The guard hoisted his own clipboard, scanned it, shook his head. “I don’t see—”

“Yeah, it was expedited. They’d have called down.”

“Let me check.” He stepped back into the booth. Daniel fiddled with the radio, trying to look bored. A moment later, the guard returned. “No, no badge for Arrow. You’re going to need to—”

“Look, man, my boss called me, said it was absolutely urgent I pick this up,” he hoisted a plastic bag with the logo of a vitamin store on it, “and rush it down before lunch. Something about Mr. Cameron’s agent threatening to pull him if he didn’t get this?”

“What is it?”

Daniel laughed, pulled the bottle from the bag and read aloud. “A natural probiotic supplement of papaya and garlic from the Colombian Andes that helps metabolize protein, remove toxins, and reduce bloat.” He passed it over, and the man looked at it.

“So what’s the rush?”

“I just drive, man.”

The guard hesitated, and Daniel shrugged. “You want to call my boss, he can call the agent, you guys can figure it out, but I’m going to need you to sign to prove that I was here on time. Cameron’s agent paid for the Urgent Response Package, which means within an hour, and it’s at,” he looked at the dashboard clock, “fifty-seven minutes now, dude, and so if you want to hold it, that’s up to you, but I’m not getting caught in the middle, you know?”

Someone honked, and the guard looked up, made a conciliatory gesture to a Porsche. Then he sighed, passed the diet pills back to Daniel. “Stage sixteen. You know where you’re going?”

“Dude, I’m here all the time.”

“All right. Next time, make sure they call first, okay?” He reached into the guardhouse, pulled out a purple parking pass. Daniel tossed it on his dash, then drove through the open gate, smiling to himself. A courier in a BMW rush-delivering diet pills. Hollywood.

The studio lot unfolded in broad avenues and vast, cream-colored soundstages with art deco façades and an air of competent activity. Crews dressed hipster-chic and flannel-grunge carried lights and cables while suits buzzed about in golf carts. Rows of white trailers lined up like race horses in front of a hundred-foot-tall mural of Marilyn Monroe lounging against some guy. He passed through a section of suburban America, complete with broad grass lawns, a church, and a bandstand in a small park. Looking one direction, he half expected to see kids playing tag; in the other, massive windowless warehouses like the Manhattan Project.

He had the same muscle memory pull of directions, and it took only moments to find the correct stage. Apart from the number at the top, it looked just like the others, a colossal block plunked down from space. He pulled into a parking garage and killed the engine. The shade cooled the afternoon, brought relief to his scrabbling headache.

Nice work. You’re super-fly. Now what?

The engine ticked. He rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and middle finger.

Well, now you get out of the car and ask Robert Cameron if he was sleeping with your wife, and if he killed her.

Or if he was sleeping with your wife, and when you found out, you killed her.

As an actress, Laney would have been surrounded by ridiculously attractive men. Glamorous guys, millionaire actors. She would have had to kiss them—hell, he’d seen her kissing Robert Cameron as Emily Sweet on Candy Girls. Long shooting schedules, press junkets, time on the road together. An affair was hardly out of the question. Hollywood marriages were a running joke.

A wave of black despair rolled over him. Not so much at the thought of a betrayal—or not only at that—but at the larger situation. Whether she’d cheated, whether she hadn’t, it didn’t change his circumstances. Neither brought her back from the dead. If she and Robert had been sleeping together, that might provide a motive for the man to murder her. Maybe. Which would get the cops off Daniel’s ass, and let him return to . . . what?

A house he didn’t remember?

A job writing for the show his wife used to star in?

What was his life now? What would he make of it?

On his long trip across the belly of America, he had played a game, inventing possible identities: he was a firefighter with a gambling addiction; he was a homosexual insurance salesman with a passion for soccer; he was a songwriter living off royalties from penning “Macarena.” Trying on selves like clothing. If one didn’t fit, if it chafed or was cut wrong, he tossed it aside and reached for the next. But now he was closing in on the hard fact that the options weren’t limitless. He had been someone before. That person had been the result of a lifetime of choices, good and bad. And like it or not, he was drawing closer to that identity now. Not the freedom of infinite variety, but the tyranny of a decision made, a path walked, a life lived.

What if he didn’t like the view?

Then you’ll deal with it. You’ll make changes. You’ll take up fucking yoga. Whatever. Right now, stick to the plan. Do what the police won’t.

He climbed out of the car, headed for the stairs. Find out who killed your wife.

Coming to the studio was a risk. But he quickly discovered that no one really looked at a man carrying a clipboard and wearing gray slacks and a bright yellow shirt. His new haircut and fake tan probably helped, but most people immediately classified him as a member of a different caste, and didn’t spare more than a cursory glance. He adopted a blankly busy expression and walked with purpose. It wouldn’t fly if he bumped into someone who knew him well, but it was as close to invisible as he could manage.

This section of the lot was all concrete and buildings, none of the carefully maintained greenery of faux-America. Stage 16 had a marked entrance, but he figured there would probably be another round of security. Halfway down the enormous building, he found a tall cargo door rolled open, with a semi backed up to unload. Daniel nodded at a black-clad woman smoking a cigarette, dodged around a costume rack, and stepped out of the street—

—into his front yard.

He stopped.

The set in front of him was the truncated exterior of a house. Not just any house, though. His house. The one in Malibu.

This version ended twelve feet off the ground. Above hung a light grid of black pipe, two dozen glowing lamps flooding the porch with soft sunset colors, a sort of hyper-clarity that made the fantasy house seem more real than the world surrounding it: the cavernous height of the soundstage, the dolly track laid on the floor, the craft services table stocked with sandwich meat and protein bars and vitamin water, the people buzzing about—