Leonard Vance never intended to become a fixer.

In 1987, Leonard was a screenwriter living in a two-bedroom apartment in West Hollywood, working on a script about a boxing manager that had been optioned by a producer who had since stopped returning his calls. The apartment had avocado-green appliances, a Viewmaster of the Hollywood Hills, and a cockroach problem that Leonard had learned to coexist with. He was thirty-eight years old. His credit card debt was $14,000. His most recent ex-girlfriend, a development executive named Paige, had told him at their last dinner that he had "the soul of an artist and the follow-through of a goldfish." She was not wrong. The script about the boxing manager was good. Leonard knew it was good. But good was not the same as bought, and bought was not the same as produced, and produced was not the same as successful. He had been in Los Angeles for eleven years. He had learned that the distance between good and successful was a vast desert that consumed most people who tried to cross it.

The first compromise happened on a Tuesday.

Leonard received a phone call from a man named Jerry Vale, who was not the singer but who shared the singer's capacity for smooth, insincere charm. Jerry was a producer at a small studio that specialized in straight-to-video action films. He had read Leonard's boxing script—someone had passed it along, Leonard never learned who—and he wanted to meet. "The script is good," Jerry said, leaning back in his chair in an office that smelled of cigars and desperation. "But it's not commercial. You know what I mean?" Leonard knew. "I have a project in development. A CIA operative. One man against the system. We've got a star interested—well, a name. The budget is tight. I need a rewrite in three weeks." Leonard did not want to write a CIA operative movie. He wanted to write the boxing script. But his rent was due. His phone was three days from being disconnected. "How much?" he asked. Jerry named a number that was not generous but was enough. Leonard said yes.

The second compromise came two weeks later.

The CIA script needed research. Leonard went to the Beverly Hills library and read books about intelligence operations. He took notes. He sketched character arcs. But when he turned in the first draft, Jerry called him with notes. "It's too smart," Jerry said. "The audience for this movie is not smart. They want explosions. They want one-liners. They want the hero to kill the villain in a creative way." Leonard pointed out that the hero was supposed to be a subtle, intelligent operative. Jerry laughed. "This is a DVD movie, Leonard. People rent it because the box has a guy holding a big gun on the cover. Write the guy with the big gun." Leonard thought about the boxing script, sitting in a drawer in his apartment. He thought about Paige, who was now dating a television producer. He thought about his $14,000 in credit card debt. "Fine," he said. He rewrote the script. The hero now carried a weapon that fired explosive rounds. The villain died in a helicopter crash that Leonard calculated would cost roughly a third of the entire budget to film. Jerry loved it.

The third compromise was personal.

Leonard met a woman named Diana at a party in the Hills. Diana was a production designer with kind eyes and a laugh that sounded like wind chimes. She had worked on three independent films that had premiered at Sundance. She had a cat named Buster. She did not own a television. Leonard fell in love with her over the course of a single evening, in the way that men in Los Angeles fall in love: quickly, desperately, and with no regard for the practical consequences. They began dating. She stayed over at his apartment. He left a toothbrush at hers. For three months, Leonard was happy. And then Jerry called with another project. "A sequel," Jerry said. "Same hero. Bigger explosions. Two weeks." Leonard told Diana about it. She asked what happened to the boxing script. "I need the money," Leonard said. "There will be time for the boxing script later." Diana looked at him with an expression he had seen before—on Paige's face, on his mother's face, on the face of every woman who had ever loved him and realized she was competing with something invisible. "There is no 'later,' Leonard," Diana said. "Later is a lie we tell ourselves so we don't have to face what we're choosing right now." He chose the job. Diana was gone by the end of the month.

The fourth compromise was invisible.

The sequel was worse than the original. The star, such as he was, had scheduling conflicts, so the script had to be rewritten to accommodate a different actor, who was shorter and less charismatic and demanded that his character have a catchphrase. Jerry called it "creative collaboration." Leonard called it writing a shopping list. He wrote the catchphrase. He inserted it into every scene. By the sixth draft, the catchphrase appeared an average of once every four pages. Leonard did not recognize the script when he was done. It was not his work. It was a machine that had been assembled from the parts of a hundred other movies, none of which had been very good. But the check cleared. He paid off his credit card debt. He bought a new couch. He stopped noticing the cockroaches.

The fifth compromise was about a man Leonard had never met.

Jerry called him in March of 1988 with an unusual request. "I need a favor," Jerry said. "I have a friend. He's an actor. Well, he wants to be an actor. He's having some legal trouble. The kind of trouble that makes it hard to get work." Leonard asked what kind of legal trouble. "The kind that involves a minor." Leonard put down the pen he had been holding. "I'm not writing a script about that." "I don't want a script about it," Jerry said. "I want you to talk to a journalist. A friend of mine. She's writing a profile of this actor. I need you to convince her that the charges were exaggerated." "Jerry, I don't even know this person." "You don't have to know him. You just have to be believable." Leonard said no. Jerry sighed. He named a number. It was a large number. "You're not writing anything illegal," Jerry said. "You're just talking to a journalist. Saying that people deserve a second chance. Publicly." Leonard thought about the script in his drawer. He thought about Diana's laugh. He thought about the last time he had written something he believed in. The answer was still no. But the silence was longer this time. "I'll think about it," Leonard said. He did not do it. But he also did not say no again, and Jerry knew the difference.

The sixth compromise was a rewrite of reality.

By the summer of 1988, Leonard was no longer a screenwriter. He was a fixer. Jerry had introduced him to other producers, other executives, other men with problems that needed solving. Leonard's job was no longer to write words. His job was to write people. He wrote press releases that made scandals sound like misunderstandings. He wrote scripts that were never filmed but were used as "evidence" of good faith in legal proceedings. He wrote phone calls, the kind where he called a journalist and said, "Off the record, I've worked with this person and I can vouch for their character." He was good at it. He was very good at it. The money was better than screenwriting had ever been. He moved to a high-rise in Century City. He drove a silver Mercedes. He wore suits that cost more than his first car. His mother called him on his birthday and asked what he was working on. He told her he was in "development." She said she was proud of him. He did not correct her.

The seventh compromise was the one that mattered.

In October of 1988, Jerry brought Leonard a file. "I need a full background on this guy," Jerry said, tapping the manila folder on Leonard's desk. "He's a journalist. Used to work for the Times. Now he's freelance. He's been asking questions about some of my, ah, creative productions." Leonard opened the folder. The journalist's name was Aaron Weiss. He was forty-two. He had a wife and a daughter. He taught a journalism class at UCLA Extension. His last published article was an investigation of corruption in the straight-to-video film industry. It had named several producers, including Jerry. "What are you asking me to do?" Leonard said. "Dig up dirt. Find something we can use. A divorce. A gambling problem. An affair." "And if there's nothing?" "There's always something." Leonard closed the folder. He thought about the boxing script. He thought about the first conversation with Jerry, in that office that smelled of cigars and desperation. He thought about how he had started here. He had started here. And this was where he had ended up. "I'll see what I can find," he said. Jerry smiled. It was the same smile he had worn on the day he told Leonard to write the guy with the big gun.

Leonard spent a week investigating Aaron Weiss. The journalist was a difficult target. He did not gamble. He did not drink. He had been married for eighteen years. His daughter was a straight-A student. He coached her soccer team. He volunteered at a food bank on Saturdays. Leonard sat in his Century City apartment, surrounded by evidence of a man who was simply good, and felt the weight of what he was doing settle into his bones. He called Jerry. "There's nothing," Leonard said. "Everyone has something," Jerry said. "He doesn't. He's clean." "Nobody is clean. You're not looking hard enough." Leonard was looking hard enough. That was the problem. He was looking hard enough to find a man who was everything Leonard had once wanted to be. He put down the phone and looked out the window at the lights of Los Angeles, the endless carpet of them, each one a story that someone had compromised to tell.

The last compromise was a choice.

Leonard closed the file on Aaron Weiss. He called Jerry and said, "I can't do this." Jerry's silence was long and cold. "You've done everything else," Jerry said. "Yes," Leonard said. "That's the problem." He hung up. He sat at his desk for a long time, looking at the file. He opened his drawer and took out the boxing script. He had not read it in two years. He opened to the first page. The words were unfamiliar. They had been written by someone he no longer recognized. He closed the script and put it in the trash. He typed a letter of resignation. He took the elevator to the parking garage. He got into his silver Mercedes and drove. He did not know where he was going. He drove past the studio where he had written the catchphrase, past the building where he had talked to the journalist, past the house where Diana had lived. He kept driving. He drove until the city lights faded and the sky became dark, and he pulled over on the side of the highway and got out of the car. The air was cold. The stars were visible. Leonard had not looked at the stars in years. He leaned against the hood of his Mercedes and looked up. The stars did not care what he had done. The stars did not care about catchphrases or press releases or the difference between a screenwriter and a fixer. The stars simply burned, indifferent and precise, and Leonard felt, for the first time in two years, something that might have been the beginning of shame.

He drove back to the city the next morning. He sold the Mercedes. He moved out of the Century City apartment. He took a job teaching screenwriting at Santa Monica College. The salary was a fraction of what he had made as a fixer. The apartment was small. The students were not always talented. But when Leonard stood in front of the classroom and talked about structure, about character, about the difference between a story and a lie, he did not feel the weight of what he had done. Not yet. Sometime, he thought, the weight would catch up to him. Sometime, he would have to face the accumulation of every small, reasonable choice that had led him to the edge of becoming someone else. But not today. Today, he was teaching a class about the second act. And for a man who had spent two years living in the second act of someone else's story, it felt like a beginning.