"But why wouldn't it happen?" Blair asks. "Is it because of her? The girl you wanted to bring to my house?" She pauses. "The actress?" She pauses again. "You don't think I'd be upset about that?"

"What do you want to talk about?" I ask impatiently.

"I guess in a way it's about Julian."

"Yeah? What about him?" I down the drink. "You were having an affair with him? You guys hooked up? What?"

When Blair bites her lower lip she's eighteen again.

"Julian told you?" she asks. "Is that how you know?"

"I'm just guessing, Blair," I say. "You told me to stay away from him, remember?" And then: "What does it matter? It's been over for a year, right?"

"Did you know that he broke it off?" she asks haltingly.

"Blair, I don't know anything, okay?"

"He broke it off because of that girl."

"What girl?"

"Clay, please don't make this any weirder-"

"I don't know what girl you're talking about."

"I'm talking about the girl you wanted to bring to the dinner party," she says. "That's who he left me for." She pauses again for emphasis. "That's who he's with now."

I break the silence by saying, "You're lying."

"Clay-"

"You're lying because you want me here and-"

"Stop it," she shouts.

"But I don't know what you're saying."

"Rain. Her name's Rain Turner. That's the girl you wanted to bring, right? When Julian broke it off with me she was the reason. They've been together ever since." Again she pauses for effect. "He's still with her."

"How...do you know this?" I ask. "I thought you didn't talk to him."

"I don't talk to Julian," she says, "but I know they're together."

I throw the gla.s.s against the wall.

Blair looks away, embarra.s.sed.

"You're that upset over her? I mean how long have you even been with her?" Blair asks, her voice cracking. "A couple of weeks?"

Concentrating on the flower arrangement in the middle of the suite is my only hope of focusing while Blair continues.

"I made Trent take her on as a client because Julian asked me to, without telling me he was seeing her. It was a favor I did for him. I thought she was just a friend. Another actress who needed help...I did it because..." She stops. "Because I liked Julian."

I'm murmuring to myself. "That's why she was at your house."

Blair realizes something after I say this. "You never asked her why she was there, did you?" Another silence. "Jesus, it's still all about you, isn't it? Didn't you ever wonder what the h.e.l.l she was doing there?" Blair's voice keeps climbing. "Do you know anything anything about her except how she makes about her except how she makes you you feel?" feel?"

"I don't believe any of this."

"Why not?"

"Because...she's with me."

Finally, I stagger toward the door.

"Wait," Blair says quietly. "I better leave first."

"What does it matter?" I ask, wiping my face.

"Because I think I'm being followed."

I text Rain: text Rain: If I don't hear from you I'm going to make them give the part to someone else If I don't hear from you I'm going to make them give the part to someone else. In a matter of minutes I get a text from her. Hey Crazy, I'm back! Let's hang. Xo Hey Crazy, I'm back! Let's hang. Xo.

In my office, sitting at my desk pretending to work on a script, I'm really watching Rain, who has just shown up, and she's tan and pacing the floor, holding a gla.s.s of ice with some tequila in it, chatting casually about how crazy her mother is and her younger stepbrother who's in the military and when she falls onto the lounge chair in the corner of the office it takes all the strength I have to get up and walk over to her and not say anything about Julian. She looks up at me and keeps talking, only lightly distracted, but when I don't answer a question she touches her knee against mine and then I reach for her arm and pull her off the chair and when she reminds me about the reservation at Dan Tana's I tell her, "I want to f.u.c.k you first," and start pulling her toward the bedroom.

"Come on," she says. "I'm hungry. Let's go to Dan Tana's."

"I thought you didn't want to go to Dan Tana's," I say, pressing into her. "I thought you wanted to go someplace else."

"I changed my mind."

"Why? Who didn't you want to see there?"

"Can't we just hang?"

"No," I say.

"Look," she says. "Maybe after dinner? I just want to chill." She strokes my face and then kisses me lightly on the lips and then she pulls her arm away and walks out of the office. I follow her through the living room and into the kitchen, where she heads for the tequila bottle and does another shot.

"Who was in San Diego?" I ask.

"What?"

"Who was in San Diego?" I ask again.

"My mother. I told you that about a hundred times."

"Who else?"

"Stop it, Crazy," she says. "Hey, did you talk to Jon and Mark?"

"Maybe."

"Maybe?" She makes a face. "What does that mean?" She makes a face. "What does that mean?"

I shrug. "It means maybe."

"Don't do that," she says quickly, whirling toward me. "Do not do that."

"Do what?"

"Threaten me," she says, before her face relaxes into a smile.

At Dan Tana's we're seated in the front room next to a booth of young actors and Rain tries to engage me, her foot rubbing against my ankle, and after a few drinks I mellow into acceptance even though a guy at the bar keeps glancing at Rain and for some reason I keep thinking he's the guy I saw her with in the parking lot at Bristol Farms, his arm in a sling, and then I realize I pa.s.sed him on the bridge at the Hotel Bel-Air when I went to see Blair, and Rain's talking about the best way to approach the producer and director of The Listeners The Listeners in terms of hiring her and how we need to do this carefully and that it's "superimportant" she gets the part because so much is riding on this for her and I'm zoning out on other things but I keep glancing back at the guy leaning against the bar and he's with a friend and they both look like they stepped out of a soap opera and then I suddenly have to interrupt her. in terms of hiring her and how we need to do this carefully and that it's "superimportant" she gets the part because so much is riding on this for her and I'm zoning out on other things but I keep glancing back at the guy leaning against the bar and he's with a friend and they both look like they stepped out of a soap opera and then I suddenly have to interrupt her.

"There's no one else you're seeing, right?"

Rain stops talking, considers the vibe and asks, "Is that what this is about?"

"I mean, it's just me right now, right?" I ask. "I mean, whatever it is we're doing, you're not hanging out with another guy, right?"

"What are you talking about?" she asks. "Crazy, what are you doing?"

"When's the last time you had s.e.x?"

"With you." She sighs. "Here we go." She sighs again. "What about you?"

"Do you care?"

"Look, I had a stressful week-"

"Stop it," I say. "You got a tan."

"Do you want to say something to me?" she asks.

I look around the room and she relents.

"I'm here with you now," she says. "Stop being such a girl."

I sigh and say nothing.

"What happened? Why are you so angry?" she asks after I order another drink. "I was only gone five days."

"I'm not angry," I say. "I just didn't hear from you..."

"Look." She scrolls through the iPhone I bought her and shows me pictures of herself with an older woman, the Pacific in the background.

"Who took these pictures?" I automatically ask.

"A friend of mine," she says. "A girl girlfriend," she stresses.

"Why does that guy at the bar keep looking at you?"

Rain doesn't even glance at the bar when she says, "I don't know," and then shows me more pictures of herself in San Diego with the older woman I don't believe is her mother.

Heading up Doheny I'm looking through the windshield of the BMW and I notice the lights in the condo are on. Rain sits in the pa.s.senger seat, arms crossed, considering something.

"Did I leave the lights on?" I ask.

"No," she says, distracted. "I don't remember."

I make a right on Elevado to see if the blue Jeep is there and I cruise by the spot where it's usually parked and it isn't there, and after circling the block a couple of times I pull into the driveway of the Doheny Plaza and the valet takes the car and then Rain and I go back to 1508 and she lets me go down on her and when I'm hard enough she sucks me off, and when I wake up the next morning, she's gone.

Rain is the only topic discussed in Dr. Woolf's office on Sawtelle and I had referred to her anonymously in the last session while she was in San Diego as "this girl" but now with the information I have about Julian I tell him everything: how I had met Rain Turner at a Christmas party, and I realize while I'm describing that moment to Dr. Woolf that I had drinks with Julian at the Beverly Hills Hotel almost immediately afterward, and how I ran into her again at the casting sessions and then at the lounge on La Cienega, and I detail the days we spent together that last week of December and how I began to think it was real, like what I had with Meghan Reynolds, and then found out from Blair that Rain is supposedly Julian's girlfriend-at this point Dr. Woolf puts down his notepad and seems more patient with me than he probably is, and I'm trying to figure out the game plan and then realize Julian must have known that Rain and I had spent those days together but how was that possible? Finally, near the end of the session, Dr. Woolf says, "I would urge you not to see this girl anymore," and then "I would urge you to cut off all contact." After another long silence he asks, "Why are you crying?"

I'm not taking no for an answer," Rip says lightly, in singsong, over the phone after telling me to meet him at the observatory at the top of Griffith Park even though I'm hungover enough to forget how to fill the BMW's gas tank at the Mobil station on the corner of Holloway and La Cienega, and cutting across Fountain to avoid the traffic backed up on Sunset I call Rain three times, so distracted that she's not picking up I almost make a right onto Orange Grove in case she's there, but I can't deal. In the mostly deserted parking lot in front of the observatory Rip is on his phone, leaning against a black limousine, the driver listening to an iPod, the Hollywood sign gleaming in the background behind them. Rip is dressed simply in jeans, a green T-shirt, sandals. "Let's take a walk," Rip says, and then we're wandering across the lawn toward the dome of the planetarium, and on the West Terrace we're so high above the city it's soundless and the blinding sun reflected in the faraway Pacific makes it look as if the ocean's on fire, and the empty sky is completely clear except for the haze hanging over downtown where a dirigible floats above the distant skysc.r.a.pers and if I hadn't been so hungover the view would have been humbling.

"I like it up here," Rip says. "It's peaceful."

"It's a little out of the way."

"Yeah, but there's no one here," he says. "It's quiet up here. No one can follow you. We can talk without worrying about it."

"Worrying about what?"

Rip considers this. "That our privacy might be compromised." He pauses. "I'm like you: I don't trust people."

The sun is so bright it bleaches the terrace, and my skin begins to burn and the silence that drowns everything out makes even the most innocent figures in the distance seem filled with ominous intent as they roam slowly, cautiously, as if any natural movement would disrupt the stillness and we pa.s.s a Hispanic couple leaning against a ledge as we move across the Parapet Promenade and once we're on the walkway and moving toward the East Terrace, Rip softly asks me, "Have you seen Julian lately?"

"No," I say. "The last time I saw Julian was before Christmas."

"Interesting," Rip says, and then admits, "Well, I didn't think you had."

"Then why did you ask?"

"Just wanted to know how you'd answer that question."

"Rip-"

"There was a girl..." He stops, considers. "There's always a girl, isn't there?"

I shrug. "Yeah, I guess."

"Anyway, there was a girl I met about four or five months ago, and this girl worked for a very exclusive, superdiscreet...service." Rip pauses as two teenage boys speaking French pa.s.s by, and then looks around to see if anyone else is near us before he continues. "You can't find it on the Net, it's just word-of-mouth referrals so there's no, um, viral viral trail. Everything was handled among people who knew each other so it was all fairly contained." trail. Everything was handled among people who knew each other so it was all fairly contained."

"What...was the service?" I ask.

Rip shrugs. "Just really beautiful girls, really beautiful boys, kids who came out here to make it and needed cash and wanted to make sure that if they ever became Brad Pitt there's no hard evidence that they were involved in anything like this." Rip sighs, looks at the city and then back at me. "Comparatively expensive, but you're paying for the low-key and the no records and how totally anonymous it is."