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terrazzo floors, headlong toward the kitchen.
    Ralph sat on a stool, across from a Sub-Zero the size of a giant’s armoire. The handsome, mordantly stubbled face with dimpled chin, hollowed cheeks and tormented eyes reminded Tull of a monk in flight from a monastery—never mind that Trinnie had decked him out in Dries and motocross Menichetti and in six scant weeks addicted him to Keratase emulsions, Hortus Mirabilis elixirs, Lorenzo Villoresi aftershaves and the arcane almond pastes of Santa Maria Novella. Today he wore an absurd Edwardian tux that made Louis Trotter look positively staid. The popinjay’s head hung heavily, mocked by the pots and pans that dangled around him in cheerful, coppery profusion.
    â€œHey, Ralph.”
    He looked up, annoyed. “
Why
do you call me that?”
    â€œSorry. I forget.”
    With a grunt, Tull broke the vacuum’d death grip of the Sub-Zero and began to forage.
    â€œDo I fuck with
your
name? Do I call you ‘Teal’?”
    Tull phonily mused. “You can call me that.” That was bogus; it would have irritated him no end. Lugging Tupperware filled with Southern-fried leftovers from the shelves, he changed tack. “Did you hear about the tapir? It pulled off a zookeeper’s arm. It was on the news.”
    â€œThere’s a rocky island near San Francisco,” said Ralph smugly, “where some naturalists live. They saw a sea lion wash ashore, its ass bit off by a shark, clean. It lived for days, shimmying along on the front fins—whenever the thing tried to rest, a gull would come give it a little peck and it’d move on. This went on for
days
.”
    â€œThat’s rad.”
    â€œA perfect marriage of Beckett and Bosch.” He simpered, then dementedly shrieked, “Teal!” like a sadistic gull himself. The boy recoiled, glowering.
    â€œOh! Then there’s the
whale
that got trapped too far inland when the water started icing up—Alaska or something. The polar bears just sat in a ring around the hole swiping at it while a shark had his way from underneath. Oh, the natural world! How pristine and unforgiving! Like Hollywood, no?” He wriggled and sneered and cockadoodled: “Teal! Teal!”
    Tull lost his cool. “If you want your name pronounced
Rafe
, then why don’t you just spell it that way? With an
f
instead of an
l
?”
    While it wouldn’t be fair to say that Tull baited his mother’s “friend”—the latest, most tolerable of a line of friends stretching as far back as he could remember—he wasn’t exactly indifferent.
    â€œHow would
you
know how I spell it?” asked the poseur.
    â€œMom said.”
    â€œOh. In your many discussions. Of me.”
    â€œWe were talking about Ralph Fiennes, the actor”—Tull used the
l
again, as in
Ralph’s Foodmarket
, and egregiously rhymed Fiennes with
Viennas
—“and she said you pronounced yours the same way.”
    â€œIt’s
Rafe
!” he furied, nostrils flaring.
“Rafe Fines!”
The thirtysomething self-anointed screenwriter from Colorado drew a hand through long, gel’d hair. “In this town, unless you’re very lucky, unless you’re
Ron
Bass
”—he spat the name out like pus—“you need something else, something small and subliminal. What the Jews call minor shtick.” Tull greedily set upon half a cold chicken, green peas and whipped potatoes. “Take ‘Rafe Fines.’
You
brought him up.
‘Rafe Fines’ ”—
he called out the name as if he were announcing the nominees for the Golden Globes—“is a ‘double hit.’ You
read
‘Ralph,’ but you
hear
‘Rafe.’ You
read
‘Fee-ehnnez’ but
hear
‘Fines.’ The
juxtaposition
makes it memorable. It oscillates. And that’s especially true of a ‘double hit.’ ”
    â€œWhere’s Candelaria?”