Shallow Graves

go.”
    After a moment she waddled into action. The spherical thighs swung as she stepped to a counter.
    Marty was excited. “That five-and-dime, Pellam? Across the street?” He was looking out the window. “I was in there yesterday. It is a totally excellent place. I mean, they sell wigs there. A couple rows of them. What other store in the world can you walk into, pay nineteen ninety-nine and walk out with a wig? I ask you? Can you do that on Rodeo Drive, can you do that on Michigan Avenue?”
    “You are getting a bit thin on top.”
    The rain hit the large plate-glass window with a slap and there were several huge claps of thunder. As Pellam turned toward the noise he saw a woman running into the diner, the door flying open, the cowbell dinging. She pulled off a green cape. She was about his age, a year or two more maybe, wearing a faded purple dress, the waist high, just under her ample breasts. A granny dress, he remembered they were called. Her long hair—brown with a silver sheen to it—was parted in the center.
    She scanned both Pellam and Marty. To Pellam she gave what could have been a smile, wiping the rain from her face.
    Pellam and Marty turned back to the counter. They took the Polaroids out of their pockets, lined them up on the counter and started talking about camera angles.
    The woman in the granny dress glanced over at them, casually. Then she looked back to the counter girl and ordered herbal tea and a bran muffin. She glanced again at the two men, then away.
    The waitress set the coffee and Coke in front of the men and lifted a piece of frothy cake out of a cello-window carton. She disappeared into the back to collect the chili.
    She delivered the food—adoringly in Marty’s case. They ate. The granny-dress woman ignored them—even when Pellam said, “Hollywood,” twice in one sentence.
    “How’s the cake?” Marty asked.
    Pellam had three bites and couldn’t take any more. He pushed the plate toward Marty, who dug into it with a spoon still containing a helping of greasy chili.
    More thunder, shaking the windows. Huge detonations.
    Pellam said, “What else is Lefkowitz doing now?”
    Marty thought. “That European thing?”
    Pellam shook his head.
    Marty said, “Oh, I know. The Western?”
    Pellam smiled. He stood and walked to the telephone. He called to Marty, “Look at this.” He was genuinely surprised. “Still costs a dime to make a phone call.” The granny-dress woman was looking at him now. Smiling. He smiled her way. She turned back to her tea.
    Pellam punched in the number and was put on hold, the first of several times.
    Finally, the assistant producer came on the line and said, “Johnny, my boy, where you been?”
    Pellam knew he was a young man but he couldn’t picture him. “Around.”
    “Ha, ‘around,’ ” he said. “Ha.”
    “So,” Pellam said lazily. “How’s the weather in Tinsel Town? Damn hot out here. Close to a hundred.”
    “Johnny, how’s it going?”
    “It’s going.”
    “I’m not kiddin’ you, friend, the man’s got a righteous hard-on for this project and we don’t get the locations buttoned up soon all God’s chilluns gonna be in serious trouble. Where the hell are you?”
    “Think I’ve got just the spot for you.”
    “Oh, I love the sound of your voice. Marry me.”
    “It’s perfect.”
    “Talk to me, Johnny, talk to me. We got pressure, hombre. I’m talking righteous pressure, dig?”
    Pellam wondered where you learned producer-speak. Maybe it was at UCLA. He winked at Martythen said into the phone, “Lefkowitz’s going to go hog wild. The dawn shots’ll be so beautiful. . . . Desert for miles around. I mean, you cannot see a goddamn tree, I mean, see one, unless you look west, then you’d need a telephoto, and—”
    “Desert?”
    “Then there’s this little shack. . . . You can’t shoot inside—”
    From the other end of the line: the silence of the universe’s outer reaches. Then: “Shack?”
    Pellam continued, “—but don’t worry. There is a corral. Oh, and I thought you could move some of the interiors out there. The scene where—”
    “You ragging me, John.”
    Pellam sounded hurt. “Ragging you? No, when I say it’s perfect, it’s perfect. I wouldn’t—”
    “You’re ragging me.”
    Marty shouted, “Tell him about the arroyos.”
    “Oh, yeah, the arroyos. You know the scene where the Comanches are sneaking up on the cabin?”
    “John, not funny.”
    Pellam said, “What do you