BRENDA

Working.

BLAINE

On Dad’s computer?

BRENDA

Yep.

BLAINE

Are you working on your movie?

BRENDA

Mmmhmm.

BLAINE

Is it like Scooby Doo?

BRENDA

No, it’s nothing like Scooby Doo. Remember I said it’s a movie for grown-ups?

BLAINE reaches out to touch the computer.

Ah, ah, don’t touch. Do not touch Dad’s computer with those sticky hands. Go wash.

BLAINE

Wil you play Chutes and Ladders with me?

BRENDA

I can’t now, Blaine. I’m working.

BLAINE

When you take a break, wil you play?

BRENDA

When I take a break, yes.

BLAINE

When’s that—

BRENDA

I don’t know. Now, please . . .

BRENDA checks the cottage. She wonders, Where’s Josh? Where’s Vicki? Where’s Ted?

Auntie Brenda has to work.

BLAINE

How come?

BRENDA

Because. (in a whisper) I have to make money.

Brenda finished typing in the screenplay for The Innocent Impostor on the third day, in the middle of the night. She was sitting on the sofa with Ted’s computer resting on Aunt Liv’s dainty coffee table. There was a breeze coming in through the back screen door. ’Sconset was quiet except for the crickets and an occasional dog bark. Brenda typed in the last page, the scene where Calvin Dare, as an older gentleman with his career behind him, enjoys an afternoon of quiet reflection with his wife, Emily. Dare and Emily look on as their grandchildren frolic in the yard. The scene was taken directly from the last page of the book; it was the scene that gave critics pause. Was it right for Dare to enjoy such bliss when he had al but coopted the life of the man that he had al but kil ed? Brenda meant to include some kind of questioning imagery in her cinematography notes—

but for now, dialogue and direction were . . . DONE! She stared at the computer screen. Fade out. Rol credits. DONE!

Brenda pushed Save and backed up the screenplay on a disc. It was twenty minutes after one, and she was wide awake. She poured herself a glass of wine and drank it sitting at the kitchen table. Her body ached from so much sitting; her eyes were tired. She cracked her knuckles. DONE!

Euphoria like she thought she would never feel again. This was the way she’d felt when she finished her dissertation; this was the way she’d felt when she finished grading final papers her first semester at Champion. Job completed, job wel done. Tomorrow she would worry about what to do with the damn thing; for tonight, she would just savor the euphoria.

She finished the glass of wine and poured herself another. The house was fil ed with the sounds of people breathing, or so Brenda imagined.

She thought about Walsh—then blocked him out. She found her cel phone on the side table and carried it and her wine out to the back deck. She scrol ed through her numbers.

What was she doing? It was quarter to two; any normal person would be asleep. But Brenda couldn’t afford to let that matter. She was excited about her screenplay now; in the morning, when it was printed out, she might find flaws, she might question its big-screen potential.

She dialed Amy Feldman’s number and tried, in the split second of silence before their lines connected, to remember everything she could about Amy Feldman. Brenda had now spent enough time with Blaine to know that Amy Feldman looked like Velma from Scooby-Doo. She was short and squat with a grandmotherly bosom, she had short hair, she wore square glasses with dark frames, and she kept the glasses on a chain so that, when the glasses were off, they rested on her bosom. Amy Feldman was like an intel ectual beatnik from forty years ago, and this, somehow, translated into her being cool, or if not cool, then at least accepted. The other girl-women in the class had seemed to like her; they’d listened respectful y when she spoke, though this may have been because of her father, Ron Feldman. Brenda’s class had been, she saw now, a class of aspiring actresses, playing themselves up not only for Walsh but for Amy Feldman. Amy Feldman was majoring in Japanese. What was she doing this summer? Was she traveling in Japan? Had she stayed in New York? If only Brenda had known that she would be fired, and sued, and then in the hole to the tune of a hundred and twenty-five thousand dol ars and hence dependent on the proceeds of a screenplay she had to sel , she would have paid more attention to Amy Feldman. As it was, what stuck in her mind were the glasses on a chain and the Japanese.

Like a thunderbolt Brenda recal ed overhearing Amy Feldman talking to Walsh about sushi, a place cal ed Uni in the Vil age that absolutely no one knows about, that was undiscovered and completely authentic. Just like the sushi they have on Asakusa Road in Tokyo.

You’ve been to Tokyo? Walsh, fel ow world traveler, had asked.

I was with my father, Amy said, in a voice that was meant to impress. On location.

Amy Feldman, quite possibly, had been in love with Walsh, too.

Three rings, four rings, five rings. Brenda wondered if she was cal ing Amy Feldman’s apartment or her cel phone. If she got voice mail, would she leave a message? A message was too hard to ignore, Brenda decided; Brenda wanted to connect with Amy Feldman in person.

“Yes?”

Someone answered! The voice was male, older, and overly pleasant, as if to say, in the nicest possible way, Why am I answering the phone at two o’clock in the morning?

“Hi,” Brenda said, in what she hoped was a sprightly voice, to let this person know that she was neither drunk nor an obscene cal er. “Is Amy there?”

“Amy?” the man said. Then, in a curious voice to someone else, he asked, “Is Amy here?” The other voice, female, murmured a response. The man said, “Yes. She’s here, but she’s sleeping.”

“Right,” Brenda said. Hold it together, Brenda thought. This was not Amy Feldman’s cel phone, nor was it her apartment (insofar as Brenda meant “apartment”: some col ege dive with roommates, laundry in the basement, and a hot plate). This was Amy Feldman’s home number, her family home, probably some extremely fine pad overlooking Central Park. Amy Feldman lives at home, Brenda thought. And I am now talking to her father, Ron Feldman.

Ron Feldman said, “Would you like me to leave Amy a message?” Again, his voice was so pleasant that there was no possibility he was sincere.

“This is Brenda Lyndon cal ing,” Brenda said. She was speaking very quietly because she didn’t want to wake up anybody in the cottage. “Doctor Lyndon? I was Amy’s professor last semester at Champion.”

“Ohhhh-kay,” Ron Feldman said. “Do I have to write this down or can you cal back in the morning?” It was clear he would prefer the latter, but Brenda was as shameless as a telemarketer. She had to keep him on the phone!

“Would you mind terribly writing it down?” she asked.

“Al right,” he said. “Let me find a pen.” To his wife, he said, “Hon, a pen. It’s a professor of Amy’s from Champion . . . I have no goddamned idea why.” To Brenda he said, “What’s your name again?”

“Brenda Lyndon. Lyndon with a y. ”

“Brenda Lyndon,” Ron Feldman repeated. The voice in the background raised an octave. Ron Feldman said, “What? Okay, wait. Honey, wait.” To Brenda, he said, “I’m going to put you on hold for one second. Is that al right?”

“Al right,” Brenda said.

The line went silent, and Brenda kicked herself. She was a complete idiot. She had decided, only seconds before making this phone cal , that she wasn’t going to leave a message, and here she was leaving a message. And this was the one and only time she would be able to cal ; she couldn’t stalk the Feldman household.

The line clicked. Ron Feldman said, “Are you there? Dr. Lyndon?”

“Yes.”

“You’re the one who got in al the trouble?” he said. “With the student from Australia? You’re the one who nicked up the original Jackson Pol ock?”

At that second, a light went on in one of the cottages that backed up to Number Eleven Shel Street. In the newly brightened window, Brenda saw the face of a woman her mother’s age who appeared to be throwing back some pil s and drinking water. Aspirin? Brenda thought.

Antidepressants? Pil s for arthritis? High blood pressure? Osteoporosis? When you peered into the windows of someone else’s life, you could only guess what was going on.

“Wel ,” Brenda said. “Yes, I guess I am.”

“We heard al about you,” Ron Feldman said. “Or my wife did, anyway. Amy told us you were a good teacher, though. She liked your class. She liked that book you taught.”

“The Innocent Impostor?” Brenda said.

“The Innocent Impostor, hon?” Ron Feldman said. “Um, we can’t remember the name, neither of us had ever heard of it. Anyway, Dr. Lyndon, it’s late, but we wil pass on to Amy . . .”

“Because that’s why I’m cal ing.”

“What is?”

“The Innocent Impostor, the book Amy liked, the book you’ve never heard of. I turned it into a screenplay. I have it right here in front of me, as an adapted screenplay.”

“Waaaaaaaait a minute,” Ron Feldman said. “Are you . . . ?” He laughed, but he no longer sounded overly pleasant or polite; he sounded suspicious, verging on angry. “Did you cal here to pitch me?”