He was a screenwriter who wrote comedies. His name was Marty Gold and he was forty-three years old and he had written three successful comedies and twelve forgettable ones and lived in a house in the Hills that looked over the city and tried not to think about the city when he was in the house, because the city reminded him of everything he had worked for and everything he had lost, and the loss was newer and more vivid than the work.

His son was named Toby. Toby was ten years old. Toby had a leukemia that the doctors treated for eighteen months and then told him was back and untreatable, and Marty had written checks to hospitals and charities and doctors and nobody, including the hospitals and the charities and the doctors, could write a check back, and that was the first lesson he learned about the mathematics of grief, which is that there is a directionality to it, a flow, and it goes one way, out of your hands and into a world that does not return anything, not even the money you gave it.

Toby died in March 1987. Marty wrote a funeral that nobody attended because he had written a life that nobody attended, a life that was full of locations and cameras and lighting and no people, because screenwriting is a profession in which you create worlds that are populated by characters who feel real to you and empty to everyone else, and the only person who ever visited those worlds was you, and now those worlds were empty too, because the character who made them real, the character who was his son, was gone.

The first compromise was small and reasonable and involved a check for twelve thousand dollars.

It came from a man named Sal Benedetto, who was a producer of films that Marty had never heard of and did not want to hear about. Sal had known Toby, or known of Toby, through the hospital, through the network of parents and doctors and volunteers who form around a sick child the way a body forms a scar around a splinter, and Sal had approached Marty at a fundraiser that Marty had attended because he felt he should attend, and Sal had said, quietly, that he had a project that Marty was perfect for, a biographical drama about a man who had overcome impossible odds, and the advance was twelve thousand dollars, and it would give Marty something to do, and doing things is what people do.

Marty had said no, initially, because he had promised Toby, in the way that people promise things to children who are dying, that he would not work, that he would take this time and be present in the absence, which is the only presence available when someone you love is absent. But the rent on the house was due, and the mortgage was due, and the legal fees from the estate of his wife, who had left five years earlier and left him with the house and the boy and a emptiness that he had filled with work, and the twelve thousand dollars was a number that existed in the world and the emptiness was a number that existed in the house, and the twelve thousand dollars could pay the emptiness for one month, and one month is a reasonable thing to accept.

He wrote the first draft. It was not good. Sal Benedetto told him so, kindly, with the kindness of a man who has read thousands of bad drafts and believes that every bad draft contains within it the seed of a good one, if only someone will water it. Marty watered it. He wrote three more drafts. On the fourth draft, he realized that he had changed the protagonist's name from the real name, which was Anthony, to Marty, and that he had changed the biographical subject's son, who had been a girl in the real story, into a boy, and that he had made the boy the center of the story in a way that the real Anthony would never have allowed, because Anthony was a private man and Marty was not, and privacy is a form of respect and Marty had lost his capacity for respect and replaced it with something that looked like respect but was actually extraction, the way one extracts meaning from a experience that has none, the way one extracts commerce from grief, the way one turns a man's struggle into a commodity and sells it back to the public in the form of entertainment.

He told himself that this was reasonable. The biographical subject had signed a release. The biographical subject had received half the advance. The biographical subject had said that the story needed to be changed for dramatic purposes, which is to say that the biographical subject had wanted money and had traded the truth of his daughter's existence for twelve thousand dollars, and Marty had facilitated the trade, and the trade was reasonable, and twelve thousand dollars paid the mortgage for three months, and three months is a reasonable thing to accept.

The second compromise was smaller and more reasonable and involved a phone call.

Marty was working on a different project by July, a comedy about a family going on vacation that he had pitched to a studio that had said yes and given him a contract and a deadline and a producer named Linda who was sharp and efficient and had never cried in a meeting, which Marty admired and also found alarming, because he had always assumed that crying in a meeting was a sign of professionalism, and the absence of crying was a sign of something he could not name.

Linda called him in August and told him that the studio wanted changes. The family in the comedy was too perfect. The children were too well-behaved. The father was too patient. Linda said, in her sharp and efficient way, that the audience would not believe them, and Marty said, quietly, that he knew people who were like that, that he had known them for forty-three years, that perfection was real and patience was real and he was writing what he knew, and Linda said, in her sharp and efficient way, that the audience does not pay to see what you know. The audience pays to see what they want to believe, which is that perfection is achievable and patience is a choice and the world is fair, and Marty said, after a pause that lasted long enough for Linda to wonder if he was going to refuse, that he would make the changes.

He made the changes. He made the father impatient and the children difficult and the mother sarcastic, and in doing so, he betrayed every person he had ever known who was patient and well-behaved and kind, because the world of screen comedy is a world in which flaw is entertainment and virtue is boredom, and he had written virtues for forty-three years without noticing that he was writing them, until someone pointed out that virtues do not sell tickets, and he had realized that he was right, and the realization was reasonable, and making the changes was reasonable, and reasonable things accumulate the way sediment accumulates, layer upon layer, until the landscape has changed and you cannot see the change because you are living inside it.

The third compromise was the smallest and the most reasonable and involved a coffee.

Marty met a man named David at a coffee shop in Hollywood. David was a writer, or claimed to be a writer, and he had read Marty's work and admired it and wanted to talk about the craft, and they talked for three hours over two coffees, and on the second coffee, David said something that would change the trajectory of Marty's career and the quality of his work and the person he was, in a way that Marty would not recognize until it was too late.

David said that he had a story, a real story, about a man who had lost his child and had become a different person, and that the story had never been told, and that Marty was the only writer who could tell it, because Marty had lost a child and had written comedies and understood the difference between laughter and pain and could write a character who moved between those two states in a way that felt real.

Marty asked him what the story was. David told him. The man's name was Victor. Victor had been a teacher. Victor had lost his daughter to an illness that was not leukemia but was something, and Victor had become angry, and his anger had turned into something that was not anger anymore, it was a project, a campaign, a mission, and the mission had consumed him, and he had lost his wife and his house and his job and his name, and in the end, he was a person who lived in a car and wrote letters to politicians and strangers and nobody answered any of them, and the story was about what happens when grief becomes a machinery that consumes the person inside it.

Marty listened. He thought about Toby. He thought about the way Toby had laughed, a laugh that was unselfconscious and full and without inhibition, the way children's laughter is, before they learn that laughter is something to be modulated and controlled and performed for the amusement of others. He thought about the twelve thousand dollars from Sal Benedetto and the changes to the family in the comedy and the coffee with David, and he thought about how reasonable each of these things had been, and how reasonable the next thing would be, and he said, quietly, that he would write the story.

The fourth compromise was reasonable and involved a name.

Marty wrote the script over three months. He wrote it in the mornings, before the light was too strong, in the room that had been Toby's room, which he had not converted into an office because he had not been able to make the conversion, and the room remained a room with a single bed and a desk and a wall covered with drawings that Toby had made, drawings of fish and spaceships and a dog that did not exist, a dog that Toby had imagined and drawn with a precision and affection that Marty could not replicate, and Marty would sit at the desk and write and look at the wall and feel the drawings as a presence, the way one feels the presence of someone who has died and is not there but is, in some sense that cannot be articulated, still there.

He wrote Victor's story. He wrote it faithfully, in the sense that he followed the facts that David had given him, but he changed things, small things, things that would not be noticed by anyone who did not know the real Victor, and one of the things he changed was Victor's name. Victor was a common name, and Marty did not want the real Victor to recognize himself in the script and be hurt, or be happy, or be anything, because Marty had learned that emotions are liabilities in matters of this kind, and he had become skilled at suppressing them, the way one becomes skilled at suppressing anything that interferes with function, and function was all that remained.

He changed Victor's name to David, because David was the name of the man who had told him the story, and Marty did not want the real Victor to be hurt, and the compromise was reasonable, because a name is just a sound, and sounds can be changed without affecting the thing they name, the way a label on a bottle does not change the liquid inside, and Marty had learned, in four compromises, that labels can be changed and liquids can be traded and reasons can be found for every action, and that reasons are the scaffolding that we build around actions we cannot defend on any other basis, and the scaffolding is reasonable and the actions beneath it are not, but the actions are hidden by the scaffolding and the scaffolding is visible, and what is visible is what matters, and what is visible is always reasonable.

The fifth compromise was reasonable and involved a phone call that Marty did not return.

The real Victor called him in November. Marty was working on a different project, a screenplay about a detective who was also a poet, which was the kind of project that people took when they could not get the projects they wanted, which was the kind of projects that people took when they had sold everything they had ever written and needed to pay the rent and needed to justify to themselves that they were still working, still creating, still part of a profession that valued creation even when it did not value the particular thing that you were creating.

Victor's voice was on the answering machine. It was a quiet voice, the voice of a man who had spoken too much and had learned that speaking less was a form of self-preservation. He said that he had seen a draft of the script, through David, who had shown it to him, apparently, without asking, and he said that his name was not David and his story had been changed in ways that were not accurate and not fair, and he said that he had not agreed to this, and he said that he was asking Marty, politely, to make the corrections, and he said that he did not want money, he just wanted the truth, and the truth was reasonable, and returning a phone call was reasonable, and Marty would have returned it, if he had not been working on the detective script, and if he had not been tired, and if he had not been thinking about the rent and the mortgage and the legal fees and the emptiness in the house, and reasonable things accumulate, and the fifth compromise was small and reasonable and involved a phone call that was not returned, and the not returning of it was reasonable because the caller had not left a number, which was not true, he had left a number, but Marty had not noticed, because noticing requires attention, and attention is a resource that is depleted by the same forces that deplete everything else, and attention was one of the first things to go, and its absence was reasonable, and the accumulation of reasonable absences was the person he was becoming, and he did not notice, because to notice would have required a form of attention he no longer possessed.

The sixth compromise was reasonable and involved a meeting.

Linda called him in January and told him that the studio wanted to produce the Victor script, which he had submitted under the title DAVID, because David was the name in the script and the name in the script was the name that mattered and the name that mattered was the name that was visible and the visible was what sold tickets and tickets paid the rent and the rent paid the emptiness.

Linda said that she had set up a meeting with the real Victor, who had agreed to come to Los Angeles to discuss the changes, and that Marty should attend, because it would be good for him to meet the person whose story he was telling, and good is a word that Marty had stopped using accurately, the way one stops using colors accurately when one has been looking at them for too long, and the spectrum has collapsed into a range between gray and darker gray, and everything that is not gray is an error in perception.

He met Victor in a hotel lobby in Beverly Hills. Victor was smaller than Marty had expected, a thin man with gray hair and eyes that were the color of the Thames in winter, brown and slow and carrying information about things that had happened and would happen and were happening now, in a way that time does not separate.

They talked for an hour. Victor asked questions, polite questions, the questions of a man who is trying to understand what has been done with his life, and Marty answered them, answers that were true in the sense that they were accurate descriptions of the process by which the script had been written, but were not true in the sense that they described the process by which the truth had been changed, because truth is not a fixed point but a variable that changes in response to the forces applied to it, and the forces applied to Victor's truth were commerce and time and Marty's grief, which was a force that operated like gravity, pulling everything toward itself, distorting the space around it, bending the light so that nothing was visible as it truly was, only as it appeared from the perspective of the person standing at the center of the distortion, which was Marty, standing in his house, looking out at the city, writing scripts that were not his, telling stories that were not his, using a man's grief as material and calling it art and calling art commerce and calling commerce reasonable and calling reasonable the accumulation of small changes that had transformed Victor into David and David into a character and a character into a commodity and a commodity into a product and a product into something that would be seen by thousands of people who would not know that they were watching a man's life stripped of its name and sold back to them in the form of entertainment, and who would not know because the name was David, and David was a name that did not belong to Victor, and the name was the first thing to go, and names are the first things to go, and after the name goes, everything goes, and after everything goes, the person who remains is someone who looks like the person who was there before but is not, the way a script looks like a life but is not, the way a commodity looks like a story but is not, the way a reason looks like a justification but is not, and Marty knew this, knew it in the way that knowledge exists in people who have stopped believing that knowledge matters, and knew it while doing the thing that knowledge cannot stop, which is to continue, reasonable, reasonable, reasonable, the way sediment accumulates, the way compromises accumulate, the way a person becomes someone they would not have recognized if someone had pointed them out and said that is you, standing in a hotel lobby, listening to the man whose story you are telling, whose name you have changed, whose grief you are selling, whose life you are turning into entertainment, and the person who would have pointed him out and said that is you was not there, because the person who sees clearly is the last person to remain, and clarity is the last thing to go, and Marty had not lost his clarity, he had lost his ability to act on it, which is a different thing, and more terrible, because clarity without action is not wisdom, it is torture, and he was being tortured, reasonably, by seven compromises that were each reasonable, and the accumulation of reasonable things is a person who is unrecognizable to himself, and he only noticed because someone had not pointed him out and said that is you, because the person who would have said it was him, from seven years earlier, from before Toby died, from before the first compromise, from before the twelve thousand dollars and the rent and the mortgage and the emptiness, and that person was gone, and the person who remained was reasonable, and reasonable is the word that people use for things that cannot be defended on any other basis, and Marty knew this, and knew it clearly, and knew it while continuing, because continuing is what people do, and continuing is reasonable, and the accumulation of continuing is a life, or what remains of a life when everything else has been traded for reasons.

The seventh compromise was the one that someone else pointed out.

It was a woman named Sarah, a production assistant on the Victor project, who was twenty-four years old and had read Marty's early work, the comedies from the nineties, the ones before Toby, the ones in which people laughed at things that were not funny and laughed anyway, and the laughter had been real, and the things had not been funny, and the gap between them was where comedy lived, and Marty had lived in that gap for twenty years, before grief had moved in and taken over the space and refused to leave.

Sarah was twenty-four and she had read his early work and she had seen the script for DAVID and she had read the reviews and she had seen the previews and she had seen the man who had been the inspiration for the film standing in a hotel lobby and being treated as a consultant, which is to say being treated as a resource to be extracted and a name to be changed and a truth to be modified and a life to be turned into a commodity, and she had approached him after a screening, in the lobby of the theater, in front of people who were laughing at the things that were not funny and laughing anyway, and she had said, quietly, that she had read his early work, and she had loved it, and she had loved it because it was honest, and she had looked at this script and she had not seen honesty, she had seen a man's life stripped and sold, and she had seen his name changed and his story twisted and his grief turned into entertainment, and she had said, very quietly, that he did not recognize himself anymore, and that was not honest.

Marty stood in the lobby of the theater, surrounded by people who were laughing at things that were not funny and laughing anyway, and he listened to a twenty-four-year-old woman tell him that he was not honest, and he understood, with a clarity that was physical, that she was right, and that the seven compromises had accumulated into a person who was unrecognizable to anyone who had known him before, and that the only person who could point it out was someone who had known him before, and the someone who had known him before was gone, and the person who remained was someone who had made seven compromises, each one reasonable, each one justifiable, each one a small change that had accumulated into a transformation that no amount of clarity could reverse, because clarity is not a tool for reversal, it is a tool for recognition, and recognition is the beginning of something, but no one knows what it is the beginning of, except that it is not the beginning of going back, because going back is not possible, because the sediment has accumulated, and the landscape has changed, and you are living inside the change, and the change is you, and you are the change, and the accumulation of reasonable things is a person who cannot be recognized, and cannot be recognized because the person who was there before is gone, and the person who is there now is the accumulation, and the accumulation is not a person, it is a structure, and structures do not feel, and structures do not grieve, and structures do not laugh at things that are not funny, they simply stand in the lobby of a theater and watch people laugh and understand, with a clarity that is their only remaining possession, that they are not the people who used to stand in that lobby and write comedies and believe in the gap between what is funny and what is not, and that the gap is closed now, and the closure is reasonable, and reason is the last thing people use to defend what cannot be defended, and Marty understood this, and understood it clearly, and the clarity was his only possession now, and it was not enough, and it was everything, because clarity is not enough and it is everything, and the two things are the same, in the end, when everything else has been traded for reasons.

He went home. He sat in Toby's room. He looked at the wall with the drawings. He looked at the fish and the spaceships and the dog that did not exist but had been drawn with such precision and affection that Marty could feel the affection, across the distance of time and compromise and reasonable accumulation, and he felt something move inside him, not a breaking but a recognition, the way one recognizes a face in a photograph and understands that the face is gone but the recognition remains, and recognition is the only thing that remains, and it is not enough, and it is everything.

He picked up a pen. He picked up a page. He wrote a single line at the top of the page: DAVID does not exist. There is no David. There is only Victor. And then he wrote another line: The seven compromises did not accumulate. They accumulated into me. And then he wrote a third line, which was the only honest thing he had written in seven years, and it was a line that would not be seen by any audience, because he would not submit it to any studio, and he would not sell it to any producer, and he would not turn it into a commodity, and he would not make it reasonable: I am the compromise. I am the accumulation. I am the structure that does not feel and does not grieve and does not laugh and does not write, and the only thing I can do is write this line, and the line is honest, and honesty is not reasonable, and reasonableness is the word we use for what remains when honesty has been traded away, layer by layer, compromise by compromise, reason by reason, until there is nothing left but the structure, and the structure is us, and we are the structure, and the structure does not know what it has become, except that it is not what it was, except that it cannot go back, except that going back was never possible, except that the sediment is us and the accumulation is us and the seven reasonable things are us and the person who made them is us and the person who made them is gone and the person who remains is the reason we cannot go back, because the person who remains is not a person, it is an architecture, and architecture does not grieve, architecture does not forgive, architecture does not forgive itself, it simply stands in the landscape it has created and watches the landscape change and understands that the landscape is itself and itself is the landscape and the landscape is the accumulation of seven reasonable things and seven unreasonable honest ones that were written on a page in a room with a wall of drawings and a desk that was once a child's desk and a father who sat at that desk and wrote lines that would never be seen and wrote them because writing was the only thing that remained and the writing was honest and honesty was not reasonable and reasonableness was everything and everything was nothing and nothing was the seven compromises and the compromises were him and he was the compromises and the compromises were reasonable and the honesty was not and the honesty was the only thing he had left and the only thing anyone ever has, because architecture does not grieve and structures do not feel and the only thing that feels is the person who sits at a desk in a room with drawings on the wall and writes a line that is honest and knows that it is honest and knows that it is not reasonable and knows that reasonableness is the word we use for the accumulation of compromises and and the compromises are us and we are the compromises and we are reasonable and we are honest and the honesty is not reasonable and the reasonableness is not honest and we are both and we are neither and we are the space between and the space between is where grief lives and grief is not reasonable and grief is not honest and grief is the space where reason and honesty meet and cancel each other out and leave only the structure and the structure is us and we are the structure and the structure is the seven compromises and the seven compromises are reasonable and the only honest thing is the line on the page and the line is: I am the compromise.

That is what David knew about grief. David who did not exist. David who was Victor. David who was Marty. David who was the seven compromises and the one honest line and the honesty was not reasonable and the reasonableness was not honest and the accumulation was the person and the person was the accumulation and the accumulation was reasonable and the person was not and the person was and the person was reasonable and the person was not and the person sat at the desk and wrote and the writing was honest and the honesty was not reasonable and that was the only thing that remained, the honest line, written in a room with drawings on the wall, by a man who was the compromise and the compromise was reasonable and the honest line was not and that was the truth, and the truth was not reasonable, and reason was the accumulation, and the accumulation was the man, and the man was gone, and what remained was the line, and the line was honest, and honesty was not reasonable, and reason was everything, and honesty was everything, and the two were the same, in the end, when everything else had been traded, compromise by reasonable compromise, for the scaffolding that hides the action that cannot be defended, and the scaffolding is visible and the action is hidden and what is visible is reasonable and what is hidden is honest and the hidden is the truth and the truth is not reasonable and the reasonable is the lie and the lie is seven small compromises that accumulate into a person who is unrecognizable, and the person only notices because someone else points it out, because the person who was there before is gone, and the person who remains is the accumulation, and the accumulation is not a person, it is an architecture, and architecture does not grieve, and the only thing that grieves is the line on the page, written by a hand that is still holding a pen, in a room with drawings on the wall, by a father who sat at a desk and wrote a line that was honest and knew it was not reasonable and wrote it anyway, because writing is the only thing that remains when everything else has been traded, and the trading was reasonable, and the line was not, and the line is the only honest thing in a life that has become an architecture of reasonable compromises, and the architecture stands in the landscape it has created and the landscape is itself and the self is the seven compromises and the compromises are reasonable and the honest line is not and the honest line is the only truth and truth is not reasonable and reasonable is the lie and the lie is everything and the truth is nothing and nothing is the line on the page and the line is I am the compromise and the compromise is me and I am reasonable and I am not and I am the accumulation and the accumulation is me and I am the structure and the structure does not grieve and the structure does not feel and the structure stands and the structure watches and the structure understands and the understanding is the only thing that remains and the understanding is not reasonable and the understanding is honest and the understanding is the line on the page written by a father at a desk in a room with drawings on a wall by a man who made seven compromises each one reasonable each one justifiable each one a small change that accumulated into a person who was unrecognizable to himself and only noticed because someone else pointed it out because the person who was there before was gone and the person who remained was the accumulation and the accumulation was reasonable and the honest line was not and the honest line was the only thing that remained and the line was honest and the honesty was not reasonable and that was the truth and the truth was not reasonable and reason was the accumulation and the accumulation was the person and the person was the compromise and the compromise was reasonable and the honest line was not and the honest line was the only truth and truth was not reasonable and reasonable was the lie and the lie was seven small compromises and the compromises were reasonable and the honest line was the only truth and truth was not reasonable and that is what David knew about grief, David who did not exist, David who was Victor and David who was Marty and David who was the seven compromises and the one honest line and the honest line was not reasonable and the compromises were and the compromises were reasonable and the honest line was the only truth and the truth was not reasonable and reasonable was the lie and the lie was everything and the truth was nothing and nothing was the line on the page and the line was I am the compromise and that is what the dead know and that is what the living must learn, and the learning is not reasonable and the learning is not honest and the learning is the space between and the space between is grief and grief is not reasonable and grief is not honest and grief is the accumulation of reasonable things and the reasonable things are the compromises and the compromises are the person and the person is the structure and the structure is the landscape and the landscape is the street and the street is the same in two timelines and the timelines are the same in one reference frame and the reference frame is the water and the water is the same in 1925 and 1975 and the women are the same and the men are the same and the children are the same and the loss is the same and the grief is the same and the grief is a landscape and you live in it and the landscape does not change and you learn its contours and you learn which hills cast shadows at what time of day and you learn where the ground is firm and where it gives way and you learn to walk through it without expecting it to end and that is what David knew about grief and that is what everyone knows who has sat in a kitchen and stared at a wall and waited for a door to open that would never open and understood in the silence that waiting is not the same as hoping and hoping is not the same as believing and believing is not the same as knowing and in the space between all those words lies the entire territory of loss with no borders and no exit and the only thing anyone can do is stand inside it and acknowledge that it is there and that it is reasonable and that it is honest and that it is the compromise and the compromise is everything and everything is the compromise and the compromise is reasonable and honesty is not and the honest line is the only thing that remains and the line is honest and the honesty is not reasonable and reason is the accumulation and the accumulation is the person and the person is the compromise and the compromise is reasonable and the honest line is not and the honest line is the truth and the truth is not reasonable and reason is the lie and the lie is seven compromises and the compromises accumulate into a person who is unrecognizable and only notices because someone points it out and the person who was there before is gone and the person who remains is the accumulation and the accumulation is reasonable and the honest line is not and that is what David knew.