She spent seven hours working on the script, addressing all of Douglas's comments, as well as Max's. She ordered scrambled eggs and a salad from room service, and at midnight she was still at work. She called Peter when she finished. She hadn't gotten to call the girls before that, the time just slipped by, and she knew they'd be asleep by then. He was still awake, reading, and waiting for her call. He suspected when he didn't hear from her that she might be writing, so he left her alone and waited to hear from her.

“So how was it?” he asked with interest. He figured she'd had a full day or she'd have called.

“I don't know.” She was tired as she stretched out on her bed to talk to him. “Normal, I guess. Douglas hates one of my characters. I've been rewriting all her scenes all night. I think I've made her worse. He thinks she's too boring. We had a meeting until three o'clock, without stopping for breaks or food. I thought I was going to keel over by the time we finished. I've been working my ass off in the room ever since. And I don't think I've fixed it. We meet with the actors tomorrow for their notes.”

“Sounds grueling,” he said sympathetically, but he knew she had expected it. And she was a workhorse anyway. She never gave up on a problem till she fixed it, in writing or all else. It was one of the many things he admired about her.

“How was your day?” she asked, happy to hear him. She had missed him terribly all day, even when she was working. The week looked like a long stretch ahead. “I missed calling the girls. I was working and didn't see the time. I'll call them tomorrow.”

“They were fine. Alice brought us lasagne, and her famous pound cake. We pigged out. I made the salad. I got off easy tonight.” Which was a good thing, since he had had a long day himself, working with a new client on some tough problems that were surely going to wind up in litigation.

“Did Alice stay for dinner?” Tanya asked casually, and was surprised to hear she had. It was nice of her to bring them food, and she was grateful for it. But admittedly, Tanya had been there for her every second for months when her husband died. “I owe her big time after this. If she keeps it up, I'm going to have to cook for her for the next ten years.”

“I have to admit, it was helpful. And she took Meg to her soccer game. Molly needed the car. Alice saved my life. I couldn't leave work in time, so I called her. She was just leaving the gallery and said it was fine.” Tanya had done the same for her kids many times over the years, but she was grateful anyway. In some ways Alice helping them out assuaged her guilt, but in other ways it made it worse. She liked knowing that someone was picking up the slack for the girls, and helping Peter, but it also made her feel guiltier than ever for not being there to do it herself. She was just going to have to live with it for the duration. And at least Alice was there for them. More than anything it was a lifesaver for Peter, and Tanya was especially grateful for that. He couldn't do it all himself. He had too much to do at work.

They talked about other things after that, and then they both had to get off the phone, although Tanya would have liked to chat with him forever. They both had early meetings the next day, and needed to get some sleep so they had their wits about them. She promised to call him earlier the following night, and asked him to give her love to the girls. She felt almost like a stranger saying it to him. It was completely foreign to her to be away from her children and sending them her love. In her own mind more than his, she was supposed to be there to give it to them herself.

Tanya was back in the same conference room the next morning, and this time Max arrived with his dog, if you could call it that. Harry was closer to the size of a small horse, but he was very well behaved, and sat in the corner, with his gigantic head on his paws. He was so well trained that after people's initial surprise over his size, no one noticed him at all, until food appeared in the room, and then he sat up looking alert, whined loudly, and drooled profusely. Max gave him treats to eat, and everyone else gave him table scraps, and then he lay down again and went to sleep. Harry was an extremely polite dog. Tanya complimented Max on it halfway through the meeting.

“He's actually my roommate, not a dog,” Max said with a grin. “He was in a commercial once. I put the money in the stock market, and he's done very well. He pays for his half of the rent. I think of him as more of a son.” She could see that he did.

The meeting was long and arduous. Douglas ran it extremely well, with Max's help. And Tanya was very surprised at the copious notes the actors had made. Some were very sensible, which made good points, and others were totally disorganized and irrelevant, but for the most part they all had something to say, and something they wanted changed. The biggest problem was dialogue that didn't “feel like them,” and then she had to work with them to find ways of saying the same thing in most cases, in ways they felt better with. It was a long tedious process, and Douglas got irritated with all of them more than once. His stress level seemed to be high in meetings, and he and Tanya got into another argument about a different scene involving the same character he hated and that they'd battled over the day before.

“Oh for chrissake, Tanya,” he shouted at her, “stop defending the bitch. Just fucking change her!” Tanya was more than a little startled, and was silent for a while after that, while Max shot her encouraging glances. He could see that Douglas had upset her and hurt her feelings.

Douglas himself stopped to talk to her after the meeting, as the actors were filing out. It was nearly six o'clock, and there had been carts of food in and out of the room all day. She could see what Max had meant. Even scones, whipped cream, and strawberries at four o'clock, and a hell of a lot of sushi and tofu all day long.

After the meeting all the actors were heading for the gym, or for sessions with their trainers. Tanya just wanted to go back to the bungalow and collapse. She was beyond exhausted, from concentrating on what everyone had said all day, and trying to work with them on making changes in the script.

“I'm sorry I was a little rough on you today,” Douglas said smoothly. He looked as though nothing had happened, but Tanya felt like she'd been hit by a bus and he could see it. “These meetings with the actors drive me nuts. They pick on every word and detail, and worry about how they sound when they say it. It's in their contract that they can request changes in the script, and I think they all feel they didn't do their job if they don't ask you to rewrite every scene for them. After a while I just want to strangle everyone. These meetings over the actors' notes always take forever. Anyway, sorry if you got the blunt end of my temper.”

“It's okay,” Tanya said easily. “I was tired, too. It's a lot of minutiae, and I'm trying to preserve the integrity of the script and keep everyone happy.” It wasn't always easy, and he knew it. He had done this hundreds of times over the years, on dozens of scripts. “I've been working on the character you hate so much, and I don't think I've solved the problem yet, but I'm trying. I think the snag here is that she doesn't strike me as boring. I see all the undercurrents in her, all the hidden thoughts and intentions, so I get that she's not as boring as she looks. Or maybe I just identify with her, and I'm as boring as she is.” Tanya laughed as she said it, and Douglas shook his head with a smile. Tanya was grateful he had stopped to talk to her to relieve the pressure. He had intimidated her considerably for the past several hours. It wasn't fun. This was better.

“That's not how I would describe you, Tanya. You're anything but, and I hope you know it.”

“I'm just a housewife from Marin,” she said honestly, and he laughed out loud.

“Try that on someone else. Helen Keller maybe. That housewife thing is the game you play or the mask you wear, I'm not sure which one yet. But I can tell you one thing I know for sure, it's not who you are. If it were, you wouldn't be here. Not for a hot minute.”

“I'm a housewife on loan from my family to write a script,” she tried again. He remained unconvinced.

“Bullshit. Not even close. I don't know who you fool with that one, Tanya, but it wouldn't be me. You're a sophisticated woman with a fascinating mind. Casting you as a housewife in Marin is about like putting an alien from another planet in a job at McDonald's. They may be able to do it, but why waste all that mind and talent?”

“It's not wasted on my kids.” She didn't like what he said or how he perceived her. It bothered her. She was exactly what she said she was and how she appeared, and took pride in it. She loved being a mother and housewife and always had. She enjoyed her writing, too, especially now, and the challenge of it. But she had no desire to become a Hollywood person, and it sounded like that was what he was intimating, that she belonged there and not in Ross. And that was not what she wanted. She knew she would never do it, except this one time as a lark. After this she was going home and staying there. She had already made up her mind on that.

“The tides have turned, Tanya, whether you like it or not. You can't go back. It doesn't work. You've been here a week and you've already outgrown it. You did before you came. The day you made the decision to do the film, it was done, the die was cast.” His saying that made chills run up and down her spine. It was as though he were saying that her way home had vanished, and she wanted reassurance that it had not. Every time Douglas said something like that, it made her want to run into Peter's arms. Being around Douglas, she felt like Bess with Crown in Porgy and Bess. What Douglas said was terrifying and mesmerizing at the same time. She wanted to go home. “You were very patient with all the actors today,” he commended her. “They're an unruly lot.”