Two months ago, two weeks ago I would have lashed out, Fat lot you care! But if Leon had changed and tempered, so had I. And too, living in England, Max had moved beyond the possibility of legal harm. His occasional dismal letters that Marian shared with me and Thelma also proved he had moved beyond the possibility of any hope that Marian might join him. He lived in one room, and he sent money to Marian, who was still living with Thelma in Tarzana. Norman had been placed in a facility nearby. “Adrian Scott got him a job in England with some of the other blacklisted writers, writing on The Adventures of Robin Hood for British television. It plays over here too, in the late afternoon, kiddie TV.”

“Well, I’m glad to know Max is working anyway. Writers need to be writing.”

“That’s what Max said to me. That if he wasn’t writing, he was dying.”

“Composing or decomposing, one or the other, that’s the writer’s fate.”

The baby yawned a great, wide-mouthed, satisfied yawn. He hoisted the baby to his other shoulder, where he left a pool of drool. Leon didn’t seem to mind. The baby fussed, and with his little hands he tugged at the cap on his head, pulling it off and dropping it to the floor. I picked up the cap, and Leon put it in his pocket.

“See?” Leon said proudly. “Aaron already has a mind of his own. Mrs. Shea insists on the baby cap, but he hates it.” He tickled the baby’s chin. “Is that Nelson’s old upright?”

“Yes. I think it is.”

“I mourned Nelson, Roxanne, I did. And I know a lot of people were angry that I didn’t go to the funeral, but I couldn’t let people think that I was going soft on Communism, or that I supported his being a homo. I’d known Nelson for twenty years, but I cared more for my reputation than I did for my friends. It doesn’t mean I love my country any less, and it doesn’t mean I would ever embrace a Communist, but I wonder now . . . There are things I should have done differently. I should have called you right when I read those two scripts Elliott Dunne sent to Denise. I should have picked up the phone and asked what the hell you thought you were doing.”

“So you did recognize Max’s touch.”

“Max wrote them, and you were fronting for him, and I thought you brought them to Empire to make me look stupid, or to give me a heart attack. Or both. I saw it as an act of betrayal.”

In my own defense, I could only offer that I was angry.