Brewing coffee in the kitchen, I could see George and Mildred Wilbur out walking on the beach with their dog. They waved at me in their sickly, middle-aged fashion. Bruno, the huge, stupid, loving, gorgeous Irish setter, barked at me to come out and play. George called him back and told him to heel. Bruno, eager to please, did so.

I opened some windows to let the stale air out, and when the coffee was done, I started to take a cup out to the porch before I remembered I was only wearing a T-shirt. The Wilburs wouldn’t much like that.

I went into the bathroom and took a shower, where I made a lot of noise—flushing the toilet, slamming the towel cabinet door. Nonetheless Charlie only just rolled over on his back when I came back into the bedroom. I raised the shade, and sunlight fell across the bed, glowing on his long, tanned legs. Grinning, he pointed to his upthrust dick, the ornament of the brilliant white patch between his tanned hips and his muscled thighs.

“No. It’s nearly noon. I’m throwing you out of the house. I have work to do.”

He sat up, drew me toward him, and held me, murmuring against my throat, “I like you better when you’re all woman and not part agent.”

“But if I were all woman, you wouldn’t eat.”

“I barely eat now.” He released me. “I should be earning fifteen hundred a week, not a measly two fifty a pop for an episode of Dragnet. Why did Larry Sanford turn down Return of the Cat People? It was perfect for them.”

“Larry missed his chance,” I replied, never having told Charlie the truth.

“Why can’t you get me something that’s not television and not Poverty Row? What about my Coast of Heaven? You’ve read it. You know it’s as good as On the Waterfront or Rear Window.”

“I’m going to trust your own good sense that you know that isn’t so.”

“But it is!”

“It needs polish. I keep telling you, it needs polish.”

“You know I’m the best of your writers. I’m certainly the best of your lovers.”

“Time to go,” I said, freeing myself. I reached in the drawer for my lacy, satin lingerie and then pulled on a pair of pedal pushers and an oversized USC T-shirt.

Charlie got up, put on his swimming trunks, and took his surfboard out for a quick dip, returning an hour later, salt-splashed and glowing. He left his surfboard leaning against the porch rail, collected his clothes, got in his beat-up ’48 Dodge, and drove back to his Hollywood hovel on Sycamore Street. I never stayed at his place, not after I saw the Murphy bed and the cockroach.