They deliver then they're gone.

That, or they sat on the sidelines drinking mescal, picking up script girls and trying to pick up actresses, and then they're gone. Nobody thinks twice about them. Pellam had had other jobs in film, and no jobs other than in film, but scouting was the only one he'd kept at for more than a couple years.

Mexico last month. Georgia last week.

Now, Cleary, New York. With clear-cheeked blonde-bait Marty. With a busty former hippie. With a hundred squares of slick Polaroid pictures. With a cemetery.

With some people who weren't too happy to have him in town.

Goodbye…

He paused on a small road that led to what looked like a town park. It might have been private property, though; the lots in Cleary were massive. He thought about his place on Beverly Glen, whose lot line you could measure in inches and not end up with an unwieldy number. Pellam stopped and gazed at the property, at the huge robin's-egg-blue colonial in the middle of the beautiful yard. So, it wasn't a park at all. It was a residence. And it was for sale. The sign was stuck in the front yard.

Pellam wondered what it was like to own a house this big in a town this small. He counted windows. The place must have six or seven bedrooms. He didn't know five people he'd want sleeping in his house. Not all at the same time.

He started across the road. What would a house like this cost?

What was the backyard like?

He never found out.

Pellam was halfway across the road when a small gray car crested the hill, hit a patch of leaves slick as spilled oil and skidded hard. He tried to dance out of its path but a part of the car-some piece of resonant sheet metal-caught him square on the thigh.

John Pellam saw:

A sea of leaves, mostly yellow, rising to the sky. A flare of sunlight on glass. A huge oak tree spinning, the blue house turning upside down, caught in a tornado. Then someone swung the curb at him, and everything disappeared in a burst of dirty light.

"Where'd you get that scar?" Pellam opened his eyes. Thinking only that he wanted to throw up.

He told this to the white-jacketed man standing above him, muscular, in his forties. And, as the doctor was telling him that it was normal, Pellam started to.

A bedpan appeared just in time and, while Pellam was busy with it, the doctor continued his calm monologue. "You wake up from a concussion, you always see regurgitation. I don't mean stunned but actually knocked unconscious. Yep, completely normal reaction."

He looked like a veterinarian Pellam had taken a dog to once. A standard poodle, he thought, but he couldn't remember for sure. He liked standard poodles but he didn't think he'd ever owned one. That bothered him, not remembering. Maybe he had amnesia. Or brain damage.

He groaned. After the completely normal regurgitation, he felt burning stomach muscles and a fiery throat join the agony that swelled inside his skull, a balloon that wouldn't stop expanding until the bone cracked and the pressure hissed out like steam from a burst pipe.

He took a mouthful of water, rinsed, and spit into the bedpan. There was no nurse and the doctor disappeared with the pan. He returned with a clean one and set it on the table next to Pellam.

No, it wasn't a poodle, it was a terrier. One of Trudie's he believed (Trudie, Trudie… had he called her?).

"That should be about it," the doctor said and didn't explain any further.

Pellam did a self-exam. He wore just his Jockey briefs under a blue cloth robe. He lifted the sheets and checked body parts in descending order of importance. The only sign of damage, apart from the bandage on his head, was a bruise on his thigh the color and shape of a mutant eggplant.

"I wouldn't drink anything for a while," the doctor said.

Pellam said he wouldn't. Then added, "I got hit by a car." He was disappointed that this was the most significant thing he could think of to say.

The doctor said, "Uh-huh." Mostly he seemed curious about the scar. It was a foot long, a gouge of glossy, indented skin across Pellam's right biceps and chest. It was a memento of the time an arms assistant got the charge instructions wrong during a car chase gag and used dynamite instead of smokeless powder in rigging the Oldsmobile Pellam was driving. When the car exploded, Pellam got an eighteen-inch auto part in the chest. The medic told him that if it'd been going straight it would've pinned him to the wall. "Lahk a stuck piyag, Pellam. You a lucky somvabitch."

"Used to do stunt work," he now said to the doctor.

"Oh, you're the movie man, huh?"

Pellam focused on him. He really looked like he should be treating fuzzy terriers and poodles and mending tipped cows.

"I'm the movie man."

"Don't do stunts anymore, I hope."

"Life's exciting enough."

"I hear you," the doctor said.

"How am I?"

The doctor said, "Nothing serious. Concussion but no cracks. You fell good-I guess because you're used to stunts. That scrape on your head is wide, it can get infected pretty easy, so keep an eye on it. I'll give you some Betadine."

"This a hospital?"

The doctor laughed. "It's got me, a mini lab, a podiatrist, an OB-GYN. If that's a hospital, this is Cleary General."

"Can I leave?"

"Nope. You'll have to stay here the night. You'll be pretty dizzy for a while. I wouldn't want you to fall. I've got plenty of magazines. Reader's Digests. Some National Geographics. Good things like that. A bible, if you're interested."

"I've got to get a message to somebody."

"There's a phone in the lobby. I can make a call for you. If you-"

"No, not a phone call. Somebody'll be waiting for me back at my camper. It's parked on Main Street." Pellam told him that Marty would be returning about six.

The doctor said, "I've got a son works at the IH plant. He's a manager. He can take some time off and leave a note on your camper door."

"Be obliged."

Pellam watched the doctor take a small chart from beside the bed and write on it.

"Who was it? Who hit me?"

The doctor kept writing.

Pellam wondered if it was a hit and run, wondered who the driver was-some hotshot, a kid, probably.

Wondered too if it really was an accident.

Thinking of the mural of crosses on the Winnebago.

Thinking: Goodbye…

Maybe he should call the sheriff. That'd be the smart thing to-

The doctor looked up. "She's outside."

"What?"

"She's here. She's been waiting to see you."

"Who?" Pellam asked. (Did he mean Trudie? Damn, I hope I called her.)

"The driver. The woman who hit you."

"Oh," Pellam said. "With a lawyer?"

"Just by herself."

He said, "Can I see her?"

"You want to see her?"

"I guess."

The doctor said, "Then you can see her."

Pellam's first reaction was that she was pretty but not sexy. Pert 'n' perky, he thought, discouraged. Not his type at all. A girl with a mile-wide smile.

She was maybe thirty-two, thirty-three, but looked older-something about the teased blond hair, the heavy pale makeup, the fleshy pantyhose made her seem matronly. Pellam could picture her as a Miss America contestant, with a baton, sending it sailing up into the height of the proscenium. Her face was blank when she entered the room but as soon as she was over the threshold, she grinned shy crevices around her mouth.

He was expecting: Goshhowya'llfeelin'?

But she didn't sound that way at all.

"Welcome to Cleary," she said in a low, sexy voice that almost made him ignore the mask of pancake makeup. She walked right up to the bed and stuck her hand out.

She saw the scar and it threw her. The facade cracked for a minute then the down-home smile returned. "Meg Torrens."