Ten-thirty. I got maybe four hours sleep when the phone rang. I dropped right to the floor when I got home, didn’t even take off my shoes, just right there with my head on a chair and my hand still clutching my case I stopped and turned off. But now the phone and Pavlov’s done his work with me, so when it goes I can’t not pick up.
      “Yeah, I’m here.”
      “I’m downstairs, buzz me in.” That’s Kat, my girlfriend. Problem with Kat is she’s Artie’s wife.
      “I’m sleeping, Kat.”
      “Hey pussy, you can’t leave me standing here on the street. You’re going to buzz me in right now.”
      I hit the button. And the whole ‘buzz’ thing is just a holdover from when they actually did buzz. Now it’s just a nice solid click of the bolts going says it’s clear. Kat’s got a key for the inside door. Whatever passes for intelligence on my part didn’t give her the code downstairs. I told her the system registers when we punch in—not that it doesn’t, but I don’t know for sure—and so if the code was punched twice it’d set security in motion. They’ve got something similar on the estate, Artie and Kat, so it made sense to her and on at least that one thing there was no argument. Why she insisted on the key, well, I guess that’s just Kat.
      See, what happens is that one day a guy wakes up and realizes that his life, as it is, has all the makings of a story. A fictional one, I mean. But what happens is that this guy, this guy who’s me, he looks at his life like maybe it was on a page or a screen and he thinks to himself, “No way that would ever really fucking happen. No fucking way…” and then he—I—thinks that maybe if it got onto the page it could be edited into something that could ever really fucking happen. Take the life and first-draft it and send it off to somebody who can redline though all the bullshit that no one’s gonna buy, put in little comments: “Kid, this camp is tired, how about cutting out these three lines?” and, “I don’t know what you’re trying to do with this character, he doesn’t move the story forward at all. I say you lose him altogether and tighten up pages 12-17.” And then when it was done and approved and maybe even published or shot or something, he could keep that as the record of what happened, minus all the peripheralities and people that didn’t move his plot along… my plot is what I’m saying. My plot’s got holes, my story’s lacking the sympathetic characters that make me want to identify with someone even if I can’t identify with what they’re doing or why they’re doing it—and too many of my characters are lacking the whole why thing anyway, I want that maybe someone will suggest a motivation here and there and tie this or that up for me, and if not nicely, then at least at all. So the plan here is to write it, then get it workshopped and see where I am after that. Then I’ll tell it, the real story.
      “Artie’s out shooting pool with Ephram,” Kat’s talking before she even opens the door, I get the first few words along with the keys in the lock. “Hey asshole, you could have at least unlocked it for me,” the volume comes up as the door opens, “not like you didn’t know I was here.”
      “Kat, I’m sleeping.”
      “The fuck you are, you still got your shoes on.”
      “I’m tired, I’m so tired I just fell asleep–”
      “If you don’t want to see me, you say so. Don’t stand here and lie. You’re so fucking weak, just a weak little woman. Stand up for yourself once in a while, see maybe if you don’t get a little respect from people.” She hasn’t even closed the door yet. I doubt I have to explain why I take it. The whole Artie-would-kill-me-if-he-knew thing; and the corollary: Kat-would-tell-Artie-in-a-second-if-I-crossed-her thing. Kat crosses the room, steps over me, still on the floor, throws her ass on the couch, pulling her legs up and crossing them midair when she bounces, lets them fall on the table, the whole show totally perpendicular to her intro, but I left it alone, taking what I could get, wondering some day if maybe I wouldn’t be able to make lemonade from shit after all.
      “Get me a drink, and close the fucking door, would you?” a cigarette between her fingers, a match about to melt the acrylic on her thumb. “You want someone to see me here? You know what’d happen.” She watches the match, waits until her nail starts to blacken, waits a second longer, then drops it on the floor and screams. And for a second I don’t know whether to run to her like I’m supposed to, or if I should close the door and then run to her, or close the door and get the drink and then stand by her side and call her a brave little girl and coo and tell her it’s not so bad and everything’s gonna be okay… And in that second I could have closed the door and run to her, but I can’t ever make any decisions when she’s around, and so I’m always doing the wrong thing and thinking sometimes maybe I’ll just tell Artie myself and take whatever comes. I close the door, I walk over and grab her hand and examine the burn. I know I’m supposed to give with the poor baby/brave girl spiel, but instead I tell her it’s nothing, it’s just stained from the soot of the match. And then her hand rips out of mine and comes right back in fist form to touch my face a little more forcefully than I expect, her thumbnail digging into the socket just beside my nose and I don’t know how she didn’t pull my eye right out. Practice, skill, I’m thinking. She’s good at this kind of thing.
      The match still burning on the floor. Another black and bubbled scar on the wood. Others are shaped like cigarettes, one like a glass pipe—but I’m not even going to bother putting that in this story, I know that’ll get cut, far too ghetto for even my story—all of them between the couch and coffee table, all on either side of her legs. And though I know each one is deliberate, I still wonder how she never slips and gets her legs, and why she doesn’t want to burn the couch or table. Probably because I can replace those no problem. Probably. I know better than to try to put it out. It fails all on its own.
      “You are so fucking insensitive. You faggots are supposed to be sensitive. How is it that you’re so fucking insensitive?”
      As per the script, I intone without feeling that I’m not, in fact, a faggot.
      “Don’t lie to me, Susie,” and her hand goes between my legs and under, she’s reaching for my ass, “I bet I’d lose my foot in here if I kicked you, you fucking faggot. You dress like a woman more than you dress like a man, you wear more makeup than I do…” which is not, technically, correct. I wear more kinds of makeup, but that’s because I have to hide the fact that I’m not a woman. Kat, on the other hand, tries to hide the fact that she is. And maybe that’s not entirely accurate, she hides the woman she sees in the mirror behind this plaster of the woman she wants people to think she is. Part of how I got here, with this woman constantly clawing my rectum and telling me I like it, is on account of that other one, the one she sees. Step her out of the shower and catch her warm and soft in those few seconds before the mirror clears and she starts scowling and obliterating herself, that’s when I see her, just twenty-two and the sweetest and prettiest girl I’ve ever known. Four years ago a cheerleader and not the homecoming or prom queen, and not even in the running, but the girl everybody wanted to be queen and everyone says that’s how they know it’s fixed, and that’s what’s wrong with the world, that Katie should be queen and she never is. And Katie was always glad to not be queen, so happy, too happy to bother with petty little competitions, “Let some poor sad little girl who needs it be queen,” she said. But Kat’s not Katie anymore and I don’t know what happened—and the thing is that as far as anyone can tell nothing happened, though she’s got stories and none of them true but they’re stories anyway and our Kat’s a method actress so while she’s telling them they may as well be true—and just a year she’s been married to Artie and I thought there was some angle she was playing, that Kat was all an act, but dammit, I don’t know. Only way I ever see her actual is if I can get her to take a shower and then wait in the hallway and crack the door and wait. Figure she’s not going anywhere, figure there’s nothing I can do about it and I have to find some way to make it bearable, so I wait for those moments, take them and line them up and hope that someday I’ll have enough to carry me through a whole day.
      “It’s my job,” I’m saying again, though except that it’s probably expected I don’t know why I bother saying it anymore, “this is Hollywood…”
      “This,” she spits it, literal and figurative, in my eye, “is the fucking Inland Empire.”
      I back away, “It’s still California, and California’s Hollywood.” She doesn’t argue that. “I’ll get you that drink. You want a martini?”
      She gives a wrist flick, dismissal and acceptance all at once. This is where she usually starts in with the daily litany of bitches and fuckers and idiot faggots she has to deal with every day, and it’s almost a relief then, since it’s the closest to happy she comes in the day-to-day, the bitter half-smile and clenched teeth and Oh my fucking god… over and over with each new detail. But today the ice in the shaker’s really loud, echoing on the masonry in my apartment and I’m a little nervous with her so quiet like this.
      Two twists like she likes it in a glass out of the freezer and she’s just staring at the floor while I hold it out to her. Doesn’t see me, so I set it on the table and wait to hear what I did wrong but she doesn’t say anything. So I don’t know what to do, it never goes like this and I’m about to start up some kind of attempt at a normal conversation or something when there’s this little play of light on her face, something catching and I can’t believe it but there’s a tear, a big fucking tear right on her jaw, come all the way down her face to hang heavy, ripening then dropping on her hand. I swear I hear it, smashing like a baby grand down the stairs; I’m sure her hand’s broken and something makes me reach out with my own and even though I know she’ll tear my arm off for it, I’ve got my hand on her, touching her cheek and turning her face to me and she’s soaked, thick rivers, four of them running out all her corners. I’m still not making decisions. I’m standing, knowing there are all kinds of words I should say right now, or maybe no words, maybe I’m supposed to pull her to me, or kneel and fold her into me, do some tender embracing or something. We’re not about that, not at all, so I don’t really know how to even start it.
      So count them, all the empty seconds ticking off, and me like the rain man guy, doing higher math with each one of them. Me like the chaotic anti-dinosaur guy, noticing how her skin and the makeup and the tilt of her head made the tears go this way then that…
      “Inside me,” she says and I don’t snap out of it, just transversed and suddenly linguistic and semiotic and I know she’s saying something else and if we just wait through a few more seconds she’s going to say something that for once might actually mean something. Her hands between her breasts, folded in, two fingers pointing to herself. Then, mouth open, her tongue arching for her upper palate, she’s about to continue but there’s this sob that gets in the way and breaks it. “Inside me,” she says again, but I know she’s not saying the same thing, “I want you inside me right now.” Hands moving everything out of the way, she pulls her skirt up, leans back and to the side on my couch then yanks her thong left and sets her jaw. I’m still not moving, I’m still hoping she’ll finish what she was going to say. “Come on!” and her forward, not even messing with the belt she pulls my pants down and pulls me by my dick onto the couch—and that hurts, feels like she’s got hold of my spine right through my front and I lose the little balance I had and she doesn’t even care that I smash my nose on her forehead. She’s just rubbing me on her and she’s dry and I’m soft and no way am I going to be able to get it up after three days’ no sleep, even less likely now I’m kind of scared in a way unfamiliar to me. Not the force, but the tears. The tears got me freaked. I don’t pretend to think that all the power play is any indication of real strength or anything like that, but there’s consistency at least. Here she broke character and I didn’t recognize her.
      I’m thinking that editors like when it won’t get up. Thinking that’ll get left alone. Probably if I wrote out a hundred pages of look-at-me-I’m-mister-softy, they’d put their red pens right down and give me a big teary hug. I’d be some kind of courageous guy, maybe, but I’m not. I’m just tired.
      “You are. Such a fucking. Faggot.” She’s hissing and she’s not even trying to work it, not giving any encouragement at all. She’s still not wet and her nails are going to dig my urethra out, make my dick into some crazy toothless alligator-looking thing, except all soft and bloody and without any scaly reptile skin. “This is the best fucking pussy you’re ever going to see and I’m giving it to you and all you got to do is get fucking hard and you can’t do that. And that, sister, is because you’re a faggot. Why do you bring me here just to fuck my head instead of my pussy?” I don’t really even hear her. I can’t stop watching her not stopping the flow. Switched on and it’s not even really her crying, it’s whoever else was there that started it just didn’t shut it off before she left, so Kat’s here with busted pipes wetting everything but where it would maybe help and I’m just counting again, doing rain-man math with the seconds, not caring how anymore this ends, caring only anymore that it does.
      She pushes me away, squirms out from under me, gets up and leaves. I don’t even change position, just relax my back and push my face further up the couch till my belly hits and that’s the end of it for me. It’s only that I keep twitching, my body shocked and spasming, that keeps me awake another twenty seconds. Time enough to get pissed off that I didn’t even try to ask what the hell was up with Artie and Ephram out shooting pool.