IF QUINN COULD HAVE ANYTHING OTHER THAN A CAR for his upcoming seventeenth birthday, he might just choose a washer/dryer. At least he felt that way on laundry days, when he’d worn everything he owned—and there wasn’t that much—at least twice, and even he could detect a faint odor. He hated the Laundromat. Launderland on Santa Monica Boulevard was a long march with a duffle bag full of clothes and his el cheapo but machine-washable sleeping bag. He always swore he’d get up early the next time just to go and get it over with in relative solitude, but every time he slept in anyway.

As he approached the Laundromat he could see that the place was hopping. Men and women, but mostly men, were wheeling steel laundry carts back and forth between washers, dryers, and the folding tables. A lot of them seemed to know one another. It was probably a laundry club. He’d run into them before—groups of gay men who did their laundry at the same time and turned the whole thing into a social event. On one of the big folding tables someone had laid out a tablecloth and a spread of bagels and Danishes and cut fruit and croissants and condiments and coffee. Quinn heard his stomach rumble. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday, and then all he’d had was cereal, because it and a quart of about-to-turn milk were the only things in the apartment that belonged to him and Baby-Sue had been on a bitching jag about Jasper and Quinn eating all her food.

Quinn humped his duffle over to the single available washer, dumped in as much as he could, tamped it down, then dumped in the rest. He’d probably wind up with packed nuggets of laundry soap again when it was over, but he had only so many quarters, and the change-making machine was still broken. ESTA MÁQUINA ESTÁ ROTA. The sign surprised him, not because it was there, but because he didn’t think there were that many Latinos in West Hollywood. There was the girl at Los Burritos, though. Maybe it was just that the Anglo population was so out there—41 percent were gay, bi, or lesbian—that you didn’t notice the Hispanics.

He turned his box of laundry detergent upside down and saw there wasn’t even enough left in the box to clump up. He’d just turn the water up to the hottest setting and hope that if the soap didn’t get the stuff clean—and with that little, it couldn’t possibly—the hot water would sterilize the dirt that was left.

“That machine walks when it’s on the spin cycle.”

Quinn turned around and saw the hair stylist from Hazlitt & Company watching him with a smile. “It gets out of balance, so keep an eye on it.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said. “Okay.”

The stylist was wearing jeans and an incandescently white T-shirt, and his hair was perfectly mussed. “You look like a lost soul,” he told Quinn. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Do you live near here?”

“On Norton.” Quinn pointed over his shoulder. “Near Havenhurst.”

“Family?”

“No.”

“Really? You seem a little young to be on your own.”

“I’m not that young,” Quinn said.

The stylist smiled. “I meant that in a good way.”

“Oh.” Quinn didn’t know what else to say. It was one thing to see the stylist in the salon. Out here, in the world, it felt weird, part good and part bad. Good because he seemed like a nice guy and Quinn was more or less on the outs with Baby-Sue and Jasper—he seemed to be getting on their nerves, though he had no idea why—and it was Saturday, so there’d be no auditions or classes until Monday and he was lonely. Bad because he kept thinking of how the stylist’s hands had felt, moving through his hair, rubbing his head, and he didn’t think he should be remembering those things in front of the washers and dryers at Launderland.

A black man in a canary yellow button-down shirt with the sleeves turned back called to the stylist, “Hey, Quatro! Paulie wants to know what you did last night. He says you never showed up.”

The stylist smiled a little apologetic smile at Quinn and shook his head. “Yeah, yeah,” he called back, but he was still looking at Quinn.

“Quatro?” Quinn said. “That’s your name?”

“Yeah,” said the stylist. “Technically it’s John Robertson the Fourth. So, Quatro.” He shrugged.

“Awesome.”

The men in the laundry club were elbowing one another. “Leave that child alone and come get a mimosa!” someone said, and the others laughed.

Quinn bridled.

The stylist said, “Don’t listen to them. Look, are you hungry at all?”

“No,” Quinn lied.

“Okay. If you change your mind, though, come on over. There’s plenty of food.”

Quinn nodded. The stylist went back to the group at the folding table. A few of the men elbowed him, but he shook it off. “He’s a kid. Leave it alone,” Quinn could hear him snap.

Quinn wanted him to come back and talk, but the stylist had been absorbed by the group at the folding-table buffet, so Quinn pulled a batch of papers from his back pocket. It was the sides for a scene he was auditioning for on Monday. He jumped up to sit on the washing machine. You weren’t supposed to sit on the machines, but screw it; the machine was walking, just the way the stylist had warned.

He straightened out the pages. First he read the breakdown Mimi had given him at the showcase.

Quinn knew—every actor knew—that Gus Van Sant was one of the most respected directors in the movie industry. Almost as important, to Quinn, was the fact that he was known for working with unknown actors, sometimes even pulling kids off the street and casting them. Mimi had told Quinn that Van Sant wasn’t auditioning for After anywhere outside LA. The production schedule was tight, and word on the street was that he would open the call beyond Hollywood only as a last resort. The part of Buddy—one of the leads—had just been released, and Mimi wanted Quinn to be ready, even though he didn’t have an audition scheduled yet. Quinn knew as well as anyone what a break this role could be. He frowned and turned to the sides.

BUDDY and CARLYLE are sitting in the living room.

Raucous laughter broke out across the Laundromat. Quinn told himself he wouldn’t look over—he didn’t want the stylist to think he was paying attention to anything going on over there—but at the last minute he couldn’t stop himself. He was hungry and his ass was getting sore from sitting on the hard metal of the washing machine, which had just finished its final spin cycle. He couldn’t concentrate anyway, so he folded the pages, hopped off the washing machine, and stuck the sides back in his pocket. The laundry club was done, apparently: food was being wrapped and put back into coolers and sacks, and everyone had neatly folded baskets and hampers and duffel bags full of freshly clean clothes. Quinn saw Quatro bending over a wicker basket, tucking in a stack of blue towels. So he’d be leaving now, too. Quinn told himself it didn’t matter, that they didn’t even know each other except in a professional way.

Anyway, he’d need a haircut in a month. A month was nothing.

ACROSS TOWN AT 200 LA BREA, LAUREL BUEHL WAS CONFIDING to the camera as though to a close girlfriend why she wouldn’t be able to play in the final and most important water polo game of the season: her “friend” was visiting, and she didn’t feel she could rely on her tampons.

Then she and three other girls who were auditioning for the same commercial were asked to tell one another, on camera, about their greatest personal hygiene fears: leakage, bloating, cramping, or moodiness. They were to talk about these problems as though they were monsters in the room, and the girls were defending themselves against them as if their lives depended on it. Over the top, girls, said the dweeby casting director. Waaay over the top, now. Good. Excellent. Thank you.

Angie was waiting for Laurel outside in the bull-pen waiting room, sitting on the gray carpeted benches. Across from her a young woman held a baby on her lap and bounced her, trying to keep her quiet while they waited for the baby’s big sister, who was evidently auditioning for a soup commercial. The baby was fidgety—it was three o’clock in the afternoon, which Angie well remembered as Laurel’s worst time of day when she’d been tiny—and Angie watched the mom fishing, with growing desperation, object after object out of a string bag inside her enormous tote: a set of plastic keys, her set of real keys, a pen flashlight, a travel-pack of tissues, a set of plastic teething rings that made a nice clattering sound, a binky; and one after another, the baby threw the objects down in growing agitation.

“Will she let me hold her, do you think?” Angie asked the mom. “You look like you could use a break.”

The woman looked at Angie with tears welling up in her eyes. “God, would you mind? She’s got a double ear infection, we got about two hours of sleep last night, she hasn’t napped at all, and I’m at my wit’s end.”

Angie took the baby gently under the arms and lifted her onto her lap. The baby was astonished into silence. “Boo!” Angie said softly. “Who’s a pretty girl? Who’s a beautiful girl?”

The baby blew a spit bubble, farted into her diaper. Angie laughed.

The mom stood up, wiped her eyes, did a side bend or two as though she were warming up for a marathon. “I’ve told my husband this is too much,” she said, “but Lily—that’s this one’s big sister—had a second callback, and it’s a national commercial, which could help us get her a better agent, so here we are.”

“How old is Lily?”

“Three.”

“Oh, a big girl,” Angie said, smiling. The baby began to fidget in Angie’s arms. Angie turned her around, holding her under her armpits, and murmured, “See? Mama’s right there. Is that better? Yes, that’s better.”

“You’re great with her.”

“She’s just being good because she’s startled,” Angie said. “Her diaper feels pretty heavy. Do you have a clean one? We can change her right here, if you do.”

“Oh, God, you’re wonderful,” the woman said. “I’ll change her, but if you can watch her so she doesn’t wriggle off the bench—”

“Oh, sure,” said Angie, gently laying the baby down on her back. “Let’s just get these snaps undone. You are such a good girl!”

By the time the baby was changed and back in her clothes, a small girl came dawdling out of the casting room. “All done, pumpkin?” said the mom. The little girl was one of the most beautiful children Angie had ever seen, of mixed race, with truly green eyes, a cleft chin, and wild curls dancing around her face. No wonder she was here.

“See?” said the woman to the baby. “Here’s Big Sister. Okay? What did they say, honey?”

The little girl looked at her solemnly and popped her thumb into her mouth.

“Did the man say anything to you?”

The girl shook her head.

“Oh. Okay,” said the mom, clearly disappointed. “I know you did a wonderful job, though. Okay? We have a juice box and snack in the car. Then you can watch a DVD on the way home.”

Angie helped the young woman gather up the dirty diaper, the extra clothes she’d dumped out of the diaper bag, the scattered keys, both real and plastic, and the other objects the baby had discarded.

“You’ve been a godsend,” the woman said. “This is just so, so hard. I’ve told my husband if it’s so easy, why doesn’t he try it one day, but he just laughs, like I’m kidding. I’m not kidding, though.”

“No,” Angie said. “No, I can see that.”

“Well, thank you. And tell your daughter good luck.”

“I will.” Angie watched them disappear down the stairs and wondered if she’d ever had the stamina to do what that young woman was doing. She was so tired all the time now—she spent more and more of her energy fighting, or at least masking, a crushing fatigue. She remembered being that age, though. You came up with the energy when you had to. Not that Laurel had ever been hard to take care of. They’d wanted another child or even two more, but God hadn’t seen fit. And that was all right, too. Laurel was everything Angie could have ever wanted in a child, and more. People said you shouldn’t look upon your children as friends, but Angie didn’t see what was wrong with that. Laurel and she were even closer than most friends. They had never kept anything hidden, and Angie wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Dillard loved them—Dillard adored them—but he wasn’t much for girl talk, as he’d put it to her on their honeymoon. Laurel was the one Angie told things to. Until now. Now she was determined to keep her sickness to herself for as long as possible. That was her work. Laurel had her own work to do, and Angie didn’t want anything to get in the way of that, even though she missed her quiet strength and unfailing support.

Laurel came up, breaking Angie’s train of thought. “Done?” Angie said.

“Done.”

“Scale of one to ten?” This was their system—to rate auditions on a scale of one to ten, with ten being an absolute certainty of booking the commercial, one being no chance at all.

“Eight,” said Laurel. “Eight and a half.”

“Oh, good.”

“You okay?” Laurel said, peering at her.

Angie turned away. It was getting harder and harder to mask her deterioration. “Of course.”