She'd called him, threatened to call the police and tell them that he'd stolen a dead woman's plays. The crotchety old man had told her, “Call away. It's got your fingerprints on it and I've already got a police report filed about a break-in a week ago — just after you came to interview me. And I'm not very happy that you told half the world I was a suspect in the case. That's slander.”

Their compromise was that neither would press charges and that if he made any money from the plays, he'd donate a quarter of it to the New York AIDS Coalition.

Then something odd happened.

Larry — the Larry who was half of L&R — had appeared at the door of her houseboat.

“No bloody phone. What good are you?”

“Larry, I've had my abuse for the week.”

“It's a bleedin' 'ouseboat.”

“Want a drink?”

“Can't stay. I came by to tell you, 'e's an arse, Mr. House O' Leather, what can I tell you?”

“I still lost you the account, Larry. You can't give me my job back.”

He snorted an Australian laugh. “Well, luv, that wasn't ever gonna 'appen. But truth is, there's this guy called me, 'e's got some ins at PBS and seems there's this series on new documentary filmmakers they're looking to do...”

“Larry!”

“All right, I recommended you. And they got a budget. Not much. Ten thousand per film. But you can't bring it in under that you got no business being a film maker.”

He wrote down the name. She got her arms most of the way around him and hugged him hard. “I love you.”

“You fuck it up, I don't know you. Oh, and don't tell Bob. What 'e does is 'e 'as this little doll and it's got your name on it and every night 'e sticks pins —”

“That's a load of codswallop, Larry.”

“Rune, that's Brit, not Aussie. Work on your foreign languages some, right?”

Five minutes after he'd left Rune was on the phone. The distributor had been pretty aloof and said, real non-committally, to submit a proposal and they'd make their decision on funding.

“Proposal? I've got rough footage in the can.”

“You do?” He sounded more impressed than a film person ought to. “Everybody else has these one-page treatments.”

Two days later, when she called, he told her he'd sold Epitaph for a Blue Movie Star to PBS. It was slotted for September, on a program about young film makers. A check for all her postproduction work would be sent shortly.

Sam Healy emerged again and began spending more and more nights on the houseboat. He complained about the rocking motion for a while, though that was mostly for effect; Rune figured something inside of him felt it was better for the woman to move into his homestead, rather than the other way around.