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be.” Wide white endorsement of Dr. Weldon Markowitz’s handicraft. “I bought it. Escrow just closed.”
    “Wow. Congratulations.”
    “Yeah, yeah, I know it seems crazy.” Steve cut the engine, pushed the seat back, stretched his legs. Malcolm, always a cramped passenger, appreciated the extra room. “Here’s the story—just between us and these walls, okay? I love Ramona, she loves me, we’re getting hitched, can’t say when but we are. Definitely. But there’s a problem.”
    Steve turned and gazed out the driver’s window. “She can’t have kids. Some kind of scarring, there’s no chance in hell.”
    Malcolm thought:
I exist. There’s always a chance.
He said, “Sorry.”
    “Bad scarring,” said Steve. “But no problem, she’s okay with it and I am, too. So here’s what we’re gonna do: I’ll make a few more shit-flicks, pile up the dough, invest, whatever it takes to keep the dough handy. At some point, we’ll sell Blue Jay, get what we put in. Then
adios
to the city and we move out here. This place’ll be grand after I get it fixed up. C’mon, lemme show you.”
    —
    Inside, the house was dusty, drafty, musty, plaster walls pocked like Swiss cheese, scarred so deeply in some spots that the underlying lath was exposed. No fixtures, no light switches or plates, but remnants of a kinder time suggested themselves: burnished, knotty-pine walls, oak flooring that had miraculously remained intact and felt rock-hard under Malcolm’s feet, crown and shoe moldings, rosettes around ragged ovals that had once housed electrical fixtures.
    The ground floor was huge, the former kitchen stripped of appliances but larger than the apartment Malcolm had grown up in and accompanied by a butler’s pantry and an eat-in breakfast room with a domed ceiling. The dining room could accommodate two dozen. Several equally commodious spaces were designated by Steve as “living room, parlor, study, sewing room, view room,” as he clomped around in his crocodile Lucchese boots.
    Upstairs were six bedrooms, the largest (“obviously the master suite, kid”) with its own white-tile bathroom, still set up with a huge clawfoot tub. The five others shared a second, even larger lav. At the far end was a double-door closet able to house a Murphy bed but containing only a few shelves—remnants of what had once been built-in cabinetry.
    “For linens,” said Steve. “We’re gonna need room for lots of linens and supplies because of the plan. Go ahead, ask.”
    Malcolm laughed. “Pray tell.”
    Steve clapped his brother’s back, hard enough to rattle Malcolm’s ribs. “This,
Señor
Brother, is going to be the ultimate, cool, state-of-the-art movie ranch, forget dumps like Deuces Wild, we’re gonna have real dressing rooms, places you can stay overnight, I’m talking actual structures on solid foundations, not goddamn trailers. Not just for westerns, we’ll be set up for anything—irrigated with water from our own wells, a geologist told me there are plenty of potentials, you just need to tap them. Someone wants a certain ambience, we’ll provide it. Got land for all sorts of different and cool landscaping setups, Ramona knows the guy who takes care of the Forest Lawn cemetery. We’ll have horses, sheep, goats, hell, we’ll have ostriches you want it. One-stop shopping,
comprende
?”
    “Sounds amazing, Steve.”
    “Does it? I’ll bet it sounds loco-crazy to you, but that’s okay, I’m used to that. When I dropped out of high school and left damn Brooklyn to come out here and make my name, that was crazy. And now here we are and I’m gonna be a
land baron
!”
    —
    Back in the car, heading for the shoot, Steve said, “How old do you think the house is?”
    Malcolm said, “Seventy years?”
    “Eighty-two. Got a so-called colorful history. People trying to ranch cattle, then sheep, then—believe it or not—ostriches, that’s what made me think of it. Copper was mined a few miles north, so they tried it