I lacked both the drive to look for another job and the humility to return home so utterly swindled. With an apartment and a couple thousand in savings, I found myself simply there in the city, waiting to see what each day would bring. I sometimes watched while a movie crew filmed on my street. The film, I gathered, was about the city's dance-club and drag-queen scene, and it starred some big names who mostly just sashayed up and down the street in the most outlandish getups imaginable. One evening I watched from the sidewalk, which was blocked off and crowded with a few hundred extras, groupies and passersby pressed up against the barricades. A girl in a black tank top and cutoff jeans stepped in front of me. On the back of her right shoulder was a blood-red rose tattoo, so bright it seemed painted on with lacquer. Looking closer, I noticed a circle of black dolphins in the center of the rose.

"Seen anyone famous yet?" I asked her.

"No, but I heard some stars are supposed to be here any minute."

"I've seen 'em around the last few days, I said. "I live right over there."

"I don't think I'd recognize them in costume," she said. "I can't see over all these people anyway."

I suggested we move over to the front stoop in front of my building. But soon a short man with a bushy mustache, a silk suit and a cellular phone said we had to move. I told her we could watch from the fire escape outside my window.