“They should,” he said. “God. This is going to be another Day of the Sock.”

It had been four weeks since the Day of the Sock, and yet there was no sign that Spencer was any closer to getting over it.

A casting director had come to see Hamlet on its first night. Spencer had impressed him with his skills—fighting, fake falling, backflipping, running into walls on a unicycle. The casting director brought him in to audition for a washing machine commercial, in which he was asked to play a sock stuck in an oversize fake dryer. Spencer spent a good eight hours in the fake dryer, getting callback after callback all day long, until it was down to just him and one other actor. Apparently, eight hours in a fake oversize dryer is not nearly as much fun as it sounds. Especially when the other guy gets the part, and all you get is a headache that lasts for a day and a half.

The Day of the Sock had come to symbolize a kind of curse Spencer thought had come over his career. It cast a pall over his ordinarily high spirits. Since that day, he had been going on auditions several times a week, but nothing was panning out. Casting directors liked him. They called him back again and again. But at the last second, someone else would get the part. Again and again and again. It was wearing him down.

“Maybe you’ve never been on a plane before?” Scarlett suggested, trying to sound positive.

“I’ve only flown twice, and even I could master the seat belt,” he said. “Anyone can work a seat belt. A seat belt practically fastens itself.”

He slumped down a bit, resting his elbows on his knees and running his hands through his dark hair. Scarlett stared at his black tie.

“The tie,” she said suddenly. “What if you got it caught in the seat belt? You wouldn’t be able to buckle it then.”

This made Spencer sit up. He looked at his tie, then yanked on the knot to loosen it.

“Okay,” he said, pulling the tie so that it hung low. “I just lean over a little when I’m trying to put on the seat belt, and…”

He made sure to dangle the tip of his tie into the imaginary clamp so that it couldn’t catch.

“…oh no! I can’t figure out my seat belt!”

He increased his struggle, and began doing a very good simulation of choking himself with the belt-clamped tie. He somehow managed to make it look like it had tightened around his neck, and he gagged and choked and pulled himself all the way down to the floor.

“How’s that?” he asked, opening his eyes in his death pose. “It’s just a starting point. Obviously, I have to work that out a bit.”

“I like it,” Scarlett said approvingly.

Spencer got up and straightened out his shirt and tie. He opened the accordion guard on one of their large and dusty kitchen windows and surveyed the day. It was just before sunrise, the sky a heavy purple-gray, the air already thick and warm. A summer morning in the city, in the pocket of time when the heat was between merely uncomfortable and completely unbearable. Spencer just stared out at the small, paved area that separated their property from the apartment building behind them—just a little plot of concrete with a table and some chairs that no one ever used. He exhaled long and slow.