Charlie’s needs reached a new, exasperating peak the day before we were to have a celebratory lunch with Elliott Dunne. I held the phone to my ear and played with a pencil while he nattered on for twenty minutes, anxious and needy. I broke the tip of the pencil. “Listen, Charlie. Tomorrow Elliott Dunne is going to give you the key to the Writers’ Building at Empire Pictures. This is your great chance to be the screenwriter you always wanted to be. Don’t screw it up. We bought you that nice new suit and tie. Tailor-made, remember? The same tailor Leon goes to.”

“Yes.”

“Then you just wear that, look handsome, and let your wit and good humor shine through.”

“What if I can’t?”

“I’ll see you at Pierino’s at one o’clock.” I hung up, irritated. More than that: angry, really. If I’d loved Charlie I would have been more supportive. But I didn’t love him, and I never would. Constantly stroking his ego made me too tired to stroke other things. I couldn’t go on waving pom-poms and bouncing away to John Philip Sousa.

Chapter Thirteen

Fate had something else in store the next morning. I went out to the Silver Bullet, and it only barely coughed to life. I knew (bitter experience) better than to turn it off until I got to Reg’s Auto Repair in the Valley. Wishing I’d been brought up to pray, I urged the MG along the back roads.

Reg is a displaced Brit with smoke-stained fingers, bad teeth, a thin nose, and bright blue eyes. He only works on foreign cars, specialty cars, and fussy and unreliable sports cars. Like mine. His place, a big dusty lot overhung by eucalyptus trees and aged sycamores, takes up an acre in what was once a chicken ranch. I had the MG’s top up so I wouldn’t get blown to bits, but when I stepped out of the car, dust, no doubt left over from the chickens, swirled up and coated my white shoes. In the small office an open window let in a dry breeze, ruffling the receipts and invoices, and girlie calendars that were pinned to the wall. A colored man reading a newspaper leaned back in the desk chair, his feet up on the desk, resting atop the phone book. He bent the page and looked over it.

“Where’s Reg?” I asked.

He waved in the general direction of the garage outside and returned to his newspaper.