"What's so funny, then?"

"Nothing," she said, pushing her chin to her collarbone in a losing effort not to smile.

Tony glanced over at Ozzie. "Don't tell me our lugubrious host has ensnared you in his web."

"What makes you say that?"

"I imagine you've heard the stories."

"No."

"Bit of a stickman. Not all of us can have as uncheckered a past as you, my darling. And I don't blame you for falling in love with him, by the way. You wouldn't be the first. After all, a pretty young china doll like you, someone really ought to be digging down to tickle those warm tender bits beneath your icy crust."

Meredith frowned and made a motion to turn away. "You're drunk," she said, and searched for something worse. "And mean."

"Perhaps." Tony grinned. "But if you do decide to let him tickle your bits, just mind you don't get in the way of you-know-who."

"Who?"

"You may be Canadian, darling, but you won't fool me into thinking you're completely stupid."

"I honestly have no idea what or who you're talking about."

"His main squeeze." Tony, who never seemed to care who overheard him talking about what, lowered his head and his voice. "Kathleen Swain. The actress."

Meredith snapped upright. "I'm aware of Kathleen Swain, thanks." She sliced into her peach and hit the stone. "Are they...together?" She posed the question without looking up.

An observant sort of drunk, Tony could see she was pretending not to care. Like all journalists, he was incapable of retaining sensitive information, particularly when presented with an audience.

"Not in the conventional sense. But in the universal sense, most definitely."

"Universal sense?"

"In that they are bound to each other forever. Their fates miserably and inevitably intertwined." Tony lowered his head again and pursed his lips. "I really shouldn't say."

"For G.o.d's sake."

Tony lowered his chin and his pupils slid toward the wall. Hanging above the sideboard was a gilt-framed poster for Osmond's first movie, Silver Dollar Shooter. Kathleen Swain leaned barefoot and on a dusty saloon door. She was just a kid.

"You know the story of how she got the part," Tony said. He added a superior upward flick of his chin to indicate he knew full well she didn't and he did.

"More wine?" Meredith refilled his gla.s.s.

Tony leaned back and took in the rest of the table to see if any of the other guests were listening to what he was about to say. They weren't. Meredith sighed.

"So how did it happen?"

His eyebrows leapt up, pulling his whole face with them. "It was a case of biological blackmail."

Meredith's ears went hot and her stomach lurched. "They were having an affair," Tony continued. "It all started in the early eigh-ties in Los Angeles. Kathleen was a c.o.c.ktail waitress at the hotel bar where Crouch-then Cruchinsky-was a regular. It was a hooker hangout, but she wasn't a hooker. Not exactly. She was just an ambitious tart who occasionally f.u.c.ked old men for presents."

"Or parts?" said Meredith.

"I'm getting there," Tony snapped. "Pour me another drop, would you? I'm parched."

"Did they fall in love?" Meredith pa.s.sed the bottle.

Tony laughed, gargling his wine. "Perhaps more to the point they fell into whatever European-p.o.r.n-distributing B-movie producers and cheap-lingerie-model-slash-c.o.c.ktail-waitress-slash-aspiring-actresses?having-casual-s.e.x-in-the-eighties fall into. Unfortunately for Kathleen, she fell harder than Ozzie. When she found out she was pregnant-accidentally, of course"-Tony rolled his eyes at the notion-"she was surprised to find her sugar daddy was less than thrilled about the prospect of starting a family with a bit of tacky Kansas tottie. He suggested an abortion. She was dead set against it. What she didn't know-what Osmond conveniently hadn't yet told her-was that everything was about to change for him."

Meredith spit out her peach pit. "Why?"

"He'd lately managed to get a hold of what everyone in Hollywood had been searching for since the motion picture was invented: a decent script. It was just what audiences wanted, only they didn't know it yet. A big-budget Western epic. The green light, as they say, had been lit. All he needed now was a love interest. Someone fresh and s.e.xy and new. The studio preferred blondes. They were going to hold an open casting."

Meredith opened her mouth and Tony held up his finger. "And there was no chance he was going to hire Kathleen. Naturally, when she found out, there was h.e.l.l to pay."

"Why wouldn't he cast her?"

"Who knows?" Tony shrugged. "She was probably crazy. Or at the very least driving him crazy-she's a b.l.o.o.d.y actress after all."

"But she was perfect in that role." Meredith glanced up at the poster. "The hooker with the heart of gold."

"Hindsight, darling. Hindsight." Tony picked a bit of Chianti-stained skin off his lip and flicked it to the floor.

"So how did she convince him?"

He examined her incredulously. "You really have to ask? I thought you were brighter than that."

Meredith took a slow sip of soda and choked. "No-she didn't."

"Ah yes, but she did," Tony smiled.

Her firstborn for stardom. Meredith shivered. She thought of Kathleen. Her plumped-up pout and trailer tantrums. No wonder.

Tony sat back in his chair and drained his gla.s.s with a bullfighter's flourish. He poured Meredith more wine and this time she took it.

"How do you know all this stuff?"

"I have my sources," Tony said smugly.

"How do you know Osmond?"

"A more apt question would be, How am I useful to Osmond?"

"Fine," Meredith said, "how then?"

"A man in Osmond Crouch's position needs information, and I happen to be possessed of a great deal of information. I take care of him and he takes care of me."

It all sounded a bit ridiculous to Meredith. She could see Tony wanted to be pressed for details. She wouldn't give him the pleasure.

"The question is," Tony said, "what's your connection to all this?"

"I'm sure I don't have one," Meredith said.

"And I'm sure you do."

"Really?" (Meredith a.s.sured herself he was drunk.) Tony drew his lips up to reveal a set of wine-stained upper teeth. "Let's start with your mother."

"What about her?" Meredith bristled.

"Why don't you tell me?" he said.

"I don't understand."

"You will." Tony effected a woozy smile and patted her on the shoulder. "One day."

After dinner Meredith had planned to sneak off to her room and read a magazine, but Ozzie, noticing her retreat, managed to intercept her as she was slipping down the main hallway toward the turret.

"And where do you think you are going, Miss Moore?"

The naughty-little-girl feeling from dinner seized her once again. Meredith looked at her feet and shrugged. Her toenail polish was chipped.

After a minimal amount of stilted small talk (as neither of them, Meredith recognized with relief, was particularly good at small talk), Ozzie asked Meredith to come to the library and look at some of the rushes from Avalon. Most of the guests were returning home the next day, which meant they could resume shooting, and Ozzie was eager to begin right away. Would she mind doing a bit of homework before they began?

Meredith was relieved at the chance to concentrate on something impersonal and work-related. As the rest of the guests tottered off for a tipsy moonlit skinny dip in the pool, Meredith and Ozzie retired to the library, where he rigged up a projector and set it in the middle of the room. Sinking deep into a pair of green velvet armchairs, the two of them began the process of watching reel after reel of old footage projected on the fresco-decorated library walls.

Meredith was impressed by Ozzie's eye. There was no disputing his ability to capture light, to compose and create moments between the actors. The narrative, however, was another story. Specifically, what narrative? After sitting through the nine-hour rough cut, Meredith could think of little to say. There was no story at all-just a series of pretty, painterly pictures of two young (and later quite middle-aged) people falling in love and frolicking about an Eden-like setting.

The entire picture was set in the back garden, which put forth a number of continuity problems in itself. In the earlier reels the garden was quite spare and well pruned (no doubt the work of the Italian monks, Meredith reflected), but in later scenes it looked far closer to its current gaudy, overgrown self. The two lovers (played in silent-movie fashion by Reno and Marcella) were similarly inconsistent in their appearance. The biggest problem, Meredith immediately observed, was the irreparable and unavoidable problem of their aging on camera. Their costumes, which appeared tidy and tailored in the earlier scenes, were rags by the later footage. And their faces followed suit: moving from the freshness of youth to the well--seasoned appearance of people who had spent the better part of their adult lives working outdoors. All of this would have been fine if the film had been shot in continuity, which of course it hadn't. Shot over the course of a dozen years, the film included scenes from the first act that had been shot only a few weeks ago. Impossibly, the actors became younger as the plot progressed and featured two actors who looked like the nieces and nephews of their characters at the beginning. Ozzie was amazingly blind to all of these inconsistencies. Meredith realized the poor man had completely lost perspective and that her job would be to alert him to it.

Considering the epic length of the shoot to date, there was not a huge amount of footage to go through. The entire work had been composed by natural light, during twilight-only fifteen minutes a day of which were worth shooting, according to Ozzie. It often took him weeks at a time to shoot a single scene, completing dozens of painstaking takes from various angles until he got the moment exactly right. Time, it was obvious, was not of the essence in Ozzie's gilded universe. Watching Avalon, Meredith began to wonder whether he actually wished to make something marketable or just while away the years of villa-ensconced hermitude. After the screening, she put this very question to him.

"You dislike it, then?" he said. "You think it is worthless? s.h.i.t? A complete waste of film?"

"That's not what I said or meant," Meredith replied firmly. She was used to holding her own with hotheaded directors. In this context Ozzie didn't frighten her-at least not in any way that she was willing to cop to.

"What do you mean, then?"

"Do you want me to be honest?"

Ozzie glowered. "No, in fact, I think it is obvious I want you to soothe me to sleep with a string of gentle falsehoods. That is why I showed you this."

Meredith studied a branch of bougainvillea that happened to be slapping against the window. Beyond it was the dawn.

"Obviously, Meredith, I want you to be honest," he said finally.

Meredith looked into his eyes and saw the aggression receding. She began to give him her notes.

Her comments were much like she was-bluntly simple in some ways and lavishly complicated in others. Even Ozzie knew to hold his temper long enough to let her get to the end of what she was trying to say (they were, after all, talking about his work-a subject he enjoyed). When she was finished, he buzzed Reno, who appeared shortly with a pitcher of espresso, which he served.

"Salud," Ozzie said, lifting a cup and clanking it against hers. "To the beginning of a beautiful and fruitful friendship."

Over the next two weeks Meredith rarely left the garden-shed editing suite, save for meals and the occasional restorative stretch of sleep. She worked on a Steenbeck, cutting and splicing in the old way, surrounded by trim bins overflowing with film. It was a laborious task, but rewardingly tactile. She was literally making a movie with her hands. The rest of the guests had long gone (save for Tony, who lurked about the villa all day, sweating off his hangovers). Meredith was pleased to be back at work. Based on the footage for Avalon, she agreed to work with Ozzie on the grounds that he allow her to edit her own rough cut, which she agreed to complete within a few weeks. It was absorbing work on a hasty schedule-the sort of labor Meredith, like most people in movies, was accustomed to anyway. She had ideas about how the film could work, but she needed to be given carte blanche to make it happen. Ozzie would just have to trust her, she said, and for some strange reason he seemed to.

As the cutting progressed, the bond between them was cemented by intergenerational mutual respect. They bickered constantly, but in a productive, good-humored way. They grew close in the way that people working intensely together in dark confined s.p.a.ces for days and nights on end almost inevitably do. Meredith was surprised to find that in spite of his initial defensiveness, Ozzie quickly allowed her to have her head on the matter of the cut. (He could, after all, recut the thing any way he wanted once she was finished.) It became clear he had ground to a halt where Avalon was concerned, and was surprisingly receptive to Meredith's suggestions. The truth was, the film was a complete mess and Ozzie knew it and appreciated her help.

As it happened, a mess was just what Meredith needed to lift her spirits and fill her with a renewed sense of purpose, one that she had not felt since she was first seized by the Quest. For days and days she thought of nothing but work.

When Mish called her on her cell one evening, Meredith did not notice herself rattling on until Mish said sourly, "Wow, are you taking requests for Broadway show tunes?"

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she answered, in a manner that indicated Meredith would soon get an extended speech on the subject of exactly what was wrong. "Hey, aren't you going to ask me how my weekend with the German went?"

And before Meredith could apologize, Mish had begun a long litany of her weekend woes. Meredith listened and made dovish sounds into the receiver.

"And then"-Mish's voice had reached a semi-hysterical pitch-"and then, after acting all offended because I refused to eat it, he takes me upstairs to see his dead grandmother's shoe collection. I figured the guy was just some kind of dandy, but no. Oh, no. It's like this enormous walk-in closet filled with nothing but women's dress shoes, most of them used. How psycho is that?"

Meredith heard her light a cigarette and exhale smoke into the phone.

"G.o.d, Mere, when are you coming back? I miss you."

"I thought your gay husband was in town," Meredith said.

"Shane? Oh, yeah, but it's not the same as a girlfriend. He's out clubbing it up with the boys every night while I'm slaving away on set. I only see him for like half an hour a day if that. This movie is driving me nuts."

"Kathleen?"

"Funny you should ask, because now that I think of it, her ladyship hasn't been half bad for the last week of shooting. Which is pretty surprising considering the hours we were doing-night shoots. You know the scene where she slides down the cliff? Oh my G.o.d, it was like fifteen thousand takes later, with me having to change her into a clean corset and petticoat in between takes. And new makeup and hair every time. Total h.e.l.l for everyone, especially for her. We all thought she was going to lose it, but she didn't. Actually she was weirdly cheerful about the whole thing."

"Funny, isn't it," Meredith said after a short pause, "the way people who manufacture crises can often function very well when confronted with a real one."

"I wouldn't say it was a crisis really..." Mish drifted off, trouble in her voice. "Listen, Mere, I wanted to ask you..."

"Mmm?"

"Actually, it's rather awkward."

"Well, you might jolly well get on with it, then," Meredith said, parroting her friend's British affectation. But Mish, preoccupied with what she was about to say, didn't notice.

"Well, here's the thing. A few nights ago your ma invited me to see the pageant she was in at her club, so I took Shane."

"That's nice. Wait. She wasn't naked, was she?"

"No. Well, just topless really. And that was only for a second at the end. Anyway, I wish you'd seen it. They did a rock-opera version of some weird French farce. Bizarre. Anyway, Barnaby was there and we ended up having dinner and we were talking-not about you, though, I promise-and then he sort of..."

"Seriously?" Meredith said. "You and Barnaby? I mean, that's cool. That's totally fine."

"No, not me. G.o.d, are you kidding? After what his f.u.c.king bird did to my hat? Pas de chance. It's him and Shane who hit it off. And I mean that in the cla.s.sical sense."