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joke. Struggling with their luggage, they headed toward the terminal. He opened the back door and took his bag out of the backseat, moving with the jocular ease of a tourist, then removed the parking ticket from his shirt pocket and placed it out on the dashboard where anyone walking by might see it. It would be there, in plain sight, in the morning.
    The scream of a jet filled the sky. Thick black smoke trailed the plane. The sound of it was even louder than he had imagined when he’d written the scene in his script. Before leaving the car, he ran his gloved hand over the top of the trunk in a gesture of apology. Of course he hoped that she’d been right about his ending. He hoped in the deepest part of him that she’d been right and standing there he whispered a prayer to the heavens that, come morning, someone would hear her muffled cries and save her.
    That all depended on fate, of course.
    On the other hand, it was entirely possible that someone would steal the car and drive away.
    He didn’t know what fate had in store for Hedda Chase, and he didn’t care.
    He walked into the terminal and checked in at the airline’s counter. The woman took his bag and he watched it disappear on the conveyor belt. He stood there watching it vanish. The bag contained nothing he would miss. “Mr. Waters?” The woman smiled at him with her orange lipstick the way people smile too much when they think you’re crazy and handed him his ticket and directed him toward the gate. Walking across the slick floors toward the escalator in the distance it occurred to him how disinterested he was in going home. He tried to picture Marion’s face. She was a mirage, he thought. The sounds around him seemed to fade. It became very quiet, almost as quiet as the African desert. He was thinking about the famous last shot in The Passenger, the camera framed on an open window through which the world beyond continued, despite Nicholson’s unfortunate death.
    It made him think of poor Hedda Chase.
    It made him think of her gentle weight as he’d carried her out through the darkness to the garage, her head pressed against his chest like a child’s, tufts of breath escaping from her mouth. He’d set her down into the trunk with the utmost care.
    A car horn went off outside the glass doors. Headlights glared. It occurred to him that getting on the plane was the last thing he wanted to do. On an impulse, he turned around and headed for the Hertz kiosk. He rented a car; a Mercedes. He had never driven a Mercedes before. It handled smoothly, he thought; it was a terrific car. He sat back and pulled onto the freeway. There was traffic; he didn’t mind. He was glad to have time to think. He sensed that something important had occurred. Something profound. He thought about what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He was fairly certain it didn’t have anything to do with Equitable Life. In fact, he was glad his promotion hadn’t come through. They could take their promotion and shove it, that’s what they could do. He was tired of waiting in line for things he didn’t even want. Tired of being manipulated by false promises. He wanted to change the way things were. He wasn’t sure how, exactly, but change seemed inevitable. And whether or not his wife would be part of it, well, he didn’t know that either.
    He thought of the girl in his motel room and wondered if she’d found the money he’d left for her. A girl like that was at a tremendous disadvantage, he realized. Leaving the money had been the right thing to do. He hoped she would use it wisely.
    A feeling of happiness flooded his body. So what if it was a lousy script, he thought. It wasn’t the worst thing.
    He leaned back against the seat and looked out the window at all the cars and the people in them. How strange the world was, he thought. How strange and marvelous. And how blessed he felt to be part of it.

2
    Hugh drove along Hollywood Boulevard past the brightly lit windows of