"Not a guidance counselor-more of a therapist."

"A psychiatrist?"

"Psychologist. But budget cutbacks… Illinois, too. All over the country, I guess."

"Surprised they even have schools left in Maddox."

"Well, I really live in Cranston, which isn't as bad off as here. Closer to St. Louis. But we still aren't doing well. Anyway,

I guess if you're the one laid off, it doesn't matter if unemployment is one percent or twenty."

"Guess not."

They looked straight down this broad street and saw the gray slab of river a quarter mile away. Despite a heavy network of overhead power and telephone cables, the street seemed very nineteenth-century- like a deserted frontier town's. It would look perfectly natural for the road to be filled with muddy mule teams and drovers and ponies and river workers slogging through the muck toward the docks. Pellam noticed a couple of scabby, atmospheric buildings, right out "of 1880. "Let me take some snaps. Hold up a second."

A battered Polaroid camera unfolded and he took four pictures. He stuffed the undeveloped, moist squares into his shirt, then continued on, Nina beside him.

"Are those for your movie?"

"Not the one they're shooting now. I have a catalog of buildings and places that directors might want. Keeps me from reinventing the wheel every time I get a call."

"You work for the studio? Or do you have your own business?"

"Freelancer. Like most everybody here. Nowadays the studios just finance and distribute. Everybody else is hired as an independent contractor. Used to be different. In the thirties and forties the studios owned your soul-if you had a soul, that is."

She didn't laugh but seemed to be memorizing this lesson in Hollywood enterprise, and so he decided not to make a casting couch joke. Not yet. He turned back to the old buildings and Nina watched him take more pictures.

"What's that?"

"Your catalog of locations."

Pellam stored the binders in a file box under his bed in the camper. He said, "That can be arranged."

They continued up the street.

"Let's go in, can we?" Nina nodded at a store. Although Pellam was extremely aware that he owed Sloan a big field, he said sure. They walked into a huge warehouse, filled with scavenged relics from buildings. Nina said she was interested in columns and mantelpieces. They found a couple of scabby wooden columns, stripped down carelessly; you could still see blotches of paint and nicks and the scorch marks from the blowtorch. Nina liked them but thought at four hundredeach, they were too pricey. Pellam agreed. He also did not think they would fit into his California contempo bungalow on Beverly Glen. "And dangerous," he added, "in the camper."

She smiled at this, then stopped in front of a dark, flaking mirror, framed in ancient oak. She flicked her hair with her ringers.

Pellam asked, Tell me about yourself."

She blushed and gazed at a brass coal bucket with a face embossed into it.

"A cherub," Pellam commented, not pushing the deflected question.

"I always thought that was a cigar. Like the kind Clint Eastwood smoked in those Italian westerns."

"Isn't that cheroot?"

"Could be. I'm always getting things mixed up."

After a pause she said in a dogged voice, "So, tell you about myself. Well." She had apparently steeled herself for the response. "You'll probably find it pretty boring. I grew up in Maddox. Went to Mizzou-that's the University of Missouri-in St. Louis, studied English lit, which gets you nowhere. I got a job in a library and didn't like where it was going. So I got a master's degree in psychology. Then moved over to Cranston, nice safe distance from Mom and, at the time, Dad. Hobbies?

Astrology, shiatsu-"

Massage? He thought quickly. Was it too early in their courtship to make a thigh reference? Probably. He opted for back.

He said, "I have this problem in my back." Then added, "My lower back."

She parried with feigned disappointment. "I don't do lower backs."

"You specialize. I see." He waited what he thought was the proper amount of time. "No boyfriend?"

"Boyfriend." She considered and he wondered if she was tailoring a lie. "There's this guy I see off and on. A lot off and not much on. You know how it is. When I was younger I dated a lot but, I don't know, something about me-I was kind of a jerk magnet. What rocks those boys crawled out from under…"

"Ever been married?"

"No. You?"

He was a veteran, Pellam admitted.

"See, I'd rather not get married than be married and have to go through the pain of divorce."

"Well," Pellam said, "without pain, there's no appreciation." They both considered that while they stared at a ninety-dollar spittoon. He said, "You're thinking that was a stupid thing to say."

Nina was nodding. "Uhm, yeah, I think it was." She laughed and they paused at bins filled with old albums, selling for fifty cents each. Pellam liked the scratchy sound of LPs. He didn't own a CD player. He sunk a lot of his listening money into records. When he got home he'd record them on cassettes for the tape deck in the Winnebago. He began going through the jazz bin. "You like music?"

"Oh, yeah, music is the best," she announced, and looked over his shoulder at the album cover he was reading.

"Who's that?" she asked.

"Oscar Peterson." Who's that?

"Sounds familiar."

"Oscar Peterson," Pellam said again.

"Uh… I'm land of into soft rock, you know. Light FM. It's relaxing."

Oh.

"It's jazz," he said.

"Like Stevie Wonder?" Nina asked sincerely.

"Sort of," Pellam said. "They use the same notes."

Outside, the voodoo of Tony Sloan's paranoia caught up with Pellam. He explained that he had to get back to work. When he leaned forward to kiss her cheek, to say good-bye, she responded with firm pressure on his hands and even leaned into him. A semihug. He glanced down and got a clear vision of the plunging neckline of her sweater. He was staring at her pale skin when they separated and she caught his downward-looking eyes. He said quickly, "I was admiring those earrings.

They're interesting."

"A present," she said, perhaps choosing not to believe him.

He slipped on his sunglasses and smiled. "You interested in searching for a field with me sometime?"

Nina nodded. "Sure. I'd like that." She touched his arm and looked serious. "But I'd like to say something."

The boyfriend who wasn't a boyfriend. The girlfriend who was a girlfriend. I don't like men with film companies.

Lips that touch liquor…

"Yup?"

"I want to tell you why I picked you up."

"How's that?"

"I mean, not that I don't like you."

"No."

"See, I heard that when the film company came to town they were hiring people. I mean, it's not the only reason I started talking to you." '

"Is there any way I could get a job?"

Well, he should have known. This was hardly the first time it had happened. She must have seen the flicker in his eyes.

The Ray-Bans were not all that dark.

"I'm sorry." Her eyes went straight to the ground. "I shouldn't have asked. It's just-"

"I don't mind."

"It's just that I've been out of work for six months. I haven't even been able to find a job waitressing."

He touched the incredibly soft orange alpaca over her muscular arm. "The thing is, shootings almost over. All the extras have been cast and they don't make much money anyway."

"No, no, no." Her face had turned pink "I wouldn't want to act. I don't even like movies. I think they're stupid."

She doesn't like movies?

"Oh." Everybody likes movies… "Well, what did you have in mind?"

"I don't know. I see so many people in town from your company…"