64

Madame Sparko jingled the keys in her front door.

I'm finally home, safe, she thought. And I'm just plain old Stacy Sun again.

She realized she had been wearing the purple robe with the special sash, all the way home. Lugging her bags off the roundabout at the airport, in a purple robe with a special sash. And she'd never noticed.

Her forgotten cel phone was sitting on the kitchen counter. She had messages.

"Hi, Stace," Alan's voice said. "I enjoyed the card, sweetheart. It was a lovely thought. I'll see you soon. I love you. Bye!"

Beep.

"Stacy, it's Al Alberts. I have some bad news. Better sit down for this one. Everybody fell through, all at once. It was mighty weird because usually you would hope, if you don't get work from one, you can at least still get some work from another. But, uh, Scorcese said no, the Woody Allen camp, they said no. Tarantino, he changed his mind. He's using Vigoda! How about that. Abe Vigoda gets Tarantino'd. Heh. Um, and David Deet, he's out of the country right now but I talked to his people and they said it wasn't going to work.

"So hey, keep your chin up, kid. Easy come, easy go, right? Even David Deet had to start with the birds and the squirrels in his back yard. Talk to you later, kid."

Stacy Sun lay down in her big empty bed and hoped she would never wake up ever again.