“One day you will get caught out in one of these foolish gestures, and the world will deal with you unkindly, and you will have only yourself to blame.” She hung up.

“Who was that?” Thelma called out from the front room.

“No one,” I replied.

•   •   •

Word of the Granville Agency’s success rippled everywhere. I sold three more scripts from different writers that same week (albeit all to television). Telegrams fluttered in, delivered sometimes three or four at a time, congratulating us. Our phone rang off the hook. People offered praise, some of it laced with snide asides: Charlie Frye? The guy who wrote Return of the Cat People now had a dual-picture deal with Empire and an actual three-year paying contract as well? Amid this flurry of praise when I came into work mid-morning about ten days later, I was surprised when Thelma looked up from her typewriter with a peculiar expression on her face.

“You have a visitor.” She nodded toward a woman sitting on our couch, her shoulders hunched.

Kathleen Hilyard, once a glamorous, high-kicking, long-legged dancer, sat before me. I scarcely recognized this wisp of a woman. Her hair was clipped close to her head, her face lined. She wore a nun-gray dress with long sleeves, little white gloves, and sturdy shoes. “Forgive me for just showing up, Roxanne.”

“Mrs. Hilyard—Kathleen—there’s nothing to forgive.”

“Bachman. I’m Kathleen Bachman now. My maiden name. I took the girls back to Phoenix and we had to change our name. Nelson . . . his . . . well, the disgrace, you know? The Oscar Nelson won for The Ice Age, I have to keep it hidden in a drawer. We can’t even speak of him to anyone. It’s very hard on the girls.” She knotted a handkerchief in her gloved fingers.

“It was tragic, Kathleen.”

“I’m a manager in hosiery now,” she said with some dignity. She put her hand on an elaborate hatbox that had Goldwater’s in fancy lettering on it. “Ironic, isn’t it? I left Phoenix in nineteen thirty-six to come to Hollywood and be a dancer like Ruby Keeler, and I went back fifteen years later the wife of a suicide. However, I’m not here to dwell on the past. I’m thinking of the future.” She picked up the hatbox and put it in my hands. “Marian called me with the great news. Yes, I know they’re in Riverside. I’ve known for a while. You made them so happy, Roxanne, and I thought, I mean, Marian too, she thought, we both thought—” Kathleen cleared her throat. “Nelson was such a fine writer.”