To soothe him, Pinsleepe put her hand around his shoulder and hugged him to her. He paid no attention.

"'God is subtle, but not cruel.' Do you agree with that now, Weber? On your last, last chance to turn back, God sends out his legions to warn you, only they turn out to be prepubescent rats on orange bicycles! Today's version of the flying monkeys in Wizard of Oz.

"And weren't his warnings effective? An actor gets murdered. Blow Dry disappears. Bike flips in the air and you're told a few times to photograph only them? Didn't you recognize all his CAUTION signs? I'm not surprised. Who would?"

Phil stood and, picking up the now-lifeless body of the dog, put it gently in its basket next to the couch. "Things change when you're here. Time, sequence. Different rules.

"Think of it as a moving sidewalk in an airport next to a normal one. On mine you can go twice as fast if you walk while it's moving. Or I can just stand here and be whisked along while people next to me have to walk. Another possibility is to turn around and run as hard as I can against the flow of my sidewalk.

"What I'm saying is Flea just died now, but we'll put him back in time so Sasha sees him when she finds me. This is off the subject. I want to talk about you and me, Weber.

"You never realized I stole from you because you were always too busy being original to notice. But I did, and so did a lot of others. You were always so sure of what you did, and you were inevitably right.

"Even leaving town was right! You win an Oscar and you leave town! Do you know how much I hated myself watching you go? Feeling like such a fool staying here to play Bloodstone, while you drank wine in Portofino and then came back to work with dying people?

"So at least I could try to change a little, right? Do something artistic and redeem at least a few inches of myself.

"First I wanted to do 'Mr. Fiddlehead,' but no one was interested. So I made that fucking video which everyone hated. Two for two. What else was left? You tell me. What else could I do besides play a ridiculous monster for the rest of my life?" He was enraged: jerking his head, throwing his hands in the air, shoving them deep in his pockets.

Without being aware of it, I said, "Pinsleepe."

He stopped, turned, and pointed at me. "Exactly. Pinsleepe. There she was in that run-down church, and I knew right off the bat what was up. My old friend come to help.

"She said the only way I was ever going to do it – make a piece of art that'd mean something and last longer than five minutes – was through Midnight Kills. I'd come close with the first one, but no banana. What I had to do now was pull together every inner resource and strength and use them all. Give this film a vision like nothing ever done before. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Freaks, Psycho. That kind of phantom and illusion.

"But I couldn't do it! None of what I did worked. Not even the fucking Bloodstone monologue that took so long to write!"

"What about Portland? What about the people who died when those cars fell? It must have worked!"

On screen the two of them shared a smile. Pinsleepe spoke for the first time. "That's what you were supposed to think, Weber, but that accident at the shopping center had nothing to do with this. Nothing at all.

"I told Phil I'd help him however I could. But if he wasn't successful, he had to agree to do two things: kill the dog and help me get you here to make the scenes."

"Why the dog? Why me?"

Strayhorn made a nasty face. I'd seen it before when he was at the end of his rope. "Because she knew you could do it, roommate. Because we all know you're the only real contender around. I was just the lightweight who wanted to try and go a round with you in the ring."

"Why the dog? Why'd you kill Flea?"

"It was waving the white flag: I give up. I was even wrong about you, pal. No offense."

Pinsleepe pursed her lips. "Phil was sure you'd never do this because there's too much good in you. I said art and virtue live on different sides of town and you'd do it because, when you got interested, you wouldn't be able to resist."

"Do what? Make the scenes for the movie? What?" I had an idea but was afraid. How could they know, even them? How could anyone know? It hadn't been done yet. Only words on yellow sheets of paper.

The screen went dark, then grew light again: four women in black bathing suits chatting together.

Despite my growing apprehension, it was fascinating to see, because before leaving the house that evening I'd only made notes on what I wanted to do with the tapes when I could get into the cutting room again. But here it was in front of me on a full movie screen: a perfectly finished version of the two scenes I'd visualized.

Finky Linky's ideas were there, as well as the other parts of my films, Max's attack, even three brief glimpses of Sean and James acting out their own version of "A Quarter Past You."

How beautifully the disparate pieces fit together! How they enhanced each other, once assembled in that particular order. It was as sure and balanced as I'd envisioned – darks and lights playing off each other, humor, pain, surprise. No more than seven minutes in all – or, rather, seven minutes not including the last scene.

When that was about to come on, the picture stopped. Pinsleepe and Strayhorn reappeared.

She spoke. "Do you want to see the last part? We don't have to show it."

"Of course I want to see the last part, damn it! Why did you interrupt? You have to show it all together. It's of a piece, or –" I looked at Strayhorn and saw him mouth the words "You asshole" before the screen went dark.

They showed it again from the beginning, but this time continued to the end.

Only, then, seeing it on a giant movie screen for the first time, did I realize what I had done – what I'd been willing to do – in the name of Art. In the name of Gregston.

If I'd been making a film of this, I might have had the Weber Gregston character stand up at this point and run out of the theater. Or at least shout at the screen, something like Don't do it! or Take it off! I was wrong! I'm sorry! But that would be kitschy, and we're here to make Great Art, no matter the cost.

In real life, I sat there and watched the last scene I'd chosen to include: the crucial scene. The one that made it all work. The smartest touch.

I watched my good mother look out the window of the airplane that would kill her in the next five minutes. I'd used the entire tape Strayhorn had given me to reassure me she hadn't died in agony. Mama's last act. I used every second of it.

Coming where it did in the film, it was brilliant.

Sasha's child is due to be born about the same time Midnight Kills is due to be released.

Pinsleepe said it is my child from the one night (so recently past) Sasha and I spent together. When I said that was absurd, Strayhorn said to remember his moving sidewalk analogy. The child is their gift to me. I didn't mention that Pinsleepe was no longer pregnant when I saw her for the last time on the movie screen.

So there will be a child, and it will be born when the film is born. Is that supposed to be symbolic? Am I again being told something I must decipher, like the haruspex in Rome? When I think of children now, all I can see is that retarded boy rising off the street and up through the trees: Walter, the mongoloid angel.

When I asked why it was so important that I work on Strayhorn's film, he said, "There's no human beauty in evil. You were the only one who could give it that."

Pinsleepe said, "It will make people cry. That's the beginning. Remember 'binary weapons'?"

Strayhorn said, "There's a line from Rilke: 'Works of art are of an infinite loneliness. . . . Only love can grasp and hold and fairly judge them."