JANICE

I was thinking about what you said. Last night? About me.

SHEP

I was mad. I-

JANICE

You were right. I keep looking for answers in the past. If I'm not careful, there won't be any future left.

Pellam pulled the sheet out of the typewriter with a satisfying buzz of the platen. He wrote Insert 58A across the top and slipped it into the script, which he'd unfastened. It was now just a stack of a hundred fifty sheets of wrinkled paper, filled with his handwriting and interleaved with inserts like this one.

He put his hand on it, then picked it up and riffled the pages, feeling the thin breeze on his jaw.

He walked to the front of the camper and sat in the driver's seat, looking out the grimy windshield. Now he wasn't seeing the cinematographer's stunning dusk in Bolt's Crossing but the winding country road that led into Cleary.

The Winnebago's engine turned right over. He drove downtown, parked and stepped out into the brilliant sun. Blinking his way along Main Street he found a stationery store that did photocopying. He gave them the script and asked for a copy. The polite acned teenage boy behind the counter told him the job would take about twenty minutes. Pellam offered to pay now but the boy said, "No, sir, no hurry. Want to make sure you like the job."

Pellam hesitated then said, "Sure," remembering that he wasn't in Los Angeles or New York and that there was no reason to be suspicious of politeness.

He wandered out into the street, blazing with its raw sunlight, to get a cup of coffee. He saw Marge's across the street but, thinking of the day he and Marty had gone there, decided against it. Also, he preferred to go someplace where he wasn't so well known. He didn't want to be adored by the help, he didn't want to talk about Marty, about parts in movies, about Hollywood.

He walked into a drugstore, with its snaking turquoise lunch counter and chrome-and-red vinyl stools.

"Hey, Mr Pellam." From one of the clerks-a middle-aged man Pellam had never seen.

So much for anonymity.

And for hostility too. Whatever the official opinion about drugs and movies, the half-dozen people in the place all glanced at him with meaningful, eye-involved smiles that said, I'm not asking but if you want to haul me off to Hollywood and put me in a sitcom episode of your choice, go right ahead.

He nodded, walked to the pay phone and tried to make a credit card call. His company card number had been canceled. He sighed and billed it to his personal card. After five minutes the assistant producer came on the line. The boy was in high spirits.

"Yo, hombre. You better hope Lefty don't have a homing device set up. 'Cause he do, there's a scout-seeking missile aimed for your crotch this minute."

"He hasn't unfired me, huh?"

"Whoa, boy. You came real close to cratering that movie but I think it's going to fly. He bent over for one of the money cows and I guess it worked out okay. Shysters said Marty's accident was a force majeure. So he's got another couple of weeks."

"You got a location?"

"Not yet, but they've got a free-lancer down in Pennsylvania. Season's later. Gives 'em more time to shoot."

Pellam said, "Pennsylvania's all wrong."

"I'll connect you with Lefty. You can tell him."

"You sound pretty calm."

"I'm medicated."

"I'm going to do something and I need your help."

"No." Cheerful, cheerful, cheerful. "Absolutely not."

"Listen to me. I'm going to-"

"John, clue me in-are you trying to get me fired?"

"Every assistant producer gets fired. It's a rite of passage."

A sigh. "Okay, talk to me."

"I doctored the script."

"What script?"

"Shallow Grave."

"Hmmm. Why?"

"I want you to get the changes to Bob. Is he still directing?"

"Pellam, are you mad?"

"Don't show them to Lefkowitz. Only the director. Repetez apres moi."

"No."

"Answer my question. Has Lefty fired Bob?"

"No, and he can't. He's in too deep. His deadline problems are almost as bad as his herpes."

"Good. I'm sending it by Express Mail."

"John, no."

"To you."

"John, there's no way they're going to hire you back."

"That's not what I care about. I don't even want a credit. It's too good a story to screw up with that half-assed script. Get it to Bob and don't let Lefty see my changes."

"John-"

"Bye."

"-no."

Before he sat down at the lunch counter Pellam noticed a rack of sunglasses. His had met the same fate as his Polaroid, thanks to Meg Torrens's little Toyota. He decided to buy another pair. He noticed some mirrored teardrop shapes. He tried them on, checked them out in the mirror.

He smiled. Perfect. Yep: Cool Hand Luke.

The middle-aged man behind the counter said, "They're you."

"How'd I look? Like a small-town sheriff?"

"Yessir, you could man a speed trap any day with those."

"Take 'em," Pellam said.

"You want the fake leather case?"

"That's okay."

He sat at the counter. The clerk didn't seem much interested in a Hollywood career and just talked to Pellam about traveling, of which he'd done a great deal. He told Pellam how he and his wife had taken this year's vacation in Peru and Chile.

"The air is the thing you don't think about. The altitude, you know. You walk a couple blocks-well, they don't really have blocks but you know what I mean-and you've gotta lie down and take a nap. It's exhausting! I mean, I thought I was in good shape. I can chop a couple cord of wood and no problem. But I was beat. And there are all these little old women steaming along like it's nothing to them and trying to sell you pottery and these blankets and jewelry. They see money and they run right at you. They sprint! In air like that. It's all what you're used to." The man summarized: "Everything's relative."

"Suppose so," Pellam said, and listened to the history of Machu Picchu.

Pellam checked his watch, said, "I've got to pick up something."

"We did the Orinoco too but I didn't see one crocodile." He grimaced.

"Life's full of disappointments." Pellam stood and put his deputy glasses on.

"No disappointment at all. Sally and me're going back in October. We'll find one. I promise you that."

Pellam wished him luck.

12

Pellam parked the camper in the driveway of the Torrens house (the word "homestead" came to mind). Meg stepped out onto the porch, then smiled and jumped down the few steps to the walk that led to the driveway, wiping her hands on a scallopy apron and looking just like a housewife out of a 1960s sitcom.

A housewife, however, in a tight, blue silk blouse, the top two (or was it three?) buttons undone.

Eyes up, boy.

My God, she's got a freckled chest.

Pellam just loved freckles on women.

"What brings you here, Pellam?"

"Came to borrow something."

She blinked. To joke, or not to joke? "Butter churn?"

"Naw."

"Bear grease for your muzzleloader?" she asked.

Gotcha.

He smiled indulgently. "As a matter of fact," Pellam said, "you're talking to one of the only people in the state of New York that's fired a Sharps.54."

And she didn't miss a beat. "A Sharps? Forget about it, boy. That's a drop-block breechloader, not a muzzleloader."

Got me.

She laughed hard at his jolted expression. "Girls usually melt at gun talk, huh?"

He said, "Nobody in the goddamn world except me and born-again gun nuts know about Sharps anymore."

"I never fired one but my daddy had one. He collected guns. I've got myself a Springfield breechloader in the den."