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tablecloth and we hear the man say “Viola!” to the young woman as he pulls a bottle of red wine from a large basket. He is wearing a dark sweater which I see has a large crimson “H” on the front. I’ve seen him in the story department at Paramount.
    Judith stops. “Where are we going?”
    As she faces me, I see the new necklace, a silver doodah of some kind. When she first came out, she wore a half pence and a New York subway token. When she finally moved in with Reichert, she made a string with six of my cigarette filters, painted turquoise, to make it look like it was my fault. She wants to show me this new one and holds it out. Taking it in my hand, I am as close to her as I’ve been in ten months.
    â€œPretty, right?” I see it is a smashed .38 cartridge. “I found it last week at the bottom of the swimming pool.”
    We start back, but I steer her higher along the beach. I don’t want to see those tracks in the sand after all. “You want to go up to the pier?” I say. “You always like the pier.”
    â€œThe guy back there, the Harvard guy,” Judith says, now walking beside me, “he’s at Paramount in the story department.”
    On the pier I finally ask her why she has the day off. She says that a rat has died in the office and they can’t find it even though there are two carpenters taking all the video cabinets apart, and the smell is so bad that Reichert sent everybody home. “He’s taking meetings at the house, telling everybody that they’re so special he’s meeting them in private. Today, it’s Jamie Curtis. The smell is bad, but you get used to it. I just couldn’t take those two stoned carpenters taking the doors off everything and chuckling their heads off.”
    We buy ten tokens and go into the arcade. She leads me down all three aisles of video games and then back to the booth where she says to the kid: “Don’t you have any of the old games? Where’s Space Invaders?”
    All the games we’ve seen have “Mega” in the titles. The kid points out a Donkey Kong game in the corner which has seen a lot of use. Judith makes me go first and then she asks questions: “What do you think the point of this game is?” “Do you think the girl is even worth saving?” I’m trying to concentrate, but the little guy acts drunk. He can’t decide which ladder to take, and Judith is beside me doing her show: “Do you think the guy really wants the girl?” I never get him above the second tier. The flaming barrel drops right on our heads.
    Then, while she plays, she makes statements. She moves him expertly up the levels and says, “The guy could care less about the girl. He wants to get near the ape. He’s just curious.” She jumps two barrels at once and says, “See this, the guy only likes the outing; he loves to jump the barrels.” He seems to run faster when she plays. Judith takes him all the way to the top three times, but when he reaches the girl, Judith steps back, hands off the controls, and lets the monkey grab them both and close the game. “It’s fate,” she says. “I’m not getting in the way.”
    As she starts another session, I slip away, out onto the pier and around to the restrooms. The bumper cars are empty. The kid in his booth sits hunched on the high chair, reading a hunting magazine. Reichert brought us out here when we had first moved. He had pointed at the kid in there and told me not to worry, there was plenty of work in California. Judith had laughed.
    Later, after he’d hired Judith at the studio, she and I sometimes came out alone and stood at the end of the pier. It was like being on a great ferry headed west; she’d said that. She had liked California then. A lot of things were happening for her. We’d stand and let the waves break under us.
    On the one trip we made to France from