"People are busy in Cleary?"

Okay, it was a little over the line with that one. He'd forgotten you have to be real careful when you hit people in their home towns. Especially if you're from one that's a thousand times bigger than theirs. But come on, country folk, you gotta have a sense of humor.

She bristled. "Yes, people are busy in Cleary. There's more to this town than people like you'll ever see-"

"There, perfect," Pellam announced.

She frowned.

"Keep talking. You're giving me a feel for the place. That's just what I'm looking for."

"I should go."

He said, "No, you shouldn't."

"Anyway, I'm not a local. I've only lived here for-"

"Don't tell me, let me guess…" Pellam was feeling perverse (hell, why not? She'd run him over). "Ten years."

Her eyes flared. "What makes you think I've lived here that long?"

In for a penny, in for a pound.

"The makeup, the hair, the clothes-"

"What's wrong with-?" Her voice was high, indignant.

"Nothing. You just asked me-"

"Never mind." Meg unfolded her arms and walked to the door.

Pellam asked, "So when can we get together?"

"The word never comes to mind." She stepped through the doorway, gripping the knob hard then must've decided she shouldn't be slamming clinic doors and closed it silently. A second later it opened and she said to him, "And for your information, I've lived here for five years, not ten."

The door closed again, harder this time.

Ah, she'll be back.

Pellam heard her low heels tapping on the linoleum, then the grind of the front door and then nothing.

She'll be back. She's on her way now.

A car started.

She'll be back.

He heard a car strew gravel as it hit the road, then the whine of gears.

Okay, maybe not.

Bzzzzt.

Marty stuffed the moist square of the Polaroid into his pocket and squinted as he looked at a bald spot on the small mountain across a ravine. Acid rain'd eaten away at a lot of the greenery. It didn't look good at all. By the time Marty'd gone to college, schools were offering degrees in the environment. Marty could recognize acid rain.

He took four pictures, numbered them and slipped them into his pocket. All location scouts he knew used Polaroids, but Marty was an amateur photographer and would've preferred to use his old Nikkormat 35mm. The variation in the lenses-wide angle, telephoto-would give a better idea of what the scenery and locations looked like through the Panaflex movie camera. But the studio paid his salary and the studio said 'Roids.

So 'Roids were what they were going to get.

Marty wanted to be a cinematographer eventually. He knew cameras. He liked the murmuring gears and heavy, oil-scented parts that fit together so well. He liked the perfectly ground disks of the Schneider lenses, set into their royal-blue velvet carrying cases. He liked the portable Arriflex 35mm cameras, which cameramen would carry around on sets like rocket launchers. He liked the robotic contraption of Steadicams.

He figured a couple more years of location scouting, then it would be about time for his break (a unit director would call out, "Holy Mother, the director of photography's on a bender-you, kid, get behind the Panaflex. Roll, roll, roll…") Until that happened, however, being a location scout would do. Especially being a location scout for John Pellam, where you tended to get a week of experience in the movie business for every day you worked.

Marty wandered back down the hill toward the rented Tempo.

Get the feel.

Marty worked hard at trying to get the feel. Pellam made him read the scripts over and over. Scripts are a bitch to read but he kept at it. Pellam would question him about a story. You gotta get the feel for it, he'd say.

The feel… that was the extra ten percent that Pellam-for all his bullshit and fire-me-if-you-want attitude-was always talking about. The ten percent that Pellam delivered. This was the essential lesson Marty had learned from John Pellam.

The day was getting hot. The sun was out. Marty looked at his watch. There were still thirteen locations he had to find but sun like this was too good to miss. Beer break. Marty went to the trunk of the car and took out a Miller. He opened it. He sat on the rear bumper as he flipped through the script for Shallow Grave. He unbuttoned his shirt and let the sunlight fall on his tanned, skinny chest.

He liked sitting in the sun and drinking beer. He liked the country, liked the blond dry grass that hissed when he walked through it. When he was in California he usually stayed in a condo in Van Nuys, but he preferred to travel because there were no seasons in L.A. He loved fall. He wondered if there were more jobs for cinematographers in New York than in L.A.

He wondered-

The bullet hit the back of the car with a huge ringing slap a full second before he heard the rolling boom of the rifle shot. Marty jumped up, eyes wide, dropping the script, the camera and his beer. White, malty foam shot out of the gold can.

"Christ," he whispered as terror and relief oozed through his legs. All he could do was stare, openmouthed, at the hole in the car, remembering a newspaper story about a woman who was killed by a gunshot from several miles away, a hunting accident. "Christ."

He thought: that'd been four feet to the right…

The second shot, which he never heard, wasn't four feet to the right at all. It hit the gas tank pretty much dead center.

You could hear, as if on a soundtrack, a huge whoosh, as the flaming ball spread twenty feet in all directions.

You could hear Marty's horrific scream from the tangle of fire.

And, as the Ford burned into black metal, you could hear the honking of geese and swans, fleeing with their imperfect memory of the terrible explosion.

At first, Pellam thought the tragedy was his. Leukemia. A tumor. Hodgkin's.

I'm sorry, sir. The X ray showed something else.

The doctor opened the door slowly. Pellam looked at the man's face and knew something bad was coming. The man sure had the technique down. Pellam had used it himself. When his father had died he'd been elected to break the news to a lot of people. He let the downcast eyes and endless loop of a sigh explain to them that terrible news was impending, before he said a word. The telepathic message of tragedy did a lot of the work for him.

Pellam saw this same expression in the eyes of the strong, young vet of a doctor, pausing in the doorway, looking at Pellam as if he were gazing at the last few seconds of his patient's good health.

"Evening," Pellam said.

Then he saw the deputy, a young man, similar in build to the doctor, baby-faced, crewcut, and he thought-his first fleeting thought-someone had stolen the camper. But their eyes explained too much. And at that moment, Pellam understood.

"Marty?"

The doctor looked at the deputy, who nodded.

He asked, "An accident?"

The deputy said, "I'm sorry, sir."

"What happened?" Pellam found himself breathless. The air had actually escaped from his lungs.

The deputy said, "His car caught fire. I'm sorry to have to tell you he was killed."

"Oh, God." Pellam closed his eyes. He felt an overwhelming, raw sense of loss. Images of the boy flipped through Pellam's head. Like still pictures. That was one thing about himself he'd always thought odd. For someone who worked in film, his memories were always static. Kodacolor snapshots. They never moved.

"Oh, God…" His voice faded. Suddenly, he thought of all the things he'd have to do. Who should he call? What should he say? There'd be hours of the grim, official business that he'd have to handle. Pellam, surrogate father to this poor young man. "What happened? A crash?"