He and I might once have been Ugly Ducklings together, but we no longer felt like Quackers. On those few occasions when we went out, he took me to high-profile restaurants and bars where the movie star Jonathan Moore was shown to the best table, and people nodded admiringly as he passed by. People came up to him just to shake his hand. We talked mostly of his successes, and the fact that Paramount had paid him four times his Empire salary. He never brought up Denise, and he never again evinced that moment when something like genuine regret, or caring, crossed his face as it had the time he had accused me of asking presumptuous questions.

I saw so little of him I was astonished one morning driving to the Culver City post office box to see a billboard advertising aftershave with Jonathan’s handsome face and shirtless torso, staring into a mirror and beaming at the bottle of aftershave he held in his hand. I hadn’t known that he was doing commercials. As I scooped the mail out of our post office box, I brightened to see Terrence’s distinctive handwriting on the envelope, though when I read it, my heart broke and fear for him seemed to ice over my veins.