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off some gory statistics that I'd been blissfully unaware of—like that only one of every thirty-five thousand screenplays ever got made—and he was starting to bug the hell out of me.
    “I'm bugging you, aren't I?” he said.
    “No, no.”
    “A lot of people say I bug 'em because I push my stuff too much.”
    He had his elbows on the counter and I caught that cologne-in-lieu-of-a-shower smell, like a prep school freshman's dorm room— sweaty, sticky,
semeny.
    I waved him off. “Eh.”
    “It's just that here I am in the middle of Beverly Hills and I'm serving movie people all day and, heck, if I don't push myself, no one else will do it for me, know what I mean?”
    “Amen, brother.”
    “You should work here, man—you wouldn't believe the people you meet. And they're hiring.”
    “That right?”
    “Uh-huh. That's how Spielberg got started, you know—blowing his own horn. He doesn't so much now, but he did then.”
    “Sure.”
    “You know that story?”
    “Sure. What?”
    “About Spielberg—how he got started?”
    I nodded yes, but when he kept staring, I said, “What he do?”
    “He snuck onto the lot at Universal one day, found an empty office, and just moved in. He brought his scripts, moved some furniture in from another office, plugged in a phone. He waved to the guards, dropped in on executives just to say hi, ate in the commissary. Basically, he acted like he belonged there, and before long everyone was treating him like he did. That's how he got his first deal.”
    “No shit?”
    “You've got to push yourself, 'cause if you don't, no one else will.”
    Three-thirty in the morning, she was getting it real good. From my bed clear across the hall I could hear her.
“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, yes, yes, yes!
I closed my eyes, imagined her sitting on me, those monster jugs sloshing around the room.
    I was finished before she was.
    Still, I couldn't sleep. I'd had a fleeting opportunity after I came, but I kept dwelling on things, keeping my brain alive, I hadn't taken advantage of the burn in my eyeballs and now it was gone. I ran
How I Won Her Back
over in my head, thought of a line for the scene in which the protagonist and his girlfriend break up: “If you walk out that door, you're making the biggest mistake of my life!” Great movie line—too perfect for a book maybe—but fine for a romantic comedy. I got a notebook out of the fridge and wrote it down. Back in bed, I got to thinking about what the hamburg flipper had said. The stupid bastard was right; no one was going to push me if I didn't push myself. I was a salesman, for God sakes, Ishould be selling myself. Most writers didn't have the savvy I had. Most writers were geeks. I'd been in the trenches. I knew stuff. Maybe things weren't so out of my control anymore. I felt a giddy surge of adrenaline. The wait was over. Tomorrow I was going to make something happen.
    A knock. “Dude, you up?”
    I pulled on a pair of shorts, opened my peephole. The Herb guy who'd stolen my seventeen-dollar brownies. In boxer shorts this time, wearing my potholder T-shirt.
    “Dude,” he said again.
    I opened my door.
    “Do you remember the theme song from
Family Affair?”
    I was so exhausted I actually thought about it for a moment.
    “What are you doing?” I finally said.
    “Were you sleeping?”
    “What do you think?”
    “Sorry. Tiff wanted to know if you had any popcorn.”
    I stared at him.
    “Wasn't my idea. Come on, let me in. I got blow.”
    I sighed. “Wait here.”
    Herb swung the door open and a fireball of hair entered my room. He walked over to a picture pinned to the closet door, a snapshot of my high school girlfriend sitting on Santa's lap. I was Santa, though no one would be able to tell.
    “Who's this?”
    “Santa.”
    “The babe.”
    I picked an empty plate off the floor, brought it into the kitchenette. “Old girlfriend.”
    “Want a bump?”
    He held up a little amber vile.
    “No.”
    It was the first coke I'd seen