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want a part? I’d be—”
    “Are you asking me?” She blinked in surprise.
    He didn’t like women who couldn’t tell when he was joking.
    “Everybody wants to be in movies,” Pellam said, not looking at her directly, but studying her reflection in a round wall mirror. “Everybody wants to be rich. Everybody wants to be young. Everybody wants to be thin.”
    She— Meg he remembered her name (MAC-10, rocket, terrier, call Trudie, Meg, Meg, Meg)—she swallowed whatever she was going to say and instead offered: “I’ve got a son.” Saying that seemed to make her more comfortable, established some boundaries. Yo, men, secure the perimeter. Pellam was gettingtired of the visit. He had his present, she had her son and her husband’s massive rings. Now he wanted her to leave. Meg said, “He’d love to be in a movie.”
    “You don’t want him to be.” Pellam said in a tone that said he knew.
    “I don’t know. He’s really into California. We went to Universal Studios last year. He loved it. I did too.”
    “Universal Studios isn’t Hollywood. Except in the most general of senses.”
    Meg said, “You have any kids?” Now her eyes did the heart–finger scan.
    “Nope,” he said.
    A pause. “I think it’d be tough to have a job like yours and have kids.”
    “It would, true.”
    “Or,” she said, “be married.”
    “Also true.”
    “So, you’re not?”
    “Divorced.”
    Meg nodded. He wondered if she was storing this information and, if so, in what kind of file.
    “So, you just drive around and look for places to shoot movies?”
    He thought for a moment and decided that described his life about as succinctly as anybody’d ever done. “Yep.”
    A luxuriant silence.
    She handed him a piece of paper. “That’s my insurance agent.”
    He put the slip on the bedside table, next to the bedpan.
    “My husband told me not to say anything to you. . . . But, I had to come by.”
    (“John, cops and insurance companies they’re going to eat up your words like M&M’s. Don’t say a goddamn syllable to the cannibals, got it?”)
    He told her, “These things happen.”
    “I hit a patch of leaves. I wasn’t expecting to see somebody in the middle of the street.”
    He said, “You’ve acted, haven’t you?”
    She laughed in surprise. “No. I did some modeling. Just for a year. How could you tell?”
    He said, “The way you carry yourself. . . . I don’t know. Just an impression.”
    He felt she wanted to warm up, but was keeping the tone conversational. She continued, “I lived in Manhattan for a while. I did some fashion work. But I was too short to get good assignments. I didn’t like it anyway.” She folded her arm across her chest and looked for the door, seemed relieved that it was only six feet away. “Why are you asking me these questions?”
    “I always like to find out from the locals about locations I’m scouting. It’s—”
    “Locals?” She tromped hard on the frown, but some of it escaped.
    He said, “I get the feeling you’ve lived here long enough to give me an idea of what Cleary’s really like.”
    Meg was grimacing. Whatever was behind the visit—Pellam didn’t have a clue what that might be—wasn’t working out. On cue, she looked at her watch. “I should go. There’s someone covering for me at the office.”
    “When I get out of here—they’re paroling me tomorrow—let me buy you lunch.”
    “No, I—”
    “Not to worry,” Pellam said. “I’ll drive.”
    “Uh, I don’t think that’s a very good idea. I’ve got a lot going on. I’m very busy.”
    “People are busy in Cleary?”
    Okay, it was a little over the line with that one. He’d forgotten you have to be real careful when you hit people in their hometowns. Especially if you’re from one that’s a thousand times bigger than theirs. But come on, country folk, you gotta have a sense of humor.
    She bristled. “Yes, people are busy in Cleary. There’s more to this town than people like