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while, every other fellow in Hollywood gives up even trying ’cause they know they won’t win.” He cradled the bottle as if it were a gold statuette.
    Doris shook her head. She fumbled in her purse until she found a small oval box with a mother-of-pearl lid, then opened the box and pulled out a pill. “Here,” she said, stepping closer and holding it out. “You’ve got yourself all worked up. This will calm you down.”
    He didn’t want to calm down. He wanted to rage, to kick and scream and punch until his throat and fists were raw. But he took the pill and swallowed it with a swig of whiskey. So did she, but she took hers dry.
    “Have another,” Doris ordered, so he took that one too.
    She walked across the room to inspect one of the ugly paintings. “You don’t understand,” she said with her back to him. “You’re just a kid and you’re so sure about the ways things are… but they don’t have to be that way. When you get a little older, you’ll see you had so many more possibilities, only now it’s too late and those chances have slipped from your fingers.” Doris turned to look at him. “But they haven’t slipped from your fingers yet, Jacky. You still have so many ways to be happy.”
    Jack lurched across the room and collapsed into the chair. “I’m not happy.”
    “Not now, no. You’re disappointed and your feelings are hurt. But that’s just today. Tomorrow… who knows what will come along?”
    “Nothing will fucking come along. I’ll be standing in congealed blood, hacking at chunks of dead animal until my hands cramp and my knees lock.”
    “There are other options.”
    “What? Bending over for some goddamn car salesman and his pervert non-nephew? Maybe I should just sell myself on the streets.” He’d seen the hustlers, the hungry, feral-looking boys who gave it up for a few bills.
    “Baby,” Doris breathed. When she gave him more pills, he took them with quick gulps from his rapidly emptying bottle.
    Doris sat on one of the beds—the one with the unmussed comforter—and frowned at him. The light made her blonde hair glow like a halo, and giant wings unfurled from her back. They weren’t feathery and white, but gray and furry, like her coat. “Like a myth,” he said to her, or at least tried to say. His tongue was stupid and slow.
    “Jacky, did you mean what you said to Sam last night?”
    He couldn’t answer; his thoughts were too jumbled. “I didn’t have a script. Didn’t know my lines.”
    “You threatened to go to the press and tell them Sam’s secrets. You didn’t mean that, did you? You’re a good boy, Jacky.”
    “Not a good boy. Never have been. Ask Dad.”
    “But you have to understand—if you talk to the press, Sam will be ruined, but not just him. Me too, honey. And all those people who work for him. Some of them are your friends.”
    “No friends,” he snarled. He tried to drink more whiskey, but the bottle was empty. Maybe there was more somewhere. Hadn’t he bought beer? If the light wasn’t so glaring and the air so thick and fuzzy, he could see. He could see, goddammit.
    Doris’s wings brought her over to him. He struggled not to cry; she was beautiful, but she wasn’t what he wanted. He couldn’t… couldn’t remember what he wanted. “I wanted to swim,” he croaked. “Like flying.”
    “Here. These will make it all better, Jacky.”
    He swallowed what she gave him. Like candy, but bitter. “Nobody wants bitter candy.”
    “But you want—”
    “I want to swim, Doris. Please?” He was small and young and helpless and the world was far too big and difficult.
    She stared at him for a million years. A million million years, so that while he waited, the Grand Canyon eroded away and was reborn. He got tired of waiting and struggled to his feet. “Swimming.”
    She took his arm and steadied him. He should take off his clothes. But that wasn’t allowed, not without a suit, and the suit was from some other boy Sam fucked. Maybe Benny