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unintelligent monkey with certain vague perversities in the way of human behavior but we will prove to this monkey that his conceits cannot possibly keep us harnessed,” the director says and then begins to cough. He says that he is sorry but he cannot seem to get over the cigarette habit which appeals to all the latent self-destructiveness in his European temperament and reminds her that he would like to see her reading the recommended books at the earliest possible opportunity. Then he adds that he will of course see her tomorrow morning and hangs up. Susan replaces the phone carefully and goes back to the living room where Timothy, leaning over the typewriter, looks at her incuriously and asks if she is carrying on some kind of relationship behind his back. She starts to explain and then realizes that he is not listening. She only goes to him and rubs his shoulders absently for a time, scanning the row of paperbacks on shelves over his head to see if there is anything useful there. She sees a couple of titles by Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal but suspects that this is nothing like what the director had in mind.

CHAPTER XIX
    Later that night, after they have violent and perverse sex, Susan falls from Timothy and onto her own side of the bed, falls into sleep that way and has a dream. In the dream the film has opened in first-run theaters throughout the world and is an enormous critical success. Her own performance is praised as being of great delicacy and range, showing not only artistic control but that kind of rare sensitivity and fragility which are almost never combined in newer actresses. She seems to be attending some kind of show business party; virtually every celebrity of whom she has heard is there and seem to be interested in talking to her but she, in a formal, strapless evening gown, is unable to socialize because she is pinned off in a corner by Phil who seems to be talking intensely to her. She cannot understand a word he is saying; he is talking in a strange language, Portuguese perhaps, from the context of which every now and then a familiar word or phrase emerges disconnected, floating like a bird above a swamp. “No percentage,” Phil is saying to her before going off into another flood of Portuguese or “you understand integrity is the key,” and she moves to respond, trying to forestall him with the touch of a hand or even a breast but he will not be stopped. Over his shoulder she can see the faces of people anxious to meet with her and offer her promising opportunities for her career: a famous Hollywood producer is there, three female actresses who she has always admired, the senior senator from the state of New York, and her father as well, with a conciliatory and beckoning expression on his face, motioning for her to come toward him and grant forgiveness. She attempts to move toward them, pick up the strands of her career but she cannot pass Phil; his short, blunt body is in the way and, as she moves to pass him forcibly, she confronts him fully through the eyes, understands, in one glance, that he is in some kind of unspeakable pain and that as much as she wants to she simply cannot hurt him in this way. Perhaps it is not Portuguese which he is speaking at all but a kind of neologistic language which is the product of severe brain damage. Perhaps he is trying to communicate with her in the only way he knows how and she is the only person who can understand him. “Good God grant,” Phil says and whisks his fingers down the underside of her bare arm, across her hand and then caresses her under the chin, “God grant good,” he says and now moves toward her purposefully, his language still somehow incomprehensible but more demanding: he wants something — she can tell this now — there is some unspeakable need at the heart of his purpose and, as her father, the senior senator from New York, the three female actresses, and the Hollywood producer look on, Phil tears his clothes open with a cry