A speeding car lurched into the no-parking zone before Police Headquarters. The driver, in a cop’s uniform, scurried to the curb and threw open the rear door for a tall, stooped man of fifty, and I reeled from another and equally devastating shock: the tall man, in nappy tweeds, was my father. It wasn’t the first time I had seen him since his disappearance, yet each time on close inspection he had proved to be a phantom, a shape-changer, a pretender. Now I dashed across the street, eager to throw myself into his arms—a reunion of blood and genes, as touching and tumultuous as my encounter with Valerie, and all in the space of half an hour. He hardly glanced at me as I ran to intercept him, and for good reason: he was yet another imposter.

When I got back to Climax Productions Valerie was nowhere in sight. I stood there for a moment, feeling like an intruder in the emptiness of that concrete dustbin, when the STAGE door opened. A woman walked in, I guess about thirty, wearing a murky rayon dressing gown. Above it she had on a pair of glasses with lenses so thick they might have been borrowed from a couple of flashlights. Beneath it she wore nothing but fishnet stockings, house slippers with bunnies on them, and a dancing glint of sequins over her pubic floss. She smiled at me like any good receptionist and made no attempt to cover her nakedness.

“Hi!” she said brightly, plopping on the couch. Her jugs bounced, not quite in unison, stirring the air. She smelled slightly of sweat and strongly of a perfume derived from the glans of a Himalayan wild goat. She took off her gigs and wiped them on the hem of the murky schmatte. “You’re Judd, right? Valerie said she’d be with you in a minute. Jesus,” she readjusted her glasses, “I’m dead, I’ve been off my feet all day.” She squinted, blinking affably. “That’s a joke,” she confided, “you dig?”

My expression must have indicated that I didn’t. “You’re in the movie they’re shooting?”

“Me? Nooo.”

“Tell me about your work.”

“Well,” she said, “I used to be a star, now I’m queen of the warm-up pit.”

Again I drew a blank and showed it.

“You know,” she said encouragingly, as if I were two steps below average intelligence, “the bull pen. That’s where you warm up the male lead, so’s he’s ready for action when the camera rolls. You’d be surprised,” she lowered her voice confidentially, “what some of ’em want. You may not believe it but you get some real flakes in this business.”

“Such as?”

“Well…”