"Yeah. No problem."

"Next time, just give them your wallet. I had a neighbor tried to negotiate with some thug for his ID. Ended up with a knife in his side." I nod to indicate I'm filing this away – give them your wallet.

"No costume?" Again, the question seems not to be directed at anyone in particular, so I'm not sure if I should answer. Teeka jumps in that she can have Wardrobe bring it down to the set.

"No. Never mind. Well, just the paws. The rest we can do without for now. It's probably cooler under the lights without it."

He refocuses on me. "So Dan, let's get you on the wheel. Just hop up there and get the feel of moving on it."

A stagehand holds the wheel still while I climb through the spokes and onto the wheel. There is a floor, if you will, of foam-covered bars spaced about a foot apart. I crouch on all fours and slowly advance to the next bar, one hand at a time, following with my feet. After a few false starts where I lose my footing and bang a shin, I start to get the hang of it. It's like climbing a ladder, except that the ladder is moving underneath me, pushing me forward. I fall into an easy rhythm, alternate feet and hands working in sync. Pitney encourages me to pick up the speed.

"What you're doing is great, Dan. But we need a sense of urgency, a frantic quality. Maybe if you put more into the shoulders."

Because I have no peripheral vision on my right side, I can't see Pitney, but I can hear in his tone that he would just love to jump up here and show me how to make this baby spin. I start treading a little faster, and almost immediately, sweat beads on my forehead and begins to trickle down my ribs. I don't have a clue what he has in mind with my shoulders, so instead I try nosing my head side to side in quick little staccato motions. This is good, I can tell, and I hear what sounds like an approving murmur from the small crowd that has gathered at the edge of the set. A drop of sweat slides into my left eye and blurs what's left of my vision and I stop, gripping the bars as the wheel swings first up and then back, before coming to rest.

"That's good. Great. Don't go past your limit. We can always speed up the film if we have to."

A dark, parrot-nosed woman dressed in pink overalls has emerged through the knot of observers and approaches Pitney with what looks to be an armful of stuffed animals.

"Oh, good. I'm sorry, what's your name? Sheila? Sheila here has your paws. Go ahead and put those on and we'll run this one more time. Frank, how's it looking?"

The paws are made of smooth white fake fur and have long prehensile toes ending in claws. On the undersides of one pair are pink cotton gloves. The other pair are designed to strap over my shoes. Sheila helps me Velcro the paws into place, and I hold up my hands in front of me, slowly examining them with exaggerated horror.

"Can this be evil?" I intone and then laugh maniacally. There are a few obliging chuckles around the set. No telling how many of them recognize an imitation of Spencer Tracy's Jekyll and Hyde and how many think I'm just another loosely hinged actor. I catch Jodi, Teeka's assistant, watching me intently and sucking on a strand of hair. I wink at her, and her eyes drift to the floor.

"Okay, whenever you're ready…" Pitney is smiling, but it's a thin smile of tolerance. He doesn't have time for fooling around. I get the sense that this is a break for him, too, the chance to do a big-budget national instead of the local RV and furniture warehouse ads. He may even have private fantasies that this will break him out, that it will lead to bigger things, a TV pilot or who knows what else. Of course, he's wrong. This is a job, nothing else, a couple days' work, and at best it will lead to more days just like this one. I could tell him, relax, your life isn't in here. It's outside that door, out in the world somewhere. This? This is ridiculous. But would he listen to the one-eyed actor with the rat paws? Not a chance.

I climb back up on the wheel, my rat nails clattering against metal, and begin climbing the wheel. The paws take a little getting used to, but they also help me visualize myself as Lab Rat. I pick up speed and start the sniffing motions and manage to keep all these balls in the air until Pitney says "Cut." Again, the wheel slows to a halt and I can see a half-circle of satisfied mugs, some encouraging nods. We're in business.

Next, we run the final shot. Pitney instructs me to lie on my back on the wheel. "What we're looking for here is an exhausted rat. But also at the end of his rope. Really crazed."

"In other words, just be yourself, Dan," I joke, but of course, no one knows if I'm kidding or not, so they smile uncertainly, humoring me.

I lie back, raising my legs and arms above me, and start slowly bicycling my feet and twitching a bit, squeaking pathetically.

I'm practically giddy with sleeplessness and disdain, and who knows, this may be working in my favor. Whatever impulse comes to me, I follow it. I feel like Steve Martin or Robin Williams, ricocheting in high gear from one new piece of business to the next. At one point, I try grabbing handfuls of paper off the floor and flinging them overhead, shaking my feet so my claws clatter, and squeaking ecstatically. This is a keeper; even Pitney is chortling. I've been a little hard on him; he's not such a bad guy. Then we do the shot with the giant copier. The doors of the copier are open, and they've got it rigged to spew out shredded paper from the side. I'm supposed to nose around, lift the various levers and pull out drawers. I throw in the ear scratch bit, and it gets a good laugh from Pitney. Then I scrabble over to the side of the copier where the paper is coming out and start stuffing paper into my mouth. It's an inspired bit, and the crew is laughing. As I'm doing this, I hear a voice on my right. "A rat's not gonna eat the paper. He should just sniff it." I twist around and grab a peek – it's one of the agency goons, Ben Somebody. Everybody wants to direct.

I raise my eyebrows, a la Jack Benny, and hold up my rodent paws in appeal to my audience. This is a bad move, and I know better. I'm just the hired rat. You don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Pitney is nodding earnestly, the weenie, doing his best to pacify the suits. "Good point, yes. So, Dan, let's try that. Just sniffing the paper as it comes out." I sniff.

By the time they're done with me, I'm starving, but the catering table has been cleaned out – lots of crumb-dusted trays, wadded napkins, and used paper plates with half-eaten muffins, crusts of quiche, and melon rinds – and another three hours before lunch. I grab a couple of glazed donuts and a cup of sour coffee, and Jodi takes me to my dressing room. Halfway there, we pass a guy coming the other way. He looks like something you might see at a sinister theme park: an enormous white rat in standard issue business attire – pale blue dress shirt, rep tie, chalk-striped trousers – but minus the paws, which I've left on the set. There's a large furry headpiece with pink ears and eyes, a pointed snout maybe two feet long and with stiff plastic whiskers. Human eyes peer out through wire mesh in the mouth. A bubble of anxiety loosens in my bowels. As we pass, I take note of the long, rubbery tail emerging from the seat of his trousers.

"That's the stand-in," Jodi informs me. "I got assaulted at a club," she adds, making conversation. The remark strikes me as a bizarre segue until I remember that, in theory, we are fellow crime victims.

"These guys come up behind me and one of them, he, like, smashes me on the head with a beer bottle. For no reason. I was just standing there. I had to have six stitches." As she's talking, I realize that what I had taken for a speech impediment is actually a tiny silver barbell implanted in her tongue. I am attracted and repelled in about equal measure.