indignation.
    "Then this is real!" I felt my breath catch. "The lead . . ." I sat down. This was a twenty- million- dollar budget with a solid script and a superior director. (I didn't know that dayâ and it was a few years offâ that I would one day be married to Andre Lucerne, perhaps the most demanding director in Hollywood.) "You're sure? Andre Lucerne cast me ?" I remember the doubts starting to creep in, that a mistake had been made, a mix- up in head shots or the audition tapes. I even suspected Harry might have bribed the producer, used blackmail, called in a life- and- death favor owed and I would be found out and dismissed as a fraud. I was working up to full- fledged panic when I heard Harry moving.
    He lifted his cumbersome frame out of the plush leather desk chair and waddled to a small fridge you wouldn't know was there, tucked beneath some shelves in the well- appointed, screaming- success office. He leaned down heavily and pulled out a split of champagne, and from a nearby cabinet two flutes. "If you didn't have work tonight, we'd celebrate properly at Spago, on the Strip. Will this do for now?" He held up a bottle of Cristal. Spago was the place to be seen; the Cristal cost about what a New York City immigrant garment worker made in a week. He popped the cork and poured out wine and fizz.
    I reached blindly for the glass Harry pushed toward me. I'd had my small victories; someâ plenty ofâ actors would say I was in a good place even without this bit of luck, but I suddenly didn't know what to do, didn't know how to handle getting what I wanted. Harry was always saying luck had nothing to do with it, but that's not so; luck is either at work in a person's life or it's not. I sagged backward into the thick cushions of Harry's buffalo- hide sofa and put the flute down on the coffee table. Harry chuckled. I looked up; tears filled my eyes, ready to spill over. " Thank you, Harry," I whispered.
    "Don't thank me. All I did was make a few calls, let the world know an angel had descended. You did the rest."
    That snapped me back to my senses. I never knew if Harry bought his own lines or not. I jumped up, pointing to the phone on his desk. "I have to tell Joe!"
    Harry snorted. "Go ahead, call that chump. You're halfway up the mountain; see if he can't find a way to drag you back down."
    I smiled. "Don't ruin it, Harry," I said, reaching for the flute
with my right hand as I punched in the numbers with my left. I raised the glass to Harry and took the bubbly down in one swallow. I listened impatiently to Joe's ring tone but hung up when the leave- a- message voice came on. I didn't leave one. I canceled the call and saw what I'd just done register on Harry's face. I looked at him as I chewed on my lower lip.
    "This is a game changer, Ardennes," Harry said. "Nothing will be the same after today." And nothing ever was.
S o here I am in L.A., climbing a mountain of remembering, killing a day piled high with the past. I should give Proust another try. I walked idly up to the pavilion to check on the condom before heading back to my freshly cleaned rooms. Remembrance of Things Past â I never got through it. Joe did; all seven volumes in one year, ten pages a night. Joe, what's he up to now? I miss his ironclad discipline. I've read all his books, four so far. Remembrance of Joe . . . There it is! Dropped a foot farther down toward the parking lot, lying in the dirt; sunshine has baked the rubber hard, the semen into crisp mica crusts. Do the lovers remember their fallen condom; is it part of their meaningful past?
    Where did I see that rosemary the other day, along one of the paths? I wanted to pick a few stems on the off chance I'd grow ambitious in the little kitchen and maybe cook a chicken.
    I gave up on the rosemary and turned toward