Peter looked back at the picture, and maybe there was something soft in his face, something less antic and less onstage. “She got pregnant right away and then there was the kid and I just wasn’t into the family scene. I was scrambling from job to job, trying to get a toehold, and she’s talking about Huggies. I busted out of film school. It was crazy. So I said, look, this isn’t my thing, I don’t wanna be married anymore, and she didn’t fight it. I don’t think I’ve seen her or the boy since the day we signed the papers. A little while after that Chainsaw came along and things happened fast.” He spread the big hands, looking for a way to say it. “I got larger.”

I said, “Did Karen work, or was she just a wannabe?”

Pat said, “Quite a bit of extra work and a couple of walk-ons. The sort of thing you get when all they need is a pretty face in the background.”

“Where do they send the residuals?”

“She’s got four hundred sixty-eight dollars and seventy-two cents waiting for her for some work she did on Adam 12. Neither SAG nor the Extras Guild knows where to send it.”

Peter brightened and went back to the candy machine. He slammed it with his elbow and pulled out an Almond Joy. Another wrapper on the floor. “I remember that gig. I went to the set with her and tried to talk the producer into giving me an episode to direct. The guy gives me the bum’s rush. That TV prick. A lousy episodic producer and he’s telling me I can’t hack an Adam 12, he’s saying that what they do is ‘highly stylized.’ Man, I ain’t thought about that prick in years.” It was as if relating something of his to something of hers, he could remember it.

Dani came back between the flats with a fat guy in an argyle sweater. Peter said, “That’s Langston. He’s my cameraman. I gotta talk to him about a shot move we’re designing through the pyramid set. Is there anything else you wanna know about me?”

“Karen. We were talking about Karen.”

He looked annoyed. “That’s what I meant. Look, I gotta go. If you want anything, it’s yours. Use my name. This town, it’s like saying open sesame.”

“Ali Baba.”

He smiled. “Yeah. Just like Ali Baba.”

He walked over to Langston.

Pat said, “Well?”

I shook my head. “He knows about him, but he doesn’t know about her. How long were they married?”

“Fourteen months.”

I shook my head some more. You do that a lot in this business.

Pat and I went past the electrical cables and between the flats and toward the big doors. We were most of the way there when Peter Alan Nelsen yelled, “Hey, Cole.”