Of course the writers never listened to the actors although they tried hard to pretend they did. Bernie patted her shoulder, nodded enthusiastically, and said, “Good, good,” but ended with, “Sweetie, Sunday sleeps with Damian for revenge against her half sister and her mother. It’s that straightforward, at least that’s the way it’ll appear for a couple of weeks, then-well, we’ll just have to wait and see.” She knew she should hang it up, stop pestering him about it, but where were they heading with this?

She paused a moment before crossing the gnarly Malibu Road, its name not posted to discourage outsiders. She didn’t see a single car coming and crossed the road. She heard a gut-jerking song from Phantom at the same instant she heard the screech of tires and saw the flash of an old Buick LeSabre coming straight at her. For an instant her brain and her feet froze, then air whooshed out of her lungs as she hurled herself toward the opposite sidewalk. The car clipped her right side, sent her tote flying, and her crashing onto the sidewalk where she landed at the feet of a woman with a white toy poodle on a leash. The poodle barked maniacally in her face, his sequinned collar nearly blinding her.

The woman, wearing too-tight white Capri pants that barely covered her hip bones, and a tube top of bright lime green, wasn’t, however, a sloucher. She fell to her knees beside Mary Lisa.

“Oh my God, that maniac tried to kill you! I saw it. Are you all right? What hurts? Are you bleeding inside? Sorry, you wouldn’t know that. Don’t move.” She pulled out her cell phone and dialed 911. The poodle stopped barking at the sound of his mistress’s voice telling the dispatcher what happened. When she punched off, the dog started licking Mary Lisa’s cheek.

She didn’t hurt yet, but she knew, somewhere deep where such knowledge resided, that pain would come, and it would be arriving soon and it wouldn’t be good. She pictured a tsunami, nearly to her coastline. She looked up at the woman, but couldn’t think of a thing to say. So she lay there listening to the woman talk to her while lightly patting her arm, as the dog’s tongue scratched her cheek.

“An ambulance is on the way, you lie still, it’ll be okay. My name is MacKenzie Corman and I’m an actress, but that isn’t important now. Well, yes it is since I have an audition in two hours in Burbank, but I’ll stay with you until the paramedics arrive. Calm down, Honey Boy, don’t lick her face off. There, there, you’ll be all right. Maniacs, they’re everywhere, even here in Malibu. Damned fool. He wasn’t a crazy boyfriend, was he? Do you hurt anywhere?”

Mary Lisa thought about that. “I don’t hurt in one particular spot yet, and that’s a relief. Thank you for helping me.”

“That’s okay.” Honey Boy, now curled around Mary Lisa’s head, occasionally licked her hair, pulled free of its French braid, her baseball cap having flown off her head when she’d gone airborne. MacKenzie sat down beside her and kept patting her shoulder.

Mary Lisa heard voices coming closer now, some low and worried, some excited and loud.

“Is she a drug overdose?”

“Is she dead?”

“Who is she?”

“I sure like that green T-shirt.”

MacKenzie called out, “A car hit her. Everyone stay back, give her room. An ambulance is on the way.”

Mary Lisa whispered, “Ask if anyone saw the car hit me.”

MacKenzie asked, but no one had seen anything. Until an old man wearing a black bikini Speedo and black sleeveless shirt, a surfboard balanced easily over one wiry shoulder, jogged up. “Yeah, I saw the silly bastard, aimed right at her, did it on purpose, you ask me. I saw him do a big skid onto PCH going south. No cops around when you need ’em. I hope she didn’t happen to owe Breaker Barney money, that wouldn’t be good.” He managed to step through the growing crowd of people, and gasped. “Mary Lisa! Oh my God, dear girl, oh my-”

Mary Lisa smiled. “Hello, Carlo. How are the waves today?”

“Fine, perfect actually. Hey, who’d you piss off?” Carlo squatted beside her and lifted her hand in his. Honey Boy growled at him, received a consolation kiss from his mother, and subsided again, wetting a hank of Mary Lisa’s hair with drool.

“I’ll be okay, Carlo. It happened so fast I didn’t see the driver. I don’t owe anyone any money. You know I’m not stupid enough to gamble with Breaker in his house of sin. You know Breaker and I drink espresso most mornings over at Monte’s. He likes me, says I’m cheap to keep.”

Carlo thought about this and nodded. “This isn’t Breaker’s style anyway, particularly when his mark is female. It’s okay, sweetie, you lie still. I’ll stay here. Hey, who are you?”

“I’m MacKenzie Corman-nice name, don’t you think?-and I’m an actress. I have an audition in an hour and fifty-one minutes in Burbank.”

“You’re gorgeous,” Carlo said, giving her the professional and objective eye, “but so is every other girl I know in L.A. You’ll need buckets of talent and O.J.’s luck. You related to a movie star, maybe a successful moneymaking director or producer? That’d be the ticket.”

“Well, no, but I’ve really got this role down. I’m going to play Lena Cross, a noble dedicated nurse who’s ministering to poor Indians in backward mountain villages when she happens to find out there’s a gold treasure chest in an Andean cave.”

“Low budget, huh?”

Mary Lisa moaned. She didn’t mean to, it boiled up out of her throat. The tsunami had struck and pain ripped through her side. Carlo angled his surfboard so it shaded her face. “Hot sun today,” he said to Mary Lisa. “I hear sirens, close now. You hang in there, baby doll.”

Well, there was really nothing else she could do, Mary Lisa thought. She listened to all the conversations around her, not really understanding the words, and not really caring.

“You’ve called her three different names now. Which is it?”

A beautiful smile broke through Carlo’s sun-seamed face. “She’s my favorite bitch goddess.” He looked back down at Mary Lisa. “You want me to call Bernie at the studio? Maybe Lou Lou or Elizabeth? What about that idiot agent of yours?”

Mary Lisa shook her head, closed her eyes against a sharp jab of pain in her side. “Not yet. Maybe a Band-Aid will fix me up. I don’t want them to freak out.”

MacKenzie went en pointe. “What do you mean, bitch goddess? What studio? You’re not famous, are you? Maybe it’s the same studio where I’m having my audition. All the stars dress like dog meat down here so they won’t be recognized and have their photos plastered all over the fanzines. You don’t mind?” And MacKenzie fingered Mary Lisa’s curling red hair, pulled off her huge Audrey Hepburn sunglasses, and leaned down to study her face. “You look familiar. Who are you?”

Carlo grabbed the sunglasses and slipped them back over Mary Lisa’s eyes. “Don’t you watch Born to Be Wild? It’s the best soap on TV, noon every day on Channel Five. Mary Lisa won the Emmy for Best Actress, the third year in a row. Never been done before.”

MacKenzie shrieked. “Oh my God, you’re Sunday Cavendish! Oh my, I see-the bitch goddess! But you don’t look like her, you look like a regular person, kind of ratty, actually, but that’s okay. You don’t look like a bitch, but someone sure tried to run you down. Maybe it’s revenge, you know? Oh goodness, Honey Boy, no, no, sweetie, don’t lick her mouth.”

Carlo’s face faded from Mary Lisa’s view, but he kept his surfboard above her to shade her from the sun. The pain in her hip started drumming big time now.

The tsunami had hit hard. She felt dizzy and light-headed, nauseated. She swallowed. No way was she going to vomit. She heard Honey Boy panting close to her ear. When she finally heard a paramedic shouting for people to move aside, she wanted to sing hallelujahs.

As they strapped an oxygen mask on her nose and loaded her gently onto a gurney to put her in the ambulance, she heard MacKenzie announce, “I helped save Sunday Cavendish’s life. I’m a nurse by nature, Lena Cross, Angel of the Andes.”