“… It’s not my problem, Larry. We need the logos to be on these menu cards. I don’t care how you do it. Okay, then you do it yourself. That’s right, you do it yourself, bring them over yourself, I don’t care how you do it. Just get them here this morning, seven-thirty latest. We need those things here. The tables look fine. There are plenty of tables, trust me. Okay. I’ll check that out. Okay, okay. Yeah. I’m gonna check that out right now.”

For the last part of this, his voice had been moving over to one side of the room. He must now have flicked a switch on some wall panel, because a strong beam came on directly above me, and also a whirring noise like the air-conditioning had come on. Only I realised the noise wasn’t the air-conditioning, but the curtains opening in front of me.

Twice in my career I’ve had it happen when I’ve been on stage, I’ve had a solo to play, and suddenly it hits me I don’t know how to start, which key I’m in, how the chords change. On both occasions this happened, I just froze up, like I was in a still from a movie, until one of the other boys stepped in to the rescue. It’s only happened twice in over twenty years of playing professionally. Anyway, this is how I reacted to the spotlight coming on above me and the curtains starting to move. I just froze. And I felt oddly detached. I felt a kind of mild curiosity concerning what I’d see once the curtain was gone.

What I saw was the ballroom, and from the vantage point of the stage, I could appreciate better the way the tables were laid out in two parallel lines all the way to the back. The spot above me was putting the room in shade a little, but I could make out the chandelier and the fancy ceiling.

The cellphone man was an overweight bald guy in a pale suit and open-neck shirt. He must have walked away from the wall as soon as he’d flicked the switch, because now he was more or less level with me. He had his phone pressed to his ear, and from his expression you’d guess he was listening with extra attention to what was being said at the other end. But I supposed he wasn’t, because his eyes were fixed on me. He kept looking at me and I kept looking at him, and the situation might have gone on indefinitely if he hadn’t said into the phone, maybe in response to a query about why he’d gone silent:

“It’s all right. It’s all right. It’s a man.” There was a pause, then he said: “I thought for a moment it was something else. But it’s a man. With a bandaged head, wearing a night-gown. That’s all it is, I see it now. It’s just that he’s got a chicken or something on the end of his arm.”

Straightening up, I instinctively started to stretch out my arms in a shrugging motion. My right hand still being inside the turkey beyond the wrist, the sheer weight brought the whole arrangement back down with a crash. But at least I’d no more worries about concealment, so I went right at it, no holds barred, in an effort to extricate both my hand and the statuette. Meanwhile the man went on talking into his phone.

“No, it’s exactly what I say. And now he’s taking his chicken off. Oh, and he’s producing something out of it. Hey, fella, what is that? An alligator?”

These last words he’d addressed to me with admirable nonchalance. But now I had the statuette in my hands and the turkey fell to the floor with a thud. As I hurried towards the darkness behind me, I heard the man say to his friend:

“How the hell do I know? Some kind of magic show maybe.”

I DON’T REMEMBER how we got back to our floor. I was lost again in a mess of curtains coming off the stage, then she was there pulling me by the hand. Next thing, we were hurrying through the hotel, no longer caring how much noise we made or who saw us. Somewhere along the way I left the statuette on a room-service tray outside a bedroom, beside the remains of someone’s supper.

Back in her room, we flopped down into a sofa and laughed. We laughed till we were collapsing into each other, then she got up, went to the window and raised the blinds. It was now light outside, though the morning was overcast. She went to her cabinet to mix drinks-“the world’s sexiest alcohol-free cocktail”-and brought me over a glass. I thought she’d sit down beside me, but she drifted back towards the window, sipping from her own glass.

“You looking forward to it, Steve?” she asked after a while. “To the bandages coming off?”

“Yeah. I suppose so.”

“Even last week, I didn’t think about it so much. It seemed such a long way off. But now it’s not so long.”

“That’s right,” I said. “It’s not long for me either.” Then I said quietly: “Jesus.”

She sipped her drink and looked out of the window. Then I heard her say: “Hey, sweetie, what’s the matter with you?”

“I’m fine. I just need to get some sleep, that’s all.”

She kept looking at me for a while. “I tell you, Steve,” she said eventually. “It’s gonna be fine. Boris is the best. You’ll see.”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, what’s wrong with you? Listen, this is my third time. Second time with Boris. It’s gonna be just fine. You’re gonna look great, just great. And your career. From here it’s gonna rocket.”

“Maybe.”

“No maybe about it! It’ll make such a difference, believe me. You’ll be in magazines, you’ll be on TV.”

I said nothing to this.

“Hey, come on!” She took a few steps towards me. “Cheer up there. You’re not still mad at me, are you? We were a great team down there, weren’t we? And I’ll tell you something else. From now on I’m gonna stay part of your team. You’re a goddamn genius, and I’m gonna make sure things go well for you.”

“It won’t work, Lindy.” I shook my head. “It won’t work.”

“Like hell it won’t work. I’ll talk to people. People who can do you a lot of good.”

I kept shaking my head. “I appreciate it. But it’s no use. It won’t work. It was never going to work. I should never have listened to Bradley.”

“Hey, come on. I may not be married to Tony anymore, but I still have a lot of good friends in this town.”

“Sure, Lindy, I know that. But it’s no use. You see, Bradley, that’s my manager, he talked me into this whole thing. I was an idiot to listen to him, but I couldn’t help it. I was at my wit’s end, and then he came out with this theory. He said my wife, Helen, she had this scheme. She hadn’t really left me. No, it was all part of this scheme she had. She was doing it all for me, to make it possible for me to get this surgery. And when the bandages came off, and I had a new face, she’d come back and it’d be all right again. That’s what Bradley said. Even when he was saying it, I knew it was bullshit, but what could I do? It was some kind of hope at least. Bradley used it, he used it, he’s like that, you know? He’s lowlife. All he thinks about is business. And about the big league. What does he care if she comes back or not?”

I stopped and she didn’t say anything for a long time. Then she said:

“Look, sweetie, listen. I hope your wife comes back. I really do. But if she doesn’t, well, you’ve just got to start getting some perspective. She might be a great person, but life’s so much bigger than just loving someone. You got to get out there, Steve. Someone like you, you don’t belong with the public. Look at me. When these bandages come off, am I really going to look the way I did twenty years ago? I don’t know. And it’s a long time since I was last between husbands. But I’m going to go out there anyway and give it a go.” She came over to me and shoved me on the shoulder. “Hey. You’re just tired. You’ll feel a lot better after some sleep. Listen. Boris is the best. He’ll have fixed it, for the both of us. You just see.”

I put my glass down on the table and stood up. “I guess you’re right. Like you say, Boris is the best. And we were a good team down there.”

“We were a great team down there.”