Rosie said, "I think she sends out for things."

Fat Charlie thought it highly likely that Rosie's mum went out at night in bat form to suck the blood from sleeping innocents. He had mentioned this theory to Rosie once, but she had failed to see the humor in it.

Rosie's mother had told Rosie that she was certain that Fat Charlie was marrying her for her money.

"What money?" asked Rosie.

Rosie's mother gestured to the apartment, a gesture that took in the wax fruit, the antique furniture, the paintings on the walls, and pursed her lips.

"But this is all yours," said Rosie, who lived on her wages working for a London charity-and her wages were not large, so to supplement them Rosie had dipped into the money her father had left her in his will. It had paid for a small flat, which Rosie shared with a succession of Australians and New Zealanders, and for a secondhand VW Golf.

"I won't live forever," sniffed her mother, in a way that implied that she had every intention of living forever, getting harder and thinner and more stonelike as she went, and eating less and less, until she would be able to live on nothing more than air and wax fruit and spite.

Rosie, driving Fat Charlie home from Heathrow, decided that the subject should be changed. She said, "The water's gone off in my flat. It's out in the whole building."

"Why's that then?"

"Mrs. Klinger downstairs. She said something sprung a leak."

"Probably Mrs. Klinger."

"Charlie. So, I was wondering-could I take a bath at your place tonight?"

"Do you need me to sponge you down?"

"Charlie."

"Sure. Not a problem."

Rosie stared at the back of the car in front of her, then she took her hand off the gear stick and reached out and squeezed Fat Charlie's huge hand. "We'll be married soon enough," she said.

"I know," said Fat Charlie.

"Well, I mean," she said. "There'll be plenty of time for all that, won't there?"

"Plenty," said Fat Charlie.

"You know what my mum once said?" said Rosie.

"Er. Was it something about bringing back hanging?"

"It wasnot . She said that if a just-married couple put a coin in a jar every time they make love in their first year, and take a coin out for every time that they make love in the years that follow, the jar will never be emptied."

"And this means...?"

"Well," she said. "It's interesting, isn't it? I'll be over at eight tonight with my rubber duck. How are you for towels?"

"Um...."

"I'll bring my own towel."

Fat Charlie did not believe it would be the end of the world if an occasional coin went into the jar before they tied the knot and sliced the wedding cake, but Rosie had her own opinions on the matter, and there the matter ended. The jar remained perfectly empty.

THE PROBLEM,FAT CHARLIE REALIZED, ONCE HE GOT HOME,with arriving back in London after a brief trip away, is that if you arrive in the early morning, there is nothing much to do for the rest of the day.

Fat Charlie was a man who preferred to be working. He regarded lying on a sofa watchingCountdown as a reminder of his interludes as a member of the unemployed. He decided that the sensible thing to do would be to go back to work a day early. In the Aldwych offices of the Grahame Coats Agency, up on the fifth and topmost floor, he would feel part of the swim of things. There would be interesting conversation with his fellow workers in the tearoom. The whole panoply of life would unfold before him, majestic in its tapestry, implacable and relentless in its industry. People would be pleased to see him.

"You're not back until tomorrow," said Annie the receptionist, when Fat Charlie walked in. "I told people you wouldn't be back until tomorrow. When they phoned." She was not amused.

"Couldn't keep away," said Fat Charlie.

"Obviously not," she said, with a sniff. "You should phone Maeve Livingstone back. She's been calling every day."

"I thought she was one of Grahame Coats's people."

"Well, he wants you to talk to her. Hang on." She picked up the phone.

Grahame Coats came with both names. Not Mister Coats. Never just Grahame. It was his agency, and it represented people, and took a percentage of what they earned for the right to have represented them.

Fat Charlie went back to his office, which was a tiny room he shared with a number of filing cabinets. There was a yellow Post-it note stuck to his computer screen with "See me. GC" on it, so he went down the hall to Grahame Coats's enormous office. The door was closed. He knocked and then, unsure if he had heard anyone say anything or not, opened the door and put his head inside.

The room was empty. There was nobody there. "Um, hello?" said Fat Charlie, not very loudly. There was no reply. There was a certain amount of disarrangement in the room, however: the bookcase was sticking out of the wall at a peculiar angle, and from the space behind it he could hear a thumping sound that might have been hammering.

He closed the door as quietly as he could and went back to his desk.

His telephone rang. He picked it up.

"Grahame Coats here. Come and see me."

This time Grahame Coats was sitting behind his desk, and the bookcase was flat against the wall. He did not invite Fat Charlie to sit down. He was a middle-aged white man with receding, very fair hair. If you happened to see Grahame Coats and immediately found yourself thinking of an albino ferret in an expensive suit, you would not be the first.

"You're back with us, I see," said Grahame Coats. "As it were."

"Yes," said Fat Charlie. Then, because Grahame Coats did not seem particularly pleased with Fat Charlie's early return, he added, "Sorry."

Grahame Coats pinched his lips together, looked down at a paper on his desk, looked up again. "I was given to understand that you were not, in fact, returning until tomorrow. Bit early, aren't we?"

"We-I mean, I-got in this morning. From Florida. I thought I'd come in. Lots to do. Show willing. If that's all right."

"Absa-tively," said Grahame Coats. The word-a car crash betweenabsolutely andpositively -always set Fat Charlie's teeth on edge. "It's your funeral."

"My father's, actually."

A ferretlike neck twist. "You're still using one of your sick days."

"Right."

"Maeve Livingstone. Worried widow of Morris. Needs reassurance. Fair words and fine promises. Rome was not built in a day. The actual business of sorting out Morris Livingstone's estate and getting money to her continues unabated. Phones me practically daily for handholding. Meanwhilst, I turn the task over to you."

"Right," said Fat Charlie. "So, um. No rest for the wicked."

"Another day, another dollar," said Grahame Coats, with a wag of his finger.

"Nose to the grindstone?" suggested Fat Charlie.

"Shoulder to the wheel," said Grahame Coats. "Well, delightful chatting with you. But we both have much work to do."

There was something about being in the vicinity of Grahame Coats that always made Fat Charlie (a) speak in cliches and (b) begin to daydream about huge black helicopters first opening fire upon, then dropping buckets of flaming napalm onto the offices of the Grahame Coats Agency. Fat Charlie would not be in the office in those daydreams. He would be sitting in a chair outside a little cafe on the other side of the Aldwych, sipping a frothy coffee and occasionally cheering at an exceptionally well-flung bucket of napalm.

From this you would presume that there is little you need to know about Fat Charlie's employment, save that he was unhappy in it, and, in the main, you would be right. Fat Charlie had a facility for figures which kept him in work, and an awkwardness and a diffidence which kept him from pointing out to people what it was that he actually did, and how much he actually did. All about him, Fat Charlie would see people ascending implacably to their levels of incompetence, while he remained in entry-level positions, performing essential functions until the day he rejoined the ranks of the unemployed and started watching daytime television again. He was never out of a job for long, but it had happened far too often in the last decade for Fat Charlie to feel particularly comfortable in any position. He did not, however, take it personally.

He telephoned Maeve Livingstone, widow of Morris Livingstone, once the most famous short Yorkshire comedian in Britain and a longtime client of the Grahame Coats Agency. "Hullo," he said. "This is Charles Nancy, from the accounts department of the Grahame Coats Agency."

"Oh," said a woman's voice at the other end of the line. "I thought Grahame would be phoning me himself."

"He's a bit tied up. So he's um, delegated it," said Fat Charlie. "To me. So. Can I help?"

"I'm not sure. I was rather wondering-well, the bank manager was wondering-when the rest of the money from Morris's estate would be coming through. Grahame Coats explained to me, the last time-well, I think it was the last time-when we spoke-that it was invested-I mean, I understand that these things take time-he said otherwise I could lose a lot of money-"

"Well," said Fat Charlie, "I know he's on it. But these things do take time."

"Yes," she said. "I suppose they must do. I called the BBC and they said they'd made several payments since Morris's death. You know, they've released the whole ofMorris Livingstone, I Presume on DVD now? And they're bringing out both series ofShort Back and Sides for Christmas."

"I didn't know," admitted Fat Charlie. "But I'm sure Grahame Coats does. He's always on top of that kind of thing."

"I had to buy my own DVD," she said, wistfully. "Still, it brought it all back. The roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the BBC club. Made me miss the spotlight, I can tell you that for nothing. That was how I met Morris, you know. I was a dancer. I had my own career."

Fat Charlie told her that he'd let Grahame Coats know that her bank manager was a bit concerned, and he put down the phone.

He wondered how anyone could ever miss the spotlight.

In Fat Charlie's worst nightmares, a spotlight shone down upon him from a dark sky onto a wide stage, and unseen figures would try to force Fat Charlie to stand in the spotlight and sing. And no matter how far or how fast he ran, or how well he hid, they would find him and drag him back onto the stage, in front of dozens of expectant faces. He would always awake before he actually had to sing, sweating and trembling, his heart beating a cannonade in his chest.

A day's work passed. Fat Charlie had worked there almost two years. He had been there longer than anyone except Grahame Coats himself, for the staff turnover at the Grahame Coats Agency tended to be high. And still, nobody had been pleased to see him.

Fat Charlie would sometimes sit at his desk and stare out of the window as the loveless gray rain rattled against the glass, and he would imagine himself on a tropical beach somewhere, with the breakers crashing from an impossibly blue sea onto the impossibly yellow sands. Often Fat Charlie would wonder if the people on the beach in his imagination, watching the white fingers of the waves as they wriggled toward the shore, listening to the tropical birds whistling in the palm trees, whether they ever dreamed of being in England, in the rain, in a cupboard-sized room in a fifth-floor office, a safe distance from the dullness of the pure golden sand and the hellish boredom of a day so perfect that not even a creamy drink containing slightly too much rum and a red paper umbrella can do anything to alleviate it. It comforted him.

He stopped at the off-license on the way home and bought a bottle of German white wine, and a patchouli-scented candle from the tiny supermarket next door, and picked up a pizza from the Pizza Place nearby.

Rosie phoned from her yoga class at7 :30 PMto let him know that she was going to be a little late, then from her car at8 :00 PMto let him know she was stuck in traffic, at9 :15to let him know that she was now just around the corner, by which time Fat Charlie had drunk most of the bottle of white wine on his own, and consumed all but one lonely triangle of pizza.

Later, he wondered if it was the wine that made him say it.

Rosie arrived at9 :20, with towels, and a Tescos bag filled with shampoos, soaps, and a large pot of hair mayonnaise. She said no, briskly but cheerfully, to a glass of the white wine and the slice of pizza-she had, she explained, eaten in the traffic jam. She had ordered in. So Fat Charlie sat in the kitchen, and poured himself the final glass of white wine, and picked the cheese and the pepperoni from the top of the cold pizza while Rosie went off to run the bath and then started, suddenly and quite loudly, to scream.

Fat Charlie made it to the bathroom before the first scream had finished dying away, and while Rosie was filling her lungs for the second. He was convinced that he would find her dripping with blood. To his surprise and relief, she was not bleeding. She was wearing a blue bra and panties, and was pointing to the bath, in the center of which sat a large brown garden spider.

"I'm sorry," she wailed. "It took me by surprise."

"They can do that," said Fat Charlie. "I'll just wash it away."

"Don't you dare," said Rosie, fiercely. "It's a living thing. Take it outside."

"Right," said Fat Charlie.

"I'll wait in the kitchen," she said. "Tell me when it's all over."

When you have drunk an entire bottle of white wine, coaxing a rather skittish garden spider into a clear plastic tumbler using only an old birthday card becomes more of a challenge to hand-eye coordination than it is at other times; a challenge that is not helped by a partially unclothed fiancee on the edge of hysterics, who, despite her announcement that she would wait in the kitchen, is instead leaning over your shoulder and offering advice.

But soon enough, despite the help, he had the spider inside the tumbler, the mouth of which was firmly covered by a card from an old schoolfriend which told him that YOU ARE ONLY AS OLD AS YOU FEEL (and, on the inside humorously topped this with SO STOP FEELING YOURSELF YOU SEX MANIAC-HAPPY BIRTHDAY).

He took the spider downstairs and out of the front door, into the tiny front garden, which consisted of a hedge, for people to throw up in, and several large flagstones with grass growing up between them. He held the tumbler up. In the yellow sodium light, the spider was black. He imagined it was staring at him.

"Sorry about that," he said to the spider, and, white wine slooshing comfortably around inside him, he said it aloud.

He put the card and the tumbler down on a cracked flagstone, and he lifted the tumbler, and waited for the spider to scuttle away. Instead, it simply sat, unmoving, on the face of the cheerful cartoon teddy bear on the birthday card. The man and the spider regarded each other.

Something that Mrs. Higgler said came to him then, and the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. Perhaps it was the devil in him. Probably it was the alcohol.

"If you see my brother," said Fat Charlie to the spider, "tell him he ought to come by and say hello."

The spider remained where it was, and raised one leg, almost as if it were thinking it over, then it scuttled across the flagstone toward the hedge, and was gone.

ROSIE HAD HERBATH, AND SHE GAVE FAT CHARLIE A LINGERing peck on the cheek, and she went home.

Fat Charlie turned on the TV, but he found himself nodding so he turned it off, and went to bed, where he dreamed a dream of such vividness and peculiarity that it would remain with him for the rest of his life.

One way that you know something is a dream is that you are somewhere you have never been in real life. Fat Charlie had never been to California. He had never been to Beverly Hills. He had seen it enough, though, in movies and on television to feel a comfortable thrill of recognition. A party was going on.

The lights of Los Angeles glimmered and twinkled beneath them.

The people at the party seemed to divide neatly into the ones with the silver plates, covered with perfect canapes, and the ones who picked things off the silver plates, or who declined to. The ones who were being fed moved around the huge house gossiping, smiling, talking, each as certain of his or her relative importance in the world of Hollywood as were the courtiers in the court of ancient Japan-and, just as in the ancient Japanese court, each of them was certain that, just one rung up the ladder, they would be safe. There were actors who wished to be stars, stars who wanted to be independent producers, independent producers who craved the safety of a studio job, directors who wanted to be stars, studio bosses who wanted to be the bosses of other, less precarious studios, studio lawyers who wanted to be liked for themselves or, failing that, just wanted to be liked.

In Fat Charlie's dream, he could see himself from inside and outside at the same time, and he was not himself. In Fat Charlie's usual dreams he was probably just sitting down for an exam on double-entry bookkeeping that he had forgotten to study for in circumstances which made it a certainty that when he finally stood up he would discover that he had somehow neglected to put anything on below the waist when he got dressed that morning. In his dreams, Fat Charlie was himself, only clumsier.

Not in this dream.

In this dream, Fat Charlie was cool, and beyond cool. He was slick, he was fly, he was smart, he was the only person at the party without a silver tray who had not received an invitation. And (this was something that was a source of astonishment to the sleeping Fat Charlie, who could think of nothing more embarrassing than being anywhere without an invitation) he was having a marvelous time.

He told each person who asked him a different story about who he was and why he was there. After half an hour, most of the people at the party were convinced that he was the representative of a foreign investment house, seeking to buy outright one of the studios, and after another half an hour it was common knowledge at the party that he would be putting in a bid for Paramount.