Eric Roberts VIII: Shadow Boxing

We had come so far on this film - months of preparation and weeks shooting in locations all over the city and dressed sound stages that probably cost the moon. The dailies were beautiful, promising, and rumor had it that PBS had already committed to buy the finished film as the opener for a new series, American Playhouse.

During the production we'd all assumed that this project was going to get the producer, director, and all of us for that matter, an actual entree into the business. We were working day and night, pouring every bit of energy we had, and each day's work seemed to validate this effort: it looked and felt like a professional production. In these days, before the really cheap indies like Clerks or The Blair Witch Project made the $1.99 hit possible, most student films, despite the interest from development directors, looked slightly better than a home movie, with amateurish scripts, cheezy sound, and so-so acting. Miss Lonelyhearts was the Benz of student movies and had risen in its last hour to the calibre of her storied predecesors like Lucas' THX 1138, which I'd seen as part of my course study in theatre school. And speaking of course work, Lonelyhearts was my graduate thesis at free film school - I'd learned more about how every above and below-the-line department worked down to the last nitty gritty detail and I was ready to get out into the world and earn a living.

Now we had an unfinished film and no star. Eric Roberts had disappeared and no-one knew where he was. We waited well into the long, dreary afternoon on a prepped but empty set until we were all sent home. Since I carpooled with Lydia every night I was hoping for more information but at that point she was as much in the dark as the rest of us. But like the trooper she was she and Michael Dinner had decided that no matter what the film would be finished.

But how to do this? Eric was needed for some remaining key scenes. As is often the case with shooting schedules, scenes are not filmed in sequential order, instead in a pattern that best suits a variety of other considerations, including locations, actor availability, and weather. Some inter-connected scenes necessary for the story to make sense hadn't been shot. Without them the film was useless.

A day or so later Lydia called me to say that the film was on hold until they could figure out what to do next. Eric was gone. He had left Los Angeles and she thought he'd gone back to Sandy Dennis' place in Long Island but his agent was claiming only that he'd gone AWOL and was powerless to do anything to help. I'm sure Eric had a contract of some kind, I remember hearing he was getting scale wages, perhaps deferred, and perhaps sharing in the revenue after a sale. But to have principal actor disappear before finishing a film was almost unheard of, and who knows what protection the film (or AFI) had against a disaster like this. I often wondered how much those close to him knew just how volatile and unpredictable he was when they offered him up for this under-the-radar project. A student movie at this critical time in his career seemed like an odd thing but perhaps the PBS deal was in the works early on and sweetened the pot. In retrospect many unanswered questions contributed to a lot of speculation about how Eric had come to be in our film, and why the gamble hadn't paid off.

Film or no film I had to make a living.

The meager funds from my last temp job at some downtown oil company was just about gone so I had to get cracking. It was hard, though. I was in shock and not getting much satisfaction from the I-told-you-so of knowing that Eric was about to take his oars out of the water. Lydia seemed so behind the eight ball that I didn't even have the heart to tell her what I'd predicted and even though we lived only a couple of blocks apart, we went our separate ways.

My personal life had taken an interesting turn and it was a wait-and-see period. I had just started dating the boss of my roomate's boyfriend, producer Michael Varhol. He had recently completed an indie film, The Last Word, with Richard Harris but they were having trouble selling it to a distributor. He and his partner, a strange, manic guy who was later to cause me a lot of personal grief, were Industry outsiders. They had been in the photo unit of the army together a decade earlier and after their discharges teamed up to make a documentary on legendary banjo picker, Earle Scruggs. While shooting the film across the deep south they'd made a fateful connection to talent manager, Bill McEuen, whose brother, John, was a founding member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, one of the acts featured in the documentary (in 2005 the Dirt Band won a Grammy for "Earl's Breakdown"). One of Bill's clients was a young comedian who favored balloon tricks and sight gags in his act and he opened for the Dirt Band on tour. Brown-haired, loose-limbed, this wild and crazy guy's name was Steve Martin. By the time I'd hooked up with Michael, Steve Martin was a silver-haired SNL household name and a bonafied movie star. As partners with Martin, Bill had parlayed their success into a going concern with Aspen Films, and had opened a showy, ivy-covered production office in Beverly Hills.


The thing I remember most about Michael (who was a decade older than me) when we first met were the cashmere sweaters he wore in shades of fawn and ivory, with neatly pressed jeans. He was a nice guy, kind and generous, but a bit of a brown mouse, overpowered by his Hippodrome partner who just needed a swirly black moustache and satin cape to complete his persona. Their partnership was a psychiatrist's dream, one fraught with secrets, double-entendres, and hidden jealousy. I'd disliked "Richie Rich" at first sight but, always the optimist, believed I'd landed the good guy.

Michael and I had been set up by my roomate. A blind date, not particularly memorable, had turned into a warm relationship with some promise, and I was anxious to find work in the business rather than another anonymous temp job pecking away on a Selectric. Since the rest of the crew of Miss Lonelyhearts had also been released there were a lot of us in the same position and it wasn't long before I got a couple of phone calls from some of them to work on a variety of small projects.

In the next few weeks I managed to work in a variety of production jobs in an area of the business that isn't good resume material: what we fondly call "Industrials". These are films used for educational purposes or for marketing a product at a trade show and they are as invisible as your mother's show on public access television where she shares her favorite recipies with her seven viewers at 4:00 a.m. on Tuesday night.

Neverthless I was overjoyed! I was actually working for paid money (who made up that term anyway?) in the film business. I was finally a real professional. Never mind that sometimes I was back catering again (the career I never had kept calling me over and over) I was making more and more of those connections that lead, inevitably, to the golden time when you just keep working and working because everyone knows you and thinks you're grand.

Weeks slipped without any word from the Miss Lonelyhearts team by so I was surprised to get a call from Lydia saying that they had managed to devise a plan to film the missing shots without Eric. Would I help out? I was busy then with work but wanted very much to come back and finish what I'd started.

Next: Eric's face-plant makes the news

Photo: Arthur Hill, crew member, the author, and Lydia Woodward. Author's collection.

Eric Roberts VII: Bitter Fruit

We were well into the shooting schedule when other people began noticing Eric's strange behavior. But, it was reasoned, he was at the emotional heart of Nathaniel West's dark story as it relentlessly explored the downward spiral of a sensitive, empathetic young man overtaken by the depression and helplessness of others. In some ways we were all caught up in the powerful energy as the tale came to life through our careful ministrations; it was as if we were coaxing the demons to rise up inside a cold, empty stage, jostling about in the firelight of our own making, underestimating its ability to feed on us.

The sun shone in Los Angeles but each day we were immersed in the private worlds of Miss Lonelyheart's desperate readers we were pulled further and further away from the beauty outside and it was hard to keep a sense of balance. Eric's mood had shifted into a state of dark introspection and he communicated only with the director and a few of his fellow actors. We had a strong, seasoned cast assembled with the strength of Eric's name in the lead including veteran Arthur Hill, Conchata Ferrell, (of L.A. Law fame and currently starring in Two and a Half Men), and a young Greg Itzin, who is known to 24 fans as last season's President Logan. Hill had been a last-minute replacement - the original actor, another well-known veteran of television supporting roles, had been summarily dismissed after he had difficulty remembering his lines. We thought it amazing that our little production had the luxury of firing a name actor mid-stream (with useless shots in the can) but nothing about this project seemed like a student film. Producer Lydia Woodward (pictured above) and director Michael Dinner were determined to wring every last production value and cast performance out of all of us and no-one was exempt.

We had a crushing schedule, long hours and early calls to the set. Soon it became apparent that something was seriously messing up our lead actor. He was in almost every scene of the film so demands on his time (and our dependence on him) were beginning to become worriesome. He was late for makeup calls in the morning and occasionally became belligerent over small things, storming off to cool down. Whispers began floating around that he was doing copious amounts of weed or pills, or drinking, or who knows what else, depending on the source. And another tidbit of information surfaced soon afterward: he was sleeping with someone in the camera department. She was a quiet girl with a mane of luxurious red hair, who liked to wear overalls and generally kept to herself. Her calm demeanor and professional attitude made it difficult to figure out if the rumors were true. She certainly never showed any undue attention to Eric, but after the word spread we noticed that they always left the set together, discreetly of course, and the pieces began falling into place.

Cast and crew hook-ups are common, and although they are often innocent and a natural result of weeks or months together in a life bubble of sorts, some of them are outside someone's marriage and that's why the film business is tough on commited couples. It's the nature of the work, an intense focus on a common goal, the emotionally charged climate of creating faux relationships onscreen, hours with nothing to do but talk and develop friendships, and the need to let off steam after long days spent in arduous, or tedious work together. Most importantly, rather like a giant support group or a platoon we have to trust each other completely. It's an inter-dependant organism for the life of the film, and all decisions, from the highest level about the direction of performances and the development of the visual canvas to showing up on time, delivering as promised, and devoting all of one's available energy to the core is what fosters this quickened connection. Even more so on location where hotel living adds to the sense of unreality. I once knew a perfectly rational makeup artist who had a blazingly hot and very secret rendevous every night with the star of their film. He was 15 years her junior and once the film was over they never saw each other again but for a few weeks she had the undivided attention of a major hearthrob. Despite the pain of withdrawal that followed, who wouldn't have traded places with her?

As far as Eric's personal life was concerned I was quickly out of the loop and this news about the camera girl, plus the rumors about Sandy Dennis made me as much of an onlooker as the rest. It now seemed surreal that we'd even had a budding friendship, he'd become so alien and distant. When Eric and I worked on a party scene together (which explains my formal dress in the photos) we didn't speak, or even look at each other.

Near the end of the shoot everyone was tired and cranky, made no easier by Eric's erratic behavior and a growing sense of fiction come to life. It doesn't seem strange to me anymore but all my memories of those days are in the black and white shades and textures of the film. We were living in the deep shadows and stark contrast of cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchia, who was a promising Spanish transplant, and the set design of Tom Walsh, who constructed unrelenting visuals of the worn, greasy, lonely rooms where the forgotten lived.

It began to feel like a nightmare.

We were nearing the end of the shoot, with a few important scenes still to do when we were setting up for a party scene and no-one could find Eric. An eerie silence descended on the set as we all sat down on apple boxes and waited. By lunch it was apparent that he had disappeared. Lydia and Michael were conferring and although the rest of us were waxing between disbelief and disgust (mixed in with a dash of purient tabloid curosity), they stayed amazingly calm.

Their film was about to implode.

Next: The mystery of Eric's disappearance.

Photo: Lydia Woodward on the set of Miss Lonelyearts. Author's collection

Eric Roberts VI: The Dark Prince

Miss Lonelyhearts took place in the 1940's so the expense and time constructing and dressing sets and creating authentic wardrobe for a large cast was enormous, made even more difficult by the miniscule budget and volunteer crew. I'm not certain of the actual bottom line but I think it was in the neighborhood of $20K, more than likely agumented by the personal finances of the two principal AFI students, Michael Dinner and Lydia Woodward, for whom this project meant a serious jumpstart into the industry. They knew early on that PBS was interested in purchasing the finished project and since this was unusual for a student film everyone was looking to make the most of the exposure.

We were shooting the newspaper office scenes where Miss Lonelyhearts worked for several days in one of downtown Los Angeles' historical treasures, the Million Dollar Building. This architectural landmark, like all the original buildings in the downtown district was in a state of near-abandon and disrepair. Preferring the newer steel and glass towers on Flower Street, no major business would lease space in these dilapidated dinasours so it wasn't hard to find a portion of a floor that had been sitting empty for years. It was perfect for our needs because the space required very little set design as the office partitions, doors and signage had remained unchanged since the building had been constructed in 1918. Later I discovered the penthouse had once housed the offices of William Mullholland (his exploits as head of the Metropolitan Water District were made infamous in Chinatown). But as we lugged equipment and racks of clothes up and down the tiny, cranky elevator, it was testament to the decline of a great urban metropolis that had once been the center of this city's power before Hollywood's influence brought the limelight to the Westside and virtually gutted the life out of the old city.

While the art department was busy painting the walls and bringing in desks, telephones and slatted wooden chairs to dress the sets I wandered down to the Million Dollar Theatre housed on the main floor of the building. The grand, elegant facade in old movie palace proportions had been boarded up with cheap wooden false store-fronts and garish signage for luggage and wholesale jewlery. But once inside this magnificent orpheum-style theatre built by Sid Grauman (of Grauman's Chinese Theatre fame) the ornate tilework, murals, carved statues and velvet trimmings were still visible, if badly degraded. I felt, as I often did when I saw these old treasures, that Los Angeles had become disconnected from its past at a price and had embraced a transient culture reflected in Hollywood's obsessive quest for all that was 'new', 'hot', and 'young.'

During this time Eric seemed to become more and more withdrawn and our hourly talks dwindled down to sporatic bursts of conversation during which he seemed to be on automatic pilot. Everyone began to notice his change in behavior and speculation grew as to the cause. Then strange rumors surfaced that he was having troubles with his heretofore unmentioned 'girlfriend', Sandy Dennis, a reclusive semi-retired actress of a certain age which we thought were too crazy to be true. Although details were sketchy we were told that he was living with her and dozens of cats in a remote Long Island house and things were falling apart in his absence. Everyone was buzzing about it before long because although Dennis was an extraordinarily talented actress from the 60's (Up The Down Staircase, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and my favorite, The Fox), Eric was 26 and Sandy was.... closing in on 50 and reportedly as crazy as a loon. Even so, in some ways it made sense because her trademark style as an actor was one of memorable vulnerability, a hesitant way of speaking with fluttering hands, which always sounded organically spoken rather than memorized lines. There was something about Eric that mirrored this willingness to bare all in his performances, to become totally immersed in and to choose roles that brought out his vulnerability and fragility.

It seemed that Eric had a lot more going on in his complicated life than met the eye, but I took this information in stride, never considering the nutty Sandy Dennis as serious competition, so I decided that I would try to be supportive and understanding. Big mistake. The moment I mentioned her name he gave me such an evil look that I withered and disappeared, confused and hurt. In that moment I saw something that actually scared me and for the rest of the day I avoided him. As he sat in his makeup chair, darkness all around save for the pool of light a halo on his still figure, I was torn between compassion and frustration. We had become close enough that his erratic and dramatic mood shifts were too stark a contrast to the sweet, innocent person I had come to really like. It was troubling, and that night I came home to my roomate and confided in her that I was worried about Eric Roberts.

"I think there's something seriously wrong with the guy", I told her and the more she asked for details the more convinced I became he was about to implode. But when I listened to the set gossip, no-one seemed to agree with me - they just thought he was focused on his work and didn't want to break character off the set.

That afternoon as we were getting ready to shoot the last day at the office set we heard a tremendous ruckous outside and rushed to the windows. To our amazement a caravan of huge production trucks came rolling down Broadway Avenue and came to a stop outside the building, people spilling out to busily secure all the sidestreets. Our producer sent a scout downstairs to find out what was going on and she came back to tell us that Ridley Scott and company had arrived to set up an elaborate outdoor set for a new film they were making with Harrison Ford: the futuristic outdoor street scenes from Blade Runner were all shot outside our building while we were creating our tiny project in its very large shadow. It was the first time most of us had seen a production of this magnitude closeup (including huge rain machines that blanketed an entire block during takes). When I see this film I know that, just off camera, we were all watching the action from fourth floor windows overlooking the scene.

Despite all this activity I still had long stretches of down time and in the wee hours of the night I decided to write Eric a letter and let him know that I was on his side, that everything was going to work out, and that some day he would be back at his ranch, riding his horses. I shyly added that I hoped I was still invited to join him for a night out under the clear sky of stars he had described to me so vividly on one of our imaginary vacations. I signed the letter, sealed it in an envelope, and when he was on the set, slipped it into his script at the makeup table.

I was standing with a group of people later in the darkened litter of equipment and costume racks when Eric came marching up to me, his face a mask of contempt. Slowly he pulled out the letter, which he had obviously read, from his script. Without a word he he opened it up, held it at arms length and slowly, very slowly, ripped it into little pieces and let them fall to the floor. Everyone stood in a frozen tableau, looking from him to me, saying nothing. Then after a moment of pure, tortured silence, he turned on his heel and walked away.

We never spoke again.

Next week: My predictions about Eric start to prove true.

Photo: Eric Roberts on the set of Miss Lonleyhearts. Author's collection.

Eric Roberts V: Close to You

Looking back at my first encounter with Eric I can't help but measure it in context to other experiences that followed. Not only with him, but the community of actors I worked or met socially in subsequent years. It's a unique, self-selecting profession - only those who cannot possibly do anything else in the world would put up with the struggle to be accepted, the immeasurable disappointments and blows to the ego with every failed audition, the uncertainty, ridicule, and even in success the handling, the dishonesty, the invasion, fawning and faux life that comes with the territory. It's a curse in my opinion, to be a star. A damn curse that not one struggling wannabe actor can see coming until it has it firmly in its clutches.

Having said that I do know a few nice people who make their living as successful actors, some who have even managed to live a fairly normal life despite the extraordinary circumstances of their fortunes. But they are rare, and special, and I salute them. I really do.

But to this memory, all is colored by those days spent in Eric's company, and the closeness to something I couldn't understand or quantify, but knew at once to be irresistible. It was that quality that made him and others like him different than the rest of us, for better or worse. As ingrained into the fabric of his being as the color of his hair and the shape of his intellect. These things were inseparable.

My first clear memory of time spent with the newly arrived star of Miss Lonelyhearts was a conversation we had walking down the halls of AFI. We were killing time so we just kept going back and forth from one end to the other. It was a warm afternoon and the sun had turned the dingy egg-tempera walls a deep gold color and he was easy in my presence. From the moment we met he had eyes only for me, and it was intoxicating. Perhaps he understood the lay of the land. I had been chosen for him and he took my hand, chattering non-stop between shy glances. I don't know how many people ever really have seen Eric this way, certainly events that followed may have been responsible for the loss of what innocence was left in this 26 year old but his sweet luminescence was like quicksilver, rare and fleeting. What made him all the more charming was something none of use expected: his pronounced stutter. Since this was something that disappeared when he was performing it caught all of us by surprise. Some reacted by looking away, others by trying to finish his sentences. I just let him be, find his voice, and perhaps that's why he took such a shine to me.

Ahh, the flawed prince, the hero with vulnerability. Though a celluloid mirage, he was no longer unattainable, and in the barrage of courting that followed in the next weeks, I was completely taken in. He hardly ever stopped talking when we were together, a jumbled mix of repeated consonants and bursts of inspired, articulate ideas.

"Would you like to come to my r,r-ranch?" he said not long after we first met. "Oh, I don't know," I replied with forced casualness. "I have h,horses," he went on, taking my hand. "We could ride all day and no-one w,would bother us." He watched me intently during these ministrations, watching for some kind of approval. "Eric" I would say, laughing, "you're crazy...you hardly know me!" And then he laugh and try to entice me with some other adventure we could take together.

We drove around the city a lot those first few days, Joe a silent presence in the front seat. He took it all in, eagerly asking me questions about places to eat and how far it was to the beach, and was there a place where we could go to dance.

"I can't drive yet," I said shyly, and he would always squeeze my hand. "I wouldn't drive here either," was his mantra. "But I want you to take me everywhere. I want to see this city, these people, through your eyes." We became inseparable, so much so that my work began to suffer and it was almost a relief when the first day of shooting arrived and our paths took a measured diversion.

I never kissed Eric, nor did we talk of feelings, other than to share an almost hourly exchange of fantastical journeys we could take together to discover the world. It was his escape from the pressure he was under and he sought me out at every opportunity. In those first heady weeks he asked my opinion on everything, listened intently, and sometimes would just gaze at me with such adoration that at first I took it to heart. But shooting began and gradually I was forced into another role, that of watcher in the dark to his spotlighted performance, and this disconnection began to wear on both of us. I was also required to be at the production office quite a bit and he began to resent the demands on my time.

I did what I needed to do. It is the world of a film shoot, to be divided into sets and subsets, depending on your value at any given time to the momentum of the whole. There are bursts of activity, followed by hours of waiting, small ministrations to the details that need attending to, quiet, thoughtful moments where the creative process is moving among the players as they envision, prepare, tweak, and dig deep into private spaces. And this is not just about the actors, the creative process is shared by almost everyone in the group, which is what makes working on a film so special. Without the ideas and inspiration of all the contributors the vivre just doesn't happen. It's all about the alchemy when everything is working well and you become part it, no matter how small your role. On Miss Lonelyhearts we had that alchemy, and Eric was at the heart of every great moment. He was so extraordinary in this role that I never had the feeling we were making a student movie. It was always the real, very real thing, and when he was immersed his character during a take, the set fell silent.

But when you are filming a dark story, one where the sense of doom pervades, it's hard to escape the energy that fills the space. Shot in black & white, the sets were purposely dingy and worn out to reflect the young columnists' lonely life, and the lighting effects were purposeful, washed into greyness, pooled by one small shaded lamp or filtered as moonlight through half-closed blinds for the classic film-noir atmosphere. It wasn't long before the entire sound stage began to take on an oppressive air as each scene brought us closer and closer to the desperation of lost loves, lonely housewives, and jealous husbands.

At the center of all this Eric was called upon again and again to gather the dark energy around him and make it come to life in all its shaded depth. The brooding silence between takes began to grow longer and he was beginning to fall inward into a place that seemed eerily like the character he was portraying. Like Alice, we'd all fallen into the rabbit hole and down, down, down into the unknown we went, not realizing just how far the bottom was going to be.

Next: A letter and my public humiliation

Bonus: The Thing About Poltergeists....

Poltergeist (n. pol'ter'gist') comes from the German words, rapping & ghost. Literature on the subject claims poltergeists manifest around young girls who are in extreme states of anxiety or in the throes of pubescent hormonal changes. These geists can do strange things.

Like make appliances stop working. Or bump your car from behind.

As you all know I had a pretty scary car accident several weeks ago and although the cuts, bruises and tickety ribs are almost healed, some odd things have been happening that have made me a cautious believer in strange energy that's got a mind of its own.

And I'm not easily swayed. Probably because I have steadfastly kept the door to the netherworld firmly shut since I was a test subject at UCLA's department of parapsychology many years ago after volunteering to be a wired-up monkey. They told me that I was unwilling to open up to other realities and yanked me off the study. Suffice to say I'm not in the paranormal business and never have been.

But having someone push your car like a tinkertoy into the path of oncoming traffic and living through the whole 'life-flashing-before- your-eyes' experience does some strange things to your energy. First it implodes as you obsessively rewind the moment of impact night and day, reliving the pure, unadulterated essence of every second, the visceral sense-memories of sound and smell and the powerlessness of it all. And the even though it's deeply upsetting, you tell yourself that this process must be necessary because as time goes on it becomes more and more difficult to be present in the moment and less and less frightening. Finally you are no longer a true time-traveller, becoming merely the observer, the biographer and witness, left finally with a memory to be filed away in the older-but-wiser department.

And even though I was aware of the impact to my psyche from this face-off between life and death, I think I underestimated the power of the residual energy as it found ways to slough off into my everyday world. I am usually quite organized, a dedicated multi-tasker, and over the following weeks important papers went missing, keys disappeared, and the little 'borrowers' that make your socks disappear were out in force, something that rarely happens. I locked myself out of the house, the car, the bathroom, forgot to call people, and was generally oblivious to the obvious. Perhaps it was some hard-wired part of my brain that was saying: we were about to turn off the power and surprise! you're still around.

And then odder things started happening. In one afternoon the microwave, the air-conditioner, and the dog's citronella anti-bark collar just stopped working. I checked the outlets, checked the fuses, batteries, and everything was fine. "How very strange," my commonplace brain said, not putting things together, "that everything is breaking down all at once." And I went my merry way.

The next day I was driving my little rental car around and with one small bump it all came together. I was sitting in a parking lot waiting to turn into a city street (not far from where I'd been hit) when I felt a jolt from behind. Unmistakably the impact of a bumper on bumper. I went berserk, yelling profanities at the top of my lungs, something along the lines of "Not f-ing again!" and in a flash I saw a large white car kissing my car in the rearview mirror. I took a deep breath, trying not to consider the bum rap I was getting in the victim department, undid my seatbelt and got out of the car to confront the other driver.

No car.

I stood there, hands in the air, huffing and puffing, looking around in pure panic. What the....? I saw a large white truck turning into the parking space I'd vacated but he was nowhere near me. I twisted this way and that, not sure what to do, but after a quick look at my bumper, which seemed unharmed, I had no other choice but to get back in my car and question my sanity.

I was pretty shaken up at that point - glancing around at the people moving this way and that on their way to the shops, they seemed unconcerned, unaware. I was alone. After a moment I put the car into gear and drove off, seeing the white car in my rearview mirror over and over again. After a few blocks I couldn't stand it anymore and I pulled to the curb, got out and went back to take a closer look at my bumper. And there it was. A clear dent the shape of someone's license plate in the dark blue plastic. I had been right. Someone had hit me. But how on earth had they left so quickly?

And then it came to me as I rewound the moments before the incident, a true test of my observational powers, the ones we rely on every moment of our lives to navigate our paths. As I was leaving my parking spot I saw a woman near the exit in a white sedan who had just put her car into reverse and was waiting for me to pass. I stopped not to far ahead, waiting for a space in cross-traffic and when she backed out of the space she backed smack into me and in that second before she drove forward in the opposite direction, I saw her in my rearview mirror. She may or may not have known what she'd done but whatever the case she took off and was long gone in the maze of parkinglot land before I realized what had happened.

That's my story. Then again, I can't prove any of this because, well, she and her car were gone by the time I got out and there were no witnesses.

So what does this have to do with the poltergeist? There's still the small matter of the appliances that all stopped together that afternoon, only to start up again when my husband got home from work (except for the dog collar which had been working flawlessly for months before). And then there was the sudden appearance days later in the parking lot of the post office where I was waiting in line to mail a package. We heard a lot of screaming outside and turned to see a line of burning fuel snaking along the asphalt toward a retreating car, which burst into flames seconds later.

At that point I decided I'd had enough. I sat in front of the hospital where I was going for a followup visit and watched the parade of very sick people, very unfortunate people, very unlucky people and banished the little nymph into the world of reality checks and balances.

I was finally at the place where I could take an old saying to heart: I used to cry because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.

I'm over it now. And the appliances have since decided to cooperate.