Loser's Town

by Unknown

  (applause)

  First of all, I’d like to thank the one guy without whom this film couldn’t have been made. And you know who he is . . . Bobby Dye!

  Huge applause. The camera finds Bobby, sitting next to a new babe – who decidedly isn’t Irina. She kisses him proprietorily.

  JURADO

  Well, Bobby’s already copped his award tonight for Best Actor . . .

  (applause, whistles, whoops)

  . . . and I’m not going to give him any more publicity. I just want to say . . . thank you, Bobby! And thank you, Collateral Pictures, for the courage and the vision to allow us to make this wonderful film . . . Thank you, thank you all . . .

  Spandau turned off the TV. The room fell back into a near-darkness.

  ‘Will you stay for a little while?’ Spandau said to Dee. It sounded far too much like begging, which is what it was.

  ‘For a little while,’ she said.

  Outside a car went by. Somewhere in the neighborhood a dog barked, over and over again, fruitlessly, pointlessly, into the night. Dee got up and sat next to Spandau and put her arms around him. She put her head on his chest, and in a moment she could feel it making small leaps beneath her cheek. She held him tightly and allowed the man she loved the small dignity of not looking up.