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returned, she had put one of his Junior Wells CDs on the stereo and helped herself to a drink. He listened to her talk about acting class, about her aspirations for stardom, about all the meaty roles she knew she could play. And twenty minutes later, when he was sure his gun was reloaded, he took her to bed.
    The edge was gone, the urgency, and with it much of his passion. She thrashed around for the audience, but he doubted it was any better for her than it was for him. He wanted sex, but perhaps he needed more. It was the first time another woman had been in his bed since Connie and, despite himself, he found he missed her, perhaps for the first time. This was their bed. For six years, this was where they'd made love, argued, cuddled, whispered, and kicked off the dog. Alice was a stranger in this bed and, oddly enough, Charlie felt like one, too. He resolved to go to lkea first thing tomorrow and buy a new one.
    When Charlie Willis woke up the next morning, Alice Doss was gone. But she had left him something to remember her by—a picture, a resume, and a tape.

    # # #

    Boyd Hartnell tooled down the Ventura Freeway to the studio in his Mercedes convertible, automobile exhaust blowing through his hair plugs. He loved the feeling of the wind whipping his hair—it was one of the few joys he had these days and a subtle reminder of the constant terror he lived under.
    His hairline had started receding at a steady rate when he was seventeen, a rate that increased tenfold when he became president of Pinnacle Studios, a hundredfold when he met Esther Radcliffe. Meeting her was like being exposed to radioactive waste. His hair came out in clumps.
    The old crone was vital to Pinnacle Studios and, by extension, his career. Although the studio had dozens of series shooting on the lot, only three of them were their own; the rest just used the facilities. Pinnacle's laughless comedy Bonjour, Buddy Bipp, was doomed. My Gun Has Bullets was on the ropes. But Miss Agatha was an insanely profitable hit that allowed the Japanese owners of Pinnacle Studios to forgive him for a string of expensive failures.
    His one and only mandate was to keep Esther happy.
    When she shot the cop Charlie Willis, Boyd nearly went bald with anxiety. Aftersaving her withered butt, he had to schedule two dozen emergency sessions with Dr. Desi for radical hair triage.
    Even with all the stress, he still looked better than Burt Reynolds or William Shatner. Hell, he was paying more per strand of hair than even they were. Dr. Desi only accepted a lucky few for his experimental, and highly expensive, procedure.
    In the 1970's, Boyd had proudly worn his shirt open, his chest hair fluffing out in vibrant manliness, more than compensating for his ever widening brow. But those days were gone. Nowadays, collars were buttoned all the way up. Boyd was left with nothing to distract from his retreating hairline.
    Then along came Dr. Desi and his brilliant innovation. Why should all that bountiful, hairy machismo go to waste, hidden under Boyd's shirt? These days, when people looked at Boyd Hartnell, they still saw a man with a hairy chest. Only now it was on his head.
    Now everything was as it should be. Esther was hard at work on a new butt-kicking season of Miss Agatha. He had a full head of hair and had even managed to get a new series out of the catastrophe. All told, Boyd considered himself pretty damn remarkable.
    He zipped past the stalled lane of cars waiting to turn into the Pinnacle Studios tour and took the next left, cruising under the shadow of the marble Pinnacle Pictures office tower to the executive gate. The guard stepped out of his knockoff Frank Lloyd Wright shack and waved him through. Boyd gave him the grandiose smile of the powerful and sailed toward his coveted private parking spot. He came to a sudden halt.
    There was a car in his spot. Not just any car. A 1959 Cadillac convertible, all fins and chrome and attitude. UBC chief Don DeBono was into