"How did you find out about it?" I don't want to know the answer but the silence, amplified, ramped up, makes me ask just to say something.

"Well, that's one of the interesting parts of this story," Rip says. "The guy who started the service is someone we know. I guess you could say he's the one who hooked me up with the girl."

"Who are we talking about?" I ask, even though something tells me that I already know.

"Julian," Rip says, confirming it. "Julian ran it." Rip pauses. "I'm surprised you didn't know this already."

"Julian ran what, exactly?" I manage to ask.

"The service," Rip says. "He actually started it. All by himself. He's personable in that way. He knows a lot of kids. He brought them in." Rip thinks about it. "It's something he knows how to do." Another pause. "Julian's good at it."

"Why are you telling me this?" I ask. "I'm not interested in using an escort service to hook up and I'm definitely not interested in anything that has to do with Julian."

"Oh, that's a lie," Rip says. "That's a big lie."

"Why is that a lie?"

"Because Julian is how I met a girl named Rain Turner."

"I don't know who that is."

Rip parodies a brief scowl and makes a dismissive gesture with his hand. "Oh, dude, you handled that so awkwardly." He sighs, impatient. "That girl you've been hanging with? The so-called actress you promised to give a part to in your little movie? Does this ring a bell? Please, don't be an idiot with me."

I can't say anything. I'm suddenly gripping the iron railing. The information is an excuse not to look at him anymore. The fear, the big black stain of it, is rushing forward and it's in the heat and the vast expanse of empty terrace and everywhere else.

"You're shaking there, bro," Rip says. "Maybe you want to sit down?"

On the East Terrace I'm finally numb enough to listen as Rip starts speaking again, after he takes a brief call confirming lunch and texts someone else back and we're sitting on a bench in direct sunlight and I feel my skin blistering and I can't move and up close Rip's face is androgynous and his eyelashes are tinted.

"Anyway, so I meet her and I like her and I think we hit it off and then I'm not paying for it anymore and I'm actually thinking about divorcing my wife, which shows you how committed I am to this girl." Rip keeps gesturing with his hands. "I tell Rain to quit the gig and she does. I take care of everything-pay the rent for her and the b.i.t.c.h roommate in that dump on Orange Grove, clothes, f.u.c.king hair, the Beamer, personal trainer, tanning salon, whatever she wants. I even got her a gig at that place on La Cienega, Reveal, all these things that Julian can't afford to do-and guess what she still really wants?"

Rip waits. I'm processing everything. And then it hits me and I say in a low voice, "She still wants to be an actress."

"Well, she wants to be famous," Rip says. "But at least you're paying attention," he says. "That's basically the correct answer."

I can't unclench my fists and Rip gets up and starts pacing in front of me.

"I think you know by now it's never going to happen for her, but anyway Julian's been bragging about what a great friend Clay is and that he'll be sure to hook her up with you and this movie that I guess you have some hand in casting. Whatever. I mean, it sounded like bulls.h.i.t to me but you've gotta have hope, right?" Rip suddenly stops and checks his phone, then puts it back in his pocket. "But when you first got into town Julian kind of riled you up about something and I guess you guys didn't exactly hit it off that night so he didn't ask you to help out." Rip sighs, as if tired of it all, yet continues. "Somehow she manages to get an audition-something I admittedly don't really care about or have the juice to do and anyway I think it's a waste of time because she has no talent-and so she comes in and reads for you guys and I'm guessing she's just f.u.c.k-awful but she has her charms and the rest is...well, why don't you tell me what the rest is, Clay?"

I'm just sitting silently on the stone bench.

"I take it you've been banging her for a couple of weeks now?"

I don't say anything.

Rip sighs. "That's an answer in a way."

"Rip, please-"

"And then she splits for San Diego," Rip says. "Right?"

"She went to see her family."

"Family?" Rip scowls. "Did you know that Julian was in San Diego with her?"

"Why would I know that?" I say.

"Oh, come on, Clay-"

"Rip, please, what do you want?"

He considers this. "I want her." her." And then he considers something else. "I mean, I know, I know, she's just a dumb c.u.n.t actress, right?" And then he considers something else. "I mean, I know, I know, she's just a dumb c.u.n.t actress, right?"

I'm nodding and Rip registers the nods and c.o.c.ks his head, curious.

"If you're agreeing with me, then why are you so beat up over her?" he asks.

"I don't know," I say quietly. "I just am."

"Have you ever thought that maybe this-your little freak-out-isn't about her?" Rip says. "That maybe it's about you?"

"No." I swallow. "I haven't."

"Look, you're not the threat," Rip says. "She's just using you. However...she really likes him." Rip pauses. "Julian's the problem."

"The problem? What are you talking about? Why is he he the problem?" the problem?"

"Julian is the problem," Rip says, "because Rain denied anything was going on with him until I found out about their little vacation in San Diego last week."

"She told me she went to see her mother," I say. "She showed me pictures of herself with her mother."

Rip fake-smiles. "So, she has a mother now? In San Diego? Sweet." But after he studies my reaction the smile fades.

"The first time I found out they were together I had gotten some information she couldn't lie her way out of and I let it go because she promised me she wouldn't go back to him or do anything with him but...this time...I just don't know."

"What don't you know?"

"This time...I don't know if I'll hurt him or not." Rip says this so gently and with so little menace that it doesn't sound like a threat and I start laughing.

"I'm serious," Rip says. "This is not a joke, Clay."

"I think that's a little extreme."

"That's because you're probably very sensitive."

After a long pause, Rip says flatly, "I only want one thing. I want her back."

"But obviously she wants someone else."

Rip takes a moment to study me. "You're a very bitter dude."

I'm leaning forward, clutching my sides. I glance at him before nodding.

"Yeah. I guess I am."

We're walking across the gra.s.s toward the black limo and the driver waiting there and Rip glances at the Astronomers Monument as we pa.s.s it and I'm staring straight ahead, unable to focus on anything but the heat and the surreal blue sky and the hawks sailing over the soundless landscape, their shadows crossing the lawn, and I wonder if I'm going to be able to make it back to Doheny without getting into an accident and then Rip asks me something that should have been just a formality but because of our conversation now isn't. "What are you doing the rest of the afternoon?"

"I don't know," I say, and then remember. "Are you going to Kelly's memorial?"

"That's today?"

"Yeah."

"No," Rip says. "Didn't really know him. We did some business, but that was a long time ago." The driver opens the door. "I've got to deal with this d.i.c.khead about the club. You know, the usual." He says this as if I should be hip enough to understand what exactly he means, and before getting into the limo Rip asks me, "When are you seeing her next?"

"I think maybe tonight." Then I can't help it and ask, "How do you feel about that?"

"Hey, I hope she gets the part. I'm rooting for her." He pauses, and grins. "Aren't you?"

I don't say anything. I just barely shake my head.

"Yeah," Rip says, convinced of something. "I thought so." And then, as he slides into the back of the limo and before the driver shuts the door, Rip looks up at me and says, "You have a history of this, don't you?"

I'm supposed to go to a Golden Globes party at the Sunset Tower tonight but Rain doesn't want to even after I tell her that Mark and Jon are going to be there and that if she wants the part of Martina I should formally introduce her to them outside of Jason's office in Culver City. "This isn't the way to do it," she mutters. "But it's the way we're going to do it," I tell her. When she arrives at my place, newly bronzed, her hair blown out, she's wearing a strapless dress, but I'm still in a robe, drinking vodka, stroking myself. She doesn't want to have s.e.x. I turn away and tell her I'm not going if we don't. She downs two shots of Patron in the kitchen and then strides into the bedroom and carefully takes off her dress and says, "Just don't kiss me," gesturing at her makeup and while I'm eating her out my fingers move to her a.s.s and she brushes them away and says, "I don't want to do it like that." Later, as she's putting the dress back on, I notice a bruise on the side of her torso that I hadn't seen before. "Who did that to you?" I ask. She cranes her neck to look at the bruise. "Oh, that?" she says. "You did."

Entering the party at the Sunset Tower we're behind a famous actor and the cameras start flashing like a strobe and I pull Rain with me toward the bar and when I catch my reflection in a mirror my face is a skull, sunburned from the hour spent at the observatory, and on the terrace overlooking the pool, snaking through the hum of the crowd with Rain, I say h.e.l.lo to a few people I recognize while nodding to others I don't but who seem to recognize me and I make small talk with various people about the Kelly Montrose memorial even though I wasn't there and then I spot Trent and Blair and I move in another direction since I don't want Blair to see me with Rain, and projected onto the walls are black-and-white photos of palm trees, stills of Palisades Park from the 1940s, girls who were cast in the new James Bond movie, and trays of doughnuts are being pa.s.sed around and I'm chewing gum so I won't smoke and then I spot Mark with his wife and I bring Rain over to where they're standing and Mark frowns when he sees her, and then erases it with a smile before we fake-hug, his eyes never leaving Rain, his wife's reaction a barely concealed hostility, and then I launch into an explanation as to why I haven't been at the casting sessions and Mark says that I should come in tomorrow and I a.s.sure him I will and just as I'm about to make a pitch for Rain my phone vibrates in my pocket and I pull it out and there's a text from a blocked number that says She knows She knows and after I type in and after I type in ? ? Mark and his wife drift off and Rain, seemingly uncaring that I didn't pitch her to Mark, is behind me talking to another young actress and a new text arrives: Mark and his wife drift off and Rain, seemingly uncaring that I didn't pitch her to Mark, is behind me talking to another young actress and a new text arrives: She knows that you know She knows that you know.

Heading back to the Doheny Plaza trying to keep steady on Sunset, I ask casually, "Do you know a guy named Julian Wells?" After I ask this I'm able to loosen my grip on the steering wheel-the question is a release.

"Hey, yeah," Rain says brightly, fooling with the stereo. "Do you know Julian?"

"Yeah," I say. "We grew up together out here."

"I didn't know that. Cool." She tries to find a track on a CD Meghan Reynolds had burned for me last summer. "He might have mentioned something about that."

"How do you know him?" I ask.

"I did some work for him," she says. "A long time ago."

"What kind of work?"

"Just like an a.s.sistant. Freelance," she says. "It was a long time ago."

"I actually know that you know him," I say.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asks, concentrating on locating the song. "You say that so weird."

"Where is he right now?" I ask. "I'm just wondering."

"How would I know that?" she asks, pretending to be annoyed.

"Well, aren't you his girlfriend?"

Everything is suddenly in slow motion. It's as if suddenly she forgot her lines. Her only response is to laugh. "You're crazy."

"Let's call him up."

"Okay. Sure. Whatever, Crazy."

"You don't believe me, do you?" I say. "You think this is a joke?"

"I think you're crazy," she says. "That's what I think this is."

"I know about you and him, Rain."

"And what do you think think you know?" Her voice remains playful. you know?" Her voice remains playful.

"I know you were in San Diego with Julian last week."

"I was with my mother, Clay."

"But you were also with Julian." Saying this relaxes me. "Didn't you think I was going to find out about this?"

At the light on Doheny she stares straight out the windshield.

"Didn't you know I was going to find out that you're still f.u.c.king him?"

She suddenly cracks. She whirls toward me in the pa.s.senger seat. A series of questions pour out in a pleading rush. "So what? What does it matter? What are you doing? What do you think this is about? Will you just leave it alone? What does it matter what I do when I'm not with you?"

"It matters," I say. "In this situation, for you to get what you want, it matters very much."

"Why does it matter?" she shouts. "You're crazy."

I calmly make the left and start heading down Doheny.

"You couldn't even play this part for a f.u.c.king month?" I ask quietly. "What, you needed his c.o.c.k so badly that you had to jeopardize everything for yourself? If being with me was so important to you, Rain, why did you f.u.c.k it up? You could've played me but-"

"I don't play play people, Clay." people, Clay."

"What about Rip Millar?"

"What about Rip Millar?" she says. "Jesus, you need to get over yourself."

The blurry headlights from oncoming cars cause me to pull the BMW to the side of the road across from the Doheny Plaza.

"Get out. Just get out of the f.u.c.king car."

"Clay..." She reaches for me. "Please, stop."