A waiter came past with a silver tray of martinis, an actor playing a waiter actually, in black and white, more waiter than any real waiter. It was the way with movie people, they rewrote their lives to look like movies, cast them like movies, spoke dialogue, saw their houses as sets, their clothes wardrobe, their bodies things to be reworked perpetually by backstage craftsmen. Jimmy went along with the gag, took a martini, let the waiter bow at the waist, didn’t giggle. He waded into the crowd. He walked past the guayabera guy just as he was delivering the punch line to his story.

“And it had already been calibrated!”

It got a big laugh.

A woman stood at the bar along the far wall under a Ruscha, her face turned away, quarter profile, talking with someone, maybe watching herself in the plateglass window beyond the man. There was something Old School about her look, too, black hair over the eyes, a silk dress that caught the light, shoes taller than they needed to be. In another time, or at least another movie, she would have had a cigarette smoldering and a little chrome.25 automatic in her clutch bag. And a hurt in her heart.

Jimmy was watching her when Joel Kinser came up.

“Maybe I could see some I.D.,” the host said.

Kinser was just over five feet. He wore a suit the color of raw clay, a black silken V-neck tee underneath, thin-soled slip-ons, no socks, a belt that picked up the hardware on the tops of the shoes. He had his hands in his pants pockets, pockets which were always empty. He hated bulges.

“Look who’s talking,” Jimmy said. “It takes an I.Q. of one-twenty to get into Mensa. What’d you do, have one of your story editors take the test for you?”

Joel Kinser loved talking about how very intelligent he was. It was almost his favorite subject. He smiled in an oddly feminine way.

“Don’t hate me because I’m perspicacious,” he said.