The Player by Michael Tolkin

shirt salesman outside his failing store, waiting for a customer. The man studied Griffin for a moment, and Griffin expected him to call out, “Are you here for the funeral?” but the man just looked at hiswatch and went inside. Griffin looked at his own watch. Two-fifteen. He told himself he didn’t have to go in. Then he told himself he did.
    The parking lot beside the mortuary was almost empty. He counted fourteen cars. He was surprised to see David Kahane’s new Saab; had June Mercator driven to her lover’s funeral alone? A few white limousines were parked in the lot, next to the black hearse. And all because of me, he thought. Now he crossed the street.
    Griffin slowly opened the door to the chapel, a long beige room. The heavy carpet in the mortuary brought back an old boredom to him, the dull confusion of following his mother through department stores when he was seven. What do they say boredom is, nothing but frustration? Why am I frustrated in here? he asked himself.
    The first two rows were full; behind them a few people sat on the aisle. A Japanese family sat in the back. So Kahane’s death had brought thirty mourners. Griffin felt himself hating Kahane for wasting June Mercator’s time; she deserved a bigger crowd. How could Kahane have expected to make massively successful movies if he had such little charisma? No wonder he’d never had a movie made. No wonder he died so easily.
    The door opened behind him and a man in a suit excused himself as he brushed against Griffin’s shoulder. He walked slowly down the aisle to the front row and quietly offered his condolences. Two women who might have been June Mercator, mid- to late-twenties, sat next to each other, with an older man, possibly Kahane’s father, beside them on the aisle. One of the women had the same thin nose and blond hair as a college-age boy in the row. Griffin figured them for brother and sister and doubted that all of June Mercator’s family would be here, making her the single, but then why wouldn’t they? If her parents were alive and they lived in Los Angeles and their daughter’s mate died, they’d go to the funeral. Would they cross thecountry for the funeral if Kahane and June Mercator hadn’t been married? Probably only one of them would come. The sister could just as easily be June Mercator as the single. Which would he prefer, the sister or the single? Tonight he would have to make the same kind of choice, looking around the Polo Lounge and guessing who was Joe Gillis. He supposed that would be simple; the Writer would be whoever was alone and most self-conscious.
    The sister turned and looked back to see the small crowd. She had the bright, functional good looks of a woman who worked in something technical at a studio, a film editor or special-effects artist, with an athlete’s haircut, center-parted and longer in back than on the sides, and clear, pale skin. The single glanced back, automatically, to see what caught the sister’s attention. Her hair was longer and loose. She had bags under her eyes and she was fleshy. Like me, thought Griffin. She looked tired. From mourning? From her job? He couldn’t tell the difference between grief and worry. He pegged her for a lawyer, which made the other woman June Mercator, and that made sense, didn’t she do pasteup for a bank’s brochures? That’s technical. Besides, she was crying.
    He let their eyes meet, and he wondered who she thought he was; with so few people there, she was sure to know everyone. His picture had been published a few dozen times, on the front pages of
Variety
and
The Hollywood Reporter,
there had a been a profile in the
Times,
articles in
Newsweek
and
Time,
a picture of him in
Rolling Stone.
Maybe she didn’t read those pages. He waited for the small shock when she realized who he was, but it didn’t come; she looked past him, then turned back to face the lectern, when a man in a