By now, I'd reached the front door. Lewis was still standing there. I think he'd been there the whole time, listening. I was still mad at him for not telling me the truth, but it was hard to blame him. He'd been in an impossible position.

I nodded at him, and he nodded back.

In the hallway behind me, Mr. Brander said, "Don't you dare open the door! I mean it, if you leave now, you'll regret it!"

I opened the door, and I left, closing the door behind me.

It was after dark by the time I got back to the apartment. As soon as I opened the door, Kevin said, "What happened?" It was like I could see the groove in the floor where he'd been pacing back and forth.

"It's over," I said. "Evan was right. Mr. Brander's crazy." I briefly told him what I'd learned.

"Oh, man," Kevin said. "I'm so sorry."

"But."

"But what?"

"Well, you told me so all along. Right? You were right and I was wrong."

"You think I'm happy I was right?"

"I don't know," I said. "Are you?"

"You're not being fair."

I wasn't being fair. In fact, I was being kind of a d.i.c.k. But I couldn't help it. Los Angeles had been testing the h.e.l.l out of me lately: not just that moment with Otto in his bedroom, and having Daniel try to seduce Kevin and me, but also the traffic, the smog, the noise, all the att.i.tude from other people. I'd pa.s.sed those tests (more or less).

This was different. It was one thing constantly being surrounded by the desperation of other people - of Otto, Gina, Regina, Daniel, Declan McConnell, and even Cole Gordon and Mr. Brander - to feel their dark emotion coating me like crude oil. It was another thing to realize that I'd been just as desperate as they were, even if I hadn't quite known it yet. And it was another thing still to realize that I was right to feel so desperate, that the things I thought were real weren't. I'd joked with Otto that first week that I was going to go barefoot in Los Angeles, but in a way, it had been true. And it wasn't just broken gla.s.s I was walking across. It was something even more painful. Yup, it was broken dreams - everyone else's and my own.

But so what? Bad things happened all the time in this town. I'd told Kevin that Los Angeles was the big-time, and it was, so what the h.e.l.l am I moaning on about? All I can say is at that moment in time, I'd had all the desperation I could take. I said once before that I felt like an inflatable Santa slowly leaking air. Well, now I was completely deflated, an empty vinyl skin lying on the floor. I wasn't sure how I was even able to talk, but I was.

"You have no idea how hard this whole thing has been on me," I said to Kevin. "Writing movies is my dream."

"How hard it's been on you?" Kevin said. "Did it ever occur to you this has been hard on me too? In case you forgot, I had an actual career before coming to this town. I wasn't just a d.a.m.n interview transcriptionist."

I had forgotten that. Kevin hadn't talked much about his new job. Maybe it was like how I hadn't wanted to talk about the movie project around him, how I was always worried what he'd think. He probably hadn't wanted to make me feel guilty, since coming to Los Angeles had been my idea in the first place.

Even so, I couldn't seem to stop arguing with him.

"It's not the same thing," I said. "That's just your job."

"And writing movies is some higher calling?" Kevin said. "Is that it?"

"That's not what I meant. I just meant this is a real disappointment for me, okay? Can you not let me feel bad about this for one single day?"

"Who said you can't feel bad?"

"You've just been expecting it," I said. "Right from the very beginning, you thought this movie was never going to happen."

"And that makes it my fault?"

"It's not your fault. It just doesn't feel very supportive."

"Supportive? You know how you just mentioned that I have an actual job? Can I point out that I'm the only one here who does?"

It went on like this for a bit, and I still couldn't seem to stop myself from saying things I knew I'd regret, and not saying all the things I knew I should. Why was I taking it out on Kevin? I didn't know, but somehow it was like a scene from a movie, the screenplay locked, and there couldn't be any deviations from the script.

Finally, Kevin said, "Just tell me one thing."

"What?" I said, impatient.

"Exactly how much are you willing to sacrifice to make it in this town?"

"What?" I said again.

"If you had to choose between me and making it as a screenwriter, which would you pick?" Now he was the impatient one.

What was I supposed to say? Kevin's question seemed totally unfair.

So I said, "I can't deal with this right now."

And then I went to bed.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

I was floating facedown in a swimming pool, completely motionless, dead to the world.

It was the next day, Sunday morning.

I know this is how this story started - with me floating in that pool the same way. But that had actually been pretty different. Back then, I'd been floating in that pool because I'd been so dead-tired from the move to Los Angeles.

Now I really did feel dead.

I'd never felt this way before. All my life, I'd heard people say, "I feel dead inside," but I hadn't known what they meant, not really. Now I did. It was different from having a black hole in your stomach or even feeling like a deflated Santa. It was like I didn't feel anything - like I didn't exist, like I wasn't even a person.

Like I was a ghost.

I'd woken that morning to find an email from Fiona. She'd finally gotten back to me: I've read your scripts. I'm afraid I'm not the right agent for you. Good luck. Fiona She hadn't said anything about Mr. Brander, but I figured she'd heard from him. He'd probably sent her an angry email the day before, or maybe made a furious phone call. Now Fiona, who had been stringing me along for months, knew there was absolutely no chance of the deal with Mr. Brander ever going forward, so she was cutting her losses.

I could not believe it. She hadn't even waited until Monday. That's Hollywood efficiency for you.

Kevin and I hadn't slept together the night before, not after our fight. He'd slept on the couch in the front room. That morning, before I could even tell him about that email from Fiona, he told me he was going to stay in Long Beach with his old college roommate for a day or two, that he needed some time to think.

I hadn't stopped him. I knew it had to do with our argument, and the question he'd asked me the night before, about my picking between him and screenwriting. But even if I had started the fight, that hadn't been a fair question, so I still hadn't answered it. Right then, he was up in the apartment packing up his computer, getting ready to go.

That was fine. I needed time to think too, or maybe just to see if I'd ever feel anything again.

Floating in that pool, I wondered if Fiona had even read my screenplays, or if she had just been waiting to see what happened with Mr. Brander. I wasn't sure which was worse: her reading them and not being impressed, or her not even bothering to read them at all and waiting to see how A Cup of Joe turned out - her whole determination of my worth as a writer depending on someone else in Hollywood liking me first.

This city made no sense to me, and it wasn't just the fact that the freeways all had different names. Mr. Brander had said the world desperately needed a story about gay love - not only what was awkward and pathetic and ironic about it, but also what was joyful and wonderful and real.

He was crazy, but when he'd said it, it had felt true.

But no one else thought so. No matter how convincing Mr. Brander had sounded, it had ended up being just another lie. My screenplay wasn't what the world needed. Or at least it wasn't what the world wanted. That was the worst part of this whole experience: finally feeling like I had something to say, something new and different, and then being told, "Oh, wait, never mind, not really, forget it."

I hung there in that pool, floating like just another dead leaf.

A shadow stretched out along the bottom. Someone was standing at the edge of the pool, watching me. This time, the legs weren't hairy - it wasn't Kevin. This time, the legs were black and were wearing what looked like Onitsuka Tigers.

Regina.

I lifted my head. I'd needed to take a breath anyway.

"Hey, there," she said. "I was hoping I'd run into you."

"Why?" I'd just lifted my head out of the pool, and there was still water running down my face, so I don't think she could tell what I was feeling, that I was dead inside.

"To say goodbye," she said. "Gina and I are leaving."

"What?" As the water ran out of my eyes, she became clearer in my vision.

"We're leaving. We've given our notice and everything."

"Where are you going?"

"We're not sure yet. Not staying in California - too expensive. Arizona maybe?"

I was confused. "You're leaving?"

She nodded. I worked my way to the edge of the pool where I could stand on the bottom, where I didn't have to dog-paddle.

"But what about-?" I said.

"Our careers?" she said, and I nodded. "I think we're going try something else for a while. Maybe run a bed and breakfast."

"A bed and breakfast?"

Regina nodded, and I had absolutely no idea what to say to that. Part of me thought she was joking. I was still dead inside, but I was curious too.

"Really," she said, somehow reading my thoughts. "We've given this a lot of thought, but we're done."

"Done? With what?"

"Our careers. Comedy. Screenwriting."

"But..."

"Yeah, I know. But we're just done. Really."

Even now, I was somehow a.s.sembling a pep talk in my mind, about how talented she and Gina both were, even though I'd never actually read any of Regina's scripts. They were so close, I'd say. They couldn't give up yet.

The words disappeared from my mouth before I could even speak them, like the water dripping down my face.

They're giving up, I thought.

I didn't know what to say. Everything I could think of sounded judgmental or patronizing: "That's too bad." Or, "Well, at least you tried." Giving up on a dream wasn't something you saw very often, in the movies or on TV, or even in real life. You saw plenty of people achieving their dreams: giving Oscar acceptance speeches, or winning gold medals at the Olympics, or being elected President of the United States. But not that many people accept Oscars, or win gold medals at the Olympics, or get elected President. So clearly a lot of people do give up their dreams at some point. I guess they mostly do it alone.

It was sinking in at last: Gina and Regina were what happened when someone's dream never came true.

Finally, I said, "Why now?"

"To tell the truth, it was you," she said.

"Me?"

"Do you remember that night we all went out to eat after Gina's show?"

I nodded.

"You sent Kevin a text," Regina said.

"What?" I said. Now I was really confused.

"Well, I should say you thought you sent Kevin a text. You wrote, 'Promise me we'll never be like Gina and Regina.'"

That did sound vaguely familiar. "But how-?"

"You and I had been texting earlier. I'd said where to meet me in the club. So you meant to send it to Kevin, but you really sent it to me."

"Oh. I'm sorry." I knew I should feel embarra.s.sed, but I didn't, not now.

"Don't be," Regina said. "I wouldn't have told you if it was a bad thing. It ended up being a really good thing."

I looked at her.

"The funny thing is," Regina said, "Gina and I used to be you and Kevin. We didn't just love each other, we liked each other. We never in a million years thought we'd become one of 'those' couples. But then you sent that text..."

My first response was to think, Kevin and I are nothing like you and Gina! But I thought about the argument he and I had had the night before. We'd been total jerks to each other (even though I'd started it).

Regina and Gina had once been us, and now Kevin and I were basically them. That was ironic. The night before, we'd even sort of sounded like them.