled it between my thumb and forefinger until it was a pebble.

Our tongues mingled. I felt a catch in her breath and heard her moan. She gently pushed me away and chuckled.

“Who’s this?” she said, nodding at my speaker.

“The new xx,” I said, and shrugged sheepishly. “Not very original of me, I know.”

“Wine, candles, and make-out music.”

“I’m not as creative as you.”

“It’s perfect.”

We kissed some more and had a few laughs. While we talked, I slid my hand beneath her sweats, pushed the crotch of her damp lace panties aside, slipped my longest finger inside her, and stroked her clit. It got warm in the room. She lay back on the couch and arched her back, and I peeled off her pants and thong. Now she was nude. I stripped down to my boxer briefs and crouched over her. I let her pull me free because I knew she liked to. She stroked my pole and took off my briefs, and I got between her and spread her muscular thighs with my knees and rubbed myself against her until she was wet as a waterslide, and then I split her. We fucked for a while, slow and deep, with my feet against the scrolled arm of the couch for leverage. Neither of us allowed ourselves to come. It was too good to end.

“Let’s go to my bed,” I said. We were pretty sweaty by then.

I brought the candles, the speaker, and my phone. Annette followed with the glasses and the bottle of wine. Entering my bedroom, I switched the music over to an Anthony Hamilton mix and let that ride. Anthony was our favorite, spiritual and secular, authentic and sublime.

My room was large, with a four-poster bed and floor-to-ceiling windows that gave to a view of the street below and the city skyline. Because it was on the top floor of the hotel, and because there were no nearby buildings as high as mine, it was completely private. Moonlight and candlelight are a heady aphrodisiac, and I kept the curtains open at all times.

I pulled her to me. I took her band off, and her hair fell free about her shoulders. I cupped my hand around the back of her neck, and we made out standing beside my bed. It felt good to both of us, pressed together, her body lush, soft, and hot against mine. She was a good kisser; our mouths fit.

She got onto the bed, atop the blankets, and I spread her out. I held her hands and raised them above her, and I kissed her. I kissed her chest and her inner thighs and everywhere. Her pussy was clean, with a five-o’clock shadow and just a hint of smell. I penetrated her with my thumb while I licked and kissed and pressed my tongue into her swollen button. She talked to me and told me what to do. “There,” she said, and “Yeah,” and she said my name, and then her thighs tensed and shuddered. She spasmed and pushed my head away. I lay back and left her alone to enjoy her last rippling throes. But I only left her for a minute. She was ripe, and I pulled her to the edge of the mattress and stood beside the bed and spread her legs. I fucked her like that, me, looking down and watching myself, thick, plunging into her velvet, standing on the carpet with great purchase, her lying there, her knees bent, taking me in. I turned her face to lick inside her ear and kiss her neck, and then her mouth, and she said, “God,” and said it louder, and I controlled it, and she bucked as she came, this time harder than the last.

When her heart had slowed down, I withdrew from her and handed her a short glass. I took mine off the dresser, and both of us drank some wine.

“Now you,” she said.

I lay on my back, and Annette put a pillow under my head. She spread my legs as I had done for her before, and got between me and played with my dick. She knocked the head of it against the nipples of her pendulous breasts and hit it on her tongue like a hammer to a bell.

“I love your cock,” she said.

“It loves you.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Touch my ass.”

She tickled my anus as she licked my balls and shaft, and slathered her tongue on my helmet. I laced my fingers through her hair and closed my eyes.

“Go,” I said.

I stopped breathing and, like her, invoked a higher power. My orgasm was eye-popping, as I blew a hot load into her mouth. It seemed to last forever, and she took it all.

“Thank you,” I said, my hand still in her hair. I must have been twisting it. It was a mess.

“My pleasure.”

“Sorry. I know that it was a lot. It felt like a lot.”

“You could help me out and empty that thing once in a while.”

“I don’t care to spill my seed. I like to save it all for you.”

She moved up and came beside me, rested her head on my chest. It was quiet now, with just the soul music playing in the room. She blinked slowly and shut her eyes, and I listened and waited for her breathing to slow down. Soon, with each of her inhales, I heard a small click. That was the sound of her in sleep. In the candlelight, I watched her.

I checked my wristwatch. It was nearly four a.m. We had a short turnaround, a nine-o’clock call, which meant I had to be up at eight. Four hours’ sleep for both of us, but that was workable, and not unusual. It was late in the shoot, and all of us were running on fumes.

A little while later, I touched her shoulder and said, “Annette.” Her eyes fluttered open. I hated to rouse her, but I knew she liked to wake up in her own bed.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

She looked up at me without raising her head. The moon had dropped, and its light came full into the room and it was in her eyes.

“That was nice,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I love you, Vic.”

I made no comment. I studied her face, a mix of affection and disappointment, and felt a rush of emotion. When production wrapped we’d go our separate ways. “If it happened on location, it didn’t happen.” That’s what was said in our line of work. Maybe it would be like that with me and Annette, too. She’d move on, and so would I. But I knew that she’d always be deep in my head.

Our driver, a Teamster named Louise, picked us up in a white Ford window van at eight thirty. There were five of us standing on the sidewalk as she pulled to the curb. This episode’s director, Alan Lomax, out of L.A.; our DP, a Danish cinematographer, Eigil, now spelled Eagle for marketing purposes; the camera operator, Van “Go” Cummings, from Venice, California; the gaffer, Skylar Branson, a young Texan who ran the electric crew; and me, Victor Ohanian, writer/producer. We got into the van.

As was decorum, the director rode in the shotgun bucket beside Louise, a religious woman with kinky blond hair. Van plugged his iPhone into the auxiliary jack of the stereo and programmed some Laurel Canyon singer/songwriter jive into the system. The deal was, Van commandeered the music in the mornings, Skylar (college radio) had the middle of the day, Eagle (jazz) took the post-lunch DJ spot, and I (all over the place) had the ride home. The director listened to whatever we played and was at our mercy.

Skylar handed me the latest New Yorker. When he was finished with magazines and novels, he passed them on to me. He was wearing a Stihl chainsaw ball cap and a trumpeter’s triangle below his lower lip. He was improbably young for a department head, and very bright. He also sold marijuana to the crew. His girlfriend, Laura, a wardrobe assistant, was in on it, too. It wasn’t as if he needed the money. He was a pothead and felt that he was selling happiness to his friends.

“Thanks, buddy.” I slid the magazine into my book bag.

“My pleasure,” he said.

There was no hint of pleasure on his face. He was troubled about something. I knew him well enough to see it. But it was his business, and I didn’t push it.

Skylar was a good soul. We’d been friends since the first day of production, though I was practically old enough to be his wayward uncle. I had his back, and he had mine.

“You all right?”

“Fine,” he said. “I just need to work.”

We’d been at it for six months. The shoot was a cop drama for one of the cable networks, based in a southern port city, in a state that offered significant tax credits to film productions. It was a good, long gig. It paid enough to set most of us up for the year. When the money ran out, we’d get on something else. That was what we did.

Our morning ride to the first location was usually low-key. Some read the USA Today provided by the hotel; others made phone calls to family. Eagle, Van, and Skylar often discussed the first shot and how it would be lit. Or they discussed their golf game. If any of them or the director had a question about the content or tone of the day’s scenes, I tried to answer it. It was business, but not as defined by the straight world. We were playing with many million dollars of studio money, but we dressed as we wanted to, and wore our hair and facial hair as we desired. We thought of ourselves as handsomely compensated rebels. No conventions, no uniforms.

I studied the landscape as we made our way across town. Often, the crew sees more of a city than the locals do, because we have access and security. The low-end neighborhoods, the seedier bars, the rat-and-needle infested alleys, the Mayor’s office, police stations, prison and jails, the private mansions, back-of-the-house kitchens, and homeless camps under the freeways. I was the curious type, so that aspect of the job suited me well.

As we neared our destination, we glanced at our call sheets, which detailed our daily shooting schedule. The director was on his cell, talking to his daughter and telling her to have a good day at school. It was early morning in Los Angeles, and she had just woken up.

“Three moves today,” said Eagle, in his heavy Scandi accent. It sounded like “moofs.” He was tall and lean with long, flowing hair and a beard. He looked like a showered Viking.

“Four scenes,” said Van, youthful in his fifties, now on his third marriage. Van was a connoisseur of women and a bit of a philosopher. He sometimes entertained us with his ruminations on romance and the fleeting aspect of life.

“A lot of dialogue in scene thirty-eight,” I said. “Two pages, four people at the table. And then the secretary comes in from the BG and drops the file on the table. She’s got a line, too. We’ll have to cover that.”

“Why’d you give her a line?” said Van, playfully.

I’d cast the secretary, a young would-be actress, as a day player after seeing her audition. I was just giving her a break. She’d get an extra eight hundred bucks for that one line, and residuals. Maybe someone would notice her and she’d get more work. Plus, she was hot as balls. Van knew me well.

“Lots of coverage, is all I’m saying.”

“It’ll be fine,” said the director, turning his head to us in the back rows of bench seats, interrupting his call to his kid. Lomax was wearing a black Patagonia vest under a black Marmot shell, Merrell shoes. He was overdressed for the weather, a walking billboard for REI. “I storyboarded it and I know what I need. Two hours, tops.”

He was telling us that he was prepared, that the scene wouldn’t take long, and that he wouldn’t overshoot. But we knew Lomax’s MO. He leaned toward artsy, with shots that made no sense in terms of POV, angles and footage we’d never use when it came time to cut. The secretary’s arrival, easily accomplished by a walk into frame, would be complicated by his insistence on bringing her in with a dolly shot, which meant laying down track and more lighting, which meant time. We’d get behind, and the rest of the day we’d be playing catch-up, and consequently the last scene or two would suffer. We’d worked with Lomax before. He made the days longer than they had to be, but he was all right.

Louise dropped Eagle off at catering so he could get his usual hearty breakfast, then drove the rest of us to the location. The company trucks were parked on a street in the business district of town, and crew members were milling about, waiting for the AD to call out that we were “in.” First up was a scene in a bank (INT: BANK, DOWNTOWN — DAY), where our protagonist would interview some board members about the death of a teller, whose body had been found in the teaser, a scene we had yet to get in the can. We rarely shot in sequence.

Louise told us to have a blessed day as we exited the van. The lead set PA, waiting on the sidewalk, handed me my sides, which were the day’s scenes, complete with dialogue, collated into one stapled set of pages. I folded the sides and slipped them into the back pocket of my Levi’s, and asked the PA to order me a breakfast burrito and a coffee from catering.

“You got it, sir,” he said.

I thanked him and said good morning to crew as I walked down the street toward the bank.

This was my favorite time of the day. To step out of the van in the morning and walk onto a set among a hundred other crew members, all of us gathering in one place to build something together, is a feeling of great anticipation and promise. Costumers; hair and makeup people; props; set dressers; scenic, light, and camera crew; sound recordists — all of these people, in their own way, were artists. Unlike a painting, signed by one person, or a book, with one author’s name on its spine, the tail credits on a movie or television show carried hundreds of signatures. I liked that. I had no illusions that what I did as a television writer had weight or permanence. But, because of my comrades, I was proud to have my name on that scroll.

Inside the bank, the first AD called for a private rehearsal as the actors arrived on set. Eagle had come in with his breakfast and was shoveling it down. The lead actor, supporting actors, day players, and director stood in a circle and read their lines. I stood nearby with Lillie, the script supervisor out of New York, who was wearing New York black. She was by necessity a hyper, detail-oriented person who had one of the most demanding and important jobs in the production. Lillie watched every take in the monitors for continuity and matching issues; she was a pain in the ass, in a good way.

As the actors rehearsed the lines, I looked for trouble spots. Often the written word seems fine on the page, but when spoken it can lose its luster. Occasionally, what I thought was a great scene didn’t work in practice, and I was there to adjust lines. The actor might not like something I’d written, and I had the authority to change the words if I felt the objection was warranted, or stand my ground if it was not. An actor could misinterpret my writing and not do it justice, and an actor could also elevate what I’d done. Sometimes the words or sentences were just too much of a mouthful, or there was a redundancy I had not seen before, and I’d subtract. All of this came out on set.

“Scene,” said Lomax, when the actors were done. He then blocked the action, putting the actors through their movements and stops. We were to shoot this one with two cameras, A and B. During the second rehearsal, the B camera assistant laid down the actor’s marks with pieces of colored tape. Lomax discussed the various shots with Eagle and Van, Skylar standing close by. Master, medium shot, then the singles, tighter, tighter, tighter, three sizes. Lomax expressed his desire to bring the secretary in with a dolly shot. Van wiggled his eyebrows at Eagle: I knew it.

“Crew has the set,” said the first AD.

The actors went to their trailers as the crew flooded the set and prepped the first shot. Stand-ins took the marks of the actors so that they could be properly lit. It would be about forty-five minutes before the cameras rolled. My breakfast arrived and I ate it while Brandon, the on-set prop master, set up the cast chairs around the monitors, an arrangement called Video Village. I had my own chair with my name printed on the canvas backing, as well as the name of the series: Tanner’s Team.

The show was a serialized cop drama. It detailed the exploits of an elite Homicide squad headed by a handsome, middle-aged lieutenant named Jeremiah Tanner, a semi-clairvoyant father figure whose detectives, his children in effect (Tanner’s Team), consisted of various attractive youngish men and women, a mix of blacks (but not too many blacks), whites, and Hispanics, cast to hit all the demographic buttons. The lead was Brad Slaughter, a former film actor who had briefly flirted with cinema stardom and was now highly compensated for his work on the small screen. His co-lead was Meaghan O’Toole, an actress who had come from the stage originally and had won an Emmy for her work in an HBO original. She played Mackenzie Hart, the “hard-charging” assistant district attorney who prosecuted the criminals the squad arrested. Mainly, to the actress’s chagrin, she was written as the love interest for the lieutenant.

As we neared the start of the first shot, the executive producers arrived, and immediately the tenor of the crew changed. People stood straighter and worked faster. There was less joking around and grab-assing than there was when I was in charge of the set. The big guns were in the house.

Bruce Kaplan was the show’s creator, head writer, and showrunner. His partner was Ellen Stern. Ellen was not a writer but rather a general of sorts who hired and fired crew, kept the trains running on time, negotiated with the vendors, and brought the show in on budget. They complemented each other and made a good, efficient team. The credits listed five executive producers, but Bruce and Ellen were the only two who actually worked on the day-to-day production. Today they looked very tired, with black circles under their eyes, ill-fitting clothing, and uncombed hair. The hours and craft services were a killer for everyone, and they had the added pressure of bringing the show in on budget and taking the calls of the cable execs.

I had no desire to do or learn Ellen’s job, and no ambition to become an EP, so there was little friction between us. I had a decent relationship with both of them, though I was “just” a writer/producer and was kept out of the loop on major decisions. As for Bruce, he was respectful to the writing team but tended to rewrite our scripts in a rather mercenary fashion. I was good with that, for the most part; I knew that there had to be one voice for the show and uniformity from episode to episode. But my ego was such that I felt he cut some of my best stuff at random. On the other hand, he sometimes made my writing better, and unlike other showrunners, who put their name on scripts they reworked, he always gave me sole credit. After a while I learned to beat the game and began to write in Bruce’s voice rather than my own. It was another thing I’d given up. I was a long way from my youth, when I’d wandered the stacks of the county libraries and dreamed of someday being a published novelist. I had become a writer, in a manner of speaking. But mainly I was a well-paid hack.

I said hello to Bruce and updated him on our progress. “We’re just about to shoot.”

“You have a laptop?” he said.

“There’s one in my trailer.”

“I’m gonna need you to do a little rewrite on scene forty-two.”

“Hold up.” I fished my blue script (the blues) out of my book bag and turned the pages to the scene. It was a restaurant scene (INT. CAFÉ, UPTOWN — DAY) where Tanner and Hart discuss a case in dialogue overripe with lame double entendres. Brad Slaughter was a pro and would read the lines. Meaghan O’Toole would be the problem.

“Meaghan called me first thing this morning,” said Bruce. “She thinks the scene makes her out to be a slut rather than a professional.”

“What’s her beef, exactly?” I asked, disingenuously.

“I’m guessing it’s the part about the in-box.”

I pretended to study the lines, but I already knew the trouble spot. In the scene, Mackenzie tells Tanner that she needs the arrest report A-SAP so she can get started on the prosecution of the case.

“Oh,” I said. “That. How about if I just have her say, ‘Shove it in my box’?”

“Asshole. And what’s that bit about what he’s gonna have for lunch?”

“What? All he says is, ‘I’m partial to fish.’”

“And then the action says, She smiles demurely.”

“I’ll change it, boss.”

“Get it done. We’re publishing pinks today, and the scene’s up this afternoon.”

“Right.”

“Crazy fucker.” Bruce smirked a little and went off to craft services for a Slim Jim and some peanut butter crackers.

We were ready to shoot. The second second called “last looks,” and the hair and makeup crew went in to touch up the actors. Lomax and Lillie were in the first row of chairs, right in front of the monitors. I was in the second row, behind them. The second AC slated the scene on camera by slapping the sticks.

“Camera.”

“Speed.”

“Action!”

We rolled. I watched the first take to make sure Lomax was getting what we needed. Among the actors, there was one dreaded ham.

“Anything, Victor?” said Lillie, after Lomax had cut it.

“Tell Board Member One to say his lines as I wrote them,” I said, referring to a day player who was being far too creative.

“I’ll do that,” she said, and went in to give him the note.

“He’s playing it too defensive, right?” said Lomax, turning to me.

“Well, he did kill the teller,” I said. “But we don’t want him to telegraph it. It’s a reveal for later on.”

“He’s making a meal out of it.”

“Yeah, guy thinks he’s Larry fucking Olivier.”

“I’ll tell him to bring it down,” said Lomax.

When Lillie returned to the Village, I told her I was going to my trailer for a little while. She said she’d call me if anything came up.

I saw Annette out on the street, showing Ellen something she had drawn in a sketchbook. Ellen was nodding her head in encouragement while giving Annette some suggestions. Ellen’s cell rang and she walked down the block to take the call. I approached Annette, who was wearing brown velvet pants tucked into dark brown, buckled boots, and a tan newsboy cap with tiny mirrors across the bill.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hey. What are you up to?”

“Just showing Ellen how I plan to dress the nightclub in one-thirteen.” She opened the spiral book and showed me some sketches. “What do you think of these?”

“They’re beautiful,” I said, looking at her breasts, standing up firm in her scoop-necked shirt.

“Stop it,” she said. She had instantly blushed.

I lowered my voice. Crew was walking by us, standing about.

“I can’t help it,” I said.

“People are looking at us.”

“No, they’re not. Remember last night?”

“I’m not an amnesiac.”

“It was good, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I’m hard as a two-by-four right now.”

“Victor.”

“And thick as a can of Coke.”

“Vic.”

“Okay, I’ll stop. But damn, girl, you were hot.”

“We were.”

“Will I see you later?”

“I’ll be around. Where you off to?”

“I’ve got to rewrite a scene for Number Two.” We were supposed to call Meaghan O’Toole “Number One,” since she was the lead actress in our show. But we often called her Number Two. As in, doo-doo.

“Good luck.”

“Check you later, beautiful.”

I watched her walk toward her car.

My trailer was around the corner. I went there and rewrote the scene.

The company moved for the next two scenes to a café uptown. The first featured Meaghan O’Toole and a day player, cast as a confidential informant who was also a possible suspect in a rape/murder case, the B-line of this episode. The second featured O’Toole and Brad Slaughter, meeting that same night to discuss the information conveyed in the previous scene, as well as to go back and forth with the aforementioned double entendres, now softened to accommodate the actress. It was improbable that both scenes would occur in the same café, but for the purposes of logistics and scheduling, I had written them there.

Meaghan arrived on set, regally stepping out of her van, trailed by the hair and makeup crew and their Zucas, storage containers on rollers that they also sat on. The makeup department head, Donna Yost, had phoned me on my cell and given me an update on Meaghan’s mood. The hair and makeup trailer was a good source of information for the temperature of the actors on any given day. That morning, Meaghan had been complaining about her trailer, how it was smaller than the producers’ trailers and smelled of “sewerage,” so I knew her knickers would be up in a twist.

She was in one of three rather dowdy outfits that she insisted upon wearing, which drove the cable execs and the costume department batty. She favored black slacks and vertical-striped shirts worn out to cover her widening bottom, and comfortable, asexual clogs on her feet. Meaghan, black-haired with emerald green eyes, was an attractive individual by most standards. In fact, if one didn’t know her, a person might even find her desirable. But we knew her.

In the middle of the first rehearsal, she stopped reading from her sides and waved her hands in a theatrical show of impatience.

“Who writes this shit?” she said, musically, with a smile, looking around at the crew for some reaction to her joking tone, as if that excused her insult.

“That would be me,” I said, standing nearby.

“I know, darling,” she said. “And ordinarily, Victor, I love your words. Of course, I’m no writer, but…” Here she pretended to carefully study the dialogue. “Why in the world is she asking this guy if he likes her shoes?”

“Well, she suspects he’s a rapist and a killer. She’s trying to determine if he has a shoe fetish. The victim was redressed after her murder. She’d been wearing flats because she’d just come off work. She was a cocktail waitress and she wore comfortable shoes. But when her body was found, she was wearing ankle straps with four-inch heels. Remember? ”

I was asking if she’d read the entire script, and not just her scenes.

“Of course I remember.” Meaghan’s eyes went from reason to ice, a change I knew well; it was as if some inner switch had been thrown, like the tilt light on a pinball machine. “But when I ask the CI if he likes my shoes, it makes me out to be some kind of vacuous shopping queen or something. I’m an assistant district attorney, Victor, an A-D-A. I’m not a fucking housewife.”

The day player had reddened a bit, and grips and electric, bored with her antics, had settled in for what they thought might be a long argument. Some even stepped away from the set. When Meaghan’s name was on the call sheet, the morale of the crew went down the toilet.

I could have been contentious, but I had to pick my battles, and wasted time on a shoot meant overages and expenses. Keeping my cool was where I earned my money.

“Okay,” I said. “What would you like to say, Meaghan?”

“You’re the writer.”

“How about, ‘Do you like shoes’?”

“It’s rather generic. I mean, everyone likes shoes, don’t they? But I suppose that would be fine.”

I was always defusing bombs and putting out fires with her. When she was off her meds, it was even worse. Mostly, she just made us all tired.

The rehearsal ended, the crew had the set, and a half hour later Meaghan returned from her trailer to do the scene and get into her position. We waited for her to do her mouth exercises, and then we shot it. It took a long while; the day player was nervous in Meaghan’s presence, and when we turned around on him he continually flubbed his lines. He grew more nervous as she coached him on the finer points of acting, and then directed him, to the annoyance of Lomax, our actual director. Now we were behind.

The next scene, between Meaghan and Brad, had to be lit day-for-night. The camera crew changed lenses and filters, and the grips laid down the tracks. I watched my friend Skylar directing his lamp operators, rigging gaffers, and rigging electricians as they set up the lights. I could tell that he was listless and off his game. And then I saw his girlfriend, Laura, approach him, fresh out of the wardrobe trailer, carrying some shirts on hangers.

Laura Flanagan was a slight young woman who today wore oversized aviators, a shirt off one shoulder, skinny jeans, and leopard-print spectators. She was in her early twenties, but she looked seventeen. The two of them had a brief, joyless discussion before she moved away and walked toward me, her head down, attempting to hide her emotions. I could see tears behind the amber lenses of her shades.

Lunch, scheduled six hours after call time, was in a church auditorium near the second location. Our caterer did a good job of feeding our army, but even a Parisian chef would have trouble pleasing this crew after several months of shooting and eating the same-tasting food, day in, day out.

We served ourselves cafeteria style, with two lines of people filling their plates on either side of a long table. Salad, bread, vegetables, pasta, beans and rice, chicken, beef, pork, fish, and dessert were usually on the menu, with some half-assed food event (Taco Day, Burger Day) thrown in on occasion. Sometimes we just couldn’t face the catering grub and went off to nearby restaurants or fast-food joints, and sometimes we substituted naps for chow. The best that could be said about lunch was that the food was free, plentiful, and filling. It was also a needed break in our day.

Tables had been set up, and normally people sat with their friends, which generally meant the ones within their departments. The Teamsters were fed first, per their contracts, another source of Lazy Teamster jokes that went around from shoot to shoot.

What did Jesus say to the Teamsters?

Don’t do anything until I get back.

What do Teamsters’ kids do on weekends?

Stand around and watch the other kids play.

Teamsters were easy to ridicule, unless you needed one in a pinch, and then they came through. They were some of the most genial people on the crew when you got to know them, and also the toughest, along with our security staff, the gaffers, and the grips.

Some days I sat with Annette and her contingent, if they were around for lunch, and other days I sat with the hair and makeup folks, mostly women, the best-looking and most stylish people on set. I was just a man, no deeper than any other, and I liked the company of nice-looking females when I was breaking bread. But their table was full that day, so I sat with my boys, Van and Eagle, and a few other folks we liked: Kenny “G” Garson (picture car coordinator), Jerome Hilts (a camera dolly grip), and Victoria Lewis, our locations manager, who was normally out scouting but had stopped in for lunch. Lomax was eating with Ellen, Bruce, and the lead actors at another table. Skylar had disappeared.

“When’s the next script gonna drop?” said Kenny, looking across the table at me. He was fifty-five, with a gray Vandyke, short gray hair, a barrel chest, and a bearish belly. Kenny found us the cars that were featured on camera. If I was to have another job on a film crew, it would be his. It seemed to me that it would be fun. But he had his pressures like everyone else.

“Yeah, Vic,” said Victoria. “When?”

Like all department heads, they were eager to get the next script as early as possible, so they could get a jump on their prep. It was counterproductive to give them the details I was aware of, because more often than not, scenes and locations changed. At night, Annette prodded me for the same information, but she had an advantage over them. I spilled for her.

“I don’t know,” I said, and then, by way of explanation, “Bruce is writing it.”

“Ugh,” said Victoria, a savvy local who knew the city and its players, and seemed to be able to get us in damn near every door. She also knew that Bruce Kaplan always wrote his scripts at quarter to midnight.

“Sorry,” I said. “The good news is, we’re going to beat out one-fourteen tomorrow, and then I can go off and start writing it. So if I have any intel on that one, I’ll let you know.”

“So the brain trust is about to meet,” said Jerome, our grizzled dolly grip. Jerome was the senior member of the crew. While producers could work well into their sixties, most crew who worked on-their-feet jobs didn’t make it past their forties. The work was just too taxing on the body, and the hours were ridiculously long. Jerome was fifty-eight, an avid reader, curious about politics, with the weathered, leathery face of an old sailor, the under bite of a Cro-Magnon, and the forearms of Popeye. He was an intellectual and a bull.

“What do you guys do in that writers’ room?” said Kenny, with a twinkle in his eye. “Discuss, you know, character motivations? Do you talk about your feelings and stuff?”

Kenny, like much of the crew, thought a writer’s job was easy, which was not true, and less physically demanding than the jobs of other crew members, which was. Crew liked to believe that writers were soft, which was one reason I did two hundred push-ups and sit-ups in my room daily, without fail, no matter what time I wrapped. It confused the grips to see a guy in my profession who was also in shape. Plus, I was vain. When I stripped off my shirt at night and walked toward Annette, waiting in my bed, I wanted her to want me.

“Yeah,” I said, “we bounce idea balloons around the room. And we wear togas and crowns of ivy, and we tickle each other and laugh a lot, and then we eat grapes.”

“What happens when you get sleepy?”

“We lie down on our sit-upons and take naps.”

“You guys have the best job,” said Kenny.

“I know.”

“But you must get tired sitting in that chair all day. With your name on it.”

“It hurts my back a little. I think I need one that reclines. Like a La-Z-Boy.”

“If it was motorized, that would be my department,” said Kenny. “Maybe I can find you one with an engine in it.”

“That’s kind of you, man. That way I won’t have to walk, either.”

“I wish I was as smart as you, Vic.”

“You don’t have to be smart. Being a writer is easy. Anyone can do it. You should give it a try, Kenny.”

“Nah,” said Kenny. “I’m just a gearhead from Alabama. What do I know?”

“The brain trust,” said Jerome, shaking his head sagely as he forked a mound of cheesecake into his mouth.

Gradually we all got up and prepared to make our way back out to the vans. I went to the dessert table on the way to snag an oatmeal raisin cookie and a toothpick. Brad Slaughter was there, staring at a slab of chocolate cake. He was still wearing his “gun,” a feathery-light plastic replica Glock, in his shoulder holster, and he had his fake badge clipped to the waistband of his slacks. Brad wasn’t the type to stay in character. He was simply absentminded.

“I better not,” he said, patting his flat stomach. “I’m trying to watch my girlish figure.”

“The cake’s not that good, anyway,” I said.

“I would have remorse afterwards. It would be like…”

“Banging your kid sister?”

Brad’s eyes narrowed. “My little sister’s dead, you bastard.”

“I, uh…”

“I’m joking with you, man!” Brad smiled a perfect row of ultra-white capped teeth. At fifty, he was a handsome sonofabitch, better looking now than when he had been in the ensemble of one of those teenage-rebel movies Coppola had made in his boy-erotica period.

“Don’t do that to me, Brad.”

“Banging your kid sister.” He pointed his finger at me, pistol style. “That’s why you’re the writer.”

“I do make my living with words.”

“Let me ask you something. Why did you cut that line, ‘I’m partial to fish’?”

“Meaghan felt it made her out to be a prostitute. She doesn’t like that.”

“Yeah? Fuck what that whore doesn’t like.”

Brad winked at me. His face was caked in makeup. It would play great on camera, but in person he looked like the victim of a drunken undertaker. Still, he had an aura about him, like nothing bad would touch him, ever, in his life. Not until death came to call. Which made me think: someday, this guy is going to make a stunning corpse.

According to plan, we were to have finished our third scene of the day before lunch, but Meaghan’s actions had pushed us behind schedule. We still needed the close-ups on Brad, then the turnaround on Meaghan, which meant more mouth exercises, relighting, and three sizes on her to accommodate the peculiar standards of the TV screen. We’d need to get her “clean” (just Meaghan in the frame, medium and close) and “dirty” (looking at Meaghan over Brad’s shoulder, which would partially be in the shot). To further complicate issues, Lillie noticed some matching issues with Brad (he was drinking his glass of water at different times on various takes, the kind of mistake that he usually did not make), so we lost some time there as well.

I visited Skylar after he’d finished setting up the lights for the turnaround. He was seated on the largest size apple box, which for some reason this crew called “the Schiraldi.”

“Are you sure about those fills?” I said to Skylar. “I think you put them in the wrong spot.”

It was a joke between us. I would tell him where to “put” the lights, and he’d reply with something like, “Do I tell you how to over-write your scripts?” But today he didn’t even smile.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

“Nothing,” said Skylar. “I guess my head’s somewhere else.”

“Where is it?”

“I was thinking about my father.”

“Your old man’s good people.” I had met him, and Skylar’s mother, when they had visited set earlier in the shoot. I could tell that Skylar had been loved and carried no childhood scars. It was evident in the type of man he had become.

“I know he is. I just wonder what he’d think of me now.”

“He’s proud of you.”

“If he knew, Victor.”

“If he knew what? ”

The second AD called me back to the Village. Lomax had a question.

“We’re gonna talk later on,” I said to Skylar, before I left.

When the last shot of the scene was done and the gate was checked, it was announced that Meaghan had wrapped for the day. She was halfheartedly clapped out by the crew, who were visibly relieved.

We moved on to the last location.

The final scene of day ten was a candlelit vigil on the steps outside a “deep urban” (read: ghetto) high school (EXT: HARRIET TUBMAN HIGH SCHOOL, THIRD DISTRICT — NIGHT) that the murdered teller had attended years earlier. She had been established as a standout high school athlete beloved by her classmates, so they and her former teachers had gathered to honor her and also protest the growing violence in the city. The network execs had asked for the scene in their script notes, to make our show more “socially relevant and responsible” (read: they were hoping for an Emmy nomination), and we had complied, though such a vigil for a student long since graduated wouldn’t have occurred and didn’t make much sense.

In the scene, the young, good-looking detectives working under Tanner (Tanner’s Team) infiltrated the crowd, hoping to catch a glimpse of someone who didn’t belong there, i.e., the killer. Two of the detectives were also staked out in a van, videotaping the event. The scene would employ many extras, one non-actor who actually had lines (a woman who gets up at the lectern and remembers her friend), effects, and a lot of coverage. To make things more complicated, Alan Lomax had asked for an overhead crane shot that would look down on the vigil from the roof of the school, then pan to the city at night (directors loved crane shots and usually asked for one every episode). Problem was, there was no stair access to the roof (it was a very old school), so the crane and camera equipment, as well as the necessary crew, had to be transported up to the roof via a Condor, a heavy-duty piece of equipment similar to a bucket truck, with an articulating, retractable 120-foot arm capped with a steel-mesh basket to accommodate people and gear. It was a complicated sequence and it was going to be a long night.

We needed to get the money shot first, as Lomax’s pan of the city would look best at dusk, and we were losing light. The camera and crane had been taken up to the roof in pieces, and now humans were being lifted as well. I went over to the Condor as it came back down and landed in a grassy area beside the school building. Our key grip, Kevin Burns, was operating the Condor from a standing position in the basket, using a joystick to elevate and steer. I opened the gate and got into the basket, stepped into a nylon harness, buckled the straps and tightened them, and clipped myself to one of the rails. The first AD, who had followed me into the basket, did the same. I didn’t like wearing the harness, but I had to follow the safety procedures.

“You girls ready?” said Kevin, a thickly built former stuntman from rural Mississippi whose bad knees had necessitated a career change. He kept old photos of himself in his wallet, shots of him doing dangerous “gags,” him on fire and stuff like that. He lived in the past in more ways than one. The black guys on the crew said Kevin made Strom Thurmond seem like Rosa Parks.

The arm emerged from its cylinder, and we began to rise up in lurching, herky-jerky movements. I looked down at the crew working, setting up lights, standing around the trucks — the security guys and the Teamsters, the extras, all of them getting very small. I saw Annette, who had just arrived at the location, wearing one of her hats, staring up at me, her hands on her hips.

I raised my head and kept my eyes straight ahead on the horizon, a sailor’s trick used to thwart seasickness. I had begun to sweat and was feeling a little bit nauseated. My knuckles were bloodless as my hands gripped the basket’s rail.

“You okay?” said Kevin, looking over at me with a small smile.

“I think so.”

“Don’t like heights, huh?”

“Not really.”

“Or carnival rides, either, I bet.”

“Nope.”

“You’re white as a Klansman.”

“You oughta know.”

“Don’t get anxious. It’s safe.”

“Okay.”

“It’s pretty safe.”

At eighty feet from the ground, we finally came to the roofline. Kevin had to change direction, take the arm over the ledge, and drop us onto the top surface. The basket shook inordinately as he made the maneuver. When he landed on the roof, I quickly removed my harness and jumped out of the basket.

“Thanks for the ride, Kevin.”

“Not a problem, sir. I’ll try to make it less bumpy next time.”

Kevin had ten years on me, but one of the peculiarities of the film business was that many crew members addressed producers as sir, irrespective of experience or age. I didn’t like it, any more than I liked the silly chair with my name on it. But it was tradition.

I wondered if Kevin thought I was foolish for coming up here. He knew that I could have stayed on the ground, used the radios and monitors to communicate with the director, and still would have been able to do my job. I didn’t have to ride the Condor.

I wanted to.

We got our shot as darkness fell. It was the last scripted scene of the episode, so the pan over the city would be a quasi-artistic ending before the fade to black and credits. Lomax tended to overshoot, but his eps had a distinct style. He, Eagle, and Van had made it work. The camera movement was elegant, and it landed on a sweet frame of the twinkling downtown skyline, a nice visual contrast to the ghetto neighborhood of the school. Tonight these guys were on their game.

The ride back down to earth was less unnerving. The fear of the unknown is always worse than the event itself, and I had already stared it down on the ascent.

Annette was waiting for me when I dropped out of the basket and hit the ground. She didn’t look pleased. She was holding her iPad and was deliberately showing me its screen, which held a menu of photographs.

“Do you have a minute?” she said. “I need to know what you want at the restaurant.”

“I’ll have the filet, medium rare.”

“I’m talking about the design of the restaurant interior in scene thirty-eight.”

“Let’s walk,” I said, and she followed me away from the crowd, to the street running beside the school.

She lowered the iPad to her side. “I’m so frustrated with you. Why did you go up in the Condor?”

“It’s my job to be with the director.”

“Bullshit, Vic. You could have done everything you needed to do from the Village.”

“Crew went up there.”

“They have to. I hate when you do dangerous stuff just to do it.”

“The Condor’s safe.”

“It’s a machine. Machines break.”

We stopped walking. Annette had her hand on one hip and she was tapping the toe of one boot on the ground, the way she did when she was annoyed with me.

“We’ll talk about this later, Thumper.”

“I’m not a rabbit.” Annette’s eyes relaxed. “Don’t call me Thumper.”

“Shake a tail feather, baby.”

“You’re mixing your animals up. I thought you were a good writer.”

“I never said I was a good one. Look, I gotta get back to set. We both have work to do.”

“You.”

I leaned in toward her ear so she could feel my breath on her. “Are we?”

“Are we what?”

“Gonna talk about this later?”

Annette allowed me a smile. “Yes.”

“I want to kiss you right now,” I said. “You know that, don’t you?”

“I want to kiss you.”

“Think about it.”

“The kiss?”

“Where you want it,” I said.

She blushed and left me there.

We shot deep into the night. The candlelight vigil had many pieces, including van interiors, with dialogue. The surrounding streets and school exteriors needed to be lit and relit as we moved and turned around. On our thirteenth hour, food was brought in from catering, what was called “second meal,” usually of the steak-and-cheese/Chinese/pizza variety, something that the health-minded among us avoided but sometimes could not. The aura on the set grew peaceful and relatively quiet, a result of fatigue and pride in doing an honest full day’s work, mixed with the anticipation of the wrap. People hung around crafty, picking at snacks, or sat on apple boxes, or on their Zucas, and in between shots they talked about bands, bars, and restaurants, people they thought were hot, those who were not, and their plans for the night.

As we prepped a new setup, I broke away and walked toward my trailer, where I intended to freshen up and answer some email from my laptop. At the honey wagons, a nice name for a row of trucked-in latrines, I saw Skylar emerge from one of the heads and come down the three steps to the sidewalk.

“Hey, man,” I said.

“Hey.” Even in the darkness, I could see the trouble in his liquid brown eyes. He tried to walk past me, but I reached out and cupped his biceps.

“Hold up, Skylar.”

“I need to get back and supervise those knuckleheads.”

“They got it. Relax.”

He pulled his arm out of my grip but he didn’t move on. Our best boy, Lance, a skinny little snitch, walked by us and gave me a look.

When he was gone, Skylar looked down at the sidewalk.

“What’s going on with you?” I said. “You haven’t been right all day.”

“Trouble,” he said, and shook his head. He removed his ball cap and ran a hand through his longish hair.

“Anything you can talk about?”

“No. It’s better if I don’t involve anyone else.”

“I’m guessing this has something to do with your other enterprise.”

Skylar didn’t reply, an answer in itself.

“Do you need money?” I said.

He looked at me directly for the first time. “Money got me into this.”

“What are you into?”

“It doesn’t matter. But, listen…”

“What?”

“I’m worried about Laura. She’s just a little slip of nothin, man.”

“Now you sound Texan, boy.”

“Promise me you’ll look after her.”

“You look after her.”

“Promise me.”

“Okay, I promise. But Skylar, you can talk to me.”

“It’s too late,” he said. “It’s fucked.”

I watched him walk away.

A couple of hours later, we finished. The martini shot, our last one of the day, was called by our first AD, and at Lomax’s shout of “Cut!” and after the subsequent gate-check, we broke set.

“That’s a wrap, everybody,” shouted the AD.

I saw Skylar going around and thanking every single one of his crew, the way he did every night.

He didn’t get in the van for the hotel. Van said that Skylar told him he was going out with his boys for a couple of beers.

I never spoke to Skylar again.

In the middle of the night I lay with Annette in the bed, both of us nude, drinking wine. We had started on the carpet, moving slowly, me between her strong legs, burying it, looking down into her eyes, green and alive in the flickering candlelight. We’d finished our lovemaking atop my sheets, now kicked to the floor.

My knees were rug-burned and raw, but I was satiated and relaxed. Come still dripped down my inner thigh, and there was a puddle of it on the mattress. My unit was languid in repose. Annette was up on one elbow, facing me, her beautiful, perfect breasts set before me, solid Ds, every boy’s dream. She had a sip of red.

“You go,” she said. “I’ll guess the lines.”

We were playing a game we liked.

“Okay,” I said. “Tanner is about to leave the Homicide offices, angry and in a rush. He puts on his shoulder holster and shrugs himself into his jacket. One of his junior detectives says to him, Where are you going, Lieutenant? Tanner turns to the detective and says…”

“I’m gonna finish this.”

I lifted the bottle of Merlot off the nightstand. “You?”

“Yeah,” said Annette. “Give me some of that Strong Rodney.”

I darkened her glass, then mine. We were halfway into our second bottle. It was three a.m., and we were a little tipsy.

“How about this?” I said. “Tanner’s chased a perp, a child rapist he’s been pursuing, to the roof of a building. Tanner’s got his gun on him and he’s ready to kill him in cold blood, but he can’t pull the trigger. What’s the dialogue, honey?”

“The rapist says, Go ahead. You’d be doing me a favor.”

“Then Tanner lowers his gun and says…”

“I can’t. I’m not like you.”

“What does the rapist say next?”

“We’re more alike than you think we are. We’re two sides of the same coin, Tanner.”

“That’s good. That variation there, with the coin. You’re pretty smart.”

“Just lucky.”

“I’m the lucky one,” I said, and reached out and touched her face.

She blinked slowly. “I worry about you.”

“ ’Cause I went up in the Condor?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t worry.”

I brushed away the hair that had fallen over her eyes and kissed her lips.

“What was the purpose of that crane shot on the roof, anyway?” she said. “And then the pan to the city at dusk. It’s a cop show, for crying out loud. Lomax was shooting for his reel, right?”

I nodded. “Guy thinks he’s David fucking Lean.”

Annette called me on my cell early in the morning, just as I came out of the shower. She told me that Skylar Branson was dead.

“What happened?”

She repeated what she knew, based on a conversation with Ellen Stern. Skylar had gone to Red’s, a drinker’s bar down by the river, after wrap with a couple of the guys on his crew. Red’s, like all of the bars in this city, was open till four a.m. At some point, Skylar told one of his guys he had to take a leak. There was only one toilet in the men’s room, and it was occupied, so Skylar went outside to urinate between a fence and a nearby Dumpster. His guys heard the pop of gunshots and went out to investigate. They found Skylar, shot to death, lying beside the Dumpster. One in the back of the head, three in his back. His wallet was on the ground, emptied of cash and credit cards. Police were calling his death a robbery/homicide.

“This city,” said Annette.

I knew what she meant. Culturally, it was a vibrant, diverse town. It also had a high unemployment rate and a very high rate of crime. When we walked around at night, we put extra robbery money in our pockets, so as not to anger gunmen who were looking for more than a meager amount of cash. Violent shit happened here, randomly. People would say that Skylar’s murder was bad luck. A case of wrong place, wrong time.

“You all right?” said Annette. When I didn’t answer, she said, “Vic?”

“What about work?” I was scheduled for the writers’ room; Ellen was supposed to cover set.

“Bruce and Ellen cancelled today’s shoot. We’ll be up again tomorrow. I’ve gotta go in.”

“Me, too. I’ll see you at the offices, honey. Thanks for the call.”

I phoned Eagle first. It was the easiest call I’d make, and I was putting off the hard ones. I knew that Eagle, true to his Northern European temperament, would be the strongest and most stoic of Skylar’s friends. And indeed, all he said was, “It is a tragedy.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I think I’ll sleep.”

Van Cummings was the tougher one to deal with. He was an emotional guy, the Jackson Browne of camera operators, unashamed to wear his heart on his sleeve. Van had been crying when he picked up my call.

“Why him?” he said. I pictured him right now, running a hand through his gray-blond hair, smoking a cigarette. “He was a sweet kid.”

“I know it.”

“Meet me somewhere, Victor.”

“I can’t. I have to go in to the writers’ room today.”

“Okay,” said Van. “I’ll be at the Low Bar, if you want to stop by after you get off.”

He’d be on his favorite stool for the rest of the day, at the little bar near city hall. Drinking vodka and juice, going outside occasionally to smoke a little weed, then back in for more drink. He’d end up in his hotel bed with one of the crew members, the cute new camera assistant maybe, by late afternoon. That was how Van would deal with this. I had yet to figure out how I would reconcile Skylar’s death.

The last call I made, the one I dreaded, was to Laura Flanagan. I was relieved when she didn’t pick up. The call went to voice mail but I didn’t leave one. Instead I texted her: “Be strong. If you need me, I’m here for you. I mean it, Vic.”

I got dressed and took my rental car, a red Ford Focus, to work.

The production and writers’ offices occupied a run-down building, built in the 1960s, off the Martin Luther King highway, which was, as it is in all American cities, on the blighted side of town. The space was unglamorous and spartan — cubicles for the production staff, offices for department heads and management. I had an office, which I rarely used, with a bare-top desk and an old couch that I was meant to sleep on but never once did. My window gave to a view of an empty lot where men sat on crates and drank beer in the afternoons, after their free breakfast. We were located near a homeless shelter and morning bread line.

The mood was dour when I arrived. In the production office, people were quietly talking amongst themselves or on their desk phones. My assistant, Lynn, a local woman with a law degree who was hoping to become a writer, got up from her desk and hugged me as I crossed into the wing of the writers and producers.

“I’m so sorry, Vic.”

“It’s rough. Is Ellen around?”

“She’s in her office.”

I knocked on Ellen Stern’s open door and entered. Unlike my office, Ellen’s was heavily decorated. Its walls were crowded with framed commendations and one-sheets of shows she’d produced, and her bookshelves were filled. She worked here for most of her day, while I rarely came in, so this was her abode. My home was the set.

She was typing on her laptop with one hand and eating an apple with the other. She looked at me over the rims of her reading glasses.

“I’m sorry about Skylar. It’s awful.”

“Yeah.”

“We’re going to have a meeting with everyone on set tomorrow, before crew call. Go over some general things about street awareness. Suggest they not walk alone at night, what neighborhoods to avoid, that sort of thing. Maybe if Skylar had been more cognizant…”

“You think that’s what happened? That he was careless?”

“What do you think happened?”

“No idea, Ellen.”

She placed her half-eaten apple on her desk and removed her glasses. “He was young. The young tend to think that nothing bad is ever going to happen to them. But this is a dangerous city. We’re here because of the tax credits the state offers. The network mandated that we shoot here, and it’s saving the production millions. We didn’t have a choice. But while we’re here I’m going to try and make sure that our people are safe.”

She didn’t know anything about Skylar’s other life. Ellen sometimes criticized me for being too friendly with the crew and for not entirely committing to the side of the brass, but I was unconvinced that there had to be such a strict division between labor and management.

“That’s a good idea,” I said. “The safety meeting, I mean. Have you notified Skylar’s family?”

“The police did. His parents are coming in from Galveston today. They’re going to take his body home for burial, after the autopsy. We’ll do a service of our own here, for the crew. Maybe in the park. We’ll dedicate a tree to him, something like that.”

“That would be nice.”

“Are you going to be here all day?”

“In the writers’ room,” I said.

“I’ve spoken to the Homicide detectives. I told them everything I knew. Skylar was dating Laura in wardrobe, right?”

“Yes.”

“I also told them you were one of his closest friends here. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.”

“They’d like to speak with you later on today. Much later, I imagine. They’ve got a lot of work to do, interviews and the like. I think they’re going to get into Skylar’s room at the hotel as well.”

If they got into his suite, they’d access his room safe. The contents of the safe would tell a story. They’d know.

“I’ll be here,” I said.

Ellen placed her glasses back on her face, and her eyes went to her laptop’s screen. “They’re waiting for you in the room. Bruce and the rest.”

“Right.”

Our conversation had been free of emotion. In this racket we were used to death. Because we worked together so closely, sometimes up to eighty hours a week, death showed itself to us with surprising frequency, and we became enamored of it. One of Ellen’s partners on another show had died of a massive heart attack on set. A junkie actor on Crucial Investigations, a show I worked on for NBC, hung himself in his trailer the day he’d wrapped. We watched fellow crew members deteriorate, and continue to work, as they were dying of cancer. A dolly grip I knew, an alcoholic who had once pissed his pants while sleeping on my hotel-room couch, drank a quart of Listerine one night and did a Bill Holden, fell out of the shower while blackout drunk and hit his head on the edge of the bathtub. There were more casualties, too many to count. Skylar was the latest, a guy we’d remember and talk about less and less as the shoot progressed and we moved on to other jobs.

In my office, I took my notebook and pen out of my book bag, then headed for the room.

The writers’ room was deliberately drab, with zero decor: two walls with mounted writing boards and windows with blinds kept drawn, so we wouldn’t be distracted by the outside world. A long table, holding yellow legal pads and cups of pencils and pens, took up the bulk of the space. In the center of the table was an array of snacks, mostly of the healthy variety per Bruce’s instructions, and bottled water. A coffee urn, constantly refreshed, had been set up at a nearby station, along with a cooler holding soft drinks, juices, and Gatorade.

Bruce Kaplan sat at the head of the table. At the other end of the table was Diego Rodriguez, our young script supervisor, who took the meeting’s notes on his word processor, the only laptop allowed in the room, a rule that prevented us from surfing while at work. Diego, quiet and contemplative, was a sponge, and very smart. He would soon get a script assignment, and someday it was likely that, per his ambition, he would have his own show. Also at the table were our two staff writers, Randall Arrington and Fay Harmon. Randall, his hand in a bag of potato chips, did not look up as I entered. Fay’s eyes met mine, and she gave me a kind nod. I nodded back and had a seat near Diego.

First order of business, as always, was lunch. A menu from a local restaurant went around the table, and we made our choices on one of the pads, placing our orders beside our names. While we did this, Bruce, rumpled and clearly unmoored, made a brief speech about Skylar’s death and how deeply it resonated to management, as well as how we had to soldier on and proceed with our work. The others listened respectfully even as they chose between the Cobb salad and grilled shrimp over Caesar. They knew little of Skylar Branson except to recognize him by sight.

“Why would man fear that which is so inevitable?” said Randall, unprompted, speaking on death, quoting, no doubt, from Shakespeare or some other decomposed writer I had not read. Randall liked to do that. He knew it annoyed me, and he thought it made him seem intelligent.

“Let’s get started on one-fourteen,” said Bruce.

Scenes were discussed by character, then handwritten on the board by Diego, using a Sharpie. Often they were quickly erased. If they were deemed worthy of making it into the episode, the beats were transposed onto index cards. Lead characters (Tanner, Hart) got their own color card, as did supporting characters (Tanner’s Team), and others who reoccurred in each ep. Criminals, too, if they had a multi-episode arc or we gave them POV. Then we put the scenes in order: day one, night one, day two, night two. Once thumbtacked up on the bulletin boards, the different-colored cards would tell us, graphically, whether or not our cast of characters was fully represented. The process, called “beating out” an episode, usually took a couple of days, depending upon the level of nonsense and useless discourse allowed in the room.

“I need to give something a little extra to Andre Robbins in this episode,” said Bruce, speaking of a young actor in our cast. His agent had complained about Andre’s paucity of lines and the stagnant nature of his arc. Robbins played Cobb McCord, a handsome, “impetuous” junior member of the squad.

“Trouble at home?” I said. “He is newly married.”

“Maybe he can’t get it up,” said Randall, and I saw Fay give an almost imperceptible roll of her eyes.

“We played that already,” I said. “With Detective Richards, earlier in the season. We solved his problem with a pill.”

“Okay,” said Randall. “How about this? He wakes up one day and… I’m just spitballing here, I haven’t figured out the details yet… all a the sudden, he thinks he’s gay. Doesn’t know if he’s a cocksman or a cocksucker. We could play it out for the rest of the season.”

“They did that storyline with Bayliss on Homicide,” said Diego.

“And it didn’t work for them, either,” I said.

“Randy,” said Bruce, with great tolerance, “I don’t think that’s what the actor had in mind when he asked us to expand his role.”

Bruce had brought Randall, his former college roommate, into the writers’ room and given him a staff position. Randall had once been an advertising copywriter and he convinced Bruce that he could do it. But he wasn’t a screenwriter, or any kind of writer at all, and had no desire to learn the craft. Consequently, Bruce had to rewrite most of his work. In Randall’s mind, he was here to collect a paycheck, eat free food, and hit on the females in the office. He had a beach ball for a belly and wore thick-lens oval-rim glasses that made him look like a Japanese villain in a ’40s war flick. Women found him repulsive, and so did men, but that message didn’t reach him or stop his inappropriate behavior. Guys like him never seemed to get it; I often wondered if there were mirrors in his house. At any rate, Randall was Bruce’s cross to bear.

“We’ve already established that McCord is a hothead,” said Fay, a veteran scribe whose reserved and dignified personality had actually hindered her advancement in the industry. She was the best pure writer among us.

“That’s right,” said Bruce, leaning forward to hear her, as she was very soft-spoken.

“Playing on that,” she said, “we could have him assault a suspect during an arrest. Maybe the suspect is already handcuffed or something, and McCord punches him in the face.”

“Why does he have to punch him in the face?” said Randall, whose comments were nearly always off point. “He could sucker punch him in the gut or somethin instead.”

“Go on, Fay,” said Bruce, tiredly.

“I’m thinking, his actions could imperil the case against the suspect. McCord’s brought up on brutality charges, and it also puts him in the doghouse with Tanner and Hart.”

“Which he has to work himself out of,” said Bruce, warming to it.

“Sets McCord up for some kind of redemption,” I said. “You could sell that to the execs, Bruce.” The cable suits loved that concept: redemption.

“I like it,” said Bruce.

“It’s something we could play into next season,” I said.

“If there is a next season,” said Bruce, rather mournfully. Our first two episodes had already run, and the numbers were not stellar, despite a lead-in from a popular show. “But I do like it.”

We discussed the beats for the McCord arc and got them up on the board, then on cards. It was my episode, and I began to see the scenes, how I would write them, the dialogue, everything. That’s how it worked for me. The movie had begun to play in my head.

Lunch came, and then the inevitable post-lunch ennui. We drank more coffee and tried to get back up. A second wind lifted us, and we got more scenes on the board, and more cards on the bulletin board. Late in the day, my assistant knocked on the door and popped her head inside the room.

“Excuse me, Victor,” said Lynn. “The police are here to see you.”

I got up out of my chair.

Two Homicide dicks, one black and middle-aged, one white and getting there, were waiting for me in my office, both of them seated expansively on my couch. They were in suits and ties, wearing Glocks set in clip-on holsters and badges on neck chains, like they’d just stepped out of the props truck via the wardrobe trailer. The only thing that wouldn’t have worked for our show was their grooming; our hair department head, Jana Kendros, would have given them better cuts and some product.

They stood as I entered. The office was crowded for three, and I imagined that was the way they wanted me: uncomfortable.

“Dennis Mahoney,” said the white one, late thirties, a little overweight but not soft, with strawberry blond hair that screamed Gaelic, a nose brilliantly veined from drink, and cheeks cratered with the laughing reminder of an acned adolescence. He wore a Men’s Wearhouse — grade suit with pleated slacks and a rep tie darkened with an oval of grease.

“Detective Gittens,” said the black one. “Joe.” His suit was a little more twenty-first century than his partner’s. He wore a thick mustache, had a face dotted with raised moles, and deep brown, tired eyes. He was on the green side of fifty and wore no wedding ring.

Gittens was the sensible one, Mahoney the meat-eater.

All of this I noticed before I spoke to them. An eye for detail is helpful in my profession.

“Victor Ohanion,” I said, and shook their hands.

“Ohanion,” said Mahoney, brightly. “You must be Irish. Me, too.”

“I’m Armenian,” I said.

Mahoney’s smile faded. I might as well have said I was an A-rab or, worse, a Muslim. I was raised Orthodox Christian but hadn’t seen the inside of a church since I was an altar boy. I’d been wandering the wilderness for more than twenty years.

“Have a seat,” I said, gesturing to the couch. They did, and I took the chair behind my desk.

Gittens wasted no time.

When I was a teenager, growing up in a multiethnic neighborhood just outside the city, my friends and I had an adversarial relationship with the law. Though all of us got high, none of us were into anything that had violence attached to it. Many of the guys I knew or ran with got busted at one time or another for marijuana possession, or low-level distribution, and paid a price. Some got put into the system and never recovered.

The cops in my hometown were devious about it. They hid in the woods, waiting for kids to light up. They arrested kids and turned them into snitches. The younger police on the drug squad posed as buyers and jacked kids up like that. The black and Hispanic kids suffered worse than the whites. They were pulled over more frequently in their cars, were handcuffed and sat down on the curb in the dead of winter, and were assigned disinterested public defenders when it came time to go to trial. They didn’t have a chance.

Six months ago, I went back home to visit my mother. A curfew on teenagers had recently been enacted in that part of the county, and there had been some complaints that minority kids would be unfairly singled out. The chief of police wrote an editorial in the local newspaper defending the curfew, saying no particular race or ethnic group would be targeted, claiming that his young police officers were of an enlightened generation who didn’t “see color.” When I read that, I laughed out loud.

Gittens was all right; maybe Mahoney was, too. But it didn’t matter to me. I was nearly forty years old, a long way from my youth, and still, because of what I’d experienced growing up, I didn’t trust police. I wasn’t about to talk to them about my friend.

That night, I drove downriver to a part of town that was once a low-income, borderline dangerous district and was now a burgeoning neighborhood of newly arrived college graduates, folk resurgents, visual artists, and film production crew who were trying to make a living year-round.

Laura Flanagan lived in an old narrow-and-deep house with two young women who worked as prop and wardrobe assistants on other productions. I parked my rental on the street near one of the city’s ubiquitous neighborhood markets and walked to her house. Skylar’s electrics and rigging gaffers were grouped on the front lawn, and there were many people, some from our crew and some I didn’t recognize, standing on Laura’s porch and seated on her front stoop. They were drinking beer, wine, and liquor, playing guitar and percussion instruments, and passing around weed. Marijuana wasn’t legal in this city, but its use was tolerated. The police had bigger issues to contend with here, like murder, rape, and internal corruption.

It was an impromptu wake of sorts and I moved into the crowd. I took a pull off a bottle of Jack that was offered to me, then grabbed a beer from a cooler. I could see that people were getting twisted in the go-to-hell way that is common after an unexpected death. We had a six a.m. call in the morning. It would be a rough day for those who were going hard at it.

I found Laura inside her house, a typical artist’s lair, illuminated by candles and Christmas lights. Fish netting had been strung from the ceiling, and magazine photos were taped to the walls. Marijuana and cigarette smoke hung heavy in the room, where Laura sat on her couch, talking to friends. She was wearing her aviators, a loose flannel shirt, skinny jeans, and checkerboard Vans.

Laura stood as I approached. She came into my arms unsteady and we embraced. I held her tightly and for a long while. Her tears were hot on my face as she pressed her cheek against mine.

“It’s gonna be okay, Laura.”

“You think so, Vic?” Her tone was odd.

“Sit with your friends. I’ll talk to you in a little bit, when the crowd thins out.”

She went back to the couch. Out in the front yard I joined up with Skylar’s crew, who were standing around, quietly getting wasted. They were telling stories and sharing memories about their beloved boss. The talk went from Skylar to counterpunches and defensive stances, firearms they’d recently purchased at shows, and back to Skylar. They were gun enthusiasts to a man, and Skylar, a martial artist, had gotten them into a regular training regimen at a local dojo. Though they weren’t the show-muscle type, and none had flat stomachs, all of them were work-strong and knew how to go with their hands. They’d be hard to hurt. I pitied anyone who looked at them the wrong way tonight.

After midnight, Laura and I sat down on the edge of her bed and talked. Her twin mattress lay on the floor, separated from a roommate’s bed by a curtain strung across the room. It wasn’t the ideal spot to converse, but it was the only place in the house where we could find some privacy. I wanted to get to her before she got too sloppy, and it didn’t seem that any of the visitors would be leaving anytime soon.

“The detectives spoke to you today?” I said.

“Yes. They asked me if I knew anything about Skylar’s marijuana operation. That’s what they called it: an operation.”

“They found his stash in his hotel room. His scale and the ledger book, too. They’re going to match the crew list names with the initials in the ledger.”

“Why?”

“They’re going to talk to people on the crew who you and Skylar were selling weed to. They’re trying to determine if Skylar’s murder was a random robbery or if it had something to do with his side business.”

“Oh.”

“Someone will tell them you were selling it as well.”

“I don’t care about that.”

“Just deny,” I said, and strengthened my tone. “I spoke to Skylar before we wrapped last night. I know he was in some kind of trouble.”

Laura looked away and dragged on her cigarette. “I can’t talk about this right now.”

“You have to.”

She was just a few years out of high school. Grieving, of course, and also confused. She’d gotten into the sales thing with her lover as a lark, not for profit. Their “operation” simply provided them with free smoke. In her mind, she and Skylar were providing a service for the crew.

Thursday was payday, and on Friday the out-of-town workers were given their per diem. So, every week, on Thursday and Friday, Skylar and Laura sold weed to the crew. Eighths for fifty, quarters for a hundred, three-fifty for an ounce. It was common knowledge to damn near everyone, except for Bruce, Ellen, our few straitlaced coworkers, and the crew members who were commonly thought of as untrustworthy.

“Laura, if I’m going to help you, I need to know what’s going on.”

“Why would I need help?”

“Look at me,” I said, and she did. “If Skylar’s murder was connected to what was found in his safe, make no mistake, you’re in danger, too.”

Laura tapped ash on the thigh of her jeans, though there was a foil tray beside her on the bed. “What do you want to know?”

“Tell me what’s been going on.”

Laura hit her Marlboro and exhaled a stream of smoke into the room. “Skylar was all jammed up.”

“I know he was in trouble.”

She nodded. “He fronted a pound to someone, and that guy couldn’t pay. Skylar owed the connect about five grand…”

“And?”

“He had most of the cash he needed to settle up, but he was short by twenty-five hundred. He put the legitimate cash together with some phony money.”

“Phony money. Why?”

“He made a mistake, Vic.”

“What the fuck.”

“Counterfeit. It looked real. Our connect had sent a couple of guys to collect, and Skylar paid them off. When they figured out that some of the money wasn’t right…” She shook her head.

“What? Say it, Laura.”

“They threatened us. Skylar put them off. He’d sold one package, and he was hoping to off the last pound… the one that the detectives found in his safe. He planned to make it right. He was going to tell them that he’d been duped, and that he was good for the rest of the cash.”

“He took too long.”

“Yes.” Laura’s hand shook as she brought her cigarette to her lips.

“Who did Skylar front the pound to? Where would he get counterfeit money?” When Laura didn’t answer, I said, “Was it people on our crew?”

“I can’t tell you,” she said. “Skylar wouldn’t want me to. He didn’t want to involve anyone else in this, including you. You know him. Skylar was honorable. He told me that he’d gotten us into this, and he’d get us out himself.”

It sounded like him. I’d offered him money, but he’d declined. Pride and his notion of manhood had done him in. That was who he was.

“Tell me how this works,” I said. “How you two brought the stuff into town.”

“Normally it got FedExed in from California. We had an arrangement with a guy Skylar had met on a show in Los Angeles. We always paid him within a week, also by overnight mail. One time a package got seized in the process, and Skylar made good on it. So there wasn’t any problem with this dude. But this time, when the problem did come up, Skylar was light on cash.”

“If that was the deal, why’d the connect send in a couple of guys to collect the payment?”

“We’d bought three pounds on this go-round. Three pounds is about ten thousand dollars at wholesale. For that kind of money, he felt the need to send couriers.”

“They worked for him?”

“I got the impression they were freelance. Local collection agents.”

“You saw them?”

“They came here one night to meet with Skylar and pick up the money. Two white guys, brothers, in their twenties. I think they were twins. They were okay that night, on the surface. You know how someone can smile at you, but there’s nothing friendly there? It was…”

“Laura. Do you know their names?”

“Wayne and Cody. That’s what they said.”

“And after they figured out the money was fake, what happened?”

“They told Skylar he had a day to make it right. Two days passed, and Skylar got killed.”

“You have no proof it was them, do you?”

“No.”

“Skylar could have been robbed and shot at random.”

“I suppose so.” I watched her take a last drag and crush out her smoke in the foil tray.

“You have a cell number for this Cody or Wayne?”

“I captured one, yeah.”

“They phoned you?”

“Not since Skylar died.”

“What did they say when they called you?”

“Wayne called me. It wasn’t about business. He said he liked to look at me. And what he’d do to me if he got the chance. Shit like that.”

“Give me Wayne’s number,” I said. Laura read it off her phone and I typed it into the notes app of mine. I stood up. “Hold on a minute and stay right here.”

I left the house and walked outside. Skylar’s crew had left, but there were still some people up on the porch. I went down to the yard and called Bernard, the night manager of my hotel. When you live in a hotel, the desk people, the bartenders, the housekeepers, and the valets become friends. Some become family. I got hold of Bernard and told him what I needed. He said he’d hook me up for the production rate.

Walking back into the house, I tried to get my head around the situation. I wondered who Skylar had fronted the pound to and where Skylar had gotten the counterfeit money. Back in Laura’s bedroom, I found her where I’d left her. She’d lit another cigarette.

“Pack up some things,” I said. “Enough to last a few days at least.”

“Why?”

“You can’t stay here. It’s not safe.”

“Where am I going?”

“To my hotel.”

“I’m staying with you?”

“No.”

“Annette, then.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Everyone knows you two are together, Vic.”

“Let’s go.”

It was almost three a.m. by the time I got Laura settled in her room. I went up to my suite, where I found Annette in my bed. Her breathing was deep and there was that clicking sound. I stripped naked and got under the covers and spooned myself against her. She was on her side and she reached back to touch my thigh. I knew she preferred to wake up in her own room. She had come here, unselfishly, for me. Annette was everything I’d wanted to find in a woman since my divorce. The physical and the emotional, all in one. I stroked her arm softly.

“I’m here,” I said. “Go back to sleep.”

I only had two and half hours before I had to get up for call. When I closed my eyes I saw Skylar, lying on a morgue slab, his skin gray and marbleized, his scalp removed, his once healthy body cut up and autopsied.

I was sick with grief and anger. I couldn’t stop thinking about my friend.

We were shooting on the soundstages the next day, located in the warehouse space of a Sam’s Club, now shuttered, in an industrial area outside the city limits. For budgetary reasons, we’d built sets there that we used with frequency: the Homicide offices, the ADA’s office, the courtroom, Tanner’s apartment, and others. We didn’t have any moves on stage days, which was convenient, but the hours were typically long. Once inside the walls of the warehouse, where there were no windows, it was easy to lose track of time. Here, we typically worked fourteen- to sixteen-hour days.

I parked my four-banger rental and walked across a dirt-and-asbestos lot, past Teamsters who had shuttled in crew and brought the trucks, and our security people, a freelance outfit of fathers, tight friends, cousins, uncles, daughters, and sons, all of them black and local. Security was run by a man named Toomer who had built his business rapidly after the state’s film production tax credit was enacted, and he now serviced the majority of the shows and features that came through town. His staff were all physically imposing, the women included, which was helpful in defusing a situation before it progressed into something violent. They had nicknames like Manimal, She Girl, Creep, and Seminole Joe, and they were family men and women who rode motorcycles on weekends, and owned homes, and barbecued, and tended to their lawns. Some had been straight-up gangsters. One of them, Barry, aka Black Barry, a very large man with a bulbous nose and ridiculous guns, said “Sir” to me but cut his eyes away as I passed.

In the warehouse, I got my sides and watched the first rehearsal, a three-page scene in the Homicide offices (INT: HOMICIDE BULL PEN, POLICE HQ — DAY) between Tanner and his team. Brad Slaughter was there, ready as usual, along with the multiethnic cast of young actors who played his detectives. It was six a.m., and they had all been in the hair and makeup trailer since four. Despite the early hour, they looked fresh and groomed. Our hair and makeup department was aces.

Watching the rehearsal, it was clear to me that I had over-written the scene, and I noticed some spots where I could make some trims. It was a delicate thing to do. Actors, especially the ones who were trying to get noticed, didn’t like to lose their lines. They were like the rest of the crew, always working on getting their next gig. As a courtesy, I conferred with Alan Lomax and told him what I thought we should do.

“I want to cut Alicia’s line,” I said. “What she’s saying, about the suspect having priors? We’ve mentioned that twice before in this ep. The information has already been conveyed.”

“It’ll save me a little time in coverage,” said Lomax. “You want to tell her or should I?”

“I’ll do it,” I said.

After the rehearsal, I caught up with Alicia Nichols, who played Detective Angie Antonelli (the “earthy” Italian-American detective on the squad), on the way to her trailer. She was an actress who always knew her lines, hit her marks, and was unfailingly polite to the staff, from production assistants on up. Alicia Nichols was well liked, but that didn’t stop some of the male crew from calling her Alicia Nipples, or just Bullets, due to the fact that her bumps, long as fingertips, were visible through the fabric of her shirt and bra in every shot. In the old days, the network would have had to cover her up, but no more. Her “points” were considered a ratings booster.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve gotta cut your only line.”

“It wasn’t a very good line, anyway, Victor,” she said, and my face must have dropped, because she laughed and said, “I’m joking.”

“Right,” I said. She wasn’t really joking. The line I’d written for her, He’s got a rap sheet as long as my arm, was completely generic. Annette and I could have composed it while drunk in bed.

“You’ll still be prominent in the shot.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’ll make it up to you,” I said, and I would. She was a nice kid, someone’s daughter who was out here trying to make it like everyone else. I’d give her some choice lines in one-fourteen. A soliloquy about a dog she once owned as a kid, and how she’d had to put it down. Something heartwarming like that.

I went back to the set as the stand-ins arrived, the grips set up the sticks and removed walls to accommodate the camera, and the electrics brought in lights. Ellen was talking to Gandy, one of Skylar’s people, informing him that he was being promoted to gaffer. Gandy was mature, in his forties, a good lighting man who could handle the mechanics of the job. But, through no fault of his own, he had an interior personality and would make a poor manager. By the end of the shoot, Ellen would bring in someone from out of town to fill Skylar’s position. Gandy would be a stopgap measure for now.

Brandon, our tall, bearded prop master, rolled the cart into Village and began to unfold the chairs.

“Here you go, boss,” he said, as he placed my chair beside me.

“How do you know that chair’s mine?”

“It’s got your name on it, sir.” It was our usual routine, but he didn’t smile or look my way.

I had been thinking about Brandon just a few hours earlier, when I was lying awake in bed.

“You got a few minutes to talk to me later on?” I said.

“Sure thing,” he said.

He proceeded to unfold the director’s chair, Lillie’s, Ellen’s, Eagle’s, and the cast chairs for the lead and supporting actors. Brandon said nothing else and never once looked me in the eye.

The long day went slowly. Lunch, under a tent outside the warehouse, was a bit of a treat, as our caterer, Mike Perez, grilled filets and lobster tails (Surf and Turf Day) on a grate set over hot coals in halved oil drums. It was the last shooting day of the week, and the mood ordinarily would have been upbeat, but Skylar’s death had thrown a cloud over the set. I sat with the hair and makeup department, pretended to study the family photographs on their phones; listened to the stories about their boyfriends, husbands, and children; and quietly ate my food. I looked around for Annette, but she was not in the tent. She had not been to the stages as of yet. I missed her.

We shot into the night. In the late hours, I had a minor bump in the road with an actress named Susan Pine, a lovely, petite young woman who played Constance Browning, written as an Ivy League — bred blonde who had ditched the plan to work for her father (he was, naturally, a buttoned-down, “cold and distant” industrialist, rich white men being the last allowable villains on television) after her graduation from Harvard Business School. Instead she had entered the police academy, where she thought she could “make a difference.”

In the scene as written, Constance was in the Homicide offices, talking to Cobb McCord about a case, after hours. She was sitting, of course, on the edge of his desk, and he was seated in his chair, looking up at her with “male intent” (apparently McCord had yet to wake up one morning and “think” he was gay). McCord asked Constance if she’d like to discuss the case over a beer at Hawk’s, the squad’s local watering hole.

Susan didn’t want to say that last line. We did many takes, and she said something different every time, but not those words. Lillie had tried to get her to do it, and so had Lomax, but to no avail.

“Will you go in?” said an exasperated Lomax, turning to me in the Village.

I walked onto the set and got up close to Susan, keeping my voice low, keeping our conversation private. The crew and Andre Robbins, the young actor who played McCord, instinctively stepped out of range.

“Uh-oh,” said Susan. “They sent in the heavy artillery.”

“What’s the problem, Sue?”

“That line, ‘I have beer at my place.’ Why is she being so sexually aggressive with this guy? I mean, she’s supposed to be repressed, isn’t she? That’s how you guys defined her in the bible. The emotionally stunted daughter of a cool, distant father, Constance has trouble with romantic relationships, blah blah blah. I just don’t think I would say that.”

“You’re not saying it. Your character is saying it.”

“Okay. I don’t think my caricature would say that.”

Despite my growing impatience, I smiled. She always called her character her “caricature,” and she was correct. Her character was not a recognizable human being, but a type. Susan was a smart young woman with good instincts and a keen sense of humor. But I had to do my job.

“Well, we’ve done it several ways now, Sue. Do me a favor and give it to me the way it’s written, so we can have a take or two that way as well.”

“But if I say the line as written, that’s the take you’ll use when you cut it together. I know how you all do.”

“True,” I admitted.

“I don’t want to say that line,” said Susan Pine. “That’s my position.”

“So, in other words, that’s the Sue Pine position.”

“The Supine position,” she said, crossing her arms and giving me a charitable smirk. “I’ve never heard that before.”

“I’m quite the wit.”

“I’m still not saying the line, Vic.”

We stood there and tried to stare each other down. I knew she wasn’t going to budge, and we had to get through the day. I gave in to move things along. Plus, she was right.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll give that line to Andre. He’ll say to you, ‘I have beer at my place.’ And then your caricature can fork him.”

“Thank you.”

“Let’s get back to work.”

“Vic?” She touched my arm. “How come you never asked me out for a beer?”

“I’m not supposed to fraternize with the talent,” I said. “Matter of fact, I think it’s in my contract. But thank you for that. You made my night, Sue.”

The truth was, she wasn’t my type. And anyway, I only had eyes for one woman.

I was spoken for.

Later, as were shooting the singles of the last scene, I went over to the prop truck, backed against one of the warehouse bays, and walked through its open gate. Brandon was inside, doing some paperwork back in the office, called the Gold Room, probably because it held a safe. In the safe were real, operable guns.

I moved past bins and totes labeled with character names. Tanner’s bin held his badge, cuffs, rings, watches, and his plastic Glock, while Hart’s held her reading glasses, her favorite pens, and the jewelry she wore in every ep. There were entire bins devoted to sunglasses, and jewel cases of wedding bands and fake diamond rings. Steel shelves held multiple jugs of grape juice and apple juice, which doubled for red and white wine, and bottles of nonalcoholic beer to be poured into bottles of Bud and Heineken for our bar scenes. One drink cart, now folded and up against a wall, could service hundreds of extras. All of the non-effect illusions we sold to the public emanated from this relatively small truck. Brandon had a boss, who worked from the office, dealt with our EPs, and attended tone meetings, and he had an assistant and an on-set dresser as well. But he was the main man who placed the props in front of the camera from call to wrap.

“Sir.”

“Brandon.”

He had been seated at a desk, but stood to meet me. Behind him, on the wall, was a bulletin board showing cards of the current day’s scenes, detailing the props that would be needed for each.

We shook hands.

“Just Vic tonight,” I said. “Okay?”

“Sure. You want a drink?”

“No, I’m good.”

The prop truck doubled as the unofficial bar for the crew who were so inclined. Especially on stage days, when there were no moves, select crew members began to control-drink late in the day and continued to drink until wrap. I knew it, and it was understood that I knew and wouldn’t rat anyone out. As long as everyone did their jobs and made sound decisions, I was good with it. We were all adults.

Brandon was tall, blue-eyed, and fully bearded. He looked like a dude who drives a windowless van from the woods and steps out of it with bong smoke and a teenaged girl trailing behind him. But he wasn’t a stoner, or not much more of one than anyone else on the crew. He had a master’s in English lit and was better read than I would ever be. Not that he was destined to be a professor or a writer. He was born and bred to do the job he had now.

How Brandon had gotten here was a common story in prop departments: it was a family business. His father had been a prop master for thirty years, and Brandon had grown up working on his old man’s truck. Further, Brandon was mentally suited for the job. He had the kind of mind that could recall a watch worn by a day player four seasons back, or the exact type of weapon a tender kept hidden beneath the bar in an episode long since forgotten by the rest of our crew.

“Sit down,” I said.

I took a chair and pulled it over to his desk. We stared at each other for a while. He looked away, then looked back at me.

“Well?” he said.

“I think you know what this is about. Let’s not waste too much time on this, Brandon.”

“You here as a producer?”

“I’m here as Skylar’s friend. If you’re straight with me, you and I don’t have a problem.”

“Ask me anything.”

“You gave him some prop money, didn’t you.”

Brandon nodded.

“Why?”

“He was my friend, too,” said Brandon. “He was in trouble, and I helped him out.”

“That was pretty stupid.”

“I know it was, and I told him so. But I couldn’t change his mind, and I couldn’t say no. I guess I should have been stronger.”

“Laura told me that he had mixed the counterfeit with the real. How did he expect to pull it off?”

“He put real bills over fake, for starters. It’s called a Jamaican roll.”

I made a mental note of the term. “Okay, but…”

“Right. Whoever he was dealing with, they were gonna find out eventually. He said he only needed a couple of days. He’d tell them he was unaware the money was counterfeit, that he’d been tricked, too. Then he’d pay them in full, with actual money, soon as he got flush.”

This checked out with what Laura had told me. I nodded and said, “But how did he expect to fool them from the get-go?”

“I do good work, Victor.”

“How did you do it? Doesn’t it say, right on the bills, ‘for motion picture use only’ ?”

“It’s in the same small font as the type on a real bill, so it’s not too noticeable. But, yeah. There’s the other kind that switches the president’s face with the denomination; they put Ben Franklin’s mug on a twenty, like that. I use the first kind.”

“Prop money looks fine on camera, but when you hold it in your hand, you know it’s not right.”

“I age it. Some guys use nicotine spray. I use tea dye. Steep tea bags in water, then soak the prop money in it and let the money dry.”

“Wardrobe does the same thing with clothing, don’t they?”

“Same process. It adds a yellow-brown tone to the paper and it softens it up, makes it feel real.”

“So at first glance, and touch, you can get away with it.”

“Maybe.”

“Until someone tries to spend it.”

“I told Skylar that, too.” Brandon fished a cigarette from the breast pocket of his Western-style shirt, but he didn’t light it. “Do you know who he was dealing with?”

“A couple of collection guys. That’s about it.”

“The police talked to me. Apparently my initials were in Skylar’s ledger book.”

“Did you tell them about any of this? Did you talk about what kind of mess he was in?”

“I didn’t tell them a thing.”

“Neither did I.”

We stared at each other again. This time, Brandon held my eyes.

“Skylar fronted a pound of weed to a guy on our crew,” I said, “and the guy didn’t pay him for it.”

“Yeah. The guy rotted him.”

Rotted. That was a new expression to me. I made note of that, too.

“Who was it?” I said.

“Barry in security,” said Brandon, without hesitation.

“Black Barry?”

“Yes.” He struck a match and lit his cigarette. He wasn’t supposed to smoke on the truck, but he had been jonesing for it and I made no comment. His eyes had filled with tears.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Brandon. You were just trying to get him out of a jam.”

“I shouldn’t be thinking of me, anyway. I’m here, alive and working. I’m going home to my wife and baby tonight. It’s him who’s dead.”

“That’s right.”

“I wish I could do something.”

“You can,” I said. “You could lend me a gun.”

“Fuck no, sir. You know I can’t open that safe for you. I’d be looking at time if one of my guns had a body attached to it and got traced back to me.”

“I’m not talking about a real gun. I’m talking about one of those fake-ass plastic guns you give Brad Slaughter.”

“What would you do with it?”

“Will you give me one?”

He nodded slowly and dragged on his cigarette. “Vic?”

“What?”

“You think those guys murdered Skylar?”

“I don’t know.”

But I knew I was going to find out.

After we wrapped, Annette came up to my suite. I had lit some candles, put on some music, and opened a bottle of Rodney Strong. I was ready for her as she came through the door. She was dressed in sweats and had a large leather satchel swung over one shoulder.

“Hi,” she said, and smiled sweetly.

“Hi.” I kissed her, and nodded at her bag. “Are you staying for the weekend?”

“I need to use your bathroom. Pour me a glass of wine, handsome.”

She closed the door behind her as I retrieved two short glasses from the kitchen cabinet. I poured Merlot for the two of us and waited. It seemed to me that she was taking a long time. Maybe I was anxious. We’d skipped a night of intimacy, which was unusual for us. Since we’d been together, we’d rarely gone a day without making love.

Annette emerged from the bathroom, shutting the light behind her. She’d changed her clothing. She was now wearing a low-cup black bra, lace black panties, garters, black fishnet stockings, and simple black evening shoes — ankle straps with small rhinestones across the bridge. She walked toward me, languorously, with a feline sway. Her breasts heaved bountifully in her bra, and her thigh muscles rippled as she moved.

I felt my heart beat in my chest. It was hard to breathe.

Annette came into my arms and we kissed.

“Goddamn, girl. Thank you.”

“I want to talk to you,” she whispered. She didn’t look pleased.

“Later,” I said.

We made out for a long while, standing there on the carpeted floor. I could have kissed her for hours. But somehow we moved into the Magic Room, along with the music, the wine, and the candles. Then I was between her, both of us in fluid motion, my hands entwined with hers above her head, her hair spread out on my pillow, our chests damp with sweat.

“Can I get on top?” she said.

“Yes.”

I withdrew and turned over onto my back. She moved onto me quickly, like an animal to prey. Her heavy breasts, long free from restraint, bumped my chest. I had torn her panties off her in a moment of impatient lust, and she had kicked her evening shoes to the floor. Only her stockings and garters remained.

“I’m gonna fuck you, Victor.”

“Get on it,” I said.

But first she went down on me, hungrily licking my balls and shaft.

“I can feel your vein with my tongue,” she said, lifting her head to smile at me. “And you’ve got that bend in the river.”

My rod was throbbing and slightly bent below the head. An overzealous woman had scarred me in bed one night, long ago.

“Are you complaining?” I said.

“You know I like it.”

“Stop talking, then.”

“Don’t you want me to talk to you?”

“Yes, I do. You know I do.”

She laughed, steadied me, and slowly slid herself down upon me. I closed my eyes and heard her gasp. Her hips moved like the tides. With each of her downstrokes I thrust upward and put my cock deep inside her. She reached behind her, pushed my thighs apart, and tickled my balls.

“How’s that feel?” she said, as she picked up the pace.

I looked up at her, riding me. Her eyes were alive in the candlelight, and her hair was tossed about her face. I found her spot and stroked it, but she pushed my hand away.

“I’ll do that,” she said.

She fingered herself. I watched her eyes go dreamy, and I reached out and brushed her cool lips.

“Pull on my tits,” she said, and I pressed my thumbs and forefingers to her nipples and pinched them lightly.

“Harder, Vic,” she said. They were tough as licorice, and I pulled on them, and she said, “Oh.”

“What’re you going to do next?” I said, knowing the answer.

“I’m gonna come all over your cock,” she said, and I laughed.

She climaxed, it seemed, in slow motion. Afterward, she went down on me, artfully. I came like a horse, and she took it all in. When we kissed, I could taste my own release in her mouth.

We were as close as two people could be. I never wanted to leave that room. I wanted to be with her forever.

We were lying in bed, nude, looking at each other, talking mostly with our eyes, working on our second bottle of wine. A slow, beautiful song, Jim James singing with heavy reverb from another world to ours, was playing from my portable speaker. I was not wearing a watch but I knew it was very late. The moon had dropped, and its light pearled the room through my floor-to-ceiling windows.

“Can we talk?” said Annette.

“Go ahead.”

“I’m worried about you, Vic.”

“Skylar’s death hit me kind of hard, I guess.”

“I’m not talking about that. I found a gun in your bathroom while I was changing. In the vanity under the sink.”

“Did you pick it up?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know it’s not real. It’s light as a feather. There’s no guts to it; the thing can’t even shoot blanks.”

“I know. It’s a prop gun. So what? You must have it for a reason.”

“I don’t know why I have it, to tell you the truth. I only know that I wanted it.”

“I know why. You’re going to use it in some way on the guys who killed Skylar.”

I told her what I’d found so far. I shared everything with her, including my fears. I’d never opened up to anyone in that way before, not my male friends, not even my wife. It had been one of the problems in my marriage, maybe the biggest problem. That, and our differing visions for the future. Claudia, an Army brat who’d moved around her whole childhood, wanted a house in a neighborhood, babies, membership at the local pool, a savings card for the grocery store, stability. I wanted none of those things. The more I left town to work on shows and the longer I was away, the less comfortable I’d become with the idea of staying in one place. We’d split up after five years. Claudia remarried, had children, and lived in a Colonial on an oak-lined street. I’d gotten what I’d wanted, too.

“What were you thinking?” said Annette. “A gun? ”

“I don’t have a plan.”

“Talk to the police and tell them what you know.”

“Not yet.”

She shook her head in aggravation. “Why are you going up in the Condor?”

“I can’t live my life inside my head all the time. I have to do something.”

“‘Where are you going, Lieutenant? To finish this.’”

“Funny,” I said.

“Seriously, Victor. You should hear yourself. You sound like a character in one of your scripts.”

Annette took a sip of wine and placed her glass on the dresser. She got up on one elbow and faced me. I was still on my back.

“Steve was a lot like you.”

“Your husband,” I said.

Unlike my marriage, hers had ended involuntarily. Her spouse had been a carpenter who worked on set construction for features. They’d met on a show in Wilmington, North Carolina, when Annette was an assistant in the art department on a Dino De Laurentiis production. Steve had never outgrown his fascination with the muscle car culture of his youth. He’d flipped his vehicle, broke his neck, and burned to death in a street race on a foggy two-lane ten years ago. I knew she’d loved him very much. There were many photographs of Steve in her hotel room. She loved him still.

Steve and Annette had not had children, and now, at forty-four, she knew her maternal ship had sailed. Like me, she had become a professional wanderer, a hotel dweller, without roots, a person with tired eyes who worked seventy-hour weeks. It was hardly a healthy atmosphere in which to raise a child.

Film and television productions were like circuses that arrived in town and brought excitement to the locals for a short period of time. We came and went, leaving the straights to their families, their backyard barbecues, their churches, their nine-to-fives. “We’ve got sawdust in our veins.” I’d heard that expression muttered by my coworkers countless times.

“Steve was always talking about the experience,” said Annette. “How he only felt alive when he was red-lining his car. He was selfish, Vic. I loved him, but I’ll never forgive him for that. You’re being selfish, too.”

“I want to live.”

“So did he. But he died horribly. It happened because he took a chance that he never should have taken. I couldn’t go through that again. I won’t go through it, Victor. Do you understand?”

There was no malice in her voice, or threat. She was simply telling me her truth.

“Yes. I understand.”

But I didn’t say I’d stop. I’d already begun to make plans.

We slept in. Near noon, Annette went down to the basement, where there was a bank of coin-operated washing machines and dryers, to start her weekly laundry. While she was gone, I called the one named Wayne from my room phone. I introduced myself by name and said I had been Skylar’s coworker and friend. He said, “Who’s Skylar?” I said I wanted to make him whole financially, in exchange for his promise that he and his partner, Cody, would leave Laura Flanagan alone. He said he had no idea what I was talking about. I told him that I didn’t care; he didn’t need to admit anything — I knew. I was willing to pay him off, but only on my terms. After some negotiation, he agreed to meet in the place that I insisted upon. He was cagey, but also greedy, and that made him stupid. His voice and word choice told me he was uneducated, inarticulate, and proud of it. Wayne gave me the location of the house where he and Cody “cribbed up.” I told him I’d see him that night.

Annette returned carrying her empty laundry hamper on her hip. I told her I had some errands to run. It wasn’t a lie, except by omission, and she read it. I moved to kiss her mouth, and she gave me her cheek.

“I’ll call you later,” I said.

“I know what you’re doing,” she said. “If you care about us, you’ll stop.”

She looked at me with disappointment and walked out of my room.

I left the hotel and dropped off my dirty clothing at a full-service laundry shop, then had a late breakfast at a Greek diner. Afterward, I drove out to a trailer park on the edge of town, where Kenny “G” Garson, our picture car coordinator, lived in a silver mobile home he towed from job to job. His Harley-Davidson edition F-150 was parked beside the Gulf Stream, under a stand of pines. As I went up the grated retractable steps of his trailer, I could hear Rush Limbaugh’s voice coming loudly from a radio inside. Kenny listened to loops of Limbaugh repeats on the weekends.

I knocked on the frame of the screen. Kenny appeared and suggested we sit outside. It was only March, but the weather had turned warm and would stay that way through October. The city was on a river, but open water was hundreds of miles away. There were no gulf or ocean breezes here. When the winds came, they came in the form of a hurricane. In this part of the country, productions tended to wrap before the summer months, as the weather was unbearably hot and humid from May till September. We were due to finish in about four weeks.

Kenny directed me to a folding chair with a canvas back, not unlike my cast chair in the Village.

“Ain’t got your name on it,” said Kenny. “Is that all right?”

“I can manage.”

He was wearing a T-shirt over shorts and sandals. His sunglasses were on a leash and hung over his barrel chest. We settled into our chairs.

“What can I do you for, Vic?”

“I need a car for the weekend.”

He nodded toward my red Focus, parked in the shade on a filled spot of gravel and shells. “What’s wrong with your rental?”

“It’s got four cylinders.”

“Ford turbocharges some of those fours now.”

“They didn’t juice that one. I need something with more horses.”

“Why? You planning on robbin a bank?”

“Nothing that serious. Can you fix me up?”

“Sure. Short notice, though.”

“I’ll pay the penalty.”

“Why not just go to Hertz?”

“I’d rather give you the money.”

“Lookin out for ol’ Kenny, huh.”

“Why not?”

Kenny’s eyes twinkled. He had the loveable local-boy look of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. He had raised four boys who were now men, and was still married to his high school sweetheart, Jolene. They had a house on the Redneck Riviera, two blocks from the beach in Alabama, near the Florida line. Rumor was that Kenny had done time for vehicular theft as a young man and turned his passion for automobiles into a living. Ours was a business that allowed felons to reform, if they had skills. Kenny had a down-home way with people and the salesman’s ability to pick someone’s pocket with a smile. Plus, the man knew cars.

“So you want somethin fast.”

“It should be roomy as well. I plan to have a big man riding along with me.”

“That leaves out a rice burner.”

“I would think.”

Kenny, who’d lost an uncle at Guadalcanal, didn’t care for Japanese cars. Though Kenny had been born after the war and had never known his uncle, he nevertheless had held a grudge. Also, like me, he was a union man. We went American when we could.

“I know a fella’s got a clean black Marauder. Two thousand and four. Last year Mercury produced the ve-hicle.”

“Is it fast?”

“It’s a V-eight. A little on the heavy side, but it’ll move ya. Got the heads and block of a Mach One Stang.” Kenny brushed a hand through his short gray hair. “What are you gonna do with this car, Victor? Like the man in that movie said, ‘I gots to know.’”

“I’ve got an appointment to talk with a couple of guys tonight. They might not like what I have to say. Could be I’ll have to make a hasty retreat. It would give me immense peace of mind if I knew my ride could fly.”

“Immense peace of mind.” Kenny barked a laugh. “God, you’re fancy. I wish I was as smart as you.”

“How much for the car?”

“Say, three hundred. Five if you want a driver.”

“You throwing your chauffeur’s cap into the ring?”

“Hell, I ain’t doin nothing all weekend but playin with my pecker.”

“You better be sure.”

“This has something to do with Skylar, right?”

I nodded.

“I liked that boy,” said Kenny.

I paid him with per diem money and told him I’d be in touch.

Barry Mason lived in the Southern District, a neighborhood of mostly black, working-class residents that locals called the Dirty South. But it didn’t look all that dirty to my eyes. The houses were relatively small ramblers and shotguns, neat and tidy, with largeish yards bordered by chain-link fences. Behind the fences were mixed-breed dogs with a touch of boxer or pit, and in the yards sat johnboats, children’s toys, motorcycles, and tricked-out GMs, Caprice Classics, and Cutlasses with oversized tires and aftermarket rims. To me, the area said family, work, and play.

I went through a gate and stepped into his yard, where a black Buick Grand National was up on cinder blocks. Barry came out of his yellow-sided rambler to meet me, along with two of his dogs, a pit-Lab mix and something smaller I couldn’t identify. Both of them were the same shade of tan.

“They’re all right,” said Barry, as the large dog galloped toward me. “Nothin but yard dogs. Just let ’em smell you.”

I stopped walking and allowed the big animal to sniff at my jeans. His ears were pinned back, so I knew I was good. The smaller one was meaner, kept her distance and glared.

“Buster, Sandy,” said Barry. “Go.”

The dogs went back into the house through the open door. I thought of Annette. I told you Buster was a dog’s name.

Barry approached. He was wearing a Panavision-issue T-shirt, and as always, he’d cuffed up the sleeves. He didn’t need to do that. His arms were as big as a pencil-pusher’s thighs. Barry was a mountainous man, six foot two, three hundred pounds, much of it muscle. He didn’t need to showcase his guns to make an imprthree-ession. Folks would have stepped out of his way had he been wearing a dress and Buster Brown shoes. But certain kinds of men roll like that into adulthood. It all went back to where you came up. Where I was raised, we wore our tees the same way.

“Barry,” I said, and shook his hand, big as a first baseman’s mitt. “Thanks for seeing me.”

“You want to come inside?”

“Will we be alone?”

“My wife and kids are in there, watchin the widescreen.”

“Let’s stay out here. I won’t keep you long.”

Barry went over to the Buick and leaned his big ass against the front quarter panel. I followed and stood before him. He already knew what this was about. I’d told him over the phone.

“Let’s talk about Skylar,” I said.

“Okay.”

“He fronted you a pound of weed. Is that right?”

“Yeah.” He looked me in the eye. Whatever he’d done, Barry was no liar. “Then something went down, and I couldn’t pay him.”

“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”

“Couldn’t. You coming to me today as a boss?”

“No. Just tell me what happened.”

Barry shook his head, as if the action could erase the memory. “The get-high was for my nephew. He been trappin like a fool.”

“Trapping?”

“Dealing that tree.”

Trapping. I took note of the term.

“If your nephew’s in the game, he must have his own connect. Why would you go to Skylar?”

“My nephew’s man came up short, and my nephew, goes by Daymo, needed some product to fill his pipeline. Told me if I could get him some, he’d have the money for me right away.”

“Why would you do that?”

“On account of he’s my sister’s kid. I ain’t want him out there tryin to cop cold from gangstas he don’t know. I was looking to control the situation. Protect him. I didn’t think for a minute that my own blood would do me like that.”

“What’d you do?”

“Had a man-to-boy talk with Daymo, is what I did. Put his nothin ass up against a wall. He promised to get me the money the next morning. But when the next morning came…”

“Skylar was dead.”

Barry looked away.

“It wasn’t a random robbery,” I said. “Skylar paid the collectors off with cash mixed with prop money. They murdered him because of it. I’m pretty sure of that.”

“They. Who the hell is they? ”

The Wild Bunch, I thought. Walon Green. Greatest screenplay ever written.

“Two young white dudes. They go by Wayne and Cody. I need to confirm that it was them.”

“And?”

“I aim to keep those assholes away from Laura Flanagan.”

“That skinny little girl in wardrobe?”

“She and Skylar were together.”

Barry crossed his arms. “I’m sorry, man. You know I been stressin behind this.”

“You can help me make it right.”

“How? I can’t bring that boy back.”

“No, but we can fuck the ones who did it. I could use you, Barry. You walk into a room, you make an impression.”

“Say it plain.”

“First thing, you need to get the money from your nephew, so I can pay off Skylar’s connect. Absolve that debt for the girl.”

“What else?” said Barry.

“I’ve got an appointment with Wayne and Cody.”

“And when you get up with them? You fixin to do what? ”

“Are you with me, or not?”

“When?” said Barry.

“Tonight.”

I called Detective Joe Gittens when I got back to my room.

“The TV writer,” he said, with amusement, after I identified myself.

“Making any progress on the Branson murder?”

“Only my boss gets to ask me that.”

“I was just wondering…”

“What?”

“I’m curious. What kind of slugs were recovered from Skylar’s body?”

Gittens said nothing.

“Nine millimeter?”

“Why would you need to know that, Ohanion? Is this for one of your scripts? Tanner’s Team gonna put this one down?”

“What about the shell casings found at the crime scene?”

“You make me smile, man.”

“Well?”

“Wasn’t no casings,” said Gittens. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, today is my day off, and I plan to spend it with my family. Unless you’ve seen the light of day and plan to suddenly cooperate with this investigation, I gotta go.”

“Sorry to bother you.”

He hung up on me without another word.

I lay down and tried to take a nap, but I couldn’t sleep. The late-afternoon sun was coming strong through my window, strobing the room as the trucks on the nearby interstate passed, blocking and unblocking the rays.

I got off the bed and went to my laptop, open on the desk. The beat sheets for episode 114 were beside it. Similar to our shooting schedule, I often wrote out of sequence, especially when I was looking to crack a script on page one and staring at a dreaded blank screen. I found a place where I could start, and began to type.

In the scene (INT: INTERROGATION ROOM, HOMICIDE OFFICES, POLICE HQ — NIGHT), Tanner is in “the box,” interrogating a drug dealer, a man named Glover, who Tanner thinks has information on a murder.

I wrote the scene, and then two others. It was coming, and I could hardly type fast enough. The faucet was fully on.

The light in the room dimmed. I’d been sitting at the desk for a couple of hours. It was night.

I dressed in jeans, running shoes, and a shirt worn tails out. I retrieved the prop gun from the bathroom, then stood in front of the mirror and experimented with its placement. I settled for the front dip, barrel down, with the grip angled so I could pull it easily with my right hand. I practiced my draw several times, then covered the gun with the tail of my shirt. I stared at my reflection in the mirror. I looked like me, but different. A man armed with a gun, even a fake gun, is changed.

I called Annette on the house phone, but she didn’t answer. I left a message and told her I was going out, and hoped to see her later that night. I grabbed my book bag, slung it over my shoulder, and took the elevator down to her floor. I knocked on her door and there was no response. Maybe she was in there. Maybe she’d been in her room when I’d phoned her, too.

I got my car from the valet and drove over to Barry’s place. He was standing in his front yard, playing with his dogs, when I pulled over to the curb.

Kenny was standing next to a clean black Marauder, under the beams of his Gulf Stream spotlight, as we arrived at his trailer park. We met him at the Merc.

“Black Barry,” said Kenny, and they bumped fists.

“Kenny G,” said Barry.

I had no nickname that I knew of, so Kenny just nodded in my direction.

“She’s a beauty,” said Kenny, running his hand lovingly over the hood.

“Looks like a Crown Vic with extended pipes to me,” said Barry, who was a GM man. There was a decal in the rear window of his Grand National of a kid wearing a Chevy shirt. The kid was pissing on a Ford.

“It’s all in the details, Barry. Eighteen-inch wheels, five-spoke rims with the god’s head right in the center. Blackouts, color-keyed grille…”

“I see all the window dressing. But does it move?”

“It’s a true muscle sedan.”

“Will it run with an Impala SS?”

“I wouldn’t want to split the difference.”

“Can we go?” I said. “I already rented the car, G. You don’t need to sell me on it.”

Kenny looked Barry over, then said to me, “I see now why you needed the extra room, Victor.”

“To fit your belly under the wheel?” said Barry. “Mines is flat.”

“If a basketball is flat,” said Kenny. “I see you been lovin that chicken at Popeye’s.”

“And I see you ain’t rubbed the red off your neck.”

It went like that for a while, and continued as we got into the car. They were friends.

Kenny got in the driver’s side, Barry in the shotgun bucket, and I climbed into the back, like the third wheel on a high school Friday night.

“Where to, sir?” said Kenny.

I gave him the address.

Wayne and Cody stayed on the east bank, over the river, in an area that looked more country than city, with unkempt homes and properties, some abandoned or foreclosed. The river bridge, lit majestically at night, loomed over this section of the parish. We drove down their dark street, which faced railroad tracks and a field featuring blown-in trash and one rusted-out car. The road dead-ended at a concrete barrier.

“Turn around and face the way we came in,” I said.

“I ain’t stupid,” said Kenny, adding, “Writers.”

He three-pointed the Marauder, curbed it, and faced it toward the open run of the street. We looked at the house and its driveway, where an old Toyota Supra with custom rims was parked.

Barry got out of the car and I followed.

I slung my book bag over my shoulder and leaned in Kenny’s open window. This made him recoil.

“Thought you were about to kiss me,” said Kenny.

“Keep it running, Boss Hog.”

“I’ll write down the tag number of that Nagasaki nut-bucket.” He meant the Toyota.

“Good idea,” I said.

Barry and I walked toward the house. It was a ramshackle one-story affair with tan asbestos shingles that were half on, half off. Plywood had been fixed in several of the windows.

“Is there a plan?” said Barry, wearing an electric-crew T-shirt, rolled at the sleeves. He looked like a horseman.

“Just be your badass self,” I said, as we stepped onto an uneven planked porch.

I knocked on the front door. Soon it opened. A shirtless, barefoot man in his early twenties stood in the frame. He had a pencil-line beard, braces on his teeth, and dull eyes. On his upper chest was a Celtic cross tattoo, an appropriated symbol of “white pride.” Similar tats were inked on his inner forearm. He was holding a cell phone in his hand.

A second young man, who looked just like the first, stood behind him. He too was thinly bearded, and wore a wife-beater, jeans, and black motorcycle boots.

“I’m Victor. This is Barry.”

“Wayne,” said the one who was standing behind his brother. When he spoke, I saw that his teeth were brace-free. “You ain’t say you were bringin no one.”

“I didn’t say I was coming alone, either,” I said. “Can we come in?”

I let Barry go ahead of me. As I entered, Cody closed the door behind me.

The house was as small as Laura Flanagan’s but without any of the artistic touches. The furniture was cushiony, torn, and probably infested with bugs. The place smelled of garbage, nicotine, perspiration, and weed. It was stuffy and hot.

We all stood there in the living area. I inspected the two of them, obviously identical twins, six-footers and solidly built.

“Well?” I said.

“Have a seat,” said Wayne.

“You all first,” I said.

Cody shrugged and sat down on the couch. Barry had been waiting for that. He sat down next to Cody, closer than he needed to be. Wayne and Cody both had size, but seated next to Barry, Cody looked like a child.

Wayne and I remained standing. He was not far from me. Striking distance, if that’s what he wanted.

Snipped. I took note of the term.

“Why do you think I’m here, Wayne?”

“You tell me,” said Wayne. “You said you was fixin to give me some money. Only a fool would turn that down.”

“Laura Flanagan,” I said.

“Who?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know her. I got your number from her phone. You called her, Wayne.”

Wayne smiled. “Skinny little thing, right? Works on movies. Yeah, I met her in a club. So?”

“I want you to leave her alone.”

Wayne smiled stupidly. “But she’s my type. See, I’m into those itty-bitty gals. I fuck ’em to the bone, Victor. I like to see if I can break ’em. You know what I mean?”

When I said nothing, Wayne’s silly grin faded.

“Let’s just do the business you came for,” said Wayne. “Give me the money and you can get gone.”

I hitched up my jeans and parted the tail of my shirt, just a little, and brushed my thumb on the checkered plastic grip of the prop gun. I then let the tail fall back over the grip. Wayne’s eyes widened slightly; he’d seen it — I’d wanted him to see it. I supposed that Barry and Cody had seen it, too.

“Leave her alone,” I said, pointedly.

“The money,” said Wayne.

I un-slung my book bag and dropped it at his feet. He picked the bag up, unzipped it, and reached inside.

“You,” he said, sharply tossing the bag aside.

“Wayne?” said Cody.

“It’s empty,” said Wayne.

In the corner of my eye I saw Cody furtively touching a pad on his cell. Momentarily, a phone rang in the back bedroom.

“You stay right where you are, slick,” said Wayne. “I gotta get that.”

I knew where he was going and what he was about to do. I looked at Barry with apology. He looked back at me, both angry and juiced. But he was a professional, and kept up his end. Barry had draped his arm over the back of the couch, behind Cody’s shoulder.

When Wayne returned there was a gun pressed against the leg of his jeans.

As he walked into the room, Barry moved quickly, clamping down on Cody’s neck in a choke hold and pulling him across the couch.

Wayne pointed the gun at my chest.

“Looks like we got a problem,” I said.

Wayne’s head swiveled toward the couch, where Barry had Cody’s neck in the channel-lock of his massive forearm. Cody was already losing color. He was beginning to kick his feet.

“Pull that piece out your dip and drop it,” said Wayne, panic in his voice.

I did it slowly. It fell with barely a sound to the hardwood floor.

“It ain’t even real,” said Wayne, with wonder.

“Your brother’s not gonna make it,” I said. “You might get us, but Cody will be dead, too. Think fast, Wayne. You don’t have much time.”

My knees were weak, and I’d felt the blood drain from my face. I looked at the gun in his hand, a snub-nosed revolver. It was why I came, and all I needed.

“I’ll kill him, Wayne,” said Barry, with great calm. “He damn near gone already.”

“Don’t kill him,” said Wayne.

“Break the cylinder on that gun and let the shells fall.”

Wayne emptied the revolver. Barry released his grip on Cody’s neck and pushed on his back. Cody rolled off the couch and struggled for breath. I moved forward and kicked the rounds out of Wayne’s reach. They skittered across the floor.

Barry got up off the couch. I picked up my empty book bag and the prop gun.

“Fuck,” said Wayne, to no one in particular.

“Leave the girl alone,” I said.

Barry and I backed out of the house. We crossed the yard quickly and got into the Mercury. Wayne had not followed.

“Drive,” I said to Kenny. “You can take it slow.”

But Kenny slammed the console shifter into low and pinned the gas. The big Mercury lifted and growled as I was thrown back against the bench seat. Kenny left rubber on the street as we came out of a fishtail and finally straightened. He upshifted to drive and slowed as he neared the turn ahead. In the rearview I saw his eyes, bright and alive as a seventeen-year-old boy’s.

Barry turned to me from the bucket. He was not pleased. “I oughta kick your monkey ass. Bringin a toy gun to a situation like that. You shoulda told me… shit, you could’ve got me killed.”

“I needed Wayne to pull that revolver. I had to provoke him.”

“You did that.”

“I handled it,” I said, defensively. “Told him to break that cylinder and let the shells fall. Right?”

“I said it. I told that cracker to unload his pistol. You was so scared, you couldn’t say shit.” Barry looked down at the crotch of my jeans and smiled. “Boy, you even pissed your gotdamn pants.”

I looked down. There was a wet spot there.

Barry began to laugh, and Kenny joined him. They were laughing still as we passed through the tollbooth and rolled onto the river bridge.

I stared out the window at the shining lights strewn on the bridge suspenders, and through the rails at the black water below. The plastic pistol was still in my shaking hand.

I woke up in the bed of my suite alone the next morning. I had called Annette when I got home, but she was out or didn’t pick up.

After I’d dressed, showered, and had breakfast, I phoned Detective Joe Gittens. He was not happy to hear from me. It was Sunday, and he was about to go to church.

“I’ve got something for you on the Branson murder,” I said.

“Oh. You’ve got something.”

“Do you have a pen?”

“For God’s sakes.”

“Listen carefully: twin brothers, two white boys who go by Wayne and Cody, were responsible for Skylar’s death.”

After a silence, he said, “You happen to have a last name on these twins?”

“No. But I have their address and the tag number of their vehicle.”

I gave Gittens the information, along with the make and model of the car.

“I’m guessing they’re renting the house. But you can find the landlord by going to the database search on properties. The owner can give you their full names.”

“For real? I didn’t know that.”

“Sorry.”

“Are you gonna tell me why I should do this?”

“You said there weren’t any shell casings found at the crime scene. Okay, the weapon could have been an automatic, and the killer might have picked up the casings after they’d been ejected, but I doubt it. There wasn’t time. That means the murder gun was a revolver.”

“Okay…”

“I saw the gun, Detective. They still have it.”

“Why would they?”

“Because they’re stupid. Because it was their daddy’s gun and it has sentimental value. I don’t know. But I saw it. I’m not certain of the caliber, but I’d say it was a thirty-eight.”

“You’d say. I don’t suppose you’re gonna tell me why you suspect them, or how you came to see this gun.”

“No, sir. You’re gonna need to treat this as an anonymous tip.”

“You should have called the Crime Solvers line if you wanted to stay anonymous.”

“I called you.”

“I’m your man, huh.”

“Yeah.”

“Boy, do I feel special.” More dead air filled the line. “It’s not much to go on. Sure not enough to get me a warrant.”

“You’ll figure it out. Trust me, those are your guys.”

I heard a female voice call Gittens by his Christian name.

“I gotta go,” said Gittens. “My wife doesn’t like to be late for service.”

“Stay in touch.”

“You don’t have to worry about that, Ohanion. You and me are gonna talk again.”

I worked on the script for episode 114 for the rest of the day. I skipped lunch and drank hotel coffee, and as the afternoon sun blasted through my windows, the page count mounted. Usually, it wasn’t this uncomplicated, but now I had only to sit there at my desk and type. It was easy.

That night, I walked up to Gino’s, a bar and grill that was a half block from my hotel. It was Steak Night. I ordered a New York strip, medium rare, a wedge salad with bacon and blue cheese dressing, and a glass of California red. I sat at the stick and ate my dinner alone.

When I returned to my room, the message light on my phone was blinking. Annette had called. She wanted to know if she could come upstairs.

We sat on my couch and drank Merlot, listened to music and talked. I told Annette to lie back. I removed her shoes and put her feet up on my lap and massaged them. This relaxed her completely. Soon we were making love there, and on the carpeted floor, and on the bed. We came powerfully, almost at the same time, atop the sheets.

Afterward we stayed in bed and drank more wine in the candlelight. She asked me what I’d done the night before, and I told her everything. I couldn’t lie to her. I couldn’t even stretch the truth.

“Are you mad at me?” I said.

“No. And I’m not surprised.”

“Anyway, no one got hurt. It’s over.”

“Is it?”

“I think so,” I said, but I knew she wasn’t speaking of the event. She was telling me that she knew my nature.

“What was it like?” she said. “Was it a movie?”

“In a way. I don’t even know what I said or didn’t say when I went into that house. It’s like I imagined half the shit that went down.” I had a sip of wine and placed the short glass on the nightstand. “I was scared, Annette.”

“I bet you liked that, too.”

“Maybe. But Barry wasn’t afraid.”

“Barry’s a gangster. You’re just a guy.”

“You think so?”

“Just a stupid guy.”

There was no humor or affection in her tone.

We were combustible lovers, and we’d be together until the end of the shoot. But I’d lost her, I knew.

“Tonight was really beautiful,” I said.

She turned into me. “It was perfect.”

Call, as it always was on Mondays, was very early. I was up at four thirty a.m., due to be on set at six.

The long van ride to the first location was strange without Skylar. Gandy was with us, and though he was a good guy, we were still getting used to his taking our friend’s place. Van Cummings made it more palatable by playing most of Danny O’Keefe’s classic Breezy Stories, through a cable from his iPhone. Van had introduced the record to Skylar, and it had become one of his favorites. As “Portrait in Black Velvet” came forward, all of us listened with contemplation and regret.

We arrived on set and I received my sides. First scene up was in a bar that catered to females (INT: DOLLY DAGGER’S, DOWNTOWN — NIGHT) and had Meaghan O’Toole (as Mackenzie Hart) interviewing a “friend” of the victim who’d been murdered by the shoe fetishist. The network liked the idea of setting the scene in a gay bar where the women were attractive and could be shown in provocative outfits (“lipstick lesbians,” it said, so artfully, in the script). At the same time, the suits were keenly aware that they had to portray the culture with sensitivity and correctness, if only because that was the way the country’s winds were blowing.

Meaghan arrived on set wearing an outfit that was unusually feminine for her, probably because she wanted to avoid any suggestion that she herself was butch in any way. The truth was, no one knew or cared about her sexual proclivities. Most of us assumed she abstained, which had earned her many colorful nicknames — Corncob, Sahara, and the like. Or, as our rigging gaffer so indelicately put it, “That woman has cobwebs in her snatch.”

Bar scenes required many extras, props, fake beer and wine, fake ice, and fake cigarettes, and they created matching issues with crossings and background. We were also shooting day-for-night. Everyone was working very hard. The scene was rehearsed, blocked, lit, and slated. We rolled the first take.

“More shmoke!” shouted Eagle to the effects guy, whose sole job was to work the smoke machine and blow it into the room. Scandi DPs loved smoke for some reason, and in the monitor the shot looked like a scene from Backdraft or something out of an Adrian Lyne film. But bars did get smoky, and the look of the master could be corrected in post.

I was more concerned with the acting and the tone of the scene. The day player cast as the “friend” was very good, too good in fact for Meaghan, who didn’t care to be upstaged. Meaghan was very clever, and she turned her head in profile, even when she was supposed to be looking directly at her fellow actress, so that her face would be visible in every shot, thereby making herself the focal point of the scene, something we would not be able to fix in the editing room.

Lomax caught it and said to me, “Should we say something?”

“Let it go. Just get a couple of clean close-ups on the friend.”

I didn’t have it in me that day to pick a fight.

During lunch, served in the auditorium of a Masonic temple near set, Barry approached me at my table and asked if he could see me outside. Beside me was Kenny, who ate his fried chicken and pretended not to hear our conversation. I followed Barry out to the street, to a blind corner where he handed me a plain brown envelope.

“There’s your money,” he said. “My nephew coughed it up. Too late, but still.”

“Forget about this,” I said. “And thanks.”

Barry said, “Right.”

Indeed, neither he nor Kenny mentioned the incident at the house again.

An office PA came to set with a large FedEx envelope at my request late in the afternoon. I went to my trailer and wrote a note to Skylar’s connect in California, telling him that this took care of the debt and that his business with Skylar was concluded. I added that I would consider any further contact from him or any of his agents a breach of etiquette, and if they did so, I would contact the law. I put the money in the envelope, used the Los Angeles address that Laura Flanagan had given me, and sent the package back to the office with the PA, with instructions to overnight it immediately.

Walking back to set, I saw Laura, sitting on the steps of the costume trailer, smoking a Marlboro. She pitched the smoke aside and stood to meet me as I approached.

“Victor.”

“Hey.”

“I’m glad I caught you. I’m leaving in a few days.”

“Where you headed?”

“I took a job up in Brooklyn. A friend hooked me up. It’s an HBO show; they shoot mostly at the Steiner Studios.”

“A period thing, right?”

“Yeah, it’s set in the twenties.”

“That’ll be fun for you. Creative. With the costumes, and all.”

“I hope so. I should get out of here, don’t you think?”

“It’s best.”

Laura slipped off her aviators and placed them atop her head, so she could look me in the eyes. “Thank you for putting me up in the hotel, Vic. And for everything. You’ve been a good friend.”

“Don’t forget me on your rise to the top.”

She laughed and hugged me spontaneously, then broke away. “Don’t forget me.”

“I better get back,” I said.

“See you.”

She had a rough road ahead of her. The series she was going to was a meat grinder, eight months of sixteen-hour days. She was on the frail side, not a fighter, and quiet. In our business that was seen as a weakness.

I walked back to set.

The next day we shot out by a marina on the lake, which was wide as a bay, where in our story the father of one of our young police officers owned a shrimp boat. There were several scenes set on the boat in this script, and the plan was to knock them all out in one day. It was pleasant to work outside, and I was enjoying it, but halfway to lunch I got a call from Ellen on my cell, asking me to return to the writers’ offices. Detective Joe Gittens wanted to speak with me in person.

Gittens was waiting for me in my office. He was on my couch, his legs spread wide, wearing a nice brown suit with thin chalk stripes. A fedora with a red-and-gold feather in the band was beside him.

“You look clean today,” I said, shaking his hand before I took a seat behind my desk.

“I got all gussied up for you.”

“Where’s your partner? Getting a facial?”

“Dennis is just a little aggressive, is all. I left him in the office today.”

“So what’d I do now?”

“Your tip paid off, Ohanion.”

“Oh?”

“Couldn’t get a search warrant on Wayne and Cody’s house, so we waited for them to leave their place of residence. They were driving that Mexican-looking Toyota you described. ’Bout a mile from their place, they stopped at a red light…”

“Let me guess. The front tires of the Supra were over the white line of the intersection.”

“How’d you know?”

“Police officers in my hometown used to pull kids up for that all the time. Then they’d toss the car.”

Gittens snapped his fingers theatrically. “That’s exactly what we did!”

“And you found what?”

“Marijuana and paraphernalia, of course. And, oh yeah, a gun.”

“A revolver, I bet.”

“S&W thirty-eight.”

“You ran tests?”

“Gonna take a couple of days to do the ballistic fingerprinting. That’s where we match the striations on the slugs to the barrel of the gun it came from.”

“I know the process.”

“Course you do. You’re a crime writer.”

“I’m betting it’s a match.”

“We’ll see. But here’s the thing. We already struck gold.”

A week later, Bruce Kaplan called me into his office. He and Ellen had been talking quietly, grimly all that morning. I’d been around long enough to know what was coming, and I wasn’t surprised.

Behind his closed door, I sat before Bruce’s desk. Memorabilia of his past successes and near successes crowded the room. He’d drawn the blinds, as a doctor does when he’s about to give a patient bad news. Bruce looked heavy and tired.

“We’ve been cancelled, Victor. I’m sorry.”

“It’s nobody’s fault. We did our best.”

“The numbers weren’t there. They’re dropping in fact, week to week. The suits considered reconfiguring the cast, but ultimately they felt it best to pull the plug and move on.”

“It’s just business.”

“We’ll tell the crew after we wrap. I don’t like to do that, but people will jump ship. There’s only two weeks left on the shoot, and Ellen and I want to finish strong and under budget. It’s a point of pride with us.”

“The crew will find work. They always do.”

“As will you,” said Bruce, and he picked up my script for 114 off his desk. “This is really good. Did I tell you?”

“Yes, you did. Thank you.”

Bruce opened the script to a page he had dog-eared. “‘My man got his self snipped.’ Snipped. Where did that come from?”

“It means murdered.”

“And, ‘he rotted him.’ That’s some authentic shit.”

“I’ve been keeping my ear to the street.”

“It shows. I’m going to submit this one for a WGA award.”

“Great,” I said, with little enthusiasm.

“You’ll be fine, Vic.”

My agent had been fielding offers as of late. I’d find work, if I wanted it. Hundreds of cable channels, original content, streaming… there was always work for a whore like me.

“I don’t have to tell you,” said Bruce, “you need to keep the cancellation a secret.”

“I understand,” I said.

Soon as I left his office, I phoned Annette and told her that she needed to start looking for a new job.

The day after the wrap party, we had a service for Skylar Branson in the city’s largest park. We met around a weeping cherry tree the production had planted in his name. His parents had flown back in from Galveston, and there was a woman in vestments who said some vague, nondenominational words about Skylar’s spirit, and many crew members, some of whom I’d see on other productions, some I’d never see again. Annette was there, looking stylish in black with a touch of flair, and Laura, who’d returned for the day from Brooklyn and would leave that afternoon. Some local musicians, neo-folkies Skylar hung with, played a couple of traditional songs on acoustic instruments, and then the ceremony broke up. That’s what’s left of you, I thought. A tree.

I walked back to my rental car with Jerome Hilts, our dolly grip, who was wearing a clean polo shirt and cargo shorts for the occasion.

“What do you think, Victor? What’s it all mean?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be writing television scripts. I’d be writing my manifesto.”

“Nobody’s gonna remember us.”

“You’re probably right.”

“But we gotta keep working. I’m headed up to Baltimore, for a Netflix show. You?”

“Raleigh. I’ll be running the writers’ room for a Cinemax thing.”

I was due there in a week. I hadn’t even read the pilot. Something about a hit man in Nixon-era America. I would read the script and the bible on the flight back to Delaware, where I planned to visit my mother. I hadn’t seen her for a long while.

“We’re the circus,” said Jerome. “We just pull up our tents and move from town to town.”

“That’s right.” I squinted bitterly against the sun. “We’ve got sawdust in our veins.”

The next morning, I stood outside my hotel and helped Annette load the last of her trunks into her Grand Cherokee. She was headed back to her home in Wilmington, North Carolina, where she and her husband had bought a house just before his death. But she would only be there for a few days.

“I guess that’s it,” she said, as she closed the hatchback and brushed an errant strand of hair away from her face. We’d been up all night making love, and still, she looked lovely. I ran my hand down her bare arm.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said.

“I took a job, Victor.”

“In Hawaii. You might as well be going to China. I could get you on this thing I’m doing in Raleigh. I could talk to the EP.”

“We went over this many times last night. I took the job. We’ll see each other again.”

“When?”

Annette put her hand behind my neck, pulled me into her, and kissed my mouth.