She surfaced again in time to see Belinda swing her legs over the side of the chaise. “Fleur, come entertain Jake while I get a cover-up. I’m starting to burn.”

“Stay where you are, Flower. I’m coming in.” He pulled his T-shirt over his head, kicked off his shoes, and dived into the pool. As he surfaced at the far end and swam toward her, she watched the play of muscles in his arms, the way the water streamed over his face and neck. He put his feet down next to her. His crooked-tooth grin was irresistible, and something inside her ached.

“You got your hair wet,” he said. “I thought New York glamour girls only looked at the water.”

“Shows how much you know about New York glamour girls.” She dived under, but before she could get away, a hand grabbed her ankle and pulled her back. She sputtered to the surface.

“Hey!” he said with fake outrage. “I’m a hotshot movie star? Girls don’t swim away from me.”

“Maybe not ordinary girls, but hotshot glamour girls can do a lot better than an egghead screenwriter.”

He laughed, and she made it to the ladder before he could stop her.

“Not fair,” he called out. “You’re a better swimmer than I am.”

“I noticed. Your form stinks.”

But it didn’t stink bad enough to keep him from climbing up the ladder right after her. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Flower Power, but you don’t seem all that happy to see me today.”

Maybe she was a better actress than she thought. She picked up a towel from a chair and wrapped herself in it. “Nothing personal,” she said. “I had a late night.” Because she’d stayed up reading his plays. “I’m also a little worried about the scene I have with you and Lynn tomorrow.” More than a little. She was panicked.

“Let’s go for a run and talk about it.”

She’d been running nearly every day since she came to L.A., and he couldn’t have suggested a better way for her to work off some of her nervous energy. “Good idea.”

“Mind if I steal your little girl for a while?” Jake called out to Belinda, who’d just returned to the patio wearing her lacy cover-up. “I need to make room for those steaks.”

“Go ahead,” Belinda replied with a gay wave. “And don’t hurry back. I’ve got a new Jackie Collins I’m dying to cuddle up with.”

Jake made a face. Fleur smiled and hurried inside to change into shorts and running shoes. As she sat on the side of the bed to tie her laces, the book she’d been reading dropped to the floor. She looked down at the page she’d marked just that morning.

Koranda holds his personal mirror up to the faces of the American working class. His characters are the men and women who love beer and contact sports, who believe in an honest day’s work for an honest day’s wage. In language that is frequently raw and often funny, he shows us the best and the worst of the American spirit.

A critic in the next paragraph said it more plainly:

Ultimately Koranda’s work is successful because he grabs the country by the balls and squeezes hard.

She’d been reading Jake’s plays as well as a few scholarly articles about his work. She’d also done some research on his social life, which wasn’t as easy because of his obsession with privacy. Still, she’d discovered he seldom dated the same woman more than a few times.

She met him at the end of the driveway where he was stretching his hamstrings. “Think you can keep up, Flower, or should I get a stroller for you?”

“That’s so weird. I was getting ready to bring out a wheelchair.”

“Ouch.”

She grinned, and they took off at an easy trot. Since it was Sunday, the army of gardeners who kept the unused front lawns of Beverly Hills immaculate was absent, and the street looked even more deserted than usual. She tried to think of something interesting to say. “I’ve seen you shooting baskets by the parking lot. Lynn told me you played in college.”

“I play a couple of times a week now. It helps clear my head to write.”

“Aren’t playwrights supposed to be intellectuals instead of jocks?”

“Playwrights are poets, Flower, and that’s what basketball is. Poetry.”

And that’s what you are, she thought. A dark and complicated piece of erotic poetry. She had to be careful not to trip over her feet. “I like basketball, but it doesn’t exactly fit my idea of poetry.”

“You ever hear of a guy named Julius Erving?”

She shook her head and picked up the pace so he couldn’t accuse her of holding him back.

He altered his rhythm. “They call Erving ‘The Doctor.’ He’s a young player with the New York Nets, and he’s going to be one of the best. Not just good, you understand-but one of the best basketball players who ever lived.”

Fleur mentally added Julius Erving to her reading list.

“Everything the Doc does on the court is poetry. Laws of gravity disappear when he moves. He flies, Flower. Men aren’t supposed to fly, but Julius Erving does. That’s poetry, kiddo, and that’s what makes me write.”

He suddenly looked uncomfortable, as if he’d revealed too much about himself. Out of the corners of her eyes, she saw the shutters slam over his face. “Let’s pick up the pace,” he said with a growl. “We might as well be walking.”

Not because of her. She shot ahead of him and cut over to a paved bike path, stretching her legs and pushing herself. He caught up with her, and before long, patches of sweat had broken out on both their T-shirts. “Tell me about your problem with the scene tomorrow,” he finally said.

“It’s kind of…hard to explain.” She was out of breath, and she sucked in more air. “Lizzie…seems so calculating.”

He slowed the pace for her. “She is. A calculating bitch.”

“But even though she resents DeeDee, she loves her…and she knows how DeeDee feels about Matt.” She filled her lungs. “I can understand why she’s attracted to him-why she wants to…go to bed with him-but I don’t understand her being so calculating about it.”

“It’s the history of womankind. Nothing like a man to break up the friendship of two women.”

“That’s crap.” She thought of her earlier stab of jealousy toward Belinda and didn’t like herself for it. “Women have better things to do than fight over some guy who probably isn’t worth anything in the first place.”

“Hey, I’m the one who’s defining reality around here. You’re only the mouthpiece.”

“Writers.”

He smiled, and she fortified herself with more air. “DeeDee seems more…complete than Lizzie. She has strengths and weaknesses. You want to comfort her and shake her at the same time.” She stopped just short of saying that DeeDee was better written, even though it was true.

“Very good. You read the script.”

“Don’t patronize me. I have to play the part, and I don’t understand her. She bothers me.”

Jake picked up the pace again. “She’s supposed to bother you. Look, Flower, from what I understand you led a pretty sheltered life until a couple of years ago. Maybe you’ve never experienced anyone like Lizzie, but a woman like that leaves tooth marks in a man.”

“Why?”

“Who cares? It’s the end effect that matters.”

Her lust-crush didn’t keep her from getting angry with him. “You don’t say ‘who cares’ about your other characters. Why do you say it about Lizzie?”

“I guess you’ll have to trust me.” He pulled ahead of her.

“Why should I trust you?” she called out after him. “Because you’ve got a big Pulitzer, and all I have are Cosmo covers!”

He slowed his stride. “I didn’t say that.” They’d reached a small park as empty as the rest of the neighborhood. “Let’s walk for a while.”

“You don’t have to babysit me.” She hated the sulky note in her voice.

“Let’s have it out,” he said, as he slowed. “Are you pissed about Lizzie or about the fact that you know I didn’t want to cast you?”

“You’re the one defining reality. Take your pick.”

“Let’s talk about casting, then.” He picked up the tail of his T-shirt and wiped his face. “You’re beautiful on screen, Flower. Your face is magic, and you’ve got knockout legs. Johnny Guy’s been adjusting the shooting script every night to add more close-ups. The man gets tears in his eyes watching you in the rushes.” He smiled at her, and she could feel some of her anger dissolving. “You’re also a great kid.”

A kid. That hurt.

“You listen to other people’s opinions, you work hard, and I’ll bet you don’t have a malicious bone in your body.”

She thought about Michel and knew that wasn’t true.

“That’s why I had misgivings about you playing Lizzie. She’s a carnivore. The whole concept is foreign to your nature.”

“I’m an actress, Jake. Part of acting is playing a role different from yoursef.” She felt like a hypocrite. She wasn’t an actress. She was a fake, a girl whose freak-show body was mysteriously transformed by the camera into something beautiful.

He ran his fingers through his hair, making it stand up in little spikes along one side. “Lizzie is a hard character for me to talk about. She’s based on a girl I used to know. We were married a long time ago.”

Was Jake, the Greta Garbo of male actors, going to confide in her? Not willingly. He looked angry at having revealed even that small amount of personal history. “What was she like?” she asked.

A muscle in his jaw ticked. “It’s not important.”

“I want to know.”

He took a few steps, then stopped. “She was a man-eater. Ground me up between her pretty little teeth and spit me out.”

The stubbornness that had caused her so much trouble in the past took over. “But there had to have been something that made you fall in love with her.”

He started walking again. “Lay off.”

“I need to know.”

“I said lay off. She was a great fuck, okay?”

“Is that all?”

He stopped and spun on her. “That’s all. Thousands of satisfied customers found happiness between her legs, but the Slovak kid from Cleveland was too ignorant to figure that out, and he lapped her up like a puppy dog!”