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There, ” Karen said. “If you can’t hear that, Harry, you’re deaf.”
    He wanted to ask her how old Miguel was and what he looked like. Miguel . . . and thought of Michael, her former, now a superstar. Michael had lived here and slept in this bed. He wondered if Miguel ever got in it with her. Karen was closing in on forty but still a knockout. She kept in shape, had given up dope for health food, switched from regular cigarettes to low-tar menthols.
    â€œHarry, don’t go to sleep on me.”
    He said, “Have I ever done that?” Was quiet for a moment and said, “You have any idea what that is?”
    â€œThose are voices, Harry. People talking.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œOn television. Somebody came in and turned the TV on.”
    â€œYou sure?”
    â€œListen, will you?”
    Harry raised his head from the pillow, going along, hearing a faint monotone sound that gradually became voices. She was right, two people talking. He cocked his head in the bedroom silence and after a moment said, “You know who the one guy sounds like? Shecky Greene.”
    Karen turned her head, a slow move, to give him a look over the shoulder. “You’re still smashed, aren’t you?” Judging him, but the tone not unsympathetic, a little sad.
    â€œI’m fine.”
    Maybe half in the bag but still alert, with a nice glow. The headache would come later if he didn’t take something. He must have put away half the fifth of Scotch earlier, down in the study where the TV was on, while he told Karen about his situation, his thirty years in the picture business on the brink. He was about to become either a major player or might never be heard from again. And she sat there listening to him like a fucking Teamsters business agent, no reaction, no sympathy. He thought of something else and said:
    â€œMaybe, you know how you go downstairs in the morning sometimes you see pictures cockeyed on the wall? You’re thinking, This is some hangover, wow. Then you see on the news there was an earthquake during the night over near Pasadena someplace. Not a big one, like a four-point-two. You know? Maybe it’s something like that, an atmospheric disturbance turned on the TV.”
    Karen was listening, but not to him, staring at the bedroom doorway, pitch-dark out there, her nice slim back arched.
    â€œOr maybe it’s only the wind,” Harry said.
    That got her looking at him again because she knew the line, intimately. From Grotesque, Part Two, one of his highest grossing pictures. The maniac’s up on the roof ripping out shingles with his bare hands; inside the house the male lead with all the curly hair stares grimly at the ceiling as Karen, playing the girl,says to him, “Maybe it’s only the wind.” She hated the line, refused to say it until he convinced her it was okay, it worked.
    â€œI love your attitude,” Karen said. “What do you care if somebody broke in, it’s not your house.”
    â€œIf you think somebody broke in, why don’t you call the police?”
    â€œBecause I don’t intentionally allow myself to look stupid,” Karen said, “if I can help it. Not anymore.”
    The way she kept staring at him, over the shoulder, was a nice angle. The dark hair against pale skin. The lighting wasn’t bad either, Karen backlit with the windows behind her. It took at least ten years off her age, the tough little broad a sweet young thing again in her white T-shirt. She was telling him now, in a thoughtful tone, “When I came upstairs, you stayed to finish your drink.”
    â€œI didn’t turn the TV on.”
    â€œYou said you wanted to watch a few minutes of Carson.”
    She was right. “But I turned’ it off.”
    â€œHarry, you can’t be sure what you did.”
    â€œI’m positive.”
    Yeah, because he had turned it off the moment he thought about getting in bed