They walked up some steps into a fat one-room trailer where a man stood toying with a red wig while a woman sat reading a magazine. “I bring you the head of Suzanne Vale,” Ted announced. “Suzanne, this is Marilyn, our makeup artist, and this is Roger, our hair stylist.” Everyone exchanged hellos.

“Ooh, your hair is still wet,” Roger fretted. “You’d better come to me first.”

“I’ll leave you folks and check on how the caterers are coming with breakfast,” said Ted. He opened the door, letting in some beautiful dawn desert air, then slammed it behind him.

Suzanne sat in Roger’s chair, staring at the reflection of her dread morning face. Roger browsed his cassette rack. “Do you want calming or stimulating?” he asked her.

Suzanne mulled it over for a few moments. It was a question she had asked herself about men. She had finally decided she wanted stimulating that very subtly became calming—a holocaust that became a haven. She had hoped Jack Burroughs might make this improbable leap, but he had merely made the transition from stimulating to stressful. “Calming,” she finally replied.

“Calming it is,” said Roger, popping a Windham Hill tape into his player and starting it. He looked at Suzanne. “Early, isn’t it?” he said maternally.

“It’s so early it’s late,” she said somberly.

“That’s cute.” Roger laughed. “Did you just make that up?”

“I don’t know,” said Suzanne. “I should know later.”

“Listen to her!” Roger called over to Marilyn. “We’re going to have a ball!” Suzanne smiled.

Marilyn lit a cigarette and walked to the door. “Can I get either of you anything from Craft Services?”

Suzanne looked at her. She was blond, somewhere in her forties, with blue eyes in a tan, weatherbeaten face. She was tall and thin, and she wore blue jeans and a T-shirt that said, “Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.” Suzanne smiled—she had the same T-shirt at home. “If there are any doughnuts or pancakes . . . ,” she said shyly, suddenly convinced that food—particularly fun food—would wake her up.

“Not really a health nut, are you?” said Marilyn, through her just-inhaled cigarette smoke. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“She’s a trip,” said Roger, shaking his long, tinted, curly blond head as the door closed behind Marilyn. He plugged in the hair dryer. “We’ve worked on . . .” He rolled his eyes upward, as if the number of films they had done together was hidden high in his head. “Fifth,” he said. “This will be our fifth picture together.” With that he raised the dryer like a friendly gun, pointed it at Suzanne’s head, and said, “Bang bang, you’re dry.”

Suzanne searched her mind for an appropriate rejoinder. When none turned up, she simply sat grinning inanely at Roger in the mirror, the silence burning through her.