Yegina hated Hal because Janis Rocque had hated Hal for decades. The two had started as pals, young groundbreakers with common goals—Janis downtown and Hal in Valdivia. In 1976, shortly after Janis had signed off on a major gift to LAAC, a group of the college’s women artists had transformed every room in an old East L.A. mansion—from kitchen to bathroom to bedroom—into a bower of feminist art. It was called Womb/House. Thousands had come to view it, elevating LAAC to a media phenomenon: the new West Coast art school that was suddenly outshining New York. Janis asked Hal to use her donation toward buying Womb/House so that the college could own it in perpetuity, but Hal refused, saying he had already earmarked her funds for general operating costs. She could give more if she wanted. Janis said fat chance. The installation had been dismantled and lost to time, and a new enmity had sprung up in the L.A. art world. Ever since, Janis and Hal had clashed over the city’s creative future. Personally, I thought the contemporary art scene had largely benefited from the war between them, two titans, each equally mighty. And yet. I couldn’t erase Brenae’s staring face, her voice-over, from my mind.

As I crept west on the crowded freeway, my phone vibrated. I let it go to voicemail and then pressed speaker to hear the message. It was my friend Kaye, who’d become a birthing doula for Hollywood royalty. At a party at Kaye’s last week, I’d struck up a conversation with an up-and-coming actress. The actress was an intense person, allergic to chatter and self-help advice, and had ended up bored and adrift in a corner of the patio, staring at her wineglass. I knew that she was about to play Françoise Gilot in a play on Broadway, and I knew about Gilot, a painter who had become Picasso’s lover when she was twenty-seven and he was sixty-one. We’d talked for an hour, and then I’d given her my number and told her to call if she ever wanted me to pitch a profile on her.

Kaye’s excited voice made me nearly swerve into someone’s white Jeep. She wants an interview tomorrow. Noon?

A wave of stubborn pride washed through me. I could sell a profile on the actress in a heartbeat, to any number of publications. She was on her way to becoming a major star. This was the kind of uncomplicated, sure-to-succeed opportunity that never happened to me.

Now it was happening. I took the freeway exit for the boutique that Janis had named earlier, parked, and returned Kaye’s call. “Yes, please,” I said. “How’d you do it?”

“I didn’t! She called me. She really liked you.”