I went to the grocery store that evening and came back with champagne and steaks and all the newspapers—LA and out-of-town—I could find. (Terrence always liked to spread them out on the bed and see who was covering what.) I came up the steps and stopped for a moment, listening to him pounding on the Royal, the regular ping of the carriage, Muddy Waters low on the hi-fi, sounding from the inside, the slow insistent roll of the ocean on the outside. My heart soared with happiness: I opened the door, and he looked up from the Royal and smiled at me. He feels it too, I thought, this happiness, this love, this strength we take and give to each other. I went into the kitchen to pop the champagne and panfry the steaks. Even I could panfry a steak.

Later, finishing the last of the champagne by the fire, I said, “Does Mr. Branch know you’re back?”

“No, but he knows I’m coming back.”

“Let’s go to Baja for a few days. We can just be ourselves there.”

“Can’t. I gotta lot of work in front of me.”

“Can’t it wait a day or so?”

“It’s already waited a day or so. I’m here with you, aren’t I?”

The phone rang and I reluctantly got up to answer, wishing immediately that I had just let it ring. Charlie Frye started lambasting me with every vile name he could think of, and then finally he blurted out in what sounded like a rush of tears, “Leon is going to fire me, Roxanne!”

“What? Who told you this?”

“It’s gossip. All over the Writers’ Building, all over the studio. People look at me like I’m a zombie, the walking dead.”

“You have a contract.” In the background I could hear a low buzz of voices and laughter. “Where are you?”

“Max Leslie had a contract, didn’t he?”

“Please don’t use his name.”

“Your old pals Simon and Nelson had contracts! Leon hates me. He hated me from the time the picture started shooting. Leon knows I fronted for a Red.”

“He doesn’t know,” I said with more conviction than I felt, since I was certain he had guessed. “Your name is on both scripts. You wrote them.”

“Like hell. What about the rewrites? I couldn’t do those until you started taking them out to Max’s place.”

“I never took them out there.”

“Well, whatever the hell you did. Before that . . .” He fell into a weeping spasm.

“Where are you?” I asked again.

“I’m in a fucking phone booth in a bar, Roxanne. I’m drunk and I want my old surfboard back. I miss it. I want my old life back. I miss it. I wish I’d never met you. I wish I’d never heard of Max Leslie.”

“Please don’t use his name.”