Romance

1

KLING MADE HIS CALL FROM AN OUTSIDE PHONE BECAUSE HE didn’t want to be turned down in a place as public as the squadroom. He didn’t want to risk possible derision from the men with whom he worked day and night, the men to whom he often entrusted his life. Nor did he want to make the call from anyplace at all in the station house. There were pay phones on every floor, but a police station was like a small town, and gossip traveled fast. He did not want anyone to overhear him fumbling for words in the event of a rejection. He felt that rejection was a very definite possibility.

So he stood in the pouring rain a block from the station house, at a blue plastic shell with a pay phone inside it, dialing the number he’d got from the police directory operator, and which he’d scribbled on a scrap of paper that was now getting soggy in the rain. He waited while the phone rang, once, twice, three times, four, five, and he thought, She isn’t home, six, sev…

“Hello?”

Her voice startled him.

“Hello, uh, Sharon?” he said. “Chief Cooke?”

“Who’s this, please?”

Her voice impatient and sharp. Rain pelting down everywhere around him. Hang up, he thought.

“This is Bert Kling?” he said.

“Who?”

The sharpness still in her voice. But edged with puzzlement now.

“Detective Bert Kling,” he said. “We… uh… met at the hospital.”

“The hospital?”

“Earlier this week. The hostage cop shooting. Georgia Mowbry.”

“Yes?”

Trying to remember who he was. Unforgettable encounter, he guessed. Lasting impression.

“I was with Detective Burke,” he said, ready to give up. “The redheaded hostage cop. She was with Georgia when…”

“Oh, yes, I remember now. How are you?”

“Fine,” he said, and then very quickly, “I’m calling to tell you how sorry I am you lost her.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“I know I should have called earlier…”

“No, no, it’s appreciated.”

“But we were working a difficult case…”

“I quite understand.”

Georgia Mowbry had died on Wednesday night. This was now Sunday. She suddenly wondered what this was all about. She’d been reading the papers when her phone rang. Reading all about yesterday’s riot in the park. Blacks and whites rioting. Black and whites shooting each other, killing each other.

“So… uh… I know how difficult something like that must be,” he said. “And I… uh… just thought I’d offer my… uh… sympathy.”

“Thank you,” she said.

There was a silence.

Then:

“Uh… Sharon…”

“By the way, it’s Sharyn,” she said.

“Isn’t that what I’m saying?”

“You’re saying Sharon.”

“Right,” he said.

“But it’s Sharyn.“

“I know,” he said, thoroughly confused now.

“With a ‘y,’ ” she said.

“Oh,” he said. “Right. Thank you. I’m sorry. Sharyn, right.”

“What’s that I hear?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“That sound.”

“Sound? Oh. It must be the rain.”

“The rain? Where are you?”

“I’m calling from outside.”

“From a phone booth?”

“No, not really, it’s just one of these little shell things. What you’re hearing is the rain hitting the plastic.”

“You’re standing in the rain?”

“Well, sort of.”

“Isn’t there a phone in the squadroom?”

“Well, yes. But…”

She waited.

“I… uh… didn’t want anyone to hear me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I… I didn’t know how you’d feel about… something like this.”

“Something like what?”

“My… asking you to have dinner with me.”

Silence.

“Sharyn?”

“Yes?”

“Your being a chief and all,” he said. “A deputy chief.”

She blinked.

“I thought it might make a difference. That I’m just a detective/third.”

“I see.”

No mention of his blond hair or her black skin.

Silence.

“Does it?” he asked.

She had never dated a white man in her life.

“Does what?” she said.

“Does it make a difference? Your rank?”

“No.”

But what about the other? she wondered. What about whites and blacks killing each other in public places? What about that, Detective Kling?

“Rainy day like today,” he said, “I thought it’d be nice to have dinner and go to a movie.”

With a white man, she thought.

Tell my mother I’m going on a date with a white man. My mother who scrubbed white men’s offices on her knees.

“I’m off at four,” he said. “I can go home, shower and shave, pick you up at six.”

You hear this, Mom? A white man wants to pick me up at six. Take me out to dinner and a movie.

“Unless you have other plans,” he said.

“Are you really standing in the rain?” she asked.

“Well, yes,” he said. “Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Have other plans?”

“No. But…”

Bring the subject up, she thought. Face it head-on. Ask him if he knows I’m black. Tell him I’ve never done anything like this before. Tell him my mother’ll jump off the roof. Tell him I don’t need this kind of complication in my life, tell him…

“Well… uh… do you think you might like to?” he asked. “Go to a movie and have dinner?”

“Why do you want to do this?” she asked.

He hesitated a moment. She visualized him standing there in the rain, pondering the question.

“Well,” he said, “I think we might enjoy each other’s company, is all.”

She could just see him shrugging, standing there in the rain. Calling from outside the station house because he didn’t want anyone to hear him being turned down by rank. Never mind black, never mind white, this was detective/ third and deputy chief. As simple as that. She almost smiled.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but do you think you could give me some kind of answer? Cause it’s sort of wet out here.”

“Six o’clock is fine,” she said.

“Good,” he said.

“Call me when you’re out of the rain, I’ll give you my address.”

“Good,” he said again. “Good. That’s good. Thank you, Sharyn. I’ll call you when I get back to the squadroom. What kind of food do you like? I know a great Italian…”

“Get out of the rain,” she said, and quickly put the phone back on the cradle.

Her heart was pounding.

God, she thought, what am I starting here?

The redheaded woman was telling him that she’d been receiving threatening phone calls. He listened intently. Six phone calls in the past week, she told him. The same man each time, speaking in a low voice, almost a whisper, telling her he was going to kill her. At a table against one wall of the room, a short man in shirtsleeves was fingerprinting a bearded man in a black T-shirt.

“When did these calls start?”

“Last week,” the woman said. “Monday morning was the first one.”

“Okay, let’s take down some more information,” the man said, and rolled an NYPD Detective Division complaint form into his typewriter. He was wearing a.38-caliber pistol in a shoulder holster. Like the man taking fingerprints at the table against the wall, he too was in shirtsleeves. “May I have your address, please?”

“314 East Seventy-first Street.”

“Here in Manhattan?”

“Yes.”

“Apartment number?”

“6B.”

“Are you married? Single? Div…?”

“Single.”

“Are you employed?”

“I’m an actress.”

“Oh?” Eyebrows going up in sudden interest. “Have I seen you in anything?”

“Well… I’ve done a lot of television work. I did a Law & Order last month.”

“Really? That’s a good show. I watch that show all the time. Which one were you in?”

“The one about abortion.”

“No kidding? I saw that. That was just last month!”

“Yes, it was. Excuse me, Detective, but…”

“That’s my favorite show on television. They shoot that right here in New York, did you know that? Will you be doing any more of them?”

“Well… right now I’m rehearsing a Broadway play.”

“No kidding? What play? What’s it called?”

“Romance. Uh, Detective…”

“What’s it about?”

“Well, it’s sort of complicated to explain. The thing is, I have to get back to the theater…”

“Oh, sure.”

“And I’d like to…”

“Hey, sure.” All business again. Fingers on the typewriter keys again. “You say these calls started last Monday, right? That would’ve been…” A glance at the calendar on his desk. “December…”

“December ninth.”

“Right, December ninth.” Typing as he spoke. “Can you tell me exactly what this man said?”

“He said, ’I’m going to kill you, miss.’ ”

“Then what?”

“That’s all.”

“He calls you ‘miss’? No name?”

“No name. Just ’I’m going to kill you, miss.’ Then he hangs up.”

“Have there been any threatening letters?”

“No.”

“Have you seen anyone suspicious lurking around the building or…?”

“No.”

“… following you to the theater or…”

“No.”

“Well, I’ll tell you the truth, miss…”

“This may be a good place to pause,” Kendall said.

Both actors shaded their eyes and peered out into the darkened theater. The woman playing the actress said, “Ashley, I’m uncomfortable with…” but Kendall interrupted at once.

“Take fifteen,” he said. “We’ll do notes later.”

“I just want to ask Freddie about one of the lines.”

“Later, Michelle,” Kendall said, dismissing her.

Michelle let out a short, exasperated sigh, exchanged a long glance with Mark Riganti, the actor playing the detective who adored Law & Order, and then walked off into the wings with him. The actor playing the other detective stood chatting at the fingerprint table with the bearded actor playing his prisoner.

Sitting sixth row center, Freddie Corbin turned immediately to Kendall and said, “They wouldn’t be wearing guns anywhere near a thief being printed.”

“I can change that,” Kendall said. “What we’ve really got to talk about, Freddie…”

“It spoils the entire sense of reality,” Corbin said.

His full and honorable name was Frederick Peter Corbin Ill, but all of his friends called him Fred. Kendall, however, had started calling him Freddie the moment they’d been introduced, which of course the cast had picked up on, and now everybody associated with this project called him Freddie. Corbin, who had written two novels about New York City cops, knew that this was an old cop trick. Using the familiar diminutive to denigrate a prisoner’s sense of self-worth or self-respect. So you think you’re Mr. Corbin, hah? Well, Freddie, where were you on the night of June thirteenth, huh?

“Also,” he said, “I think he’s overreacting when he discovers she’s an actress. It’d be funnier if he contained his excitement.”

“Yes,” Kendall said. “Which brings us to the scene itself.”

Kendall’s full name was Ashley Kendall, which wasn’t the name he was born with, but which had been his legal name for thirty years, so Corbin guessed that made it his real name, more or less. Frederick Peter Corbin III really was Corbin’s real real name, thank you. This was his first experience with a director. He was beginning to learn that directors didn’t think their job was directing the script, they thought their job was changing it. He was beginning to hate directors. Or at least to hate Kendall. He was beginning to learn that all directors were shitheads.

“What about the scene?” he asked.

“Well… doesn’t it seem a bit familiar to you?”

“It’s supposed to be familiar. This is police routine. This is what happens when a person comes in to report a…”

“Yes, but we’ve witnessed this particular scene a hundred times already, haven’t we?” Kendall said. “A thousand times. Even the detective reacting to the fact that she’s an actress is a cliché. Asking her if he’s seen her in anything. I mean, Freddie, I have a great deal of respect for what you’ve done here, the intricacy of the plot, the painstaking devotion to detail. But…”

“But what?”

“But I think there might be a more exciting way to set up the fact that her life has been threatened. Theatrically, I mean.”

“Yes, this is a play,” Corbin said. “I would assume we’d want to do it theatrically.”

“I know you’re a wonderful novelist,” Kendall said, “but…”

“Thank you.”

“But in a play…“

“A dramatic line is a dramatic line,” Corbin said. “This is the story of an actress surviving…”

“Yes, I know what it…”

“… a brutal murder attempt, and then going on to achieve a tremendous personal triumph.”

“Yes, that’s what it’s supposed to be about.”

“No, that’s what it is about.”

“No, this is a play about some New York cops solving a goddamn mystery.“

“No, that’s not what it’s…”

“Which you do very well, by the way. In your novels. There’s nothing wrong with stories about cops…”

“Even if they are crap,” Corbin said.

“I wasn’t about to say that,” Kendall said. “I wasn’t even thinking it. All I’m suggesting is that this shouldn’t be a play about cops.”

“It isn’t a play about cops.”

“I see. Then what is it?”

“A play about a triumph of will.”

“I see.”

“A play about a woman surviving a knife attack, and then finding in herself the courage to…”

“Yes, that part of it’s fine.”

“What part of it isn’t fine?”

“The cop stuff.”

“The cop stuff is what makes it real.”

“No, the cop stuff makes it a play about cops.”

“When a woman gets stabbed…”

“Yes, yes.”

“… she goes to the cops, Ashley. She doesn’t go to her chiropractor. Would you like her to go to her chiropractor after she’s stabbed?”

“No, I…”

“Because then it wouldn’t be a play about cops anymore, it’d be a play about chiropractors. Would that suit you better?”

“Why does she have to go to the cops before she’s stabbed?”

“That’s known as suspense, Ashley.”

“I see.”

“By the way, that’s a terrible verbal tic you have.”

“What is?”

“Saying ‘I see’ all the time. Somewhat sarcastically, in fact. It’s almost as bad as ‘You know.’ ”

“I see.”

“Exactly.”

“But tell me, Freddie, do you actually like cops?”

“I do, yes.”

“Well, nobody else does.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Nobody else in the whole wide world.”

“Please.”

“Believe it. No one wants to sit in a theater for three hours watching a play about cops.“

“Good. Because this isn’t a play about cops.”

“Whatever the fuck it’s about, I think we can effectively lose a third of the first act by cutting to the chase.”

“Lose all the suspense…”

“I don’t find a woman talking to cops suspenseful.”

“Lose all the character develop…”

“That can be done more theatrically…”

“Lose all…”

“… more dramatically.”

Both men fell silent. Sitting in the darkness beside his director, Corbin felt a sudden urge to strangle him.

“Tell me something,” he said at last.

“Yes, what’s that, Freddie?”

“And please don’t call me Freddie.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“It’s Fred, I prefer Fred. I have a thing about names. I like being called by the name I prefer.”

“So do I.”

“Okay, so tell me, Ashley… why’d you agree to direct this play in the first place?”

“I felt… I still feel it has tremendous potential.”

“I see. Potential.”

“Must be contagious,” Kendall said.

“Because I feel it has more than just potential, you see. I feel it’s a fully realized, highly dramatic theater piece that speaks to the human heart about survival and triumph. I happen to…”

“You sound like a press release.”

“I happen to love this fucking play, Ashley, and if you don’t love it…”

“I do not love it, no.”

“Then you shouldn’t have agreed to direct it.”

“I agreed to direct it because I think I can come to love it.”

“If I make it your play instead of mine.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Ashley, are you familiar with the Dramatists Guild contract?”

“This is not my first play, Freddie.”

“Fred, please. And, yes, I admit it, this is my first play, which is why I read the contract very carefully. Once a play goes into rehearsal, Ashley, the contract says not a line, not a word, not a comma can be changed without the playwright’s approval. That’s in the contract. We’ve been in rehearsal for two weeks now…”

“Yes, I know that.”

“And you’re suggesting…”

“Cutting some scenes, yes.”

“And I’m telling you no.”

“Freddie… Fred… do you ever want this fucking play you love so much to move downtown? Or do you want it to die up here in the boonies? Because I’m telling you, Fred, Freddie baby, that the way it stands now, your fully realized, highly dramatic theater piece that speaks to the human heart about survival and triumph is going to fall flat on its ass when it opens three weeks from now.”

Corbin blinked at him.

“Think about it,” Kendall said. “Downtown or here in the asshole of the city.”

Detective Bertram Kling lived in a studio apartment in Isola, from which he could look out his window and see the twinkling lights of the Calm’s Point Bridge. He could have driven over that bridge if he’d owned a car, but there was no point owning a car in the big bad city, where the subway was always faster if not particularly safer. The problem was that Deputy Chief Surgeon Sharyn Everard Cooke lived at the very end of the Calm’s Point line, which gave her a nice view of the bay, true enough, but which took a good forty minutes to reach from where Kling boarded the train three blocks from his apartment.

This was Sunday, the fifth day of April, exactly two weeks before Easter, but you wouldn’t have known it from the cold rain that drilled the windows of the subway car as it came up out of the ground onto the overhead tracks. A grizzled old man sitting opposite Kling kept winking at him and licking his lips. A black woman sitting next to Kling found this disgusting. So did he. But she kept clucking her tongue in disapproval, until finally she moved away from Kling to the farthest end of the car. A panhandler came through telling everyone she had three children and no place to sleep. Another panhandler came through telling everyone he was a Vietnam War veteran with no place to sleep.

The rain kept pouring down.

Kling’s umbrella turned inside out as he came down the steps from the train platform onto Farmers Boulevard, which Sharyn had told him he should stay on for three blocks before making a left onto Portman, which would take him straight to her building. He broke several of the umbrella ribs trying to get it right side out again, and tossed it into a trash can on the corner of Farmers and Knowles. He was wearing a black raincoat, no hat. He walked as fast as he could to the address Sharyn had given him, which turned out to be a nice garden apartment a block or so from the ocean. In the near distance, he could see the lights of a cargo ship pushing its way through the downpour.

He was thinking he’d never do this again in his life. Date a girl from Calm’s Point. A woman. He wondered how old she was. He was guessing early to mid-thirties. His age, more or less. Thirtysomething. In there. But who was counting? She would tell him later that night that she had just turned forty on October the fifteenth. “Birth date of great men,” she would say. “And women, too,” she would say, but would not amplify.

He was wringing wet when he rang her doorbell.

Never again, he was thinking.

She looked radiantly beautiful. He lost all resolve.

Her skin was the color of burnt almond, her eyes the color of loam, shadowed now with a smoky blue over the lids. She wore her black hair in a modified Afro that gave her the look of a proud Masai woman, her high cheekbones and generous mouth tinted the color of burgundy wine. Her casual suit was the color of her eye shadow, fashioned of a nubby fabric with tiny bright brass buttons. A short skirt and high-heeled pumps collaborated to showcase her legs. She did not look like a deputy chief surgeon. He almost caught his breath.

“Oh, dear,” she said, “you’re soaked again.”

“My umbrella quit,” he said, and shrugged helplessly.

“Come in, come in,” she said, and stepped back and let him into the apartment. “Give me your coat, we have time for a drink, I made the reservation for six-thirty, I could’ve met you in the city, you know, you didn’t have to come all the way out here, you said Italian, there’s a nice place just a few blocks from here, we could have walked it, but I’ll take the car, oh dear, this is wet, isn’t it?”

It occurred to her that she was rattling on.

It occurred to her that he looked cute as hell with his blond hair all plastered to his forehead that way.

She took his coat, debated hanging it in the closet with all the dry clothes there, said, “I’d better put this in the bathroom,” started to leave the foyer, stopped, said, “I’ll be right back, make yourself comfortable,” gestured vaguely toward a large living room, and vanished like a breeze over the savanna.

He stepped tentatively into the living room, checking it from the open door frame the way a detective might, the way a detective actually was, quick takes around the room, camera eye picking up impressions rather than details. Upright piano against one wall, did she play? Windows facing south to what had to be the bay, rainsnakes slithering down the wide expanse of glass. Sofa upholstered in leather the color of a camel hair coat he’d once owned. Throw pillows in earth shades scattered hither and yon around the room. A rug the color of cork. A large painting over the sofa, a street scene populated with black people. He remembered that she was black.

“Okay,” she said from the door frame, “what would you like to drink?” and came striding into the room, long-legged stride, he liked that about her, the fact that she was almost as tall as he was, just a few inches shorter, he guessed, five-nine, five-ten, in there. “I’ve got Scotch and I’ve got Scotch,” she said.

“I’ll take the Scotch,” he said.

“Water, soda, neat?”

“Little soda.”

“Rocks?”

“Please. You look beautiful,” he said, not expecting to say what he was thinking, and surprised when he heard the words leaving his mouth.

She looked surprised, too.

He immediately thought he’d said the wrong thing.

“Thank you,” she said softly, and lowered her eyes and went swiftly to a wall unit that looked like a bookcase with a built-in television and stereo but that turned out to have a drop-leaf front that revealed a bar behind it. He watched as she poured the Scotch — Johnnie Red — over ice cubes in two shortish glasses, added a little soda to each, and then carried the glasses, one in each hand, to where he was standing uncertainly near the sofa.

“Please sit,” she said. “I should have brought you a towel.”

“No, that’s okay,” he said, and immediately touched his wet hair, and then — seemingly embarrassed by the gesture — sat at once. He waited for her to sit opposite him, in a plum-colored easy chair that complemented her suit, and then raised his glass to her. She raised her own glass.

“Here’s to golden days,” he said, “and…”

“… and purple nights,” she finished for him.

They both looked surprised.

“How do you happen to know that?” he asked.

“How do you?”

“Someone I used to know.”

“Someone I used to know,” she said.

“Good toast,” he said. “Whoever.”

“So here’s to golden days and purple nights,” she said, and grinned.

“Amen,” he said.

Her smile was like sudden moonlight.

They drank.

“Good,” she said. “It’s been a long day.”

“Long week,” he said.

“I hope you like Northern Italian,” she said.

“I do.”

“You know, I really wish you hadn’t insisted on coming all the way…”

“First date,” he said.

She looked at him. For a moment, she thought he might be putting her on. But, no, he was serious, she could see that in his eyes. This was a first date, and on a first date, you went to a girl’s house to pick her up. There was something so old-fashioned about the notion that it touched her to the core. She suddenly wondered how old he was. All at once, he seemed so very young.

“I also checked movie schedules out here,” she said. “Do you like cop movies? The one about the bank heist is playing near the restaurant, the last show starts at ten after ten. What time do you have to be in tomorrow?”

“Eight.”

“Me, too.”

“Where?”

“Majesta. Rankin Plaza. That’s where…”

“I know. I’ve been there a lot.”

“What for?”

“Well, once I got shot, and another time I got beat up. You have to check in at Rankin if you’re applying for sick leave. Well, I guess you know that.”

“Yes.”

“Eight’s early.”

“I’ll be okay if I get six hours sleep.”

“Really. Just six hours?”

“Habit I developed in medical school.”

“Where was that?”

“Georgetown U.”

“Good school.”

“Yes. Who shot you?”

“Oh, one of the bad guys. That was a long time ago.”

“Who beat you up?”

“Some more bad guys.”

“Do you enjoy dealing with bad guys?”

“I enjoy locking them up. That’s why I’m in the job. Do you enjoy being a doctor?”

“I love it.”

“I love being a cop,” he said.

She looked at him again. He had a way of saying things so directly that they seemed somehow artfully designed. Again, she wondered if he was putting her on. But no, he seemed entirely guileless, a person who simply said whatever was on his mind whenever it occurred to him. She wasn’t sure she liked that. Or maybe she did. She realized she was studying his eyes. A greenish brown, she guessed they were, what you might call hazel, she guessed. He caught her steady gaze, looked puzzled for a moment. Swiftly, she looked down into her glass.

“What time do you leave for work?” he asked.

“I can make it in half an hour,” she said, and looked up again. This time, he was studying her. She almost looked away again. But she didn’t. Their eyes met, locked, held.

“That’d be seven-thirty,” he said.

“Yes.”

“So if the movie breaks at midnight…”

“It should, don’t you think?”

“Oh, sure. You’ll easily get your six hours.”

“Yes,” she said.

They both fell silent.

He was wondering if she thought he was dumb, staring at her this way.

She was wondering if he thought she was dumb, staring at him this way.

They both kept staring.

At last she said, “We’d better get going.”

“Right,” he said, and got immediately to his feet.

“Let me get your coat,” she said.

“I’ll put these in the sink,” he said.

“Okay,” she said, and started out of the room.

“Uh… Sharyn?” he said.

“Yes, Bert?”

Turning to him.

God, she was beautiful.

“Where’s the kitchen?” he said.

Michelle Cassidy was telling her agent all about the dumb lines she had to say in this stupid damn play. Johnny was listening with great interest. The last really good part he’d got for her was in the touring company of Annie, when she was ten years old. She was now twenty-three, which made it a long time between drinks. Johnny had landed her the leading role in the musical because she had a strong singing voice for a ten-year-old — the producer said she sounded like a prepubescent Ethel Merman — and also because the natural color of her hair was the same as the little orphan’s, a sort of reddish orange that matched the adorable darling’s dress with its white bib collar. Johnny knew the natural color of Michelle’s hair because he’d begun sleeping with her when she was just sixteen.

What happened was Michelle had toured the Annie role until she began developing tits at the age of twelve years and eight months, a despairing turn of events for all concerned, especially Johnny, who at the time represented only two other clients, one of whom was a dog act. Johnny figured that suddenly blossoming into a dumb curvaceous teenybopper was the end of Michelle’s career as a waif. But the red hair still shone like a traffic light, and it certainly didn’t hurt that he could tout her as the former star of Annie, even though her voice was beginning to sound a bit strident — wasn’t it only boys whose voices changed during adolescence? He auditioned her for a dinner theater production of Oliver! figuring she’d had experience as an orphan and maybe they could bind her chest, but the director said she looked too much like a girl, no kidding. So Johnny got her an orange juice commercial on the strength of the fiery red hair, and then a string of other commercials where she played a variety of bratty budding thirteen-year-olds in training bras and braces. When she was fourteen, he got her into an L.A. revival of The King and I as one of the children, even though by that time she was truly beginning to look a trifle voluptuous in those flimsy Siamese tops and pantaloons.

Truth was, Michelle’s voice had changed to something that now resembled the bleat of a sacrificial lamb — which she was soon to become, in a manner of speaking, although as yet unbeknownst to herself. She’d never been a very good actress, even when she was Tomorrow-ing it all over the stage, but during her television years she had picked up a barrelful of mannerisms that now made her look hopelessly amateurish. Too old for kiddy roles, too young for bimbo roles although she certainly looked the part, Johnny figured she would have to mature into her body, so to speak, before he could get her any decent adult roles. Meanwhile, so it shouldn’t be a total loss, he seduced her when she was sixteen, in a motel room in the town of Altoona, Pennsylvania, three miles from the dinner theater where she was playing one of the older children in Sound of Music.

Johnny Milton — his entire name was John Milton Hicks, but he had shortened it to just plain Johnny Milton, which he thought sounded snappier for an agent — was lying naked in bed beside Michelle on this rainy Sunday night, listening intently to her plight because he was almost a hundred percent certain that the first starring role he’d landed for her since the orphan gig was in a play that would be heading south the night after it opened. The theatrical doomsayers here in this city had already mutated the title from Romance to No Chance, a certain harbinger of failure. Johnny was worried. He became even more worried as Michelle recited some of the lines she had to say in the scene where the squadroom detective gets all excited about having seen her on Law & Order.

“I mean,” Michelle said, “this is supposed to be a precinct in New York’s theater district, Midtown North, Midtown South, whatever the hell they call it. So why is he wetting his pants over meeting a person had a bit part on Law & Order? Also, suppose Law & Order goes off by the time the play opens? If it opens. We make a reference to a TV show isn’t even on anymore, it’ll make us look like ancient history. If you want my honest opinion, Johnny, I think this play stinks on ice. You want to know what this play is? This play is something Freddie should’ve written for television, is what this play is. A movie of the week is what this play is. A piece of shit is what this play is, excuse my French.”

Johnny tended to agree with her.

“I open in this play,” Michelle went on, gathering steam, “I’ll be back doing dinner theater two weeks later. Make it two days later. If you can even book me ever again. I mean, really, John, who cares about the girl in this play, who cares if she gets to perform on opening night? Because you want to know something? The other play stinks, too, the play within the play, whatever the hell Freddie calls it, the play they’re supposed to be rehearsing. It’s even worse than the real play. He’ll get two Tonys for worst play of the year, the one he wrote and the one the playwright in his play wrote. How did I manage to get stuck in two lousy plays is what I’d like to know?”

Johnny was wondering what they could do to salvage this deplorable situation.

“Also, I think you should know Mark’s been playing a little grab-ass backstage,” Michelle said.

Mark Riganti. The actor playing a character named the Detective, who nearly faints with joy when the character named the Actress tells him she’s been on Law & Order. Mark was not a very good actor. Take a lousy play—two lousy plays, as Michelle had pointed out — add a lousy actor and a lousy actress in the leading roles, and what you’ve got is trouble. Though Johnny couldn’t fault Mark for groping Michelle backstage, which he himself was beginning to do at this very moment, albeit in bed.

“I’ll ask Morgenstern to talk to him,” he said.

“Lot of good that’ll do,” Michelle said. “He was there first.”

Johnny sighed heavily.

The trouble with Michelle — aside from her being a not very good actress who never could dance and who no longer possessed a very good singing voice — was that men could not keep their hands off her. Women, too, to hear her tell it. At least in Ohio, one time. The trouble was her looks were too damn distracting. People, men and women, tended to forget that someone who looked the way Michelle did could possibly be a good actress, which she wasn’t, anyway. Being so sumptuously endowed would have been a failing at any time, unless a girl wanted to play bimbos or hookers for the rest of her life, a not insignificant ambition for many actresses Johnny had known and incidentally slept with. But coming out of your dress in a role that called for the actress to recite lines like “This is the world’s noblest calling” could he something of an impediment in a play where the girl’s extraordinary talent is rewarded with stardom due to her courage, dedication and perseverance.

After getting stabbed, that is.

The plot of Freddie’s play revolved around the Actress getting stabbed by some crazy person whose identity is never made entirely clear because Freddie felt that resolving the mystery would cheapen the play. Freddie had more exalted interests in mind. Like exploring the concept of giving one’s all for one’s art, for example. The dedication of the Actress in his play was intended as a sly reference to the play’s title, in that her true romance is with the theater, which she loves from “the very depths of her soul,” as she puts it in a memorable soliloquy premised on the corniest scene in Chorus Line. In his play, Freddie loved to ponder the significance of even the tiniest creative act as opposed to the worthlessness of mundane matters like earning a living or feeding a family. Freddie’s Romance was a “play of ideas,” as he was fond of telling Kendall. Contrarily, Kendall felt the play was far too “mysterious” and not quite “serious” enough.

Neither of them seemed to understand something Johnny had known from the first time he’d ever read a crime novel: there ain’t no way you can turn a murder mystery into a silk purse. That’s because the minute somebody sticks a knife in somebody else, all attention focuses on the victim, and all you want to know is whodunit.

Which isn’t such a bad idea, he thought.

Focusing attention on the victim.