"You know I made Courtney cry."

"I a.s.sumed."

"Do you know why?"

"No."

"I said some very nasty things to her because a moment before, I'd looked down at my cleavage and noticed that it was wrinkly. My famous t.i.ts, wizening into a couple of floppy papayas. There's no operation for that, you know."

"No?"

"Not that there'd be much point even if there was. I mean, you can only put off the inevitable for so long."

Swain threw off her curtain in one swoop. Underneath she was wearing Victorian ladies' underwear-a pair of bloomers, wool stockings and a corset. Her body was, it had to be said, not what it used to be. She was still slim, but her skin was loose under her upper arms and on her chest. Meredith correctly judged her to be about forty-five. Draped over the kitchenette table to the right was Swain's costume, a heavy blue velvet dress with thousands of complicated-looking lacings and hooks and eyes. It would take at least twenty minutes to get her into it, and given the situation with wardrobe, Meredith realized the job would probably fall to her.

"Listen," Meredith began, "I know this isn't a great time, and that you seem preoccupied with other things. But they're out there setting up for the first shot, and you're in it. So it might be a good idea to get dressed. You know, to save time."

Swain laughed. "Time is of no concern to me. The cliche is true-in the movies, time is money. And the money, in this case, belongs to Osmond Crouch. And guess what? Osmond Crouch owes me-not money, but something far more precious. He owes me my youth."

A knock at the door and the second AD's voice announced Swain's call time.

"f.u.c.k OFF!" she roared.

"I hope you don't mind listening to me for a bit. It's just that I get so lonely for female company, and these English women, they don't really count. They're all so cold. They don't really have the same body image anxiety we do. It's hard to relate." Swain looked directly at Meredith for the first time.

"No children," she p.r.o.nounced.

Meredith shook her head, unsure where this was going. She suddenly wanted to leave. Just when she was about to gather her binder, Swain stood up, stepped into the layers of velvet and began pulling up her dress. She did not talk about this, just did it. Meredith began the painstaking work of slipping each little hook into its intended eye.

Swain sighed. "I was married three times, but no babies. I even miscarried twice, like Marilyn Monroe. That was during my second marriage, to Peter, the entertainment lawyer. The normal one. I didn't realize it in my twenties and thirties, but husbands are really not the issue at all. They're basically disposable. You can always find a better one at some point." She giggled cruelly. "But babies...you only get one chance for those."

Meredith continued hooking and eyeing.

"People tell me I should adopt. A little girl from China or a foundling from Guatemala or wherever. But I've never been one for rescuing people. I haven't got much of a martyr complex. I don't think that's what parenthood is about. For me it's about the flesh. My own flesh. Flesh of my flesh, to love and care for, for the rest of my life, you know? That's what I long for. But you know, on the bright side, there are operations for that."

"For what?"

"For having babies later in life. At my age. Not operations, I mean, but procedures. New technologies, drugs and that sort of thing. So sad old hags like me can have a hope-"

Meredith felt Swain's rib cage release beneath the layers of velvet. She hoped that Swain was not about to cry, because if she did, she would have to have her makeup redone. The actress straightened her back and looked in the mirror. She was, Meredith saw now, very controlled. Swain breathed out with a whoosh and patted her face, then grimaced, remembering something.

"Good Lord, what am I going to do?"

"About what?"

"About the wardrobe stylist. I can't get into these horrendous things on my own, and I don't suppose we can convince her to come back after I burned her with my curling iron, can we?"

Meredith hid her smile in the folds of Swain's bustle. She stood up and smoothed down the back of her dress.

Swain was moaning, "Oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d, what am I going to do?"

Meredith had an idea. She felt her face brighten. "Actually, Ms. Swain, I may have just the woman for the job."

The actress raised one eyebrow, intrigued. "Is she American?"

"Almost," Meredith said. "She's Canadian."

"Close enough," Swain winked. "She's hired."

7.

Mish arrived in London the following day. Meredith had arranged to meet her at a new sushi lounge in Knightsbridge, kitty-corner from Harrods on a tiny street called Raphael. The place was one of those sprawling subterranean London nightspots that gave Meredith the feeling the city might be a grim facade built overtop a buzzing underworld populated by demons. The very young and the very rich mingled around the bar, balancing jewel-toned saketinis between their thumbs and middle fingers. Despite her best efforts to look bored, Meredith could hardly breathe. She had never seen such people-dusky and decadent. Men in dark suits sliced from such fine silk Meredith felt soothed just looking at it. The women were like fancy desserts-skin and hair polished in glossy shades, fine bones weighted with crocodile, gemstones, precious metals and swatches of sheared sable. In addition to Arabic, Meredith heard snippets of French, German, Russian and Italian in the air as she made her way through the throng and scanned the human layers for Mish.

Slate trays of raw eel, squid, tuna and sea ba.s.s slid by with waitresses in orange coveralls and black stilettos. Watching them, Meredith noted her own simple outfit-sleeveless black sweater and jeans. She worked behind the camera for a reason.

"Mere bear!" Mish enveloped her in a mango-conditioner-scented embrace.

Bangles clattered in her ears. Mish drew back and clapped Meredith's grinning face between her hands.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you! Can you believe I'm even here? I mean, can you actually? And we get to work together again? In London? I mean: How. f.u.c.king. Great. Is. That? Eh?" Mish squeezed Meredith's face vertically for emphasis.

"Get this girl a dragon-fruit saketini on the double! Extra poppy seeds! Make that two doubles!" Mish bullhorned across the bar to no one in particular. She was wearing a lace-up lavender bustier over a pair of glitter-flecked leggings and thigh-high white vinyl go-go boots. Meredith noticed she had lost weight. Under normal circ.u.mstances she would have said so.

"Do I not look completely f.u.c.king awesome?" Mish pa.s.sed over a br.i.m.m.i.n.g gla.s.s with a twig and berries sticking out of it and kissed Meredith on the forehead. "Can you believe this s.h.i.t?"

"It's so great to see you."

"Is this town even aware? Does it even know what it is in for? Have you even warned these people?" Mish waved an elbow-length kid glove around the room and leaned in to Meredith's hair. "We are going to tear it up, sister. You and me. Tear it to pieces and eat it raw." She threw back her head and honked like a goose.

They clinked and began to fill in the gaps of the past couple of weeks. Mish told her the story of the party clown she had met at Elle's. She had ended up having what she deemed a "highly therapeutic eight-and-a-half-night make-out session" with him, which had started the day Meredith had seen her last and ended shortly before she got the call to come work on the Crouch movie as Kathleen Swain's personal wardrobe stylist.

"So the thing is," Mish was saying, "I've finally realized what I was put on this earth to do." Her eyes gleamed. "It's to amuse myself. Completely, fully, ad nauseum and without guilt. What do you think? It's my new trip."

"Sounds like a plan," Meredith said.

"Done."

Three rounds later, Meredith was sloshed and feeling guilty. She still hadn't told Mish about the Quest. And she wasn't quite sure how this new, improved and biologically defiant Mish would take it.

"Oh, and Shane," Mish went on, "did I even tell you? What he did? Do you even know what he did the day he, you know, heard? He went out and bought a pug puppy-another one! And guess what we called it? Junior! I mean, isn't that the sickest thing you've ever heard? He came in a giant Tiffany box with a hole cut in the top and the little farter's head poking through with a ribbon on it. Oh my G.o.d, the box stank so badly when I took the lid off, I nearly f.u.c.king died. It was the cutest thing in the whole history of cute things ever. That guy." She reached over and squeezed Meredith's arm. "So what about you? What's up? How goes the London head-trip thus far?"

Meredith bit her lip and looked at the ceiling. There was an equatorial constellation painted on a dome. "Well, let's see," she began. "My mother just broke up with a man half her age, I'm completely single and working all the time on a set that's being funded by the Wizard of Oz and supervised by a teenage vampire. It rains constantly and everything costs twice as much and the men smell funny. Other than that, I can't really complain."

Mish c.o.c.ked her head and made a sympathetic face. "Is it really that bad? I mean like bad-bad?"

"Not bad-bad, more bad-weird."

"If it's any consolation, everyone in Toronto is saying how great it is that you told Felsted to go f.u.c.k himself. And apparently the studio is threatening to withdraw his postproduction funding because he went so insanely overbudget on the shoot."

Meredith managed a detached smile. She waited for a rush of pleasure, but felt nothing. Felsted, Toronto, her whole life at home-it was all an emotional galaxy away.

"Listen, Mish, I have to tell you something. The reason I really came here."

Mish narrowed her eyes. "You're in love."

"No, not that. Completely not."

"In l.u.s.t."

"Sadly, no."

"You've had your heart broken by a famous married guy you couldn't tell me about because his lawyers swore you to secrecy. Don't worry, I totally understand."

Meredith blinked.

"So what, then?"

She opened her mouth, but Mish shushed her.

"No, wait, I want to guess. Now, let's see...what else makes a girl drop everything and fly away-and then call her best friend for transatlantic backup? I don't geddit"-she clapped a sake-soaked glove over her mouth. Her next words were m.u.f.fled. "Oh-you caaan't be." She patted her stomach meaningfully. "With whose?"

"Jesus, Mish, no! Would you just let me talk for two seconds?"

Mish shoved her hands under her b.u.m like a child trying to behave. "You are."

"I'm not," Meredith said slowly. "Not yet. But I want to be. I intend to be. And by the right man. I just figured I had to expand my pool, you know, in order to broaden the search. For the perfect one."

"Oh, I get it-" Mish's face darkened. "Big Daddy."

"The donor of my dreams."

"Prince Charming in a tadpole suit."

"Exactly."

Above her smile, Mish's eyes were gla.s.sy and far away.

"Are you okay with this?" asked Meredith. "I didn't want to tell you. I was afraid it would make you sad."

"Why would it make me sad?" A tear slid down the bridge of her nose and hung quivering at the tip. "Seriously. I'm beyond that baby s.h.i.t at this point. I'm done with it. I want you to have one so I can corrupt it with cigarettes and beer."

"So you're okay?" Meredith looked at her carefully.

"I'm fine. It's just coming off the hormones." Mish blew her nose on a c.o.c.ktail napkin.

"Do you think I'm crazy?"

"No, honey, I think you're brilliant." Mish grabbed her knee and squeezed it tight. "Absof.u.c.kinglutely brilliant. Oh!" She remembered something and began digging in her handbag like a crazed terrier. "In that case I have a present for you...I'm sure it's still in here...ha!" She stiffened, her hand still deep in the bag, and made Meredith close her eyes.

"Why?"

"It's a surprise, for Chrissake. Now, hold still. You're so squirmy."

Meredith flinched as something cold poked her ear.

"What are you doing?"

"Just keep your eyes closed, okay? Just a second." Beeping sounded in her ear. "Okay, open!" In Mish's hand was a small device that appeared to be an electric toothbrush without the bristle. She flipped it over and revealed a small digital screen with numbers on it.

Meredith took the device from Mish's hand and brought the screen close to her face.

"Amazing thing-takes your temperature and tells you exactly where you are in your cycle. Cool, eh? Have it. It's yours."

Meredith examined the cylindrical appliance and imagined herself as an ovum, a gelatinous microscopic dot floating through the dark tunnel of her Fallopian tube to-where? To meet a force who had not yet revealed himself. The elusive biological stand-up artist. How many blind dates had been made and broken? How many eggs had showed up on time, checked the reservation, taken a table, ordered a gla.s.s of champagne and waited...fifteen minutes, twenty, half an hour, staring at the bread basket, wishing they had brought a magazine, toying with their cell phone, avoiding the pitying glance of the waiter, until finally skulking out, burning with shame and rejection at the hands of a lover they had never met.

Meredith thanked Mish, then placed the ovulation measuring device in her handbag and snapped it shut.

"More libations, please!" Mish shouted.

Meredith excused herself.

The bathroom was a world of frosted gla.s.s urinals (for women!) and a mossy waterfall down one wall for handwashing. In the powder room, half a dozen Arabian Hilton-sisters look-alikes sprawled on love seats playing with one another's hair and reapplying makeup. Meredith did something she never did sober: she looked in the mirror. Not just for a quick check to make sure her clothes weren't on inside out, but for a close and critical personal inspection.

Standing before her was a slight young woman, eyes peeking out from under dark bangs. She pushed her hair from her forehead and looked more carefully at the face-small, heart-shaped, with a straight nose and clear, if pale, skin. The chin, with its witchy prominence, kept her from being typically pretty. But Meredith had never minded. Pretty girls, she had noticed at school, tended to be much more unhappy and markedly less sane than almost-pretty girls. The world had a way of raising the expectations of the pretty perilously high and, in the vast majority of cases, dashing them on the rocks. She did not envy the Cleopatras, the Princess Dianas or the Marilyn Monroes. Much safer to be the girl with the pointy chin whom Misery (that shameless social climber) sn.o.bbishly overlooks. Satisfied, she removed a tube of clear gloss from her handbag and applied a modest daub to her lips.

When she returned, Mish was deep in conversation with a yellow-haired man in a sleeveless leather vest whom Meredith automatically took to be gay. He said something and Mish slapped his chest and erupted into one of her noisy, throat-pumping honks.

"Mere! C'mere!" Mish grabbed her hand and squashed it between her palms. She turned to the leather vest and grinned. "I want you to meet my very best girl-Meredith Moore. She's doing continuity on the new Osmond Crouch picture and she got me a job too."

On top of the vest was a head. Not a bad head, either. Possibly a little over-gooped in the hair department, but even-featured and straight-toothed.

"Charming to meet you both. Gunther," said the head.

He had a faint German inflection on top of his London accent that made him sound slightly formal. Meredith liked it.

"I hope you don't mind my being so forward, but when I saw your friend here at the bar I could not resist the opportunity to bother her."

Mish slapped his chest again and laughed. "What a load of cack-he was asking about you the whole time."

"Me?" Meredith asked.