On our final day in Los Angeles, a week after the film premiere, Cleo and I decided on a last visit to the ocean. Waiting for our car, we stood in the entrance of the hotel, looking up at the black skyscrapers of Century City a few hundred yards away. This cluster of sightless towers emerged through the low-rise sprawl of the city like a harsh, obsidian Manhattan.

Cleo stared at the razor cornices and gave a shiver. “Is it all going to look like this when we come back? Please, God … what sort of heaven circles those spires?”

“None I want to wake into. But face it, Cleo—modernism is the gothic of the information age. Dreams sharp enough to bleed, and no doubts about man’s lowly place in the scheme of things. Let’s head for the beach…”

Venice, by contrast, was ramshackle and comforting. An intact fragment of the sixties survived along its promenades. The wide sands stretched past roller-skaters and muscle-builders, break dancers and beggars posing as Vietnam psychos. Its modest stands were hung with flower-power T-shirts and mystic jewellery. Driftwood fires were burning on the sand beside the shelters which the groups of hippies had erected. The sea seemed far away, a glimmer of waves along the horizon, as if the Pacific had decided to withdraw for the day. I could almost believe that we were walking on the bed of a fossil sea, with ancient cigarette ends, ballpoint pens, and beer cans embedded in its scarred surface, all that remained of some earlier race.

I slipped my arm around Cleo’s waist, happy to be with her and glad that we would be going together to New York. The premiere had been a great success, presented with effortless Hollywood professionalism, like a vast good-natured hallucination—the hundreds of limousines, revolving searchlights, and sealed-off streets lined with red carpet and security guards. The audience of film actors seemed to have absconded from reality for the evening, ambling down the aisles of the theatre with their sable coats and popcorn cartons.