Claire glances up from her phone, thinking for a moment that Michael is talking about Daryl. Then she understands. She wonders if her deal with Fate is still in play. Is Front Man the great movie that will allow her to stay in the business? “You want to buy the play?” she asks.
“I want to buy everything,” Michael Deane says. “The play, his songs—all of it.” He stands up and looks around the little theater. “I’m buying the whole goddamn thing.”
By flashing her business card （Hollywood? No shit?） Claire gets an enthusiastic invitation to the after-party from a goateed and liberally pierced doorman named Keith. On his directions, they walk a block from the theater toward a brick storefront, which opens to a wide set of stairs, the building intentionally unfinished, all exposed pipes and half-exposed brick. It reminds Claire of climbing to countless parties in college. But there’s something off in the scale, in the width of hallways and the heights of ceilings—all the extravagant, wasted space in these old Western towns.
Pasquale pauses at the door. “è qui, lei?” Is she here?
Maybe, says Shane, looking up from his phone. “C’è una festa, per gli attori.” It is a party for the actors. Shane returns to his phone and sends a text message to Saundra: “Can we talk? Please? I realize now what an ass I’ve been.”
Pasquale looks up at the building where Dee might be, removes his hat, smooths his hair, and starts up the stairs. At the top of the landing, Claire helps the winded Michael Deane up the last steps. There are three doors to three apartments on the second floor and they walk to the back of the building, to the only open door, propped open with a jug of wine.
This back apartment is big and lovely in the same primitive way as the rest of the building. It takes a moment for them to adjust to the candlelight—it’s a huge two-story open loft with high ceilings. The room itself is a work of art, or a junk pile—filled with old school lockers, hockey sticks, and newspaper boxes—all of this surrounding a curved staircase made of old timbers, which seems to float in thin air. Upon further inspection, they can see that the staircase is held with three lines of coiled cable.
“This whole apartment is furnished with found art,” says Keith, the theater doorman, who arrives right behind them. He has spiky, thin hair and painful-looking studs in his lips, neck, upper ears, and nose, as well as pirate hoops in his ears. He has acted in TAGNI productions himself, he tells them, but he’s also a poet, painter, and video artist. （That’s all? Claire wonders. Interpretive dancer? Sand sculptor?） “A video artist?” Michael is intrigued. “And is your camera nearby?”
“I always have my camera,” Keith says, and he produces a small, simple digital from his pocket. “My life is my documentary.”
Pasquale scans the party, but there’s no sign of Dee. He leans over to ask Shane for help, but his translator is staring helplessly at Saundra’s return text: You just NOW realized you’re an ass? Leave me alone.
Keith sees Pasquale and Michael looking around, mistakes this for curiosity, and steps in to explain. The apartment’s designer, he says, is a former Vietnam vet, featured last month in Dwell magazine. “His general concept is that every design form has an innate maturity alongside its youthful nature, that too often we cast aside the more interesting forms just when they’re starting to grow into this older, more interesting second nature. Two old hockey sticks—who cares. But hockey sticks made into a chair? Now, that’s something.”
“It’s all wonderful,” Michael says earnestly, gazing around at the room.
The cast and crew aren’t at the party yet; so far it’s just fifteen or twenty black-glasses-and-hippie-sandaled audience members, with their low talk, little squalls of laughter, all of them taking turns inspecting the strange travelers of the lost Deane Party. The crowd is familiar, Claire thinks: smaller, a little rougher around the edges, but not much different from an after-party anywhere. Wine and snacks are lined up on a metallic table made from the door of an old freight elevator; a small backhoe bucket is filled with ice and beer. Claire is relieved, when she goes to the bathroom, to find that the toilet is an actual toilet, and not an old boat motor.
Finally, the cast and crew begin arriving. Word of the great Michael Deane’s presence seems to be spreading throughout the crowd, and the ambitious make their way over, casually mentioning their appearance in the straight-to-video movies shot in Spokane, appearing alongside Cuba Gooding Jr., Antonio Banderas, John Travolta’s sister. Everyone Claire meets seems to be an artist of some kind—actors and musicians and painters and graphic artists and ballet instructors and writers and sculptors and more potters than a town this size could possibly support. Even the teachers and attorneys also act, or play in bands, or sculpt blocks of ice—Michael fascinated by all of them. Claire is amazed at his energy and genuine curiosity. He’s also on his third glass of wine—more than she’s ever seen him drink.