Chapter 18 Summary

The day after the funeral, Faye moves out of the apartment. The next time Tod sees her is from the window of his office. She is dressed like a Napoleonic army cook, and he figures she's working on the picture Waterloo. He runs out after her, but she vanishes into the crowd. Tod decides to find the Waterloo set so that he can talk to her again.

Tod's jaunt across the soundstages takes him through a desert with a papier mache' sphinx, a jungle compound complete with a water buffalo, followed by a truck of snow and some malamute dogs. On his way, Tod thinks about Goya, Daumier and other painters of mystery and destruction. The soundstages he's crossing now would serve as perfect backgrounds, he thinks. When he comes up over a hill, he sees a ten-acre field with a gigantic pile...