Her hands curled into fists on the paper in her lap. “Leave me alone for a little bit, will you? I’ll meet you inside.”

“Okay, babe.” His footsteps crunched in the gravel as he moved away. She wadded the memo into a ball, then sagged against the seat. What if it was true that she had no talent? When she’d dreamed about being a movie star she’d never thought much about acting. She’d imagined they would give her lessons or something.

A car pulled into the space next to her with the radio blaring. The couple didn’t bother to turn off the engine before they started necking. High school kids, hiding out in the parking lot at the Garden of Allah.

And then the music was over and the news came on.

It was the first story.

The announcer repeated the information calmly, as if it were an everyday occurrence, as if it were not an outrage, not the end of Belinda’s life, not the end of everything. She screamed, a terrible, long cry, all the more horrible because it happened inside her head.

James Dean was dead.

She threw open the door and stumbled across the parking lot, not looking where she was going, not caring. She tore through the shrubbery and down one of the paths, trying to outrace her suffocating anguish. She ran past the swimming pool shaped like Azimova’s Black Sea, past a big oak at the end of the pool that held a telephone box with a sign, FOR CENTRAL CASTING ONLY. She ran until she came to a long stucco wall beside one of the bungalows. In the dark, she sagged against the wall and cried over the death of her dreams.

Jimmy was from Indiana, just like her, and now he was dead. Killed on the road to Salinas driving a silver Porsche he called “Little Bastard.” He’d said anything was possible. A man was his own man; a woman her own woman. Without Jimmy, her dreams seemed childish and impossible.

“My dear, you’re making a frightful noise. Would you mind terribly taking your troubles somewhere else? Unless, of course, you’re very pretty, in which case you’re invited to come through the gate and have a drink with me.” The voice, deep and faintly British, drifted over the top of the stucco wall.