3. PICK UP RIGHT WHERE YOU LEFT OFF WITH HER. Actually a finesse move, but excellent at throwing a girl-slash-woman off. Or “for a loop,” as one of the Teamsters on his latest picture was fond of saying when somebody screwed up the shooting schedule. In making this work, however, a physical element was often required, and he just wasn’t sure he was up to it. He would need to really sell the “Hey there!” part of it, and then immediately follow up with a big hug—like how he’d behave if he ran into somebody that he had done television with years ago. With her it would be easy enough since he remembered a few details about her—the shopping, going to Angeli for dinner, etc.—but this strategy could get very dicey if he had no real sense of how or where or even why he’d spent time with someone. This might be the right choice in this particular case, he mused, but he decided to run through the rest of his favorites, just to be sure.

4. BUTTER HER UP WITH A FALSE SENSE OF HOPE. Really a variation on a theme, since this called for something very similar to idea number 3, with a few slight but telltale changes. He would still need to execute the recognition-slash-hug-slash-personalization part of the routine, but then take it a step further by accepting nothing less than another date (time and place to be finalized right on the spot). Take her number this time—she’d be wary of the old office phone gag by this point—and set up a definite time to speak about going to a movie, or even better, a play, or a museum-slash-gallery. Most girls-slash-women, when they hear “play” or “museum,” get quite excited and figure this is it, things are finally turning around for good. Now he’s getting serious. Theater, by and large, was shit in Los Angeles—only because people use it as a stepping stone for getting a series-slash-film—but it was miraculous what it did for a girl-slash-woman when he offered to pick up some tickets and make a big night of it. He hardly ever used this one since it was so damn concrete, and a girl-slash-woman like this would probably never force him into a situation that necessitated it, so it was a fair bet that this notion would be quickly thought about and discarded as she was approaching. Still, it had its charms.