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figured out. He acted all hard, but really he was one of those guys who couldn’t stand to have anybody hate him. Now that he’d had his fun freaking me out, he was going to pin everything on Sophie and look like the good guy.
    “Bullshit,” I said. “Get out of here.”
    He stood up. I stood too. I’d expected him to try to argue, but he looked defeated, almost relieved.
    “Okay,” he said.
    But at our door, he turned back to me, and now he looked scared.
    “She told me this other thing,” he said. “She told me that because of something that happened to you, you might get really mad if I tried to kiss you. That you might even leave the set. But that I shouldn’t worry because that was part of it. Whatever happened to you—she didn’t say what—was going to make the movie better.”
    I had to sit back down.
    “I didn’t ask what it was,” he went on. “I should have. I knew we were doing something fucked up to you, and I did it anyway, and I’m sorry.”
    And then he did leave, and I was alone, and I didn’t know if I believed him, but I noticed that I was picking all my clothes up off the floor, like I didn’t want them touching hers anymore.
    S OPHIE CAME HOME HOURS LATER . I’d finished the bottle of wine and started in on somebody’s cheap vodka from the kitchen freezer, and I was in what my mom used to call a bloodred mood. I wanted Sophie to ask me what was wrong, but she came in all important, talking about her day, wearing a new suit jacket she’d bought, and finally when she lay back on the bed and started talking at the ceiling without even looking at me, I gave up and interrupted.
    “Peter came to see me today,” I told her.
    She didn’t look worried. She didn’t look at me at all. She was still staring at the ceiling like something was written up there.
    “I thought you weren’t speaking to him,” she said.
    “I wasn’t,” I said.
    Sophie looked at me then. She sat up on her elbows and fixed mewith those giant eyes, but still she didn’t look angry or upset. She just looked focused, like she was in the editing room, cutting a tough scene.
    “Did you tell him to kiss me?” I asked.
    “Did he say that?” Sophie asked.
    “Is it true?”
    I wanted so badly for her to say something that made sense, something simple and obvious that would make Peter the liar and not her. Instead she stood up, took her jacket off, ran her fingers through her hair. She still just looked like she was thinking.
    I started yelling. “Tell me if it’s fucking true!”
    “Can we talk about this in the morning?” she asked.
    She held her hand out to me the way she did when she wanted me to come to bed. I took it and dug my nails into it the way I did when she was making me feel so good it hurt.
    “Did you tell Peter to kiss me?” I asked again.
    She looked away. “I did,” she said.
    I threw my jar of vodka against the wall. When it shattered into a million pieces, I picked up the bottle and threw that too. I was looking around for something else to throw when Sophie started talking in a new voice, loud and with a panicky edge on it.
    “Allison, you know when you want something to be perfect?”
    “No!” I shouted.
    “Well, you know when I want something to be perfect?”
    I turned to face her. My blood was pounding in my ears.
    “Sometimes I just want that so badly that I don’t think about what will happen or how other people feel. I can’t think about it, even though I know I should.”
    “Why can’t you?” I asked.
    Her eyes were wet. I realized she was scared now, as scared as I’d ever seen her. She raised her arms in a silent shrug, and I remembered how small she was, how fragile.
    “Well, you need to learn,” I said. I wasn’t yelling anymore. I was hoarse. “You can’t be like this forever.”
    “I know,” she said. She held out her hand again, and this time I took it and lay down on the bed with her. But all that night I dreamed a dog was chasing me, barking and biting