"Damn it!" said Alison Davis.

      She bent to retrieve the spaceship model. The carpet had prevented extensive damage, but one antenna had snapped off. A hair-thin crack now ran the length of the plastic hull.

      "Damn, damn, damn, damn!"

      Ming warily poked her head back into the workroom. The blue-furred Siamese meowed questioningly, hugging the wall in case Alison directed any anger her way.

      "It's OK, kit-cat. Not your fault."

      Ming trotted over to her mistress. Alison stroked her back to demonstrate that there were no hard feelings. The cat purred its approval.

      Alison decided to call it quits, before she did any more harm to the troopship. Her nerves and concentration were shot for the day. Thanks a whole lot, Joey Spelvin.

      After putting her tools away and shutting off the lights, she picked up Ming and carried her from the workroom, locking the door on the way out. In the kitchen, Alison glanced at the clock and decided it was time to finish preparing dinner. Brad was due home at seven, and they planned to spend a quiet, romantic evening.

      Checking the small leg of lamb in the oven, she wondered just how much she should tell Brad about her afternoon with Joey. She hadn't told him about Razor Cut , because Joey made her promise not to. But she still wanted to talk to someone about her welter of mixed feelings.

      Trouble was, Brad just didn't understand her friendship with Joey. She wasn't sure she understood it herself.

      Alison had been in eighth grade when she first met Joey Spelvin, then a seventh-grader at their junior high school. She had barely noticed him, a scrawny, pimply-faced kid who kept to himself, unpopular with both teachers and students. She knew his older brothers, Tom and Jeff, but she'd never had any reason to speak to Joey.

      Until one day, when he came up to her at her locker and said, "I hear you're looking to buy a sixteen-millimeter movie camera."

      "Where'd you hear that?"

      He shrugged. "Around."

      It was true. For years, she had been making simple animated films with an inexpensive Super 8 outfit. A 16mm camera would greatly expand her capabilities. Unfortunately, there was no way she, or her parents, could afford to buy one new.

      "All right," she said, "maybe I do. What about it?"

      "I've got one for sale. A hundred bucks, and it's yours."

      "Dream on." She closed the locker and started walking away. He followed.

      "It's a nice piece of equipment, no kidding."

      "Where'd you get it?"

      "Found it at the dump. I reconditioned it myself, and it's in perfect working order."

      She laughed. "You must be as crazy as everyone says."

      He stopped and glared at her, his eyes like black diamonds. "Then forget it." He spun of his heels and headed back down the hall.

      Did she call after him because she was sorry for that cheap crack? Or did she just not want to lose the camera? "Wait a minute!" He slowed. "I'm sorry," she said.

      He turned around, a geeky kid in ill-fitting clothes, with greasy black hair and a face like a topographical map of the moon. "The price just went up to one twenty-five."

      "Assuming this camera is as good as you say, I can't afford more than fifty dollars. That's all I've got," she said.

      He smirked. "Hell, I can pawn it for that. Nope, one hundred twenty-five. Not a cent less."

      The city-wide amateur film contest was three months away. Think of what she could do with a professional piece of equipment! The school had editing facilities and projectors galore, but it didn't have a camera she could borrow.

      He knew he had her at a disadvantage. "Well? You want it or not?"

      Alison suddenly saw an alternative. She said, "Can I rent the camera from you?"

      Joey eyed her with suspicion. "What?"

      She talked fast, hoping he wouldn't turn her down flat. "For five dollars a week. That way, you get to keep ownership of the camera, and I get to use it without having to spend a lot of money up front. It's a perfect arrangement."

      He thought about it, absently picking one of the scabs on his face. At last, he nodded. "All right. We can try that. I'll bring the camera to school tomorrow."

      A 16mm camera! She would do some animation that would put Ray Harryhausen to shame. "Great! I can't wait."

      Joey grinned maliciously and said, "Of course, there is a fifty dollar rental deposit."

      Twelve years had passed since that encounter in the hallways. A lot of stuff, both good and bad, had gone down between Joey and Alison since then.

      After preparing scalloped potatoes and cutting up carrots to cook in the microwave, Alison opened a bottle of Calistoga water and put her new record on the turntable.

      She lit a cigarette and sat down in a favorite chair to admire her "brag shelf." Five shiny trophies, not a particle of dust on them, sat there for all to see. Material possessions didn't mean a lot to Alison, but if her apartment ever caught fire, she would grab Ming first. And then she would grab as many of those trophies as she could carry.

      Back in eighth grade she may have thought all she needed was a 16mm camera, but Alison hadn't even made the amateur film competition finals that first year. The next year she had received an Honorable Mention, which was nice, but it hadn't entitled her to a trophy.

      It wasn't until her sophomore year of high school that she finally took home the competition's Second Place award. By then her folks were resigned to the fact that her interest in animation wasn't just a phase she would grow out of. They gave her more support, both emotionally and financially.

      Her parents claimed to be proud of her work, even though they were more than a little embarassed that her winning entry, co-scripted with Joey Spelvin, bore the title Space Maggots.

      That trophy marked the real beginning of her career as a filmmaker. She used Space Maggots to win admission and a hefty scholarship to USC. Four more award-winning films made during college earned her a job at Light Phantastic, an up-and-coming special effects studio in Berkeley's warehouse district. Almost every good thing that had happened to her in the past ten years was directly or indirectly a result of Space Maggots.

      Alison wondered why the film hadn't brought any good luck Joey's way.

      The timer on the stove rang, and Alison got up to check on dinner. The lamb and the potatoes looked perfect. Now if Brad would just hurry up and get there...

      She poured herself a glass of white wine and began to set the table. Ming insisted on getting underfoot, so Alison opened a can of cat food and fed the insistent beast.

      Thirty minutes later, Brad still had not arrived. Alison called the law journal office. No answer. He was probably in the library.

      She poured herself another glass of wine and waited.

      The telephone rang. When she answered it, she expected to hear Brad's voice. Instead, her mother said, "Hi, dear. It's your dad and I calling to say hello. Hope we haven't caught you in the middle of dinner."

      Just what she needed. "No, that's all right. What's up?"

      Her mother brought her up to date on family news. She and Dad were looking forward to next weekend's Fall Frolic at their country club. Older sister Kathleen had just received a promotion at her investment banking firm. Younger brother Keith had a software engineering job lined up as soon as he completed his coursework at Cal Tech in January.

      Dad cut in with, "Hey, I'm trying to clean out the attic. Do you still want all those old comic books that are packed away up there?"

      Her heart lurched. "Yes! Don't throw them away!"

      Mom sniffed. "Really? The ones with the dreadful monsters on the covers? I thought you outgrew those ages ago."

      "They mean a great deal to me. Besides, they're worth a lot of money."

      "Oh. Well, maybe we can ship them to you someday when you and Brad move to a bigger place."

      Alison had no idea at all when that might be. Before she could frame a response, her father said, "Tell Brad I've got tickets for the Niners-Cowboys game when we're up there next month. He can take a break from the books for one afternoon and go to Candlestick with us."

      "We're both looking forward to seeing him," Mom said. "Well, we'll let you go, dear. Take care."

      "Bye. Love you both." She hung up.

      Sometimes it annoyed her how much Mom and Dad liked Brad. Ever since she and he started dating four years ago, her parents had always gone out of their way to voice their approval. Maybe it was due to their relief at her having selected a clean-cut, straight-and-narrow would-be attorney instead of some nerdy special effects tech who worked with explosives all day.

      Most of the time, she was glad that they were happy with Brad After all, there really was a lot to recommend him. Their relationship also proved to her parents that, even though they might think her career weird and flakey, the rest of Alison's life was sound and reasonable, just as well-ordered as her sister's or her brother's.

      Still, Alison wondered if her parents' opinion of Brad would change when they saw him again in November. Would they would notice how moody he'd become since the semester began? Until about two months ago, she had thought everything was fine between them. Now she didn't know.

      When Brad let himself in two hours later, the lamb was overdone, the carrots cold and and the potatoes burned. Alison had worked up a full head of steam and gone through three glasses of wine.

      She met him right at the door. "You jerk! You were supposed to be here hours ago!"

      He shrugged his broad shoulders and smiled sheepishly. "I'm sorry, Allie." Dumping a load of law texts and his jacket on the nearest chair, he moved to kiss her. Alison dodged out of the way.

      "Oh no, you don't! I want to know where the hell you've been!"

      Brad sighed and brushed a shock of sandy blond hair away from his eyes. He nodded at the books in the chair. "I was at the library. I'm sorry, all right?" He moved past her, retrieved a beer for himself from the refrigerator.

      "No, it's not all right," Alison said. "You do this all the time to me. You keep me hanging around, waiting for you to get home. Don't they have telephones at the law library?"

      "I lost track of time. I've got mid-terms coming up, remember?"

      "We were going to have a quiet dinner at home, just the two of us, remember?"

      Brad cut some slices from the lamb leg, arranged them on a plate and popped it in the microwave. Pressing the REHEAT button, he said, "So I'm here, right? These'll be ready in a minute. Let me go wash up."

      Alison wondered whether she should continue this argument. Part of her wanted to dump dinner over Brad's head. Another part of her really needed to talk about day's events. She decided to give him another chance.

      Reheated, the meal wasn't too bad. They ate in silence until Alison said, "I saw Joey Spelvin today."

      Without looking up from his plate, Brad said, "Oh, yeah? How's he doing?"

      "Thin as a scarecrow and real pale."

      She waited for him to say something, to enquire further about Joey and how she spent her day with him. Instead, Brad went right on eating.

      Finally, Alison said, "I'm kind of worried about him, Brad. When he stopped by the studio earlier this week, I thought he wasn't quite himself. But today, as soon as I saw him, I knew something was really the matter."

      Brad shrugged. "Joey can take care of himself." He polished off his beer and belched softly. "Great dinner, Allie. Hey, I was reading this case today --"

      She held out her hand, palm up. "Hold it. I'm not done talking about Joey."

      Brad grimaced, as if catching a whiff of something gamey. "Alison, I don't like Joey, I don't like talking about him, and I don't particularly like you hanging around with him."

      None of this came as a surprise, but Alison hated Brad for saying it so flatly. "He's my friend, Brad. One of my best friends."

      "Right. Only you never see him more than once every six months. Some best friend."

      "I see you about as often, and we live together."

      Brad looked as if he were about to say something more, but he stood, gathered up the dirty dishes and put them in the sink. With his back turned, he finally said, "I didn't mean to come down so hard on Joey. He's just not my kind of guy."

      Considering how Joey felt about Brad, Alison decided that mutual antipathy between the two was only natural. "I know. Just remember, he is my friend, Brad. I have to listen to you talk at length about law. You should be willing to hear me out when I want to talk about Joey."

      He turned to face her, and she saw the remorse in his face. "You're right. I'm sorry."

      Alison didn't mention Joey again that evening.

      Since it was too late to go to a movie, she and Brad microwaved some popcorn, made a selection from their videotape library and sat themselves down in front of the television. They watched prime-time shows they had been too busy to watch during the week. Neither said much to the other, but by the time "L.A. Law" ended, they were snuggled close on the couch, Ming nestled at their feet.

      At midnight, Alison turned the set off, saying "Time for bed. Let's go."

      "Sounds good." Brad kissed her, and this time Alison responded.

      The evening had started off on the wrong foot, but now Alison felt it might be salvaged. The after-dinner hugging and handholding had put her in a better frame of mind. She counted it as at least a week since she and Brad had slept together. Now she was ready to make up for lost time.

      She used the bathroom first, combing out her hair and brushing her teeth. Finished, she entered the bedroom just as Brad was about to put on his pajama top.

      There was an odd mark on Brad's neck. Alison said, "Hey, what's that?"

      "Huh?"

      She pulled the top off his back and touched the bruised spot. "Who the hell has been giving you love bites?"

      He stiffened. Turning to face her, he grabbed back his pajamas. "What are you talking about?"

      She knew what she had seen. Those had definitely been teeth marks. There were also fingernail scratches lower on his back.

      She and Brad hadn't made love in seven days.

      "You've been screwing around, haven't you?"

      "Allie --"

      "Haven't you?"

      He looked away. It was all the confirmation she needed.

      "Who is it?"

      Brad mumbled, "No one you know."

      "A law student?"

      "Well --"

      "How long have you been seeing her?"

      "About a month." Brad took Alison gently by the shoulders. "I'll break it off. Immediately. I promise."

      "Get out of here," she said, shrugging off his embrace.

      "Wait a minute --"

      She retrieved the clothes he had just taken off and threw them at him. "Get out! Go wherever you go when you pretend to be studying!"

      Before he could say anything more, Alison ran to her workshop and locked herself in. After about five minutes, the front door slammed. She heard Brad's Toyota pull out of its parking space and go roaring up Euclid Avenue.

      Alone in the dark, surrounded by tools, cameras and assorted bits of plastic and metal, Alison began to cry.