Maybe the Moon

landscape-painting scheme, since it would mean a significant loss of privacy. I could always put a TV in my room, I guess, but Big Ed is about as quiet as a Stealth bomber.

    After lunch Jeff insisted we stop by the video store so I could see the new Mr. Woods display, complete with moving arm on the beloved elf. He stared at the figure of Callum for a long time but made no attempt to resurrect his theory. He was still harboring it, though, I could tell.
    “Why don’t we rent it?” he said.
    I made a face.
    “C’mon, why not?”
    “Well, for starters, it doesn’t work on me.”
    “When was the last time you watched it?”
    “Three years ago,” I told him, “when Renee moved in.”
    “Well, I haven’t seen it since it came out, and I’d love to see it with you. You can annotate.”
    I groaned softly.
    “It’s not about…that guy,” he said. “I’m over that.”
    I told him it was the movie that bothered me.
    “C’mon, then,” he said. “I’ll get you stoned.”
    “Jeff.”
    “Please…”

    Note to the set designer:
    Jeff is not overly concerned about his surroundings. The bungalow he rents up the hill from Gloria’s is painted a puky mustard color and is flaking badly. There’s a balding palm in the front yard and a row of ratty hollyhocks along the driveway. On this particular day an abandoned toilet greeted us rudely from the sidewalk, left there for pickup by one of the neighbors. (Angelenos, I figure, must renovate their bathrooms more often than anyone else in the world; you can’t turn a corner in this city without seeing somebody’s no-longer-stylish crapper sitting on the curb.)
    Jeff justifies the house by seeing it as something out of Nathanael West, but that won’t cut it for the rest of us. If it weren’t for the wind chimes on the front porch and the rainbow flag serving as a curtain at the bedroom window, you’d think an ax murderer lived there. The inside is even worse: stacks of unread newspapers, dirty clothes everywhere, dozens of anemic houseplants pleading to be released from their misery.
    Jeff rolled a joint and made a big pitcher of iced tea before we watched the movie. I hadn’t been high for months, so I got silly fast, giggling uncontrollably as soon as the credits rolled. Jeff shushed me like a librarian, totally consumed by the mission at hand. When Callum made his first appearance on the screen, pedaling his bike home from school, Jeff’s eyes narrowed in rapt concentration.
    “What’s the verdict?” I asked.
    “Who knows?” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”
    After that we talked only about my performance or the technical wizardry involved. As expected, I found it utterly impossible to surrender to the film. All it evoked for me was heat and boredom,the pulse of my own dead breath against wet rubber, the needling pinball sounds of the circuitry encasing my head. That heartrending sound track didn’t work on me, either, since I had lived in the core of the fantasy, the emotionless eye of the hurricane. I may be the only person in the world with a good reason not to feel something from that movie.
    Toward the end, during the scene when Jeremy and Mr. Woods say goodbye, Jeff knelt before the VCR and froze the frame on a close-up of the boy’s face. I wondered what he was looking for. The color of the eyes? A particular expression? A telltale constellation of freckles? He just sat there, though, saying nothing, bathed in the pearly blue light of the box, his face in dramatic silhouette against Callum’s. I felt almost as if I were intruding.
    “Maybe not,” he said finally.
    I mourned his loss with a murmur.
    “Sorry,” he said.
    “Hey.”
    “I could’ve sworn.”
    “I’m just glad you got laid,” I said.
    To do my bit, though, I called Leonard’s office first thing Monday morning. His secretary said he was in a meeting, so I asked her to have him call me “regarding Callum Duff,” knowing damn well he wouldn’t phone back if he thought it was just about me. He didn’t return the call until yesterday, and even then he sounded peeved that I’d managed to command his attention twice in the same month. I said I hated to bother him, but a friend of mine thought he’d seen Callum in town, and I’d appreciate his phone number if it was available.
    Leonard said he had no such number. He hadn’t represented Callum for years, and as far as he knew, Callum was still attending “some college back East.”
    I haven’t had the heart to