Donna Andrews - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 130, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 793 & 794, September/October 2007

“So you made love and—”

“We made love. I mean, it wasn’t the first time. The last couple of weeks, we’d been sleeping together. And he tried real hard to deal with me not taking my top off. I wouldn’t let him touch my breasts.” She smiled with bloody teeth. “My scream-queen breasts.” She shook her head. Or tried. She was halfway through turning her head to the left when she stopped. She had a bad headache, too, apparently. “It was building up. His thing about my breasts. And tonight, afterwards, he just went crazy. Said if I really loved him I’d be completely naked for him. I liked him. But not enough to trust him. You know, with my secret.”

She lighted a cigarette with a red plastic lighter. She looked around a bit and then back at me and said, “It’s why I left L.A.”

“What is?”

“I don’t have breasts anymore. I had this really bad kind of breast cancer. I had to have both of them removed.” She exhaled through bloody lips. “So how would that be? A scream queen known for her breasts doesn’t have any anymore? I went to Eugene, Oregon to get the diagnosis. I kind’ve suspected I had breast cancer. I didn’t want anybody in L.A to know. I paid cash, gave a fake name, they didn’t have any idea who I was. I had the double mastectomy there, too. I had some money saved and I used it to disappear. I just couldn’t’ve handled all the publicity. All the bullshit about my breasts inspiring all these young boys — and then not having them anymore. You know how the tabloids are. And then do a couple of weepy interviews on TV. So I’ve just been traveling around. And I’ll be doing more traveling tomorrow. Because I know Bill will call some reporter or tabloid or somebody like that. I just don’t want to face it.”

She said, “C’mere, okay?”

I stood up and walked over to her. My knees trembled. I didn’t know why.

She took my right hand and guided it to her chest and then slid it inside the terrycloth so that I could feel the scarring from the mastectomy. I wanted to jerk my hand away. I’d never felt anything like that before. But then a tenderness came over me and I let my hand linger and then she eased my hand out of her robe and kissed my fingers, as if she was grateful.

Then she started sobbing, and it was pretty bad, and I said everything I knew to say but it didn’t do any good so I steered her into bed and just lay with her there in the darkness and we held hands and she talked about it all, everything from the day she first felt the tiny lump on the underside of her left breast to being so afraid she’d die from the anesthetic — she’d had an uncle who died while being put under, died right there on the table — and how she went through depression so bad she lost twenty-five pounds in three months and how that then turned around and became the opposite kind of eating disorder, this relentless urge to gorge, which she was battling now.

In the morning, I helped her load her car. She didn’t have all that much. I told her I’d pay the rent off with the money she gave me and return the key. She kissed me then for the first and only time — the kind of kiss your sister would give you — and then she was gone.

The story hit one of the supermarket papers three weeks later. She’d been right. The story dealt with the irony of a girl who’d been made into a scream queen at least partly because of her beautiful breasts losing them to cancer. A minister somewhere said that it was God’s wrath, exploiting your body for filthy Hollywood money, and then getting your just desserts. You know how God’s people like to talk.

As for me... tomorrow I’m flying to L.A. My dad has a friend out there who owns a video company that produces training films for various companies. Not exactly Paramount pictures, or even Roger Corman. But a start. My folks even gave me five thousand dollars as seed money. They’re pretty sure that in a year I’ll be back here. And maybe they’re right...

It’s funny about Michele. I watch her old videos all the time. That’s how I prefer to remember her. It’s not because of her breasts. It’s because of that lovely girly radiance that was in her eyes and her smile back in those days.

I still watch them and I’m sure Spence does, too. He got a job in Chicago and moved there a couple months back. Bill joined the Army. I wonder if he still watches them.

But most of all I wonder if Michele ever watches them. Probably not.

Not now, anyway. But maybe someday.

© 2007 by Lawrence Block

Art by Mark Evans

Lawrence Block, novelist and short story writer par excellence, was also the editor, in 2006, of one of Akashic’s city-themed titles, Manhattan Noir . Said Booklist : “The volumes are uneven, but when the right editor sits at the desk, the results can be well worthwhile, as is the case here.” Mr. Block’s latest novel is Lucky at Cards (Hard Case Crime).

A little after midnight, Gordon Benning, a balding gastroenterologist with a perpetually dyspeptic expression on his long face, announced as he dealt the cards that his next deal would be his final hand. Several players indicated their agreement, and one, a CPA with a propensity for stating the obvious, said, “So this is the last round.”

And so it was. Richard Krale (Dick to his friends, Richard to his wife, who reserved the diminutive for a specific portion of her husband) would have preferred it otherwise. He wished the game could go on for another three hours, so that he might recoup his losses, or that it had ended three hours earlier, when he’d been briefly ahead. Now he had, what? Six, seven hands to get even?

The game was dealer’s choice, and ninety percent of the time the choice was seven-card stud. The dealer anteed a buck for the table, the limit was five dollars, ten dollars on the last card. (The same betting rules applied in five-card stud. In draw poker, the bet was five dollars before the draw, ten dollars after.)

Krale was the host, as well as being the evening’s big loser. In the latter capacity more than the former, he suggested doubling the betting limits for the final round. That was all right with Mark Taggert, who had a mountain of chips in front of him, but the other players shook their heads dismissively, and that was that. It was by no means unusual for someone, generally the biggest loser, to make this suggestion; it was always voted down.

And that was just as well for Krale, as it turned out, because his luck was no better in the last round than it had been for the preceding three hours. It was worse, if anything, because desperation led him to play hands he’d have been well advised to fold at their onset, and to stay to the end in hands where he should have cut his losses. When Benning dealt the last hand of the evening, Krale chased flush and straight possibilities, backed into two pair, queens over fives, tried to buy the pot with a raise, and lost to Taggert’s three sixes.

“Hey, the night’s a pup,” he said. “No reason to quit now.”

No one even bothered to respond. They were all counting their chips and figuring out what they had coming, and in turn they announced their totals and waited for Krale to pay them. He’d set aside the cash they’d all bought in with, and when that was gone he still had two players to pay off — Norm McLeod, who had $120 coming, and Taggert, who’d had a very good last round.

He dug out his wallet, counted out five twenties and a pair of tens, and paid McLeod, who looked almost apologetic as he pocketed the money. Taggert, who looked not at all apologetic, announced that the chips in front of him came to $538.