“Thank you, we’ll be in touch,” Elaine said for the twentieth time that day. And it was only noon, Henry realized with dismay.

Henry turned to the casting director. In a few short hours, he and Elaine had formed a sympathetic bond that didn’t even require words. Of course, that was easy when the only message communicated between them, over and over, was No.

“It’s not me, right?” Henry asked. “I’m not being… difficult?”

“No, Henry,” Jeffrey Wallace, the film’s director, hastened to reassure him. “None of us are happy yet.”

And Henry needed it. The common practice in the film industry was for the writer to throw his script down the black hole, and not to see what ended up on film until everyone else did. Directors, producers, even actors didn’t want the writer on the set.

And, Henry thought after having read enough screenwriter memoirs and interviews, he could see why. If you had a writer who thought their every sentence of dialogue was a perfectly polished gem, that every scene was integral to the story just as written, well…

If life is what happens to plans, filmmaking is what happens to scripts. What works on the page doesn’t work on screen, or someone, heaven forbid, has a better idea on how to do a scene. The most inventive and creative people could be the most rigid and inflexible people, and when time was money, thousands of dollars a minute in salaries for a hundred or more people, rigidity was expensive.

So Henry knew he was in on the casting sessions, would be on the set to be consulted or called on for rewrites, on sufferance, his presence mandated by Tate Charleston, a man completely ignorant of How Things Were Done in Hollywood.

And he was resolved not to be “that guy,” the one who threw the wrench in the works. He’d fight for the truth of the story, the core of it, but he would not be the guy who threw a fit because the characters suddenly ate grapes and not oranges or some such.

The problem with so many inadequate auditions for the lead role in the film, Callum the con artist, was that it gave him too much time to think. And what he thought about was Colin.

He remembered what Colin had said, about not a day going by that he didn’t think about the one who got away. And he wondered how long it would be before he had a day he didn’t think about Colin.

He felt guilty, too. In response to Colin’s declaration, he’d thrown up a shield of Full Power Hamilton, all the charm he could muster. Their drive back to the city had been… well, a performance, by both of them. Like a pair of adept conversationalists locked in a room for two hours, they found plenty to talk about that meant nothing.

But not really. It was hard to talk about how good the movie The Lobster was, without approaching its central subject, love and loneliness, and whether or not it’s better to be alone than to be with someone just to be with someone. But they maneuvered to talking about Westworld, whose more cosmic themes about free will and slavery weren’t as close to the bone.

And when he’d dropped Colin off at his house, he’d got out, helped him with his luggage, and gave him a kiss and a long hug, like someone he was dropping off at the airport for a long journey.

And then waved him a cheery goodbye, got back in the car, dropped it off at the rental agency, took a cab home, threw down his suitcase, sat on the couch, and burst into tears.

Everything, everything, came crashing in on him in that one moment. How hard he’d worked as Hamilton to pay The Bill for Christina, fucking men he didn’t want to fuck, pretending to be someone he wasn’t, wearing suits and going to fancy restaurants and acting like it was his natural environment when he just wanted to eat a pint of ice cream in his underwear and watch White Collar and fall in love with Neal Caffrey all over again. And now all that was over, three years of faking it crashing down on him.

He thought about how hard he’d worked on his script, how many people had told him “put it in a drawer,” forget about it, move on to the next because, they insisted, it surely sucked.

And how hard it had been to lie to Colin that afternoon. To pretend that he had no feelings for him, other than professional regard.

The weekend had been… magical. It had been a lovers’ weekend, playing house together. And the sex, Jesus Howard Christ the sex. Colin was the fastest learner in the history of everything ever, when it came to how to fuck a man in the ass. By Sunday morning Henry felt like he was the amateur and Colin the professional; he was giving Henry the bone every way he’d discovered were just the ways Henry loved it.

It had been an emotional Eden, two days off from everything before and yet to come. Until Colin had said what, on some level, Henry had already known to be true. But had hoped dearly that Colin would never say.

Because that would open the door to what Henry wanted to say, too.

Why, he had to ask himself now. Why didn’t he just do it? Hamilton was gone, over, done, dead. Why didn’t he just say to Colin, you know what, fuck it, let’s…

Let’s what? He was off to a new life. They both were. Henry to Vancouver, Colin to Hollywood, and then Henry to… who knows where? Would he move to LA, would he stay in New York, he didn’t know.

You know why you didn’t say yes, he told himself. It had nothing to do with geography. For two successful people, what’s geography when a plane ticket is spare change?

You don’t want him to see you, Henry Davis. He fell in love with Hamilton Dillon, not you. Stylish, elegant, polished, sophisticated, witty Hamilton. Henry’s just a slob in a Mets t shirt who’d never wear a suit anywhere but a funeral. If then.

Broken down on the couch, Henry had nodded, sadly. You did the right thing. You couldn’t lead him on. And you would have broken his heart if you’d come out from behind the curtain. Let him move on, let him think fondly about Hamilton the rest of his life. Don’t ruin that, with… the reality of you.

* * *

“Should we break for lunch?” Elaine asked, breaking his reverie.

“Let’s see one more,” Jeffrey sighed.

Henry was rubbing his eyes when the door opened. He looked at the audition sides for the thousandth time that day.

“Slate, please.”

Silence. The actor had frozen.

Henry looked up.

The actor looked at him.

“Slate, please,” Elaine said, irritably.

“Colin O’Neill. Clarice Talent.”