Unfortunately, when he called Olé, olé! I had just glanced his way and recognized him. I watched him smile his way toward me and bet he didn’t remember my name.

“How you doing?” he said.

I just knocked it back his way. “How you doing?”

“Good.” He nodded. Marvin had already been half bald when I knew him. Now there was thirty years’ less hair, and it was jet black. “Good. Tings is cooking.”

“Glad to hear it,” And I was, if it was true. Success is so rare that I’m glad to hear of it happening to anyone. “Same act?”

It’s not that a look of pain crossed his face. More that it didn’t. Whatever else he is, Marvin’s a pro at parties. “Been dere,” he said. “Done dat. My new act–” poking me in the chest, not spilling his drink–” is a lulu.”

There was no ring on his finger. His wife’s name didn’t come to mind, but there was a look she gave me once while he was talking to somebody backstage. It was hopeless. She’d had the realization of what he wasn’t. I was five then.

“Well,” I said. “It’s good to keep growing.”

“Ever see the old gang?”

“Not really,” I said. “I ran into Link a couple years ago, in the East Village, but that’s about it.”

“How is old Link?” Marvin said warmly, though I don’t recall that they ever said more than hello.

“He looked great, actually. He was just back from being guest of honor at some science fiction convention, in Duluth or wherever.”

“Well good for him,” Marvin said emphatically, and drank.

There was a hand on my shoulder, someone who wanted to talk to me, or rescue me, and I escaped.

***

Then I ran into Link again.

Bicycling runs in the family. I wouldn’t normally go shopping on a Friday morning in New Jersey, but how often can you get a Bianchi carbon frame for $300? Limited supplies, get there early. I don’t like bright yellow, but that’s what electrical tape is for.

He was there to pick up another of their loss-leader deals, last-year’s high-end treadmill. Link’s always had a paunch, but he’s got the build for it. It’s just Link. He’s a big guy, as big offscreen as he is on, unlike most macho TV stars.

And unlike most of them, he wasn’t bothering with a toupée anymore. I don’t know what happened in his life after we went off the air, but whatever it was, he seemed more solid and real than I remembered him. Hearing that voice booming “Robin!” from across a Big-5 store, I found I was happy to see him. We crossed the parking lot and got coffee at Starbucks. I told him I’d seen Marvin.

“I never liked him,” Link boomed. That was one thing about him. His voice just couldn’t go any lower.

“Why?”

“He’s untalented and he’s mean. Untalented by itself isn’t so bad. Just look at me.” He saw me hesitate and said, “You don’t have to answer that. He called me a couple weeks ago, you know.”

“Yeah?”

“He said Robin told him to call.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I know.”

“That’s around when I saw him.”

“At the selling-out party?”

I smiled. He said, “That’s what it was, wasn’t it? You’re a real artist. You know.”

I said, “Well, we do make stuff so we can sell it. Just because we’re not the ones profiting this time…”

“God’s dead anyway,” he said. “So it doesn’t really matter. I wish clocks could turn back. I’d turn back Marvin’s. He was never going to have another success like that Lady of Spain act. It happened to fall into the stream of public taste at the perfect spot, at the perfect moment, but he’s never had an actual idea. He doesn’t know the difference between an idea and a novelty act.”

“People still remember it.”

“People still remember Pet Rocks.” He shrugged so-what. “Nobody cares what that guy’s doing now, either. It doesn’t buy him anything in 2007. And it’s not like any of us own our own images. Ever see a penny from those action figures?”

“No.”

“You know those things go for a few hundred each on eBay?”

“I guess at this point, what else would he do?”

“What we all do. Get a job, pay the rent. Go to church. Have a family. Have a life.”

“They’re church people,” I quoted sternly, and he laughed.

“Not,” I added, “That I could see Marvin being any kind of a father.”

“He’d keep them in cages,” Link said. “And hit them with mallets.”

***

You have something, and then you don’t.

I sit cringing in college auditoriums as maybe a dozen people watch my work on stained screens, with murky picture and murky sound. The laughter never achieves contagion; the scattered audiences aren’t big enough for quirky comedy. Afterwards, I do the amazing dancing bear act if anyone has questions for the filmmaker. I’m out of practice performing, so I’m nervous.

I hide in my hotel room. I fly home and kiss the tadpoles. They love the old CDs. That was Daddy when he was very, very small! That was your famous Great-Uncle! I go back to work on Monday, and I’m the temp again, not the interesting artist from another city. I don’t watch the new DVDs of the old show very often.

Sometimes I do.

You have a moment, at a place, and you think you’ve turned the river. But you didn’t, and there’s nothing to return to. The theater closes. The band breaks up. The tour ends. The rights to your image are sold, and sold again. The moment floats idly downstream and disappears.

Some other kind of moment floats your way.

You either see it or you don’t, but downstream is the only direction.

Downstream.

Forward.

###

Keith Snyder used to be a musician who wrote novels. He still had money left, so he added filmmaking. He enjoys bicycling in blizzards.