"It's not like I thought we were perfect," Regina said. "I knew Gina and I had problems. But that text was impossible to ignore. For the first time in a long time, I saw myself the way other people see us. So I showed it to Gina. Even before I'd said anything, she started crying."

I frowned.

"No, Russel, really, none of this is bad, not at all. We cried together, for the first time in years. Gina and I have been in crisis mode for twenty years now. It's always just one more pitch, one more audition, one more year. But it never is. It's like chasing mirages in a desert. It's not completely crazy - there really are oases in a desert, right? They're not all mirages. But there aren't very many of the d.a.m.n things. After all these years, Gina and I never really found one. It was okay when the two of us were at least miserable together. But at some point, we turned on each other. Then we were miserable alone."

"So you're leaving the desert," I said.

Right then, Gina appeared behind Regina on the pool deck.

"Russel!" she said, a big smile on her face. She walked closer and stood arm-in-arm with Regina.

"I'm sorry to see you guys go," I said to the both of them.

"I told him," Regina said to Gina. "I told him everything."

They both kept smiling, beaming like the sun without smog.

"Be happy for us," Gina said. "This is a good thing. And we have you to thank for it."

"I am happy," I said. In theory. For them, anyway "Well, anyway," Regina said. "We just wanted to say goodbye."

"Goodbye, Russel," Gina said.

"Goodbye," I said, watching the two of them turn and walk away. They both had a spring in their step now they hadn't had before - a spring I'm not sure I'd seen since coming to Los Angeles. A walk like that was one of the first things this city killed.

I thought back to the night I'd mistakenly sent Regina that text. Could it really only have been three weeks ago? Since then, Kevin and I had ended up in a place a lot like them. How in the world had it happened so fast? It had taken Regina and Gina twenty years.

And now he's leaving, I thought.

But he'd be back. Wouldn't he? He'd said he would.

"We'd break up if we ever treated each other like that." This was something else Kevin had said, that night we'd gone for that walk in Santa Monica.

I was still standing in the swimming pool, not moving an inch, but suddenly I had one final vision of a different time and place. I was in Kevin's and my apartment, more than sixty years earlier.

Cole Gordon faces his lover, a blond woman with a suitcase. She stands at the door, all ready to go.

"You're leaving because I'm a loser," Cole says to her. "Aren't you?"

"No," she says. "I'm leaving because you're not the person I fell in love with."

"I knew you'd leave eventually," Cole says bitterly.

She looks at him, so very sadly, as if he's just proved her point, then says, "Good luck," and turns to go.

Had this scene really happened? It was probably like all the things I'd been imagining lately, all in my mind. But once again, it didn't really matter. Either way, it was true.

Whatever you do, don't- That's what Cole Gordon had warned me. Now I knew the rest of what he'd been trying to tell me: Whatever you do, don't let him walk out that door.

Cole Gordon knew better than anyone what happened after they left you and your dreams didn't come true, what it meant to be truly desperate. How you could even end up one dark night in a very lonely bathtub.

I said at the very beginning I wasn't worried I'd come to Los Angeles and lose my soul, because I'd already seen all the movies about Hollywood, and I knew all the plot-lines. I hadn't lost my soul, but so what? I was about to lose Kevin, who was about a thousand times more important than any stupid soul. Except now that I thought about it, this was exactly how all those movies ill.u.s.trated that the main character had lost their soul: by having their lover walk out on them.

Suddenly I realized I did have something to say, something really, really important, and it was even about gay love. But it wasn't the world I had to say it to.

I ran to up to our apartment and threw open the door.

"Kevin!" I said. "Stop! Don't go!" I looked around, in the bedroom, the kitchen, even the bathroom. "Kevin? Are you here?"

There was no one there. I was too late.

I wasn't feeling dead inside anymore. Now I was feeling like a f.u.c.king idiot. If I called him now, would he come back? Or had I really blown the one good thing I'd ever done in my entire life?

Behind me, a key jiggled in the lock, and the door opened.

I spun around.

Kevin stood in the doorway. "I forgot my foot cream," he said.

He started for the bedroom.

"Wait," I said. "Don't go."

He turned to look at me. I was still wet from the pool, dripping in the middle of the floor.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I was a total d.i.c.k. I was disappointed by the movie deal, and I took it out on you. Of course I'd pick you over screenwriting - always, absolutely, no question, without a doubt. I love you, so there is no question. I don't know why I said those things last night, but it was stupid, and I'm really sorry."

He kept looking at me, and I didn't know what he was thinking.

Finally, he said, "It's all good, Russel. I said stupid things too. And that question? I love you too, so I shouldn't have made you choose. I'd never make you give up your dream. But I still think I need a day or two to clear my head. I'll be back, I promise."

He started for the door, leaving his foot cream behind.

"Please," I said. "Stay."

He stopped, facing away from me, standing in the doorway.

I wondered what to say. Did I tell him that the ghost in our apartment had warned me not to let him go, even for a couple of days? Or would that make me sound as crazy as Mr. Brander?

"I'm a moron, okay?" I said. "I came to this town to find my dream. But I already had my dream, and I didn't even know it."

He turned around to face me again.

"Oh, wait, did you think I was talking about you?" I said. "Oh, G.o.d, no! I meant my longstanding desire to take up skydiving. Sorry for the confusion!"

Kevin cracked a smile.

I smiled too. "Come on, that was some pretty cheesy dialogue. 'I already had my dream, and I didn't even know it'? I am a self-respecting screenwriter, you know."

He stepped out of the doorway into the apartment, toward me. "A d.a.m.n good one."

"Eh, we'll see," I said, and we both leaned in for a kiss.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

Almost five months have gone by. It's the end of March now, and Kevin and I are still in Los Angeles. I've continued working on my screenplays, but I also got a job as a barista, like in A Cup of Joe. (Sometimes life imitates art, just like they say.) Other stuff has happened too. I guess the second biggest news is that Scarface, Otto's web series, went viral. The first episode has something like eight hundred thousand views (and the last episode has almost that many, which means that once people start, they watch the whole series). A few weeks after it first went big, he got this incredible write-up in the Los Angeles Times. It was all about his life as an actor, how frustrating it was that people couldn't see beyond the scars. After that, Fiona made a deal with Hulu to start streaming Scarface (hardly any money - like, four thousand total - but good exposure, at least according to her).

Even better, casting directors all over town wanted him to come in and read. It didn't seem like anything had changed: Otto still had the same scars on his face, and they were just as distracting to audiences as before. But something had changed. He'd already been offered a supporting role in a TV movie, and he was up for this indie movie with Marissa Tomei. Maybe it was the web series, maybe it was the article, or maybe it was the two things working together, but now Otto is telling a story that people want to hear. Better still, they want to be part of his happy ending.

When we met for lunch last Friday - Chinese this time - he was really excited.

"What?" I said, before we'd even been brought menus. "What is it?"

"I got a sitcom."

"Are you kidding?"

"h.e.l.ls to the no! I just found out this morning!"

"Oh, my G.o.d. Otto, that's fantastic!"

"It's not the lead or anything. But it's definitely supporting, not just reoccurring. It's set in a college dormitory. They're basing the character on me, on my experiences. They're going to interview me and everything. 'Course I have to sign all these doc.u.ments saying they own everything I tell them."

"And it's absolutely definite?"

"Well, I mean, the pilot may not get picked up. But they're definitely going to pilot. And it looks really good. They don't shoot nearly as many pilots as they used to. And the script I saw is good, it really is. It's by one of the guys who did Silicon Valley - not Mike Judge, one of the others."

So the biggest obstacle to Otto's success - his scars - had turned out to be the very thing that helped him break through in the end. It feels like there's a lesson there, a really interesting one, but I'm not quite sure what it is yet.

As Otto talked, I tried to examine my feelings about his success. Was I jealous? Yeah, if I'm honest, I was, a little. But if the City of Broken Dreams was finally going to grant happiness to someone, I was glad it was Otto. I don't know anyone who deserves success more than he does.

"If we're a hit, I'm going to try to get you a job as a writer," Otto said. "I already told them you were my uncredited co-writer on Scarface."

"Otto-"

''It's true! You gave me the whole idea."

"I did not." But secretly I was glad he was pushing for me.

After the waitress gave us menus and poured us tea, Otto asked, "So how's it going with you? What's going on with your movie?"

"There's really nothing new," I said.

At this moment, A Cup of Joe isn't completely dead. Mr. Brander never did sue me, or at least he hasn't yet. And a couple weeks after the falling out with him, I got an email from Justin. He told me that he really did like my screenplay (even if he also thought it needed work, even more than he let on in any of the production meetings with Mr. Brander). He and some friends had decided to try to put together an indie movie themselves, and they wanted it to be my screenplay.

The proposed budget is a lot smaller than what Mr. Brander was talking about, but it's not a micro-budget either. It's around six hundred thousand dollars, which means I have to be open to doing even more rewrites, cutting characters and locations in order to make it cheaper to film. On the other hand, this budget is real, not the result of the Bulls.h.i.t Factor, or the figment of some delusional old man's imagination.

"It's going to happen for both of us," Otto said. "I know it is!"

I couldn't help but think back on that lunch we had right after I moved to town, when Otto told me how people really break into Hollywood, that it's a lot of little steps, combined with flat-out luck. That's exactly how it's working for Otto. For the first time in a long time, I'm thinking maybe it will work that way for me too.

As for Daniel, the news is less good. As far as I know, he never did come back to the apartment he shared with Zoe. Even worse, I was surfing around not long ago on my iPad mini (yes, I was looking at p.o.r.n), and I saw a familiar, um, face.

Was this the kind of "modeling" the guy who'd talked to him had in mind all along? Either way, finding out that Daniel was doing p.o.r.n was incredibly depressing. But it wasn't very surprising.

For the record, I didn't click on it (truly). Daniel is cute, and Kevin and I had shared a fleeting fantasy about him that one night, and I'd thought about him walking out of that shower a few times too.

But the idea of him doing p.o.r.n was just about the least erotic thing imaginable. In fact, it made me feel ashamed about all the p.o.r.n I watch in my life. Is that what the people who do p.o.r.n are like in real life? Are they all desperate or confused? I know the p.o.r.n stars themselves say no, at least if you believe their Twitter accounts and the interviews they give to various websites. But I bet a higher proportion of them are like Daniel than, say, the people who dress up like superheroes and pose for pictures with tourists at Universal CityWalk. How is Daniel going to keep from getting diseases? What's going to happen to him when he's too old for p.o.r.n?

I showed Kevin what I'd found (and he had absolutely no interest in looking either). Then the question became: what did we tell Zoe? For one thing, I knew what she thought of gay people, or at least gay guys, and I didn't particularly want her knowing that we also looked at p.o.r.n.

Finally, we decided she deserved to know, so we went down and knocked on her door.

She looked surprised to see us. And then suspicious.

"What is it?" she said.

"We were just wondering if you'd ever heard from Daniel," I said.

The suspicion turned to sadness on her face. "No. Nothing."

Kevin was about to say something when I noticed there were books open on her kitchen table behind us. They looked like textbooks.

"What's this?" I asked, nodding to the table. "Are you in school?"

Zoe glanced at the floor. "Oh, I'm just taking a course."

"Really? That's great."

"Something to distract me until Daniel comes home."

I couldn't be sure, but it sounded a little bit like Zoe was spending some of the money she'd saved for Daniel's education on herself. If he never came back at all, maybe she'd end up getting a whole degree. Who knows? After all these years of living her life for her little brother, maybe she'd finally start living it for herself.

Kevin and I looked at each other, and somehow we knew what we were each thinking.

I have absolutely no idea if we made the right decision, but we didn't tell Zoe about where we'd seen Daniel. I'm not sure we ever will.