Evan Hunter: Romance

“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.