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back. A fiery waterfall of hair streamed around his shoulders as he flicked his brush like a sword against the canvas.
    Something happened there, Misty thought.
    She was not sure what, but she no longer felt right calling herself an artist. She danced, an artist created . She mentally commanded Duncan to look down and favor her with his smile. But he did not.
    Her real name was Joanne Kowalski. She had dropped out of an Ohio high school half way through her senior year and had hitch-hiked to Los Angeles, where she bought a fake ID and took a job as what the ad in the newspaper called a Dance Hostess. It was not easy stripping at first, but five years had hardened her to where she could bend over and stick her firm, g-stringed derriere in a stranger’s face without a second thought. She had seen a lot in her twenty-two years, much of it bad, and God help her, she was not the swiftest deer in the concrete forest. But through it all she still believed in Prince Charming, and she half-suspected Duncan Delaney was his first cousin.
    Misty wished Pris were there. Pris hung out with artists. Pris could advise her on how they felt and what they thought. But Pris was not scheduled to work that night. So Misty sighed and went back inside the Hollywood Bar and Grill and told Champagne and Cassandra about the peculiar painter across the street.
       
    Duncan finished the painting at midnight.
    A shaft of light divided Roscoe into sun and shadow, tattoos quiet across his muscles like the sleeping cat on his lap. All was harsh and dark except for a light in Roscoe’s eyes that was not innocence. Instead there was wonder there, and a juvenile thrill Roscoe had thought lost years before.
    Duncan sat on his window sill. Cat jumped into his lap beneath his hand. Long hairs and businessmen, union men and those without proper documentation, went in and out of the Hollywood. Each time the portal opened rock music drifted onto the street like a guitar call to arms. He turned off the lights, stripped, and crawled into the sleeping bag. A streetlight outside his window bathed him in its creme soda glow. He pulled his Stetson over his eyes and settled into a restless sleep.
       
    Duncan dreamed he sat at a picnic table beside his father in a courtroom on the open prairie. Benjamin sat on the bench holding a gavel and wearing a robe black as his eyes. Fiona sat in a witness stand to his right. Woody wore a bailiff’s uniform and carried a cattle prod in a holster. Tiffy stood before a jury box filled with Fiona’s bridge club.
    “What happened next, Mrs. Delaney?” Tiffy inquired.
    “I remember smelling kerosene as the jet dumped its fuel. We heard a sound like a cork popping out of a champagne bottle, only louder, and then the jet trailed smoke.”
    Fiona touched a lace handkerchief to her eyes. Duncan, in a rare flash of perception, saw where she was heading.
    “Your honor!” he yelled. “Benjamin! I object!”
    Benjamin peered down from his seat near the clouds, mist swirling about him. “On what grounds?”
    “This is irrelevant and pointless. My dad did what he had to do. He should have been given a medal but instead my mother has put his memory on trial every day since the day he died.”
    “Hey,” Benjamin said, “that’s good!”
    Tiffy said, “the relevance, your honor, is that he didn’t have to do anything. And the point is that what he did accomplished nothing except his death.”
    “Well,” Benjamin wobbled, “since you put it that way. Overruled. Go on, Fiona.”
    “Thank you, your honor,” Fiona said.
    Duncan suspected it was a dream. Benjamin and Fiona were being too cordial. Plus, most courts were located indoors.
    “When the jet came down Sean jumped onto his horse and rode away. That’s the last I saw of him. Now I see the same thing happening with Duncan. This stupid desire to do what’s right. Right for who? Not for me!”
    Tiffy speared Duncan with her eyes. “I couldn’t agree more.”
    “Hey,”