"After I talked to David Cadmus, I started writing notes and think I might even have begun the book."

"Really!" Her eyes widened and she clasped her hands to her chest. "That's wonderful, Sam! Can I give you a hug?"

"I'd love one."

The moment we were in each other's arms, the phone rang. We kept hugging, but the insistent ringing made it feel like someone was in the room, waiting. I broke off and answered. A very deep woman's voice asked for Veronica. Taking the receiver, she looked at me like she couldn't imagine who it might be.

"Hello? Oh hi, Zane. What?" She paused to listen, then both her voice and face went from blank to fierce in a flash. "So what if I'm here! Am I required to check in with you every time I come to L.A.?" Listening, she started tapping her foot and shaking her head. "Zane . . . Za . . . You don't need me anymore. What? It's a big town. I doubt we'll bump into each other. No, I'm not going to Mantilini's. What? Because we shouldn't see each other!" She raged on like that a few more minutes and then, making an exasperated face, hung up. "That was Zane. We used to go out. She wanted to meet." She shrugged and frowned.

"You hung right up on her."

"Life's too short." She took a deep breath and looked hard at me. "Does it upset you that I was with a woman?"

"Makes you more intriguing. Anyway, who's counting?"

The book signing went well and afterward we had dinner at the restaurant next to the store. Both of us were in good moods and we gabbed away throughout the meal. It was the kind of conversation only new lovers can have – a combination of discovery, recognition and sexiness that comes as a result of knowing one facet of a person extremely well and almost nothing about the others.

I said something about how magically our relationship had evolved and how I wished I knew how that magic worked so I could spread it over other parts of my life. She stood up and said, "The only ones who want to know how a magician does his tricks are children and fools. I'll be right back."

Although to the eye there is nothing immediately wrong, there are wrong faces. All the features are in the correct places and the nose has only two holes, but something is off and without being able to say exactly what, you know it. The restaurant made a wonderful creme brulee. I liked it so much that I had my eyes closed in ecstasy over a mouthful of it when I heard that deep voice again.

"You're Samuel Bayer, aren't you?"

I didn't know whether to open my eyes or swallow first, so I did both. Every feature on her face was sharp as a Cubist painting – nose, cheekbones, chin. Her eyes were as black as her hair, which was short and spiky and very a la mode. She was good looking in a combative, don't-fuck-with-me way and had a long thin body that matched. She would have been a good villainess in a James Bond film, dressed in patent leather, knowing every lethal karate move in the book.

"Yes I am. Do I know you?"

"My name is Zane. I was the one who called Veronica before. The one she hung up on. I've been waiting to talk to you, but it has to be fast, before she comes back."

"How did you know she was in Los Angeles? How did you know where we were?"

"She had lunch today with a mutual friend. She told me." She kept looking toward the bathroom. Tough as she looked, she was clearly apprehensive. Was it a crazy face? Mean? Maybe it wasn't her face at all that was so disturbing: maybe it was the incredibly negative, mad-mouse-running-in-a-wheel energy she shot out in all directions. "Ask Veronica about Gold. Ask her what happened with her and Donald Gold."

"The writer?"

"That's the guy." Once again she looked toward the bathroom, saw something, and without another word walked quickly out of the restaurant. I watched her go. Once outside, she paused on the street, looked at me, mouthed, "Donald Gold," and took off.

Veronica returned a moment later and asked coolly, "Was that Zane?"

"Yeah. Strange woman." I hesitated, then thought, what the hell and said, "She told me to ask you about Donald Gold."

"Good old Zane. Still Miss Terminal Toxic Nastiness. Did she think that was going to ruin things between us? Before I met her, I lived out here with Donald. We were bad for each other. We fed on each other's weaknesses. He threw me out and was right to do it."

"That's all?"

"I was lost then, Sam. Maybe a little more than is safe. I was living a life that if you read about in a book, you'd say, 'How could she let that happen?' But here I am now and you seem to like that me, right?"

Taking her hand, I kissed it and intoned pompously, "Omne vivum ex ovo."

"What's that?"

"The only Latin I remember from school. 'Everything alive has come from the egg.'"

I don't remember what television shows we watched as kids on Saturday mornings, but all of them were sacred. Television itself was sacred then. That big square altar in the middle of the living room that held you captive anytime it was on.

I was watching TV that Saturday. My parents and sister were off shopping. I was sitting on the living room floor eating a doughnut when the doorbell rang. White powdered sugar was all over my fingers and mouth. The only thing I did to prepare myself for whoever was waiting was to rub an arm across my mouth, then my hands over my filthy jeans. Unhappily I went to the door.

When I opened it and saw Pauline Ostrova facing me, looking gorgeous and scared, I didn't know what to say. Of course I knew who she was. I was in lowly junior high while she lived in the upper echelons of high school, which would have given her godlike status even if her unprecedented reputation hadn't preceded her.

When she saw me she smiled a little. I almost peed my pants. "Hey, I know you! You're Sam, right? Listen, I ran over your dog."

"That's okay." I said cheerfully. I loved Jack the Wonder Boy but so what compared to Pauline Ostrova knowing my name.

"He's all right, I guess. I took him to the vet. The one on Tollington Park, Dr. Hughes?"

"We use Dr. Bolton."

"Yeah, well, I thought he was going to die from the way he looked, so I took him to the vet closest."

"Okay. You want to come in?" I had no idea what I was doing. She'd just run over our dog. Shouldn't I be frantic? What would I do if she came in? Just the idea of Pauline Ostrova breathing the same air made my heart race around my chest.

I was twelve, so she must have been sixteen then. At school even I knew she was all things to all men – adult, whore, scholar, artist . . . A few years later they would have called her liberated, but in those black-and-white Dark Ages before Betty Friedan and feminism, Pauline was only one word – weird. Everyone knew she slept around. That would have been acceptable if it had only been that. Then we would have had a category for her, ugly and simple as it was. But she made everything complicated by also being so smart and independent.

Waiting for her to say something else, I suddenly remembered the doughnuts I had been eating. Frantically, I rubbed my mouth in case any crumbs were still there.

"Don't you want to know more about your dog?"

"I guess." I leaned against the door, then stood up straight, then tried leaning again. In her overwhelming presence there was no comfortable position on earth.

"He ran out in the street and I hit him and broke one of his rear legs. Actually, it was kind of cool because the vet let me stay and watch him put the leg in a splint."

She was talking to me. I was just a little tool in seventh grade who watched her float by every day with upperclassmen, all of them carrying reputations nine miles long behind them like bridal trains. Yet for the moment, this high honor roll/slut goddess who knew my name was saying words meant only for my ears. The fact she was doing it as a way of apologizing for almost killing our dog was irrelevant.