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series.”
    “Oh?”
    “Still waiting for network go-ahead. But if I can get it on, it’s going to be a breakthrough show … that’s what they’re all saying.”
    Burt was nibbling on a frosting-flower like a big bee.
    “Well, can I say congratulations?”
    “Yeah. But not yet.”
    “Your creation?” Alan nodded and Burt looked at him, proudly. “Well, I hope you win those bastards. Get something good on the air.”
    Alan watched his father, chomping on the birthday cake like a six-year-old. He was so damn cute sometimes. With blue frosting on his chin and matching blue sweater, he looked like a child model in a Kodak commercial; fucking adorable.
    On the drive home at dusk, Alan thought he could feel his father’s cells moving inside him. The sun was a bloody gunshot wound over L.A. and he swore every genehis father passed him was playing Chutes and Ladders under his skin; roaming, hiding behind nerves and muscles.
    Crouching. Murmuring.
    Scheming for a way to take over, in tiny blue sweaters.

dissolve
    M irror on closet door, eyes staring back. Lamp shades tilted; lights glare. He squeezes the razor.
    The hooker stirs, bruises laking. He glares, goes back to mirror. Begins to cut himself, razor across sternum, down at an angle, to navel; two sides of a blood triangle.
    Decides to leave no note. His body will be the message. Raw scrawls; how he wants out. How nothing works worth shit. Everybody promises everything. Lies. Nothing comes true. He should’ve killed his agent. Make the world better.
    She starts to cry. He tells her to
shut the fuck up.
She won’t stop. It feels like everything. Nothing he says matters. He’s furious. Watches blood run, skin drain white. Years of training; expectation. Now just anger. Feels himself go nowhere.
    She opens the door. Runs.
    He lets her.
    The motel room is crap. It’s enough. He doesn’t miss the apartment. Tampa. His wife. Workshops; résumés. Dead nights of Neil Simon, equity-waiver tombs. Special abilities: horseback riding, akido, hypnosis. He sits on the bed, stares at bureau mirror, watching blood roam.
    The phone rings. Her. Wanting to know how it goes. How interviews are coming. Callbacks. He lets it ring. Hates her. She’s infection. Her love is greed.
    The cuts give off heat. The A.C. rattles. Hollywood Boulevard pisses desperate sewage past his window. He turns on TV, watches a soap. Pouty mannerisms; a doll show.
    Eyes close. Cold.
    Angry black voices next door. Tempers shove accusations. A.C. rattle. Tourists laughing; diving in the tiny pool, lunging up into poison air; mindless
fucks.
Blood slips past ribs, onto sheets. Staring at roof shadows; drape leaks. Tired. Car horns fade. Heat thins. Poolside voices; gone.
    Sleep.
    Sleep …
    A knock.
    Again. Twice. Footsteps; gone. Eyes opening. Listening to blood; sheet’s soft suction. Crawling to door. Listen. Reach up, open a crack. A manila envelope. Delivered. A studio. Tear it open.
    The pilot script. A note clipped.
    “Jake: I was serious. Read this and call me.”
A. White

messages
    A lan’s Porsche howled-up Pacific Coast Highway; a Kraut missile. The CD player blistered Stevie Ray’s heat-seek blues. It was nine-fifteen. He’d just left seeing Eddy at Cedars and felt awful; sad, lost.
    The 928S skimmed alongside burnt-orange surf, roaring for Malibu, and he tried hard not to think about the hospital visit. The mangled emotions that had fallen from a thousand-story building, sitting with Eddy, trying to let him know he was loved.
    Alan tried instead to think of Bart’s hairy
Tyrannosaurus rex
smile. His happy, black wiggle when Alan came in the front door. Bart’s dreamy look when the two would hammock on the balcony, together, overlooking the warm sea, swinging slowly.
    He shot past where Sunset Boulevard punched its fist into Pacific Coast Highway and couldn’t get the eveningout of his head. Every thought drew him back to the Lysol gloom of the huge hospital. The lima-green surgical