Murder on the Aisle

2

6:18 P.M.

He stood in the back of the theater. He had been about to walk back to his dressing room when the owner of the company that syndicated the show, Frank Emory, appeared as if by magic and blocked his way.

“Why don’t you avoid seeing Dunphy if you can?” Emory said. “I think things would run a little smoother that way.”

As usual, Emory managed to look both polished and terrified. From his father he had inherited the kind of snotty good looks, now complete with graying hair at the temples, that one usually associates with imperious bank presidents and preppy politicians. Unfortunately, from his mother — Tobin had gotten to know both of Frank’s parents pretty well — he had inherited the notion that everything that hadn’t yet gone to shit was about to. The clearest evidence of that could be seen in Frank’s soft blue eyes. In a head so handsome, they should have looked more confident.

“Don’t worry, Frank. I’ll go right to my dressing room,” Tobin said.

“I’m not taking sides in this,” Frank said, giving every indication that he was about to cry.

Tobin put his hand out and touched Frank’s arm. Frank was a professional fuck-up. He was forty-nine and had gone through four different businesses, each one of which his father had been called in to bail out from near bankruptcy. His father was in pharmaceuticals and had done very well. Praise the Lord. Emory Communications, however, which owned this videotape studio and theater and produced syndicated television shows such as Nashville Calling (kind of live version of National Enquirer and all about people with names like Ferlin and Jake and Dody), was coming off the worst year of its six years of existence. So Frank Emory looked more shattered than usual. Which was why Tobin was patting him on the arm. Tobin wasn’t sure he liked Frank Emory, but at least he felt sorry for him, which was more than he could say for most people.

“Calm down, Frank. I know you’re not taking sides.”

“He’s really going to do it, isn’t he, Tobin?”

“He might be bluffing.”

For just a moment — no more than a millisecond — you could see that Frank Emory really wanted to believe this. Something like a smile lifted his upper lip. But then his mouth abruptly wrinkled into a frown. “There’s no point in lying to ourselves.”

“Maybe he is, Frank. Bluffing, I mean.”

“You’d understand how much was riding on this if you’d seen the new Nielsens.”

“They’re in?”

In this business you awaited Nielsens with no less dread than you awaited biopsies.

Frank nodded.

“Well, how did we do?”

“You did fine. You and Richard, I mean. Number-three show in the syndicated Top Ten.”

“Well, Frank, let’s go get drunk and feel up some women or something.”

“You wouldn’t be laughing if you’d seen how the rest of the Emory shows did.”

“Bad?”

“Tobin, since the ratings came out this morning, three big markets called in to let me know they wouldn’t be renewing at least one of our shows. Philadelphia. Los Angeles. Miami.” He called the names off as if they were valiant soldiers slain in battle. “Not even Nashville Calling did very well.”

“Gee, I thought that show you did on transvestites in country music was interesting.”

Frank could only shake his head at Tobin’s grim humor.

Around them, grips and makeup men and lighting people moved. The young ones moved quickly and with a certain hostility, not unlike that which Tobin had noticed in the limo drivers. The older ones moved less quickly, and with dull resignation. They knew that the rush didn’t matter, that no matter how many things went wrong, shows somehow went on anyway and generally did all right for themselves. Besides, this was the medium that had produced Allen Funt and Michael Landon: It wasn’t the sort of thing you had to take really seriously. It was just television and not even network television, for God’s sake.

“Frank, it’s going to be all right. He’ll calm down.”

Frank said, “There is one thing I’d like to say. I mean, I think we’re friends enough that I can say it.”

“I know what you want to say, Frank.”

Frank raised long fingers splayed in frustration. “Didn’t it occur to you what you might be doing to our livelihood here? Weren’t things bad enough already?”

Frank was whining. Whining had a way of carrying farther than just plain talking. The crew, young and old, both kind of slowed down so they could get a proper earful.

“You know what you’re doing, Frank?” Tobin whispered angrily.

“What?”

“Giving them some nice fodder for the bar tonight. They’ll be discussing this till dawn.”

“Their jobs depend on the outcome of your contract negotiations, too. Face it. They may as well listen. Every one of us has a stake in this show — Richard, you, me...” He waved his hand at the crew. “Them, too.”

Frank didn’t say it, but Tobin could already see Daddy waiting in the wings, pockets stuffed with good green cash, ready to bail out his son.

“Why don’t we talk about all this after the show?” Tobin suggested gently. Frank was going to hell. He somehow had to get his mind off it. “Why don’t you go to your office and have a drink?”

“My wife’s in there.”

“Good. Give you somebody to talk to.”

“She isn’t speaking to me.”

“Why not?”

“Well, we were having lunch at the club when the waiter brought a phone to my table. I got the ratings over the phone. I didn’t bear up well. I... I started crying, Tobin. Right in the middle of the main dining room. With the goddamn snotty waiters standing around and everything. You know how waiters talk. It’ll be all over.”

“Jesus.”

“So Dorothy’s mad. Very mad. She’s back on her why didn’t I marry a real man routine.”

“Then go around the corner, Frank.”

“Around the corner?”

“To Delaney’s. Have Delaney put you up with an IRA cocktail.”

“What’s that?”

“You don’t need to ask questions, Frank. You just need to drink it. Now go — all right?”

Frank straightened up, thankful that somebody was telling him how to live his life. In his blue blazer and white shirt and yellow striped regimental tie, he was a formidable-looking man. Just as long as he kept his mouth shut. Just as long as you didn’t look at his eyes.

Frank had just turned his back to the exit door, apparently considering Tobin’s advice, when his wife Dorothy appeared from the east wing.

Dorothy’s age was kept a secret. She was one of those women who might have been thirty-five or fifty. She was tall, slender, and elegant and spent at least as much money on her blond hair, her red nails, and her tanned legs as the Pentagon did on nuclear submarines. Tobin liked her sometimes, disliked her others. He had never been able to form a final opinion of her.

“Hi, Tobin,” she said, leaning in and giving him a Hollywood kiss on the cheek. She smiled and took his hand. Her touch felt wonderful and he decided to like her for sure and for good. “My husband here is all shaken up about what happened with you and Richard last night. But let’s try to assure him that everything’s going to be fine.”

Frank said, “Tobin thinks I should go over to Delaney’s and have something called an IRA cocktail.”

Dorothy laughed. “That sounds like something you could have used this afternoon at the club. Did he tell you about it, Tobin?”

“I tell Tobin everything,” Frank said. “I always tell him he should have been a priest.”

One of the grips came up. “Mr. Emory, there’s a call for you.”

Frank nodded.

Then the grip said, “Mr. Tobin, Linda said to tell you she’s waiting.”

“Thank you,” Tobin said.

Dorothy kissed him on the cheek again. “Don’t worry, Tobin, between your efforts and mine, we’ll get my husband to act like a real man someday.”

Then he remembered why he didn’t like Dorothy sometimes. She couldn’t resist belittling her husband — even when he had it coming.

“As soon as I’m done with this phone call, I’m definitely going to have one of those cocktails,” Frank said. “What are they called again?”

“IRA,” Tobin said.

Dorothy drifted back to the east wing, where there was a comfortable lounge. “I’ll see you both later.”

Frank watched her go. “She’s a wonderful woman,” he said. And then he smiled at Tobin. “Sometimes.”

“You didn’t shave very well.”

Tobin leaned forward in the chair and looked into the mirror. “No, I didn’t.”

“But you still look cute.” Linda, the makeup woman, laughed. She had a great laugh. A great butt, too.

“Are you sure forty-one-year-old men can still be cute?”

“Sure.”

“Are you sure that forty-one-year-old men want to be cute?”

Linda laughed her great laugh again. “Beats being ugly.”

“True enough.”

A knock came. This was the makeup room upstairs, where stars of lesser magnitude prepared. Who’d be calling on him here?

“You want me to see who’s there?”

“If you wouldn’t mind,” Tobin said. He felt like a child. She had put a bib on him to protect his shirt from the makeup.

Linda took her great butt (which Tobin watched with a good deal of reverence in the mirror) over to the door and opened it.

The woman on the other side of the threshold caught his gaze immediately. “I just wanted to see if Tobin was here.”

Linda knew who she was, of course, and apparently liked her because her tone was very friendly. “Sure, come on in. I’m all done anyway.”

Tobin watched the mirror as she came in. She was a suburban beauty. Not the exotic sort you found in fashion magazines but the sort you found in supermarkets pushing a shopping cart and two kids. Freckles. Blue eyes. A lovely if not quite spectacular body. She knew at least something about Emmanuel Kant (she’d been a 3.7 student) and she was perfect company on rainy Friday nights for sharing a joint and listening to old Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young albums. She got sentimental very easily but it was a deadly mistake to think of her as uncomplicated because she had as many secrets as a movie star’s secretary. She had responded to her husband’s unfaithfulness by being unfaithful herself. Though she had always been Dunphy’s girl, Tobin had known her first (he still remembered the brilliant autumn afternoon when she’d walked into the student union in her fawn-colored suede jacket and her mysterious blue gaze) and loved her first, and so it had made sense that when Jane wanted to have an affair (not to pay Richard back, only so she could have some sense of purpose in her own life) that Tobin would be the man.

“Well, good luck on the show tonight,” Linda said as she was leaving.

“Thanks,” he said.

“She’s sure a nice woman,” Jane Dunphy said.

Tobin decided to get it over with. “You haven’t been returning any of my calls lately.”

“I thought we were taking a break.”

“Some break. We haven’t been together for four months. Now I don’t even get phone calls.”

“I’ve really been busy. You know, with the holidays and all.”

“Why the hell don’t you just tell me what’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on.”

He got up out of his chair and went over and tried to kiss her but she turned away.

“Things are more — complicated than that,” she said.

“Jesus.”

“I just came in to say hello. I didn’t want a scene.”

“Why can’t you be honest with me?”

She reached out to touch his cheek. Gently. “Did it ever occur to you that I might be trying to spare your feelings?”

“I don’t want them spared. I want the truth.”

She drifted over to the mirror and looked without self-consciousness at her beautiful face. “I’m starting to count the wrinkles.”

“You’re beautiful. You know that.”

“We’re not young anymore, do you ever think about that?”

“Sometimes.”

“It’s going so fast.”

“Very fast.”

“I wish there were somewhere I could go. Hide out. You know?”

“I know.”

“I’ve started thinking of time as this kind of shambling figure, like a hobo. Sometimes I look out my front window and I imagine I see him there, waiting. I’d like to hide, as I say, but I don’t know where I’d go.”

“ ‘I have an appointment in Samarra.’ ”

“What?”

“John O’Hara lifted that from Somerset Maugham, who lifted it from Arabian literature. A man leaves a town fleeing from Death. On his way to Samarra he sees Death on the road and asks whom he’s going to see, and Death says, ‘I have an appointment in Samarra.’ ”

“God.”

“Right.” Then: “I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you a lot, Jane.”

“Well, I’ve missed you, too.”

“Somehow I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing.”

“Oh, please, Tobin. I really did just stop in to see how things were going.”

“You know how they’re going. Richard and I probably aren’t going to be partners anymore.”

“I know.”

Tobin went over and leaned against the dressing table. “So you’re not going to tell me?”

“Tobin, please, I—”

“You owe it to me.”

She said nothing. She looked at her beautiful hands and then at her beautiful face in the mirror again. “I’ve started thinking about reincarnation a lot lately.”

“Last year it was transcendental meditation.”

“I think studying reincarnation has been more helpful for me.”

“Good.”

“You don’t need to be sarcastic. Just because you don’t believe in anything.”

“I believe in lovers telling each other the truth.”

“Tobin—”

“I knew something was wrong when you wanted to take a ‘break.’ But now that I don’t get phone calls—”

“Now isn’t the time.”

“To tell me the truth?”

“It’s very complicated.”

“Your favorite word.”

“What?”

“Whenever you don’t want to be honest about something, you say it’s complicated.”

“This conversation isn’t a lot of fun. I think I’d better be leaving.”

“It shouldn’t be fun, Jane. It should be truthful.”

She glanced down at her hands again. “A lot of people were starting to find out about us, Tobin. It was getting messy. You being his partner and all.”

“You could always have left him. We could always have moved in together.”

She sighed. “But that’s what I mean, Tobin. It’s — more complicated than that. I’m sorry.”

The phone rang. It was the director. “You can drift out anytime you want,” he said.

“All right,” Tobin said. He hung up.

“I want to see you again,” Tobin said to Jane. “I want to sit down across a good table at a good restaurant and talk. I want you to tell me everything. Everything. Then at least I won’t have to wonder what happened. I’ll know what happened.”

She leaned over and kissed him. “I know it hasn’t been much fun for you lately. And I’m sorry.”

He pulled her to him and kissed her as he’d been wanting to kiss her for months. He was almost dizzy with the grinding need of his kiss. It was beyond sexual need. It was — he didn’t know what else to call it, though he’d called so many things this — love.

Then she pulled gently away from him. “You’d better get ready for the show.”

“I want to talk to you. Tomorrow.”

“All right. Call me.”

“I’m serious about this.”

“Fine,” she said. “Fine. You’re serious about this. Fine.”

He tried not to notice that, as she was leaving, she was trembling.