She led me into the living room, which had been carved into offices. The tiny space had kept the original ceiling, high above us. It was like standing in an elevator or a deep well. We walked through a hallway, a kitchen, a breezeway that had been added to join the house to a double-wide trailer. I knocked on the open door. Brandon glanced up from his computer screen.

“Hi,” I said. “We met—”

“Charlotte. I remember.” His eyes were red.

“Could we talk?” I asked. “If you’re not busy?”

He shrugged and gestured to a chair in front of his desk. The furniture looked like it had come from a surplus store. Light from the windows emphasized the plasticky walls, the clutter everywhere. A broken staple glinted in the industrial carpet. Brandon slumped behind his desk, a pen in one hand.

“This place isn’t quite what I expected,” I said.

“Everyone says that,” he said. “People think it will be a slick studio.” He patted the desk in front of him, in apology or consolation. “What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I wanted—I wanted to talk to somebody who knew her.”

“Yeah. I know what you mean.”

“I can’t believe she’s dead.”

He rubbed one hand over his face. The phone on his desk rang. He stared like he didn’t recognize it. We listened to it ring and then stop ringing. He said, “I need a fucking drink. You can come if you want.”

We caravanned to the Spanish Flower and parked our cars side by side. He took a booth and we ordered frozen margaritas. A black-haired girl wearing a flamenco costume dropped off our basket of chips.

I said, “That fight at the icehouse—that was dramatic.”

“Anthony. Jesus. Not my best moment.”

“It was perfect, actually. He was being a dick.”

“I bruised my hand.” He showed me his knuckles, swollen and healing a greenish-blue. “I had to make him shut the fuck up. He’s got no sense of decorum.”

“Didn’t he work for you?”

“Not after that. Those guys are dispensable.”

We both winced at the word. I thought, That’s two he’ll have to replace. Our drinks came. He fiddled with his straw, threw it on the table, and gulped a third of his glass.

“Do people at your job know you make pornography?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. Even if they did, I think most of them would be okay with it. I’ve been there a long time, and they’re fairly open-minded. They’re artists, or they think they are. And they respect me. They’re very supportive of my other films.”

“What are your films like?” I asked.

“Experimental. Like collages. I’m working on one now that incorporates audio from drivers’ ed instructional videos and images from video games, plus a bunch of macro footage of an ant farm that I shot last year. It’s close to being done.”

“Cool,” I said.

“I’ve had films in a few festivals. And Mediasource is great—I get to use their equipment. Plus I believe in community television. A lot of it’s crap, but it’s an important vehicle of expression for students and young filmmakers.”