But Zanne thought about Ted sitting in the dark of the screening room with a warm bowl of chili someone else had made for him while down here at the gate was the one who got away. She was sure now that Phoebe had left him, not the other way around. He’d gotten in his own way or made a miscalculation and somehow let this extraordinary person vanish from his life.

It was Zanne’s job to smooth the way for Ted, and she had different tools at her disposal to make this problem go away. She could be warm but firm with Phoebe. She could offer some perk in exchange for Phoebe leaving. She could even call the police. But was Phoebe showing up here like this really a problem for Ted, or an opportunity? They’d been partners once, in the creative sense of the word. Maybe they could be again. And wasn’t it also Zanne’s job to help him stay human? Was it healthy for Ted to be this insulated from normal interaction? Who said he was entitled to it, even if he paid for it? Wasn’t he just a person, like everyone else? Phoebe was the road not traveled. How often in life did that road rise up to meet you like this?

Maybe James was right about Zanne’s curiosity. She had tasted a bit of Ted’s power. She had the power to grant wishes. She had the power to say yes.

“I can give you fifteen minutes,” she said to Phoebe.

James drove the three of them up the hill in the golf cart—Phoebe beside him, Zanne perched on the back—and in that short ride, Zanne realized what she’d done, how much she risked losing if this meeting imploded. It was the addict in her that had said yes when anyone rational would have refused. It was the addict in Zanne that pushed people and situations, sometimes to their breaking point, that wanted to see what would happen next. There was nothing to do now but proceed with confidence. She jumped off the golf cart and led Phoebe away from the terrace, where caterers lined up crates of glassware by the bars and champagne flutes and copper baby bottles clinked and clanked like a symphony. They took the cottage path. A couple of waiters stepped out of the travel and events cottage in their yellow outfits, pressing down the front of their shirts, doffing their ten-gallon hats. They looked perfectly, identically ridiculous.

“I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you this morning,” Phoebe said. “The Starfighter feels like a million years ago. You must have been so young back then.”

“And naive. I thought one day someone like you would make a film from of one of my scripts, but they weren’t any good.”

They rounded the bend in the path. The craftsman cottage was in sight, but remarkably no one else was.