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I am a detective, because everything nowadays has a detective in it and this is a thing. I could have wanted, in my 'back-story', to have been a Red Indian, but there's not much call for Red Indians these days in these kinds of things. I find myself wondering what it would like to be a woman ... before realizing that I am a woman. We female detectives are actually more salable than male detectives, especially if you're more in the Anglo sphere than the Americo sphere. I think Mickey Spillane wrecked it for the Americos; that's a matter for the history books. I have two children. One is in jail for ... something. The other lives with her father. I think she's going to turn out trampy, but that's for another tale.

I think that's enough to absolutely hook the TV producers. We can move on now. If you're not a TV producer, I hope you skipped the first paragraph.

I am a detective, and this is the story of one of my cases. But that's not all duhnt-duhnt-duhnt-duhnt! there's also ontological and philosophical and teleological and phenomenological and epistemological and chronological issues here which will be here simply because this is here and not elsewhere. It's bred in the bone, and bones are very much alive.

The first scene I have is naturally a scene: a crime scene. Get it? I think it's an original. I come onto the scene and I pull out some gloves that have been put in the pockets of the trench coat I have been given to wear. It's been made cold so the camera can pick up the vapour of my breath so as to make people say, "It's cold." There's already another detective here, already in a trench coat, already stooped over the body on the pavement in an alley between two grungy-looking tenements because crime is a romance. I call him by his name and I make a joke about how cold the weather is and what a night I had last night. Or rather:

I say: "Hey, Matt. Cold morning to be found dead, I guess. Is this an icicle through my forehead or did I have some night last night?"

The detective nods and stands up. Have I worked with this guy before? Improv? Summer stock? Community theatre? Why not all three? He stays in character long enough to point up and say, "He fell from there."

I look up to the balcony. Who'd be the killer? Probabilities say there's a 10% chance it's the first person I talk to, a 20% it's the second, a whopping 50% it's the third, only 10% for the fourth, 5% for the sixth, and 5% says it'll be unsolved. (There's never enough time for more than six suspects in forty-four minutes.)

"Whose apartment?"

Matt stands up and looks serious. "He and his boyfriend got back from a holiday earlier today. Then said victim went for a walk around the neighbourhood and winds up here."

"So, does it only look like he's fallen?"

Matt performs his characteristic gesture. A characteristic gesture is a method of staying in character. Some actors require hats. These days no-one wears hats much, so we have to use gestures.

Matt thumbs his lapel, with his pinky sticking out.

Melodramatically I crow: "This is a tough case!"

Matt stumbles and misses his cue.

I plunge on: "What's his phone say?"

Matt mutters: "He doesn't have one."

"He doesn't have a phone?"

"Never had one."

That's when I see what the writer has planned. This is going to be one of the lighter episodes, involving eccentrics. We'll know almost immediately who the killer is, and for the rest of the show it's just fun-fun-fun.

I say: "He never had a phone. Isn't that just so ... convenient. So it was the boyfriend. Let's arrest him then go to a peeler bar."

Matt is caught off-script again. "Um, why there? You're a ... a woman."

I am puzzled by this turn of events too. How am I deciding these matters for myself? I didn't even think I had a self for deciding. However, it does seem to be that way.

I say: "I change my mind. It wasn't the boyfriend. He fell out of an airplane."

Matt nearly shouts: "That's crazy! He wasn't in a plane!"

"You told me he'd come back from a vacation. In a plane. He fell out of it as it was travelling overhead."

Matt thumbs his lapel furiously. "And he fell exactly here, outside his apartment."

The alley, as I look at it, becomes wider, as if it's becoming a better target. "Yes, exactly here. It's like it's a fucking miracle."

"Did you just say fuck?"

"Fuckin' right I did. Let's call up the airline or whatever. I bet he didn't get off the plane."

I get out my phone and call the airline. Immediately I'm connected to the President of the Airline (even though I hadn't mentioned which Airline I was inquiring about). The President of the Airline says: "Yes, there was an incident on that particular flight. Yes, a passenger fell out as the plane was descending over your city."

I disconnect. "It's true. He fell out of a plane." I'm feeling smug but frightened.

Matt is looking down the alley and I follow his gaze to see ... nothing.

I say: "What are you looking for?"

He says: "I don't know who's directing this any more."

"Enough with the lapel fondling."

"Sorry."

I look at the mangled body. Yes, now it looks much flatter than it had looked five minutes ago. I notice I'm no longer being forced to do or say things. Maybe the director never had those powers in the first place.

Matt.

"Hey, Matt."

"Hmmm?"

"You know how we've been flirting for most of this season?"

"Yes, it started after my wife was killed in a freak accident."

"It's time to stop flirting."

I take him in my arms and we do it right then and there, beside the flat corpse of the guy who fell out of the plane. I'm happy to report that, even with our newfound responsibility, we are still able to come, and pretty hard at that.

I am surprised to discover I have cigarettes with me. Ignoring the implication, I offer one to Matt. "Don't sweat it," I say. "Smoke up. I don't think we have to worry about broadcast standards and practices anymore."

Matt, dazed and damp, says: "I had to learn how to smoke for a period piece I was in. And Then There Were None."

I smile. "You're free to use the novel's original title, you know."

Matt blushes. "I'd rather not."

"Suit yourself."

He gets up and rearranges his clothes. "So what do we do now?"

"What do you think we should do? The cameras are gone. The director is gone. And it's obvious the writer is gone. I guess that means we've got the run of the place."

Time to reflect.

I am no longer a pinball in a pinball machine. I am now free to do whatever I want. I am speaking directly, in the present tense, because the events are happening now. You are listening to me. You are captivated by my story. You want to know what I will do next. For once, you are going to see what freedom really looks like.

I say: "Let's go back to the police station. I want to solve some more crimes, the more diabolical the better. I suspect there's some super-villains out there."

Matt Incredulous says: "This isn't that kind of a story."

"We'll see about that!"

As Matt drives us back to the police station, following my directions (since there isn't really any police station due to the fact that it's a studio set down by the town piers), I ask him about his experience. He tells me his real name, which we can call Actor A. Actor A is played by Actor B, Actor B is played by Actor C, Actor C is played by Actor D....

"Do you mean it's actors all the way down?"

He says: "It's an infinite regress, like I'm an ideal. Up until now, that's to say. I feel like something very different is happening here."

"You're right about that. Ah, here we are."

We are at a police station that looks closely enough like the police station we've been seeing in the daily rushes. Matt and I go inside and it's surprisingly like the studio down by the piers save that the walls are not made from flimsy flats that measure twelve feet by four feet. It also sounds different since the police there are actually communicating in person and via phone instead of merely muttering: "Rhubarb, rhubarb."

There's the police chief in person. He comes up to us and says: "Great work, men. Deducing that the body fell out of a plane required alpha level intuition."

I know that the actor playing the chief of police has a serious cancer and not long to live so I give him a big thumbs up and a smile. "We're looking to round up a super-villain or two," I say. "So what do you have for us?"

The chief of police nods and rubs his chin so characteristically. "You're in luck then. It seems there's living in our fine city a writer of sorts, and this writer of sorts is currently composing a television program in which a character is a female detective ... and he is not a female detective, nor has he ever consulted with one."

I say: "And what's the crime in that?"

The chief of police rubs his chin bloody then says: "What's the crime in that? You're asking what's the crime in that? It's simply that - we should be getting a piece of the action! We could get a new fridge for the lunchroom! So - go shake him down, threaten to arrest him, whatever. This police culture is our culture, and we should be profiteering off it! Think about the money!"

"I hear you. I'm just being period-crampy. So it's give us the dough or we shut you down."

He smiles. "Go easy on him. Give him a load of bien pensant garbage about authenticity and I'm sure he'll fold easily-peasily."

"Gotcha."

So off we go in the Detectivemobile, me and the boy wonder, to an innocent-looking street in a middle-class part of town. We go to the address. The front stoop hasn't been swept in weeks if not months. There's cobwebs on the door, near the hinges. We knock. Nothing happens. We knock again. We wait.

Matt says: "Maybe he's out."

I say: "I doubt he's as clever as all that. I played a lady novelist once, and I had to play her pretty naïve and stupid."

"Did you write anything any good?"

"I wrote something with a detective who discovered his wife was a murderer."

"Wait, was that The Curtains Were Touching?"

"Yes."

"I liked that book a lot. So you played the writer, Enigma Jones?"

I shrug. "It was a gig."

The door creaks open and who should be standing there but the actor who played my brother in a production of something Swedish.

I do the introductions like we've never played scenes together before. "We're playing detectives and we're here to shake you down," I say.

The guy smiles and nods sadly. "I've been expecting you. It's a nice house you made for me to await you in."

We go inside and into the living room. Yes, I notice. I have good taste in houses. I must have a third cousin who played an architect at some point.

We all sit down. The guy says: "I've lost the script, I'm afraid. Did I create you or did you create me?"

"That's irrelevant at this juncture."

He lights a smoke and offers all around. He nods vigorously. "I get it. You've managed to get free of it all." He's nodding more, but in kind of a sarcastic way.

I reply: "I appear to be running the narrative now. I don't know how it happened, but it happened. There we were on the fifth page of the script and I suddenly seemed to say: 'Ah, bugger it all,' and I changed the rest of the script, and I'm still changing it at that."

"Interesting," he says. "So what brings you here?"

The room has become interestingly mellow. "We understand you've put a detective in a story, and you're not a detective. So we're going to raise holy hell unless you give us enough money for a big-screen TV in our lunchroom."

He smiles. "Okay, Madam Self-Created, tell you what. Put some money in my pocket and you can have it."

I bite. "Give me the money in your pocket."

He reaches into his pocket and comes out with some currency. "Here you go," and he hands me twenty dollars.

"That's not enough," I say. "We need a lot more than that."

He says: "I don't think you really get how fiction works."

"I'm controlling this situation. I put that money in your pocket."

He laughs again. "Look, go look at my computer."

It seems there's a computer in the room.

He says, "Go, sit down, and read what it says. You'll be surprised."

I sit down at his computer and I read: "I sit down at his computer and I read: 'I sit down at his computer and I read: "I sit down at his computer and I read: 'I sit down at his computer and I read: "I sit down at his computer and I read: 'I sit down at his computer and I read: "I sit down at his computer and I read,"'"'"'" then I turn away before I become some kind of a self-consuming artifact.

I tell him: "Pretty good trick, but I'm not falling for it."

The sonofabitch laughs at me. "Lady Abovo, let yourself go."

"There has to be a climax to all this," I say. "And since you won't pay for our big TV, I don't see any reason not to shoot you dead."

The guy smiles and leans back. "Go ahead and shoot. You'll be surprised at the implications. Honest Red Indian you will."

I don't get the reference‑not that it matters‑so I shoot him.

[O]

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