Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 1. Whole No. 767, July 2005

The Happy Couple by David Handler

Show business is often at the center of David Handler’s fiction: in his Berger and Mitry novels, which pair a film critic and a cop; in his Edgar-winning series starring ghost writer Stewart Hoag and former Broadway actress Merilee Nash; and in this new story. Mr. Handler lives in Old Lyme, Connecticut. His most recent book, the fourth in the Berger and Mitry series, is A Burnt Orange Sunrise (St. Martin’s).

This is the ugliest show-business story that I know.

It’s a story I’ve never told anyone. And it’s a true story. I know this because I was there when it happened thirty years ago. For reasons that will soon become clear, I haven’t been able to share it until now. Not that it gives me any great pleasure to do so. Believe me, I wish I could forget this. Only, I can’t.

You see, this is a story about somebody who got away with murder.

In those days, I was a very young writer trying to scratch out a living as a newspaperman in New York City. It was not a great time to be looking for work or for anything else in the Big Apple. The city was bankrupt, and President Ford had just told it in no uncertain terms to drop dead. Gangs roamed the parks. Drug dealers and prostitutes worked any corner they felt like. Homeless people slept in doorways and vestibules, wrapped in blankets and despair, babbling to themselves. The subways were dangerous. The garbage never got picked up. The hottest cultural rage of the day was disco. Let me put it this way: No one was mistaking this for one of New York’s golden ages.

Me, I loved the city with an intensity that I’ve rarely felt since. It was lean, mean, and real. Tingling with excitement, I prowled its grimy streets with my hands in my pockets and my eyes wide open, certain that something new and wonderful was right around the corner. I had never been happier. After all, I was twenty-four and I was about to become the next Ernest Hemingway. No one else knew this yet, but that didn’t matter. My faith in my destiny was unshakable. Any day now, the world would wake up to the undeniable fact that I was the single most important literary talent of my generation.

Like I said, I was a very young writer.

Mostly, I starved. To cover the $135 monthly rent on my basement studio in Greenwich Village, I had to be very resourceful. For the princely sum of seventy-five dollars a week, I masqueraded as Aunt Penny of Aunt Penny’s Pointers, a housewives’ hints column that went out to some 350 small-town newspapers across America. The real Aunt Penny had died in 1955, leaving behind her fount of knowledge about how to do things like remove ink stains from a vinyl sofa cushion (hairspray, if memory serves me right). For another fifty dollars a week, I ghosted many of the capsule movie reviews that were delivered every Friday by the movie critic for one of those network television morning news shows — a critic who never saw half of the films so cleverly skewered. And once every week or two, Al Posner, the entertainment editor at one of the city’s two remaining tabloids, would throw an off-Broadway roundup or celebrity interview my way.

Al was gruff, grumpy, and streetwise. Looked as if he hadn’t left the newsroom or had his suit pressed since V-J Day. To my great surprise, he took a shine to me. Opie, he called me — even though I hailed from the Midwest, not Mayberry, North Carolina. But Al, a citizen of Brooklyn, U.S.A., thought that pretty much anyone born outside of the five boroughs was from Mayberry. Plus, I did possess an open, innocent face, a thatch of unruly blond hair, and a sunny earnestness that hadn’t been knocked out of me yet.

In part, this is the story of how it was.

I’d taken to dropping by the vast newsroom on 42nd Street regularly to see if Al had an assignment for me. I wanted to show him how eager and persistent I was. Plus, it was harder for him to duck me in person than on the phone. When you walked into a newspaper office in those days, you were practically bowled over by the clatter and the smoke. Journalists still pounded away on heavy black steel manual typewriters. They smoked cigarettes. Lots and lots of cigarettes. And they went out for drinks at lunch. Lots and lots of drinks.

“Hey, Opie, how’s Barney Fife?” Al called to me that day from his glassed-in office against the wall. Al asked me this every time he saw me. It never failed to make him roar with laughter.

“Just dandy, Chief. And Goober says hey.” I lingered in his doorway hungrily. “Got anything for me today?”

“I do, I do. Where the hell’s...?” He rummaged through the memos and phone messages heaped all over his desk. “Oh yeah, here it is — want to go interview the happy couple?”

“Which happy couple, Al?”

“Babsy and Tony,” he said offhandedly.

I don’t think I let out a gasp, but my jaw did drop. Because he was referring to none other than Barbara Darrow and Anthony Beck, the legendary husband-and-wife duo who were starring in the wildly successful stage revival of Noel Coward’s Private Lives at the Broadhurst Theater. Their twelve-week engagement was completely sold out. They were set to take the show to London after that. “Are you kidding me?”

“Do I look like I’m kidding you?” he growled, squinting at me. “I need it by Thursday noon. I can pay you three hundred dollars. You want it or not?”

I assured him I did and dashed out of there, thrilled. Partly because such a plum meant that Al Posner trusted me. Mostly because I’d been madly in love with Barbara Darrow since I was twelve and was dying to meet her. Anthony Beck, as well. He was a great, great actor.

Not surprisingly, Broadway was suffering in those days. Tourism was way down. Plus, Times Square was so sleazy that a lot of the Wednesday-matinee regulars from Scarsdale were staying away, too. Sober, serious cultural critics were writing sober, serious obituaries for the American theater, which is a ritual I’ve since discovered they perform every ten years, much like the national census. To rope people in, producers were relying more and more on proven crowd-pleasers — big-time performers starring in glittering revivals of big-time hits. But it was actually a stroke of genius casting Darrow and Beck as Amanda Prynne and Elyot Chase in Private Lives, Noel Coward’s wondrously witty 1930 romantic comedy about a married couple who can’t stay together but can’t stay apart. If ever there was a case of art imitating life imitating art, this was it.

She was America’s plucky little raven-haired sweetheart — had been ever since Paramount pulled her out of the USC cheerleading squad in 1949 and put her on-screen in a college musical. The movie was quickly forgotten, but Barbara Darrow wasn’t. She was gorgeous, to be sure, with a lush hourglass figure and a dazzling wrap-around smile. But she also possessed a sweetness and vulnerability that set her apart from the other young Hollywood lovelies. Male filmgoers didn’t just want to ravage Barbara Darrow, they wanted to bring her home to Mom and take care of her for the rest of her life. She was a perennial good girl. A perennial, period. Her career spanned multiple generations of Hollywood leading men, all the way from Gary Cooper to Elvis to Dustin Hoffman.

But none of her leading men had captivated her quite like Anthony Beck had. A swashbuckling British rogue with a flowing mane of blond hair and terrific cheekbones, Beck was a rare combination of guts and pedigree, both a fearless World War II fighter pilot and a third-generation West End stage star. By the time Paramount beckoned him to Hollywood to star in its 1953 remake of The Adventures of Robin Hood, he had already established himself as the greatest Hamlet of his era — an actor who possessed smoldering intensity, an aching inner despair, and a purr of a voice so velvety that you could happily listen to him read aloud from the side of a box of Farina. Paramount picked him to play Robin Hood because they believed he would be the next Errol Flynn. Barbara Darrow was a natural to play the virginal Maid Marian. She was twenty-two at the time. He was thirty-six.

The sexual attraction between them was immediate and combustible. They bedded quite famously during the course of filming, which set off a colossal furor in 1950s America, since each of them happened to be married at the time — she to a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback, he to a well-known British actress. When the ink dried on their respective divorce papers, they were married. Their wedding picture made the cover of Life magazine. They stayed together for eight stormy years of highly publicized spats, separations, and infidelities. His with, among others, Marilyn Monroe and Natalie Wood. Hers with, among others, Clark Gable and the director Elia Kazan. They divorced in 1962, remarried in ’64, divorced again in ’70 — only to end up back together yet again, breaking up each other’s marriages once more in the process.

Quite simply, Darrow and Beck were Coward’s Amanda and Elyot, those warring exes who have just gotten married to other people only to find themselves honeymooning, horrors upon horrors, in the very same French resort hotel.

The show’s publicist, Dick Jefferies, assured me that a sit-down interview with the happy couple would be no problem. Neither would a house seat for that evening’s show.

I got to the theater a half-hour early and sat there, giddy with anticipation, as the audience members slowly streamed in. For a small-town kid from the Midwest, it was a genuine thrill merely to be in one of the hallowed temples of American theater, seated before a stage where the likes of Brando and Barrymore had once performed. When the lights went down, and the curtain started to rise, I felt certain that I was the luckiest young person in town.

I was not disappointed. The production was sprightly and energetic. And Darrow and Beck were marvelous. She was a ditsy, buoyant, and beautiful Amanda, a role that Coward had created for Gertrude Lawrence. As Elyot, the role Coward himself had originally played, Anthony Beck was masterfully dry and deadpan. The laughter that spilled almost continuously out of the packed house was genuine and knowing. After all, Private Lives wasn’t merely about Amanda and Elyot — it was about these two great stars as well. And we were all in on the joke together.

My only critical reservation had to do with the supporting players. Due to the hefty salaries commanded by Darrow and Beck, the critical roles of Victor and Sybil, Amanda and Elyot’s new and soon-to-be suffering spouses, had gone to relative lightweights. After all, the indignant Victor had originally been played by some guy named Laurence Olivier. In the Darrow-Beck revival, Lord Larry’s shoes had been filled by John Jefferson, a square-jawed beach boy whose claim to fame was a short-lived ABC series in which he’d played a private eye with a sidekick who was a talking dog. As for Sybil, Elyot’s sweetly clueless young bride, they’d cast a tall, pretty blonde named Leigh Grayson whose Playbill credits topped out with some regional Neil Simon and two years on Guiding Light. She was talented enough, light on her feet and engaging. But she hadn’t the experience or the moxie to hold her own against stars of such magnitude.

Mind you, neither did I. I just didn’t know that yet.

Next morning I rode the subway uptown to the Carlyle Hotel in my corduroy sports jacket and raincoat. It was coming down in torrents that day, a cold, sooty November rain. The wind was blowing hard out of the northwest.

The happy couple was expecting me at eleven. I could have one hour with them, according to Dick Jefferies, who would not be there to chaperone me — Barbara Darrow had taken an intense personal dislike to him and declared him to be unwelcome in her physical presence for the rest of his natural life. Apparently, she was somewhat temperamental. So I’d be on my own, which was nothing unusual in those days. Stars weren’t nearly as inaccessible to journalists then. Nowadays, a reporter is never permitted to encounter a star minus his or her highly paid posse of publicists, image consultants, personal assistants, and bodyguards. All questions must be preapproved. Not so then. You just showed up, notepad in hand.

The Carlyle was, and is, on Madison Avenue in the very posh East 70s. Directly around the corner from the hotel there’s an adjoining sixteen-story apartment tower with a narrow, private lobby guarded by two doormen. One of them called upstairs for me on the house phone, then directed me to the elevator. I got in and rode up to the penthouse. It was a very nice elevator, lined with hardwood and appointed with gleaming brass work.

When it reached the penthouse, the door opened directly into the happy couple’s foyer, which was substantially larger than my entire apartment and had a copper fountain burbling away in it. French doors led out onto a terrace, which faced west and offered a fine view across the rooftops to Central Park in the rain. A doorway opened into a grand living room with cherry wainscoting, an antique pool table, and a fireplace, where a fire crackled invitingly. On the mantel sat the Oscar statuette that Barbara Darrow had won for the Kazan movie. Anthony Beck had been nominated twice for an Academy Award, but had never won.

Standing there in that penthouse foyer, my raincoat and porkpie hat quietly dripping onto the marble floor, I felt less like a journalist than I did an orphan who had come to beg for a hot meal.

Anthony Beck came out of the living room to greet me. Offstage, the great Shakespearean actor looked every bit of his sixty years. His stride was not so much jaunty as it was arthritic. His mane of uncombed hair was more silver than it was blond. He had not shaved yet. His chin stubble was white, his face puffy, his complexion rather blotchy. He definitely had alcohol on his breath at eleven in the morning. And his piercing pale blue eyes were exceedingly bloodshot. Beck was not very tall, only about five foot nine. But he had a huge head and chest, and an even huger presence. He was wearing a shawl-collared paisley silk robe and a pair of black velvet slippers that had little gold foxes embroidered on them. His bare legs were pale, hairless, and quite thin.

“The fellow from the afternoon tabloid, are you not?” He extended his hand to me.

“That’s right,” I said, gripping it firmly. It was a soft, manicured hand, unused to work. There were liver spots on it. “Timmy Ferris, Mr. Beck.”

He arched a regal eyebrow at me. “Timmy, you say. Timmy, is it?” He rolled my name around on his tongue several times, sampling it, savoring it. He seemed highly amused. “And how are you this morning, Timmy?”

“Fine, sir.”

“You don’t look fine. You look wet. Quite wet.”

“That I am.”

“Care for a drink?”

“It’s a bit early for me.”

“Coffee?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

He looked me up and down, his eyes lingering on the puddle at my feet. “Still, you shall have a towel.”

“Really not necessary.” I peeled off my raincoat and hung it on the coat stand by the elevator. “This is a wonderful apartment, Mr. Beck.”

He gazed around at it curiously, as if noticing it for the first time. “Belongs to some captain of industry. An agency handled the sublet. Come in, come in. Let’s see if we can’t find the mad little trollop. Ah, here she is...” he exclaimed, glancing past me.

Barbara Darrow had appeared behind me in the doorway to the bedroom corridor, silent as a cat. She was a dainty little thing, barely five feet tall, exquisitely delicate and fine-boned. She wore no makeup that morning. Her cheeks were flushed, and there was a sheen of perspiration on her forehead. Evidently she’d been having a workout. She wore a black leotard and tights. Her jet-black hair was tied back in a ponytail. Standing there that way, she looked less like the great screen star of my youth than she did one of those tiny girls who compete in gymnastics at the Olympics. Except Barbara Darrow was no girl. She was a beautiful forty-six-year-old woman. On close inspection, there was something a bit strained about her beauty. She weighed nothing, for one thing. Barely ninety pounds. Her lustrous dark eyes were almost too big for her narrow face, her nose and ears too tiny, mouth too wide, cheekbones too exposed. She looked high-strung. She looked starved.

“Dear, this is Mr. Timmy Ferris from the afternoon tabloid,” Beck informed her, his rich voice resonating in the spacious foyer. “He has declined all light refreshment, as well as a towel. I don’t know a damned thing else about him, beyond the obvious fact that he’s just fallen off of a turnip truck from Podunk or Peoria or, possibly, Pomono.”

“It’s Pomona, dear,” she said teasingly, her eyes gleaming like polished stones as she gazed up at me. “He’s wonderfully gangly, wouldn’t you say?”

“Quite gangly. Terribly gangly.”

“Where do you come from, Timmy?”

“Balltown, Iowa.”

Anthony Beck let out a huge guffaw. “No one is from Balltown.”

“Well, I am.”

“Is that one of those endlessly flat places where they grow grains?”

“No, sir, it’s just outside of Dubuque, right near the river. There are quite a few hills there, and we have...” I stopped talking because he wasn’t actually listening to my reply. He’d made his way into the living room to poke at the fire.

“Well, you’re certainly not what I expected from a New York newspaperman,” Barbara chattered gaily as she led me by the arm into the living room. “You’re just so sweet. Now sit down right here by the fire and tell us how we can help you.”

I sat. Barbara perched nimbly on the sofa across the coffee table from me, gazing at me invitingly. Barbara Darrow’s gaze, much like her husband’s voice, was her chief asset as a performer. Those huge dark eyes of hers promised me that I was handsome, charming, and irresistible, that a uniquely powerful attraction existed between just us two. In short, Barbara Darrow’s eyes told me that I was the very man I dreamt of being when I lay awake in my lonely bed every night.

“I’ve been sent here to talk to you about Private Lives.” I pulled out my notepad.

“Not possible,” she said flatly. “That’s simply out of the question.”

Over by the fire, Anthony Beck lit a cigarette with a gold lighter. There was an elegant nonchalance about the way he did it. Every guy who smoked tried to light his cigarette that way. Hardly anyone succeeded. He took a pull on it, studying me calmly.

“But I thought the two of you were expecting me.”

“What we were expecting was a professional who knows how to do his job properly,” Barbara shot back, bristling. “For starters, you have not even seen the show.”

“Yes, I have. I saw it last night.”

She stared at me in silence. So did he. They were waiting for me to say something more. Anything more. I was a bit slow on the uptake in those days.

“You were both magnificent,” I added hurriedly. “I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed an evening in the theater so much. It was truly thrilling.”

They quietly lapped up my praise, much like a pair of kittens enjoying a saucer of cream.

“Cared for the production, did you?” His voice was elaborately casual.

“I sure did. The actress who plays Sibyl is very talented.”

“Leigh can be funny,” Barbara conceded coolly.

“And so is John Jefferson,” I lied. “He’s very good.”

“He is a she,” Barbara sniffed disdainfully.

“Johnny’s a laddie boy,” Beck explained. “Gay as can be. You haven’t anything against gays, have you, Timmy?”

“Why, no.”

“Very open-minded sort of person, our Timmy,” he informed his wife. “Forward-thinking. Has nothing against gays.”

“May we proceed with the interview?”

“I think not,” Barbara replied, sticking out her lower lip. “You didn’t see us at our best last night. Our timing was off. Wasn’t it, dear?”

“Terribly flat-footed,” he agreed. “The third act was an unmitigated disaster. It’s a wonder we didn’t trip over the furniture.”

“Come to tonight’s performance,” she commanded me. “You’ll notice the difference right away. Tomorrow we can talk.”

“But I’m on a deadline, Miss Darrow.”

“Now you’re being difficult, is that it?”

“No, absolutely not. I’m—”

“Timmy, I have been dealing with reporters for twenty-five years,” she huffed, shaking a finger at me. “And I will not be pushed around.”

I looked at Beck for help. He simply looked back at me, his face revealing nothing. I wanted this interview, needed this interview. All that mattered was getting it. So I said, “I’d be delighted to attend tonight’s performance.”

Barbara treated me to her most dazzling smile. “Excellent! Have that awful publicist get you a ticket. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some calls to make.” And with that she jumped to her feet and darted back across the foyer to the other side of the apartment.

“Allow me to show you out,” Beck offered, tossing his cigarette in the fire.

“Not necessary. I know my way.” I fetched my wet coat and hat, put them on, and punched the button for the elevator. When it arrived, I got in. The door was just starting to close when I heard him call out my name. Briefly, I felt like Horatio being summoned by the Prince of Denmark. I held the elevator there, hearing his slippers clack on the marble floor as he came toward me.

“You wouldn’t by some chance be heading to Midtown, would you?” he wondered, casting a furtive glance over his shoulder at the bedroom hallway. “There’s a pub near the Broadhurst called Barrymore’s...”

“I know the place. What about it?”

He reached into the pocket of his dressing gown and produced a slender cream-colored envelope. No name or address written on it. “Could I impose upon you to drop this with the barman? Fellow called Big Steve.”

“Sure. Not a problem.” I took it from him.

His hand slid back into the pocket of his dressing gown and produced a crisp, folded fifty-dollar bill. “For cab fare.”

“No, that wouldn’t be appropriate, Mr. Beck. I’m happy to do it.”

“Much obliged, Timmy.” He held a finger up to his lips. “And not a word of this to you-know-who.”

I rode down to the lobby, holding the envelope up to the light. There seemed to be a single slip of paper inside. A betting slip, was my guess. Anthony Beck was a gambler. Big Steve was his bookie. Smiling to myself, I slid the envelope snugly into the inside breast pocket of my corduroy jacket.

The rain was still coming down hard outside. I could hear it as soon as the elevator door opened. One of the doormen was talking on the house phone as I approached the front door.

He hung up immediately and said, “Excuse me, sir, could you please wait?”

“Wait for what?” I asked, frowning at him.

A moment later the elevator door opened and Barbara Darrow stood huddled there in her leotard. She motioned to me impatiently. I approached her.

“Timmy, did my husband just give you something?”

“Why would you ask me that, Miss Darrow?”

“Because I know Tony, that’s why. Now did he or didn’t he? And don’t you dare lie to me. If you lie, I’ll know. I can feel your aura.”

I stood there in guilty silence. I really didn’t want to lie to her. And yet, because he’d approached me first, I felt as if I was in cahoots with him. Not that I was, but I saw no way out of this — whatever this was. “Miss Darrow, I’m just a freelancer on an assignment.”

“Fine, have it your way,” she said wearily, holding a crisp, neatly folded hundred-dollar bill out to me. “Now give me the damned envelope, will you?”

The envelope stayed in my pocket. “I can’t accept your money.”

“Who do you think you’re fooling, you little lamb? Buy yourself a steak. Buy a decent hat. That one makes you look like a half-drowned golf caddie. Just take this, will you? And help me. Please, help me. I have no one else I can turn to...” Her voice quavered slightly now. She was no longer Barbara, the great big star. She was Rebecca, the dewy-eyed Amish girl imploring Jimmy Stewart to protect her family’s wagon train from the Apaches in The Crooked Trail. “Won’t you please help me?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t.”

In response, she called me a very bad name. Nice girls back home in Balltown weren’t even supposed to know that word, let alone scream it at a man in public. Then the elevator door closed and she was gone.

The two doormen had heard her. Hell, the doormen a half-block away had heard her. “Get you a cab, pally?” one of them asked me sympathetically, gesturing out at the rain. “She’s teeming bricks, like my dear old ma in Far Rockaway used to say.”

“No, thanks. For some reason, I feel like walking.”

Barrymore’s was a good place to get a burger and a beer before a show. Still is. It’s narrow and deep with exposed brick walls, a long bar, and a small dining room off to the left just as you come in the door on West 45th Street. It was a little past noon when I got there. Workers from the nearby Seventh Avenue office towers were chowing down on lunch at a few tables. A handful of drinkers stood at the bar. One of them, a tall, terrific-looking young woman with short black hair, was nursing a cup of coffee and looking very preoccupied and grim.

I sized up the bartenders. One was slightly built, the other taller and much beefier. I moseyed down to his end of the bar and said, “Are you Big Steve?”

“Who wants to know?” he asked me warily.

I pulled the envelope from my pocket. “If you are, I’m supposed to give you this from Mr. Beck.”

“I’m Steve,” he acknowledged, taking it from me.

As I made my way back toward the door, I spotted Big Steve delivering the envelope to that gorgeous brunette at the bar. She had on a turtleneck and a short skirt, and looked vaguely familiar to me. I suddenly realized she was Leigh Grayson, the actress who was playing Sybil in Private Lives — minus the blond hair, which was evidently a wig. So something was going on between her and Anthony Beck. Of course. No way Barbara Darrow would be so upset about him placing a lousy bet.

I went back out in the rain and paused under the awning, trying to decide whether to stop by the news syndicate to collect my weekly batch of mail for Aunt Penny. As I stood there, the door to Barrymore’s swung open and I found myself nose to nose with Leigh Grayson, who had an umbrella in one hand and Beck’s note in the other. She looked tense and fretful. She was nearly as tall as I, with a willowy figure and great legs. She had creamy, flawless skin and startlingly clear, deep blue eyes. Leigh Grayson was not the single most beautiful young woman I’d ever been face-to-face with — a few weeks earlier, I’d interviewed an unknown actress named Jessica Lange who was appearing in a remake of King Kong. But Leigh was the first beautiful woman to walk into my life and immediately make my heart race and my mouth motor. From the first moment I saw her standing there under that awning, I absolutely could not shut up. Because from that first moment I knew she was the woman I had come to New York to meet.

Which explained why I blurted out, “Would you mind telling me what it said?”

She narrowed her eyes at me, her gaze free of guile. “What did you just say?”

“I wouldn’t ordinarily be so nosy, but it just cost me a hundred bucks to deliver that envelope. Actually, a hundred-fifty if you count the money I didn’t take from him. So I feel I’m entitled to at least ask. If you don’t want to tell me, I’ll certainly understand.”

“Honestly, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do,” I said, my heart thumping, thumping.

Leigh lowered her eyes. “I don’t care what it says. I haven’t even read it. I won’t.”

“Then why did you come here?”

“I shouldn’t have.” She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her purse and lit one. “And I definitely shouldn’t be standing here talking to you.” She started walking toward Broadway.

I stayed with her, which wasn’t easy. Her stride was as long as mine, and she was walking fast. “Where are you headed?”

“The Village.”

“Me too. Want to split a cab?”

“No, I want you to go away.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t do that.”

“Who are you, anyway?”

I told her.

“Oh, that’s perfect. Just the shot in the arm my career needs.”

“I’m not going to write about this.”

“You don’t have to write about it. All you have to do is call Liz Smith or Cindy Adams or whoever, and in tomorrow’s column it’ll say: ‘Which very married Broadway leading man has gotten involved with which costar right under his wife’s nose?’ Thank you, no thank you.”

“I would never do something like that.”

“Which we’re not,” she pointed out. “Involved, I mean. It’s just a casual fling.”

“It doesn’t look that way.”

“Why, how does it look?”

“Like you’re pretty upset.”

“Well, I’m not. I like Tony. Tony likes me. So why not?” Leigh glanced at me curiously. “Why are you delivering his messages anyway?”

“He asked me to. I’m doing a profile on them for the Sunday arts supplement.”

“And how is that working out?”

“Not real well. She insisted I see the show for a second time tonight before she’ll talk to me.”

“That’s our Barbara. Always testing the little people.”

“For what?”

“She wants you to prove to her that you care. Barbara’s just a real spoiled bitch of a star that way. Everything with her is hard. I thought Morty, our director, was going to slit his wrists during rehearsals. She was always late. Always fighting with him. Always digging in her heels. Always...” Leigh shot a worried look at me. “You did promise not to write any of this, didn’t you?”

“I did. For what it’s worth, she knows about you two. Or at least she knows something is up.”

“Of course she does. Tony tells her everything. They have a really odd marriage. Oddest I’ve ever seen.”

Leigh Grayson seemed incredibly worldly and sophisticated to me that day. She was only twenty-five, a scant year older than I. But she had been a working actress for six years. That meant she had a lot of mileage on her. Me, I was fresh off the showroom floor.

When we reached Broadway I said, “Are you sure you don’t want to split a cab?”

“Oh, all right,” she responded wearily.

I hailed a Checker and we got in and told him where to drop us. Leigh lived two blocks away from me on Bank Street. As we rode she impulsively tore open the envelope and read Beck’s note. It only took her a second. When she was done she exhaled slowly. I could feel her breath on my face, accompanied by a scent of her perfume. I immediately got woozy, as if I’d just stepped off of a roller coaster.

She gazed out the window, her thoughts very far away.

“Would you like to talk about it?”

She turned and looked at me. “Why would I want to do that?”

“We could get some lunch.”

She shook another cigarette out of her pack and lit it. “Look, if it’s dirt you’re trying to get out of me that’s not going to happen.”

“It’s not, and you smoke too much.”

“What do you care?”

“I care because I intend to spend a lot of time with you from now on. I’m hoping you’ll want to, even though I can’t think of a single reason why you would. But hope is one of the things I happen to believe in. After all, where would mankind be without hope? Would we have landed on the moon? Cured polio? Created classic art like Charlie’s Angels?”

She cocked her head at me curiously. “Do you always talk such nonsense?”

“No, I don’t. You bring it out in me.”

She smiled at me. Leigh Grayson had a very sweet smile. She looked like a happy young girl on Christmas morning. “Now that you mention it, I could eat a little something.”

It turned out that her idea of a little something was pot roast, mashed potatoes, lima beans, salad, and apple pie a la mode. I had liver and bacon. We ate at the Blue Mill, which was just down Commerce Street from the Cherry Lane Theater. The Blue Mill’s not there anymore, and I miss it. It was an old-fashioned neighborhood place with a loyal clientele and waiters who knew you by name. The daily menu was scrawled on little chalkboards. If I closed my eyes, I almost felt like I was back home at Breitbach’s Family Restaurant.

“Is this your place?” she asked me after Stavros had cleared our plates and poured our coffee.

“It is.”

“I’ve walked by here a million times but I’ve never come in. I’m glad I did.” She glanced around at the homey blue-tile decor. “Where do you drink, the White Horse?”

“How did you know that?”

“Writers’ hangout. I used to wait tables there. The tips were lousy, but at least I didn’t get mauled every night. Compared to actors, writers are generally very well-behaved when they’re loaded. Why is that?”

“We’re more highly evolved.”

“Oh, is that right?” she said lightly.

“No, we just tend to live up inside of our own heads, that’s all. Instead of acting on an impulse, our first thought is, hey, I’d better get this down on paper right away.”

“It sounds like your work is more real to you than life is.”

“Well, yeah.”

“I think that’s very sad.”

“I said we were more highly evolved. I didn’t say we were happy.”

“So are you doing what you want to be doing? Or are you one of those reporters who’s secretly toiling away on the Great American Novel?”

“You make my life sound like a pathetic cliché.”

“I was just busting your chops. It’s only fair. You’ve been busting mine since the moment we met.”

“True enough.”

“Tell me about your novel, Timmy. Please.”

I needed very little encouragement. I happily told her all about my multi-generational chronicle of the Ferrises’ epic migration across the Great Plains — a journey that was, in fact, one family’s quest for the American Dream. I used those very words. I actually talked like that in those days — with a straight face.

And she actually listened. She was a good listener, her eyes lively and engaged. They didn’t glaze over once, which was what usually happened when I talked to people about my novel. Especially when those people were women.

“Timmy, I can’t wait to read it,” she said when I came up for air. “I’ll even buy it in hardcover.” She glanced at her watch, then bit down on her plump lower lip, coloring slightly. “Look, I have to get home. I’m meeting someone, okay?”

“Say no more,” I said. “Okay?”

We split the check. The rain had let up. There were some patches of blue in the sky. Leigh grew pensive as we walked, puffing distractedly on a cigarette. Me, I was well aware that she was on her way home to meet Anthony Beck for a matinee performance. I was also aware that just thinking about the two of them together made my chest ache.

Before we went our separate ways she stuck her hand out, and I shook it. It was slim and cool and seemed very at home in mine. I hoped it would move in and stay awhile.

“Timmy, I feel like I should warn you about Barbara and Tony,” she said uneasily. “They might try to use you. It’s what they do.”

“People always try to use reporters. I’m used to it.”

“No, this you’re not used to. You’re much too nice a person. Promise me you’ll be careful, okay?”

“I am careful.”

“Is that right? True or false — Tony sent you on a fool’s errand today.”

“Okay, true,” I conceded.

Her eyes lingered on mine. “So what does that make you, Timmy?”

I didn’t answer her. I didn’t have to. We both knew the answer.

My basement on Perry Street came with little in the way of heat, unless you count the lingering smell of No. 2 fuel oil that regularly wafted up from the nonfunctioning furnace in the subbasement. But my landlord was very generous about other amenities. He threw in the mice and cockroaches for free. Also the panoramic view out my windows of the trash cans in front of the building. Actually, I loved that apartment. It was my first home away from home. All mine. I’d furnished it mostly with pieces of furniture I’d picked up on the street. My work station was a mahogany drop-leaf dining table that someone had painted silver before they’d abandoned it on West Fourth Street. Whenever I had a few hours free, I pounded away on my novel there, often wrapped in an army-surplus blanket for warmth.

But on this particular day, I couldn’t concentrate. I kept thinking about the way Leigh Grayson had listened to me when I’d talked to her. And how her perfume had smelled. And how at that very moment Anthony Beck was busy making expert, ironically detached British love to her. The thought of the two of them together made me feel as if I might explode. But how could I ever hope to rival the great Anthony Beck for the affections of a beautiful young actress like Leigh Grayson? What did I have to offer to her?

For the very first time since I’d moved to New York, I felt hopeless.

I put on my sweats and sneakers and went for a run, sprinting my way through the puddles on the sidewalks of the Village. I guess I don’t need to tell you that I ran by her apartment building. Three times, no less. It was a much nicer brownstone than mine, with window boxes and nicely painted trim. I thought about ringing her bell and barging in on them to tell her I loved her. If I’d been a character in a Noel Coward comedy that’s precisely what I would have done.

But this was no bedroom farce. This was my life.

That night, I sat through Private Lives all over again, just like Barbara Darrow wanted me to. Once again, she was radiant and dizzy, Beck marvelously droll. Leigh, in her blond wig, was sweet and clueless. John Jefferson was the same blustering clod. And yet, I detected a definite change from the previous night’s performance. Not so much to the rhythm, as Barbara had suggested, but to the mood. This performance was angrier. Barbara was angrier. She came out of the gate pissed and stayed that way until the final curtain, forcing the other performers to respond to her. Her playful jabs at new husband Victor knocked the air right out of him. Her catty remarks at Sybil left bloody gouges. And the scenes where Amanda and Elyot rekindled their romance were now death-defying duels. The whole play felt different. Mind you, the audience laughed just as hard. But tonight Barbara was playing for keeps.

At the second intermission an usher came to my seat with a hastily scrawled note: Timmy — Won’t you please come to my dressing room after the curtain? — Barbara.

I had to wait backstage until her dresser gave me the go-ahead. The stage crew was busy tearing apart the Act III set of Amanda’s Paris apartment. Watching them, I was reminded that despite all of the fame and fortune, the theater is still just a bunch of grown-up kids putting on a skit in front of a painted backdrop.

Darrow and Beck had neighboring dressing rooms close to the stage. Leigh and John were up a steep, narrow flight of stairs. That’s an old law of the theater — the lower your name in the credits, the higher your climb.

I found Barbara seated before the mirror at her dressing table, looking like a waif in an oversized terry-cloth robe. Her makeup was off, her hair wrapped up in a towel. She didn’t seem at all tired by the performance. In fact, she was positively glowing. The bottle of Dom Perignon she was working on probably wasn’t hurting.

“Ah, here you are, Timmy,” she exclaimed brightly. “Close the door and sit down, dear. Have a drink with me, won’t you?”

I sat on the sofa, accepting a glass of the champagne.

“Timmy, I wanted to apologize for the awful way I behaved toward you in the lobby this morning. It was uncalled for, and way out of line. Sometimes love is a terrible thing, you know. It can make you do things you would ordinarily never do.” She hesitated, her huge eyes searching mine. “Are you in a hurry?”

“Why, no, Miss Darrow.”

“Wonderful. We can sit and talk some more. Let me get into a different outfit, okay? I’ll only be a second.”

She darted into her bathroom, shutting the door behind her. I sat there sipping my champagne and listening to the backstage hubbub out in the hall. I glanced around at the dressing room, which was plain and unadorned, aside from the dozen fresh long-stemmed roses on her dressing table. Telegrams from well-wishers were stuck in her mirror.

After a few moments, she came out of the bathroom and said, “How do you like this outfit?”

I turned and discovered that she was standing there completely nude.

Even at age forty-six, Barbara Darrow was a magnificent sight to behold. Her figure was as trim and taut as a teenager’s, breasts firm, thighs smooth and slender. No flab, no sag. Nothing but toned and buffed perfection. She was Barbara Darrow. And she was presenting herself to me.

I suppose I made some form of noise in response, but it wasn’t any known language. Quite honestly, I could barely breathe.

Now she was crossing the dressing room toward me, her eyes glittering as she plopped down sideways in my lap. Her arm went around my neck, her bare toes wrapped around my forearm, gripping it tightly. I was aware of many things at that moment. I was aware that Barbara had not a stitch of clothing on. I was aware that she was a beautiful star whom I’d had fantasies about ever since I, well, started having fantasies. And I was aware — acutely aware — that she was born the same exact year as Eleanor Clifton Ferris, also known as my mother.

“My God, you’re so clean.” She took my hand and kissed the palm tenderly before she pressed it against her cheek. “Are you a virgin?”

I swallowed. “Am I what?”

“It’s a simple question, dear. Either you are or you aren’t.”

“I... aren’t.”

“Let me guess, okay?” she said playfully. “First, there were some terribly earnest high-school fumblings with the girl next-door in a hayloft.”

“Parked car. My dad’s a judge, not a farmer.”

“Followed by one true college sweetheart. But you broke her heart when you came to New York, didn’t you? Because you didn’t love her enough to bring her with you.”

“You’re right, I didn’t,” I admitted quietly, realizing that it had been awhile since Martha Englehardt had written. I wondered if she’d finally started dating someone else. “How do you know all of this about me?”

“I told you this morning — I can feel your aura.” Now she guided my hand to her breast. I watched her do this, both participant and observer. Mostly, I could not believe this was happening. “Just like you can feel mine.”

“Miss Darrow...”

“It’s Barbara,” she whispered breathlessly.

“I really think you should get up.”

She drew back, widening her eyes at me. “Don’t you like me? You would if you got to know me better. Wouldn’t you like to?”

“I would, yes. God, yes. Only...”

“I’m too old.” Her lower lip began to quiver. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Not a chance. It’s just that, well, what about Mr. Beck?”

“What about Tony?” she demanded. “He does what he wants, who he wants. Why shouldn’t I?”

“That’s between the two of you. I only know that this feels wrong. Please get up.”

Barbara’s eyes welled up with tears. “You’re being so sweet. And you’re making me feel so shabby and miserable and... and...” She buried her face in my shoulder, sobbing.

I put my arms around her and held her.

That’s when her dressing room door burst open and Anthony Beck barged in on us. I hadn’t locked it behind me. Hadn’t thought I’d need to.

“What the devil is going on here?” he demanded, his eyes bulging furiously.

Panicking, I immediately tried to get up off of that sofa. Barbara, for her part, fought just as hard to stay put there. Here’s what happened: As I staggered to my feet I sent her tumbling onto the floor with a most unstarlike thud. Humiliated, she fled naked into her bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

“Young man, you owe me an explanation!” Anthony Beck thundered at me indignantly. “I demand an explanation!”

“Nothing happened, Mr. Beck. On my honor.”

“Your honor? I’ve just found you making love to my wife.”

“I didn’t do anything, honest. I was just sitting here and she... she...”

“She what?”

I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that she’d thrown herself at me. Couldn’t think of what to say. So I did the only thing I could do — I got the hell out of there, slamming the dressing-room door shut behind me. I didn’t go far. Couldn’t. I was too shaken. I just stood there in the hall for a moment, gasping.

That’s when I heard Anthony Beck roar: “You drive me insane with desire! You know that, don’t you?”

And heard Barbara Darrow wail: “I don’t know anything, except that I’m losing you. She’s taking you from me!”

“Not in a million years. But what about you and that — that boy?”

“He’s in love with me. I was trying to let him down gently. I was being kind.”

“You’re always kind. And, my God, you’re beautiful.”

“I’m not. I’m not.”

“You know you are.”

After that, I could hear only murmurs and laughter, soft moans of pleasure.

Reeling, I ran from the theater.

Leigh Grayson was waiting for me on the stoop of my brownstone.

She’d been there awhile. There was a pile of cigarette butts next to her feet. Her eyes were red and swollen, and she was sniffling. I invited her up. Or, more exactly, down. Leigh was very tactful. Didn’t say one word about the fuel-oil smell. Possibly, she was too upset to notice.

“Barbara’s going to get me fired from the show,” she blurted out. “She told me tonight before the curtain.”

I poured each of us a glass of really cheap Chianti and handed her one. “Can she do that?”

“Absolutely. She can refuse to go on with me. She can ruin me.” Leigh broke off, gulped down some of her wine. “She’s going to ruin me.”

“You were right about something,” I said heavily. “They did use me.”

Leigh listened closely as I told her about the little seduction scene I’d just played in Barbara’s dressing room.

“Not your fault, Timmy,” she said, shaking her head. “This all has to do with John Jefferson.”

“How so?”

“Barbara set her sights on him when we were in rehearsals, right after Tony started sleeping with me. That’s their thing — jealousy is what holds them together. Only in her case she came up empty. John’s gay. So is Dick Jefferies. She hit on him, too.”

Which explained why the star had taken such an irrational dislike to the show’s publicist.

“Barbara’s been trolling for a plaything,” Leigh went on. “Someone boyish and innocent, because that’s what really riles Tony. Today, you came along.”

“So I just happened to be in the right place at the right time?”

“Something like that.” Leigh looked around for a place to sit. She settled for the edge of my bed. “You probably don’t want to hear this, Timmy, but I haven’t been totally truthful with you.”

“That’s okay, I don’t think anyone has been totally truthful with me since I got out of that bed this morning.”

“This thing Tony and I have isn’t just a casual fling. We’re in love with each other. He’s asked Barbara for a divorce. He told me this afternoon. Tony needs to be free of her, Timmy. He needs me in his life. We’re going to get married.” Leigh glanced up at me uncertainly. “You look horrified.”

“I’m not. I’m crestfallen.”

She smiled at me. “You’re so sweet.”

“God, I wish people would stop saying that.” I poured myself some more wine and drank it down angrily. I didn’t want to be sweet. I wanted to be no good. I wanted Leigh Grayson to show up at some poor shnook’s apartment late at night sobbing over me. “Leigh, I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but when I left them just now they were in the midst of a pretty passionate reconciliation scene.”

“No, that’s not possible,” she protested, her voice rising. “He can’t stand to be with Barbara anymore. She’s physically repulsive to him. H-He’s told me so.”

“That’s really not the way it sounded,” I said, studying her in surprise. Because Leigh Grayson wasn’t so worldly after all. Not when it came to men. It seemed pretty obvious to me that she had been thoroughly taken in by Anthony Beck.

And she knew it now. She drew her breath in raggedly, very raggedly, then clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes widening with alarm. I pointed to the bathroom. She ran in there and threw up her Chianti along with, seemingly, everything she’d eaten for the past three days. Then I heard the water run, and a little while later she came back out, looking very pale. “I used one of your toothbrushes. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.”

“Timmy, how could I have been so stupid? What is wrong with me?”

“Not a single thing. You got used. Like you said, that’s what they do.”

“You’re awfully understanding,” she said softly, gazing at me.

“If you call me sweet again I swear I’m going to slug you.”

My phone rang now. I didn’t get many calls at such a late hour.

“Timmy, we need to deal with this matter openly,” the voice at the other end said. Anthony Beck didn’t need to identify himself. I recognized his velvet purr instantly. “We must clear the air.”

“Do you really think that’s necessary, Mr. Beck?” I asked, Leigh stiffening instantly at the sound of his name.

“I do, Timmy. Could you pop up to our apartment for a nightcap?”

“I don’t think I can make it.”

“You damn well can make it,” he said roughly. “And you will.”

Now there was a rustling on the line. “Won’t you please come, Timmy?” Barbara’s voice was kindly and gentle. “If you don’t, I won’t be able to sleep a wink tonight. I’m just so sick over this.”

“All right,” I said reluctantly. “I’m on my way.”

“And Timmy? Bring the Grayson girl along, why don’t you?”

When the elevator door opened they were waiting there to greet us before the burbling copper fountain. Beck looked rather chastened and downcast. Barbara was all smiles and royal reassurance.

She immediately hugged Leigh and said, “We’re all professionals, dear. For the good of the show, we must move forward. Can we do that?”

Leigh nodded meekly, her eyes firmly fastened to the marble floor.

Me, I felt as if I’d just walked into Act III of Private Lives, when Amanda and Elyot emerge from the bedroom of her apartment to find Victor and Sibyl waiting to pounce on them. Coward’s exquisitely worded stage direction for Amanda reads: Gracefully determined to rise above the situation. This was Barbara right now. Standing there, I had the uneasy feeling that the dividing line between real life and her stage role had blurred.

“No need to look so frightened, dear,” she chided Leigh. “This has just been a tiny misunderstanding, that’s all. I was a bit upset today to learn that my Tony has been something of a bad boy. Young Timmy here was comforting me in my dressing room. Beyond that, nothing was happening between us, though it certainly could have looked that way to Tony. Can we agree on that much?”

Beck cleared his golden throat uncomfortably but said nothing. Merely nodded his mane of silver hair.

“And can we agree that you’ve been sleeping with my husband?” Barbara said to Leigh.

“I’m sorry, Barbara,” Leigh answered in a small, timid voice.

“Don’t be sorry, dear,” Barbara said between her perfect white teeth. “Just tell me that you slept with him.”

“I–I did.”

“Tony, are you in love with this girl?”

“I love you and only you.”

“So you’ve lied to Leigh, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“In fact, you’ve treated her rather badly.”

“Terribly.”

“This thing between you two — is it over?”

“As far as I’m concerned, it is,” he answered, his eyes avoiding Leigh’s.

“And you, Leigh...?”

Leigh stood there breathing in and out. Briefly, I thought she was going to throw up again. “Yes, Barbara, it’s over.”

“Fine, then everything’s settled,” Barbara Darrow exclaimed. “Now we can all get on with our work and our lives.”

“Timmy, I’d like to go home,” Leigh said, glancing at me.

“Nonsense, stay and have a glass of champagne with us,” Barbara insisted. “Let’s all toast our new understanding.”

Beck reached for his wife’s hand, his eyes moistening. “You are the most beautiful and understanding creature on earth. I adore you.”

“And I you, darling. Why don’t you bring the champagne out onto the terrace?” she suggested, throwing open the French doors. “We can breathe some fresh air out here. That’s the one thing I miss about Los Angeles. Our fresh air.”

“Why, that’s not air at all,” he pointed out as he started for the kitchen. “It’s pure smog. Your whole damned San Fernando Valley reeks of it. Dreadful place.”

A breeze had blown the last of the rain clouds away, and the night air out on the terrace was uncommonly fresh and clean. It was a long, shallow terrace enclosed by a three-foot-high stone wall topped with brick. There was some deck furniture, but it was still too wet for us to sit on.

“Isn’t it lovely out here?” Barbara said gaily.

“It is.” I wondered how long it would take before I could afford such a terrace.

“And look at our view of the skyline. Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Beautiful,” Leigh murmured, scarcely glancing at it.

Barbara took her by the elbow and ushered her over toward the stone wall. “If you stand right here, dear, you can see all the way to the Empire State Building.” To me she said, “Isn’t that fountain pretty from out here?”

I glanced back inside at the copper fountain in the foyer. “It’s very pretty,” I said. Then I heard a gasp and turned back and discovered something so unthinkable that it took a split second for the horrible reality of it to sink in.

There were only two of us standing on that terrace now.

Barbara and me. Leigh wasn’t there anymore. Even as my eyes flicked desperately around the terrace, hoping she was there, praying she was there, I knew she was not. And now I heard it — the unmistakable thud of her hitting the sidewalk sixteen floors below. And now there were the screams of the people in the street. Raised voices, horns honking.

I gaped at Barbara in shock. Barbara who had led Leigh over to the edge of the terrace. Barbara who had directed me to look away. Barbara who had just pushed Leigh Grayson to her death. I knew it. She knew it. We both knew it. And yet, as she stood there smiling at me serenely, Barbara had a look of almost childlike innocence on her face.

Beck joined us now, carrying a silver tray laden with four long-stemmed flutes and a bottle of Dom Perignon. “Let’s have that drink, shall we?” He glanced around, frowning. “Where has Leigh gotten to?”

“Leigh had to leave, dear.” Barbara still had her happy face on.

“Will she be back?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” she answered brightly.

“Too bad. Nice girl, that one. Still, can’t blame her. You’ll drink with us, won’t you, Timmy?”

“Mr. B-Beck,” I stammered. “L–Leigh’s... she’s...”

“What is it, Timmy? You look as if you’ve just seen a ghost.”

“He’s trying to tell you that she’s jumped,” Barbara explained on my behalf.

He shook his head at her. “Jumped where?”

“From the terrace, dear. She’s dead.”

He set the tray down on the table so clumsily that one of the flutes tipped over and broke. “Good God, you’re joking!”

“She’s not,” I said.

“She must have been distraught, poor girl,” Barbara said sympathetically. “She went over so fast that I couldn’t stop her. To be honest, I’m not even sure I could have. She was a big girl. And I’m such a wee little thing.” Barbara smiled at me again, waiting for me to contradict her, daring me to contradict her. Knowing I wouldn’t. Because she was Barbara Darrow. And because no one would ever believe me. After all, I hadn’t actually seen anything.

I had looked away and Leigh was gone.

So I stood there in silence, shaken. In the distance, I could hear a siren now.

Anthony Beck studied her for a long moment, his mouth tightening. I wondered what was running through his mind. I will always wonder that.

Barbara reached for one of the empty champagne flutes and held it out to him. He poured. She took a dainty sip. Under the circumstances, her steady cool was beyond remarkable. It was sheer madness. “You mustn’t blame yourself, Tony,” she said gently. “Promise me you won’t.”

He didn’t promise her anything, or say anything. Just poured himself some champagne and took a long, slow drink of it.

Me, I found the kitchen and used the phone in there to wake up my editor. “She pushed her,” I told Al Posner after I’d filled him in on Leigh’s death plunge. “Barbara Darrow pushed her. She can’t get away with this, Al.”

“They’ve arrested her for it?” he wheezed at me, yawning.

“The police aren’t even here yet.”

“Then how do you know she did it?”

“I was right here when it happened, that’s how.”

“You witnessed it?”

“Not exactly,” I had to concede. “But I know what happened. Leigh didn’t jump. She wouldn’t jump.”

“In your opinion,” he pointed out. “Which, as you know, is worth bupkis. We go by what the police say. An official source goes on the record, fine. Otherwise, it’s libel. This is a major star we’re talking about.”

“Barbara Darrow is a murderer.”

“In... your... opinion,” he repeated sharply. “It’s out of our hands now anyway, Opie. Metro will take over. But, hey, I might be able to wangle you a sidebar about this Grayson girl — how she gets her big break with Darrow and Beck in Private Lives and ends up, splat, all over the pavement.”

“I can’t write that, Al.”

“Then go home, Opie,” he growled at me. “Go home and forget about it.”

I walked all the way home that night but I didn’t forget about it. I couldn’t. I had fallen for someone, and now she was lying dead under a tarp on the sidewalk, and I felt partly to blame. After all, I was the one who’d rejected Barbara’s advances in her dressing room. Barbara Darrow was a proud, ageing beauty whose husband had been sleeping with a much younger woman. Instead of showering her with affection and reassurance, I’d dumped her onto the floor. Would Leigh still be alive if I hadn’t done that? By doing the right thing — saying no to Barbara — had I driven her to such an act of savagery?

I’ve asked myself this a million times over the years. I don’t have any answers. I never do.

And I never forget. Whenever I bump into one of Barbara’s old movies on TV, it comes to me. When I’m walking down the street and catch sight of a tall, young brunette with good legs, it comes to me. When I fall asleep at night, I see Leigh Grayson in my dreams. It’s always the same dream. She’s going off that terrace to her death and I’m standing there not helping her. She’s always wide-eyed with fright. Always wondering, wordlessly, why I’m not saving her. In my dream, Leigh never gets any older. She’s always young. I’m not anymore. In fact, my wife and I have two daughters who are both older than Leigh was that night Barbara pushed her to her death. I am no longer gangly. I am no longer someone who barrels around corners certain that something exciting and wonderful is waiting there for me. Mostly, I see darkness and fear around that next corner.

I can’t remember the last time anyone called me Timmy.

I never heard from Barbara Darrow or Anthony Beck again, not that I expected to. But after my first novel came out, and got some attention, I did wonder if she’d seen it and recognized my name. He had already died by then. Barbara was by his side when he passed. She later remarried, twice, most recently to a physician who was fourteen years her junior. Barbara Darrow died this past weekend in Palm Desert at the age of seventy-five after a long battle with cancer. A valiant battle, all of the obituaries said.

That’s why I can finally tell this story. Because you can’t libel the dead. You can say anything you damned please about them.

You can even tell the truth.

Copyright (c); 2005 by David Handler.