"Is the scene gone?"

She tossed the ball into the air, caught it. "The film's gone, but that's not important. He burned the film and the sound tapes before he died, but it was too late and he knew it. He'd done the scene, so it was alive. It still is. That's why he killed himself."

"Then what am I supposed to do? What can I do?"

Pinsleepe tossed the ball to Wyatt. She looked at me. "You have to shoot another scene, Weber, one to replace Phil's. If it's better, things'll be all right again. Sasha will be okay. So will he."

"That's it? Is that what you want?"

"Yes."

"How do I make it 'better'?"

Someone screamed behind us. We turned around to see Rainer on his porch, still in his underwear, waving. "Hey, thanks a lot for coming, guys! Love your show, Finky. If you ever need a sound man, let me know!"

When we turned back to Pinsleepe, she was gone.

5

Look at this splendid room. Come, I'll show you around.

Sasha's always been a big collector. When you have money you collect "objects," when you're poor you collect "things." Sasha has objects. I bought her some of them. By the time that happened, I was so rich and untroubled by money I could walk into a gallery or antique store and not haggle over price, not turn the thing here and there, pretending to look for flaws or hidden cheapness. I'd say how much. They'd say some crazy price. I'd say all right.

That Maris York skyscraper, over the fireplace, and the painting by Jorg Immendorff were from me. I brought the painting over in my car with the top down. It was so big, it flapped in the wind like a sail. The gallery owner was horrified, but I wanted to give it to Sasha immediately and see her reaction. She put it down on the floor and walked around and around it for minutes, checking from all angles.

Sasha is . . . oh, don't worry, she won't be back for a few hours; she's still at the hospital having tests. We have time to appreciate her place: the two Chinese carpets, one the color of dusk, the other of dessert; an old ink bottle my father would love on the desk next to the round stone she found when we were in New Mexico. . . .

A woman who can demand or coerce millions of dollars from hard-edged money people, she also likes to laugh while fucking. When she wakes up in the morning, she's usually in a good mood. Sasha buys hardcover copies of books people recommend she read. It's ridiculous making a list of someone's good qualities. Anyway, I'm supposed to be giving you a tour of her apartment, not her personality. But our books, the two pairs of black running shoes, how often and how carefully we water the plants . . . haruspication. Remember the word? Study the order, find the answer. Why did she pick up that round rock and not another? Here, would you like to hold it? The size is unimportant, I can tell you that. Size, color, where exactly she found it: not those things. Rather the totality, the dots of a life connected by a smart eye. The stone and ink bottle on her desk, a bad drawing of a dinosaur that hangs in the bathroom. A little nothing that amuses her and which she can never take down, even when she thinks of doing it. Because I gave it to her.

Nothing I gave her has left this house. Not before, not after I died. I check every day, take a walk through the house when she's not around to see if some of me is still alive here. If even one thing were gone I would worry.

Sometimes when she's here I'll sit in a near room and listen to her going about the small acts of her life. The whish of her shower, the way she often hums, the quick click of channels when she tries to watch television but finds nothing – nothing to put an hour of her life into because there is nowhere else to put it right now.

I almost never sit in the same room with her. Too close. Too sad. From the looks on our faces, you wouldn't be able to figure out which of us was sadder, the pregnant woman or the dead man.

Can I tell you about this? Do you mind? I'd be very grateful.

Relationships begin with the delicate, scared use of big words you hope will apply someday soon: concern, commitment, love. Sasha and I were in the Hamburger Hamlet on Hollywood Boulevard when I said the first one, honesty.

"I have to be honest with you."

Sasha looked quickly away and I thought, Uh-oh. When she looked back, she wore a suspicious, unhappy expression. Said I didn't owe her anything, she'd gotten something "out of the fuck" too. The word sounded silly. I took her hand, but instead of responding or squeezing mine, she only looked at our two clasped hands on the table and asked if my "honesty" meant I was telling her thanks for the roll last night but go away now.

"No, my honesty meant admitting right away I'm in love with you."

"I wasn't ready for that. I'm still getting used to the idea of our sleeping together."

"Yes, get used to it. Get used to me."

We were each other's big, real hope and luckily recognized it fast. When good fortune pulls up in front of you too quickly, it can make you suspicious. You hesitate before getting in. But both Sasha and I had been through enough lonely times to know there were only so many chances at contentment with another person. In other words, don't think too long before acting.

In his Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke copies down one of his correspondent Kappus's poems and sends it back to the young man.

And now I am giving you this copy because I know that it is important and full of new experience to rediscover a work of one's own in someone else's handwriting. Read the poem as if you had never seen it before, and you will feel in your innermost being how very much it is your own.

For some reason, the idea of this great man hand-copying a fan's poem and sending it to him has always touched me deeply. What generosity! Who would ever think of doing that?

But then I met Sasha, and she took much of what I was or believed and, putting her own stamp on it, handed it back to me as if I had never seen it before. Perhaps that is what love is – another's desire to return you to yourself enhanced by their vision, graced by their script.

I asked her to live with me.

She looked at her feet. "I've never been very successful at that." Her smile was over just after it began to grow.

I reached out and stroked her hair. "I don't care what your won-loss record is. I want you for what you are, Sash, not for what I want you to be."

"Me too. And that's the best place to begin.

"When I was out walking Flea tonight, I saw this man on a big motorcycle with his girlfriend on the back. He started dragging his boots on the ground, and I guess he had metal heels or something because sparks flew in all directions. The girl laughed and did it too. It looked so impressive and magical: the big ruuuuum of the bike, her laughing, all those sparks. . . .

"I couldn't wait to get back in and tell you about it But then when I came in, after only ten minutes outside, I saw you and was so glad to see you that I forgot what I wanted to say. Those are sparks too, aren't they, Phil?"

Relationships that begin in your late twenties or early thirties have a dimension that doesn't exist when you're younger. Besides knowing more, you're also more grateful for the good things, forgiving toward the bad. What drove you nuts at twenty is only a crumb, at most a small stain on your sleeve, ten years later. It can be cleaned. It can be overlooked as long as the rest of the jacket hangs well and feels right.

From the beginning of our relationship, I didn't see great sparks flying up from our boots. I'd never have said it to Sasha, but it was enough to put my hand under her skirt in the dark at a film and feel the soft down of hair and stipply gooseflesh on the inside of her thigh. There was love and respect. We discovered we had a world of things to talk about.