Among my hands' greatest triumphs was a poster for the Michael Keaton-Nicole Kidman bomb, "My Life." My hands appeared 50 times their actual size on a billboard looming over Santa Monica Boulevard, where the 405 freeway meets Sepulveda. My palms reached out lovingly to touch a baby's fingers.

I never saw the movie, but it is apparently about a dying father's struggle to leave behind a videotape for his yet-unborn son. In a case of art imitating life, my hand modeling career had died prematurely, like the father. Since I had no idea why my hands became so popular, I couldn't put my finger on why they became unpopular. I hadn't done a hand job in over a year when my hand modeling agent phoned last month, and I was sure she was going to fire me.

"Hello, Serling," she said. She also represented my feet. With any luck, she'd lined up a job for my toes.

"Shelly!" I cried, with fake joy.

"How have you been?"

"Great," I lied, stifling a sneeze. Yesterday, my theatrical and commercial agents both dumped me. I immediately came down with the flu, and was still dragging around in my rumpled pajamas at 4 p.m. Shredded tissues sprinkled the floor like a light snowfall. I couldn't take any more bad news.

"Can you work a hand job tomorrow?" she asked.

"Sure!" I choked back tears of excitement and joy.

"Your hands are in great shape, I assume," she said flatly, less a question than an edict.

"Never better," I bubbled. "I was just doing my finger aerobics when you called." I kicked my index fingers in the air, like dancing Rockettes.

While jotting down the job information, I gasped at the condition of my hands. Because of the recent stress, I'd been biting the hands that fed me: My fingernails resembled jagged rows on a dulled saw.

I rushed over to the Great Nails salon on Ventura for a manicure and spent the rest of the evening guarding my nails like rare jewels. Cutting a tomato was a potential act of treason. The prospect of slamming my hand in a car door loomed large, not to mention the peril of a leaky pen.

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The next morning, I drove through the drizzle to the photographer's studio in the hills of Encino, the car heater blasting to ward off my lingering flu. My hands were so moisturized I could barely grip the wheel.

Yet I felt confident, even cocky. My hands were ready for their big comeback. After all, these were the dazzling digits that had portrayed the hands of God in a Honda commercial. They belonged in front of the camera. They had "It."

My car pulled into the long driveway of a sprawling mansion. An elderly, stooped gentleman guided me upstairs. The studio was a '60s nightmare with cottage cheese ceilings and boxy walls. The psychedelic black-and-white tile floor made the room look like it was tilting. The new "Shaft" soundtrack buzzed from above. The photographer, Mike, and the art director, Susan, had assembled a small credit card machine on a table covered in a white tablecloth.

"We'll be shooting on video and you'll be pointing at the Linkpoint 3000 credit card machine," Mike told me.

"Pointing, pushing, pressing," I said, merrily. "I do it all!"

"I can't wait to see your fingers make this machine look sexy," Susan told me. Her New York accent made normal sentences sound like vicious threats.

"My charismatic fingers are going to blow you away."

"They'd better. The guy we used yesterday didn't work out. That's why we're reshooting with you today."

I got chills, and began to sniffle. Shelly hadn't mentioned anything about another guy. If they'd fired one hand model, they could easily fire another. Even when my hands had been in great shape, I feared being exposed as a fraud. Hand modeling, as a job skill, seemed to rank right up there with coughing and sneezing.

"Do you live here?" I asked Mike.

"No. The house belongs to a friend of mine. You're old enough," he said, looking me up and down. "You know the Fifth Dimension?"

"Sure." I smiled, sensing the creases bunching up around my eyes.

"The guy who owns the house is Lamont from the Fifth Dimension."

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