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you’ll ever see—”
    “There, perfect,” Pellam announced.
    She frowned.
    “Keep talking. You’re giving me a feel for the place. That’s just what I’m looking for.”
    “I should go.”
    He said, “No, you shouldn’t.”
    “Anyway, I’m not a local. I’ve only lived here for—”
    “Don’t tell me, let me guess. . . .” Pellam was feeling perverse (hell, why not? She’d run him over). “Ten years.”
    Her eyes flared. “What makes you think I’ve lived here that long?”
    In for a penny, in for a pound.
    “The makeup, the hair, the clothes—”
    “What’s wrong with—?” Her voice was high, indignant.
    “Nothing. You just asked me—”
    “Never mind.” Meg unfolded her arms and walked to the door.
    Pellam asked, “So when can we get together?”
    “The word never comes to mind.” She stepped through the doorway, gripping the knob hard thenmust’ve decided she shouldn’t be slamming clinic doors and closed it silently. A second later it opened and she said to him, “And for your information, I’ve lived here for five years, not ten.”
    The door closed again, harder this time.
    Ah, she’ll be back.
    Pellam heard her low heels tapping on the linoleum, then the grind of the front door and then nothing.
    She’ll be back. She’s on her way now.
    A car started.
    She’ll be back.
    He heard a car strew gravel as it hit the road, then the whine of gears.
    Okay, maybe not.
    BZZZZT.
    Marty stuffed the moist square of the Polaroid into his pocket and squinted as he looked at a bald spot on the small mountain across a ravine. Acid rain’d eaten away at a lot of the greenery. It didn’t look good at all. By the time Marty’d gone to college, schools were offering degrees in the environment. Marty could recognize acid rain.
    He took four pictures, numbered them and slipped them into his pocket. All location scouts he knew used Polaroids, but Marty was an amateur photographer and would’ve preferred to use his old Nikkormat 35mm. The variation in the lenses—wide-angle, telephoto—would give a better idea of what the scenery and locations looked like through the Panaflex movie camera. But the studio paid his salary and the studio said ’Roids.
    So ’Roids were what they were going to get.
    Marty wanted to be a cinematographer eventually. He knew cameras. He liked the murmuring gears and heavy, oil-scented parts that fit together so well. He liked the perfectly ground disks of the Schneider lenses, set into their royal-blue velvet carrying cases. He liked the portable Arriflex 35mm cameras, which cameramen would carry around on sets like rocket launchers. He liked the robotic contraption of Steadicams.
    He figured a couple more years of location scouting, then it would be about time for his break (a unit director would call out, “Holy Mother, the director of photography’s on a bender—you, kid, get behind the Panaflex. Roll, roll, roll . . .”). Until that happened, however, being a location scout would do. Especially being a location scout for John Pellam, where you tended to get a week of experience in the movie business for every day you worked.
    Marty wandered back down the hill toward the rented Tempo.
    Get the feel.
    Marty worked hard at trying to get the feel. Pellam made him read the scripts over and over. Scripts are a bitch to read but he kept at it. Pellam would question him about a story. You gotta get the feel for it, he’d say.
    The feel . . . that was the extra ten percent that Pellam—for all his bullshit and fire-me-if-you-want attitude—was always talking about. The extra ten percent that Pellam delivered. This was the essential lesson Marty had learned from John Pellam.
    The day was getting hot. The sun was out. Marty looked at his watch. There were still thirteen locations he had to find but sun like this was too good to miss. Beer break. Marty went to the trunk of the car and took out a Miller. He opened it. He sat on the rear bumper as he flipped