Laura Lippman - Another Thing to Fall

Although twenty-four hours had passed since the Internet had provided helpful video of Selene wandering dazedly through Penn Station, Tess expected to find a young woman still suffering the effects of her long night’s journey into day. Yet the actress – actor – made her 11 A.M. call time without any sign of wear or tear. Her skin was glowing, her eyes fresh and bright. Oh, to be twenty again.

“I’m so sorry you got sick up in New York,” Selene said, sitting in the makeup chair. It took more than an hour to arrange her hair in the elaborate style that had been copied from one of the portraits of Betsy Patterson, a so-called triple portrait by Gilbert Stuart, which was pinned to the mirror, a reference point for the stylist. “But that’s the risk with Mexican food – what do they call it, Petaluma ’s revenge? I wanted to take you to a hospital, but Derek said you’d be okay if we just let Moby drive you home, and I could follow on the train. Did you know the train is actually faster than a car?”

So that’s how you want to play it, Tess thought. She and Flip had discussed at length how she should behave with Selene, and he had urged her to pretend to accept Selene’s version of events – even as she allowed Selene to suspect that Tess was running her own game. As someone who could flub a role as a spear carrier – this was not hyperbole, Tess had been fired from her bit as a supernumerary in Aida a few years ago – Tess wasn’t sure she had the acting chops to achieve the desired effect. But then, the whole point of the exercise was to act badly.

“Oh, it was fine,” she said. “When nausea comes on that way, the only place you want to be is your own bed. I so appreciate you getting me home. I’m not quite recovered – that’s why Flip hired a rent-a-cop to guard your condo last night. But I’m getting better.”

“And you’re not mad at me?” Selene put on a little-girl voice, her eyes sliding away from Tess’s reflected gaze.

“No, it’s not your fault I had a bum quesadilla.”

“I don’t remember you eating a quesadilla…”

“Didn’t I? The chips, then. Although we all ate the chips, didn’t we?” Selene had licked the salt off one chip, exactly one chip, as Tess recalled, while still maintaining that she could eat whatever she wanted, thanks to her fantastic metabolism. “Oh well, what does it matter what caused it? The thing is, I’m still a little shaky, and I can’t let that get in the way of Job One, which is looking after you, especially now that we’re going twenty-four-seven. Which means, of course, I’m going to require backup. I’m only one woman, I can’t be with you constantly.”

“Back” – Selene paused almost five seconds before squeaking out – “up?”

By then she had registered the tall blonde entering the makeup trailer. It was Tess’s oldest friend, Whitney Talbot, whose very posture seemed to scream “boarding school headmistress on crack.” This was Jean Harris before she shot Dr. Herman Tarnower. Mere moments before. Whitney was wearing riding pants and boots, although Tess knew that her friend hadn’t ridden for years, and the kind of gone-to-seed Burberry blazer whose elbow patches weren’t for show. In fact, Tess was certain that she recognized the blazer from their freshman year in college, and she had thought it looked like a dog’s blanket then.

“Around the clock?” Selene said sharply, dropping her usual little-girl lilt. “Isn’t that excessive?”

“Not at all. What if something had happened to you in New York when I got sick? And, truthfully, this isn’t just about you, Selene.” The girl gave the tiniest bit of a pout, as if she found it sacrilegious to suggest that anything was not all about her. “This is a twenty-five-million-dollar production. If anything happens to you, all that money will be lost.”

“But they have insurance for that,” she said, her antennae up.

“Some. But they wouldn’t recoup all their losses, and they wouldn’t be compensated for the money that they expect to make when Mann of Steel takes off. Anyway, this is Whitney Talbot.”

Whitney shook Selene’s hand so hard that what little flesh the girl had on her arms wobbled up to the shoulder and back again. Skinny as she was, Selene didn’t have a lot of muscle tone.

“Delighted,” Whitney said. “What was your name again? I’m afraid that I don’t get to the movies much.”

“Selene Waites.”

“Right. You were in the movie about the prodigy.”

“P-p-prostitute.”

“Well, that’s a kind of prodigy, isn’t it? And I’m sure you were utterly convincing in the part.”

“Th-thanks.”

Whitney was acting, too, of course, but only a little. Tess knew that her friend really did go to the symphony more often than the cinema, and she wasn’t inclined to be impressed by any actress, even one who insisted on being called an actor. The movies that Whitney knew tended to feature Katharine Hepburn, Myrna Loy, or Jean Arthur. Or, as she liked to say: “They were called the talkies for a reason, once upon a time.”

Tess patted Selene’s bony little shoulder, and the girl shot her a look, as if it were a breach of etiquette to touch her without permission. “Anyway, Whitney’s going to hang here on set today, then I’ll meet you back at the apartment, where we’ll both be sleeping for the duration of the shoot.”

“You and me?” Selene’s voice squeaked.

“You, me, and Whitney. Quite a threesome, don’t you think, but you’ve got all those empty rooms, right? Oh, I might sneak home to check up on my houseguest, Lloyd, but Whitney will be there every night.”

“With my rifle,” Whitney added.

Selene bit her lip, studying the two women. Tess was determined not to underestimate her again, and she doubted that the girl would give in easily. But, for now, she seemed cowed, and Tess felt more than comfortable leaving her in Whitney’s care.

“My family was distantly related to the Pattersons,” Whitney said, peering over Selene’s shoulder to study the facsimile of the Gilbert Stuart triptych. “Of course, we kept our money.”

The production office was still cordoned off, an official crime scene for at least one more day, and the writing staff had set up a makeshift workstation in another suite of offices one floor down. Tess was impressed to see Lloyd at the photocopier, running off pages with the rapt attention of a young novice.

“He doing okay?” Tess asked Ben, who was working nearby. Well, lolling, but he could have been thinking deep thoughts about the script in front of him.

“He’s great, actually. Seems thrilled to do anything we ask, and never complains, even about the most trivial assignments. I think he would draw my bathwater if I asked him – and drink from it afterward.”

“We are talking about Lloyd, right?”

Ben nodded. “But you didn’t come up here just to check on Lloyd, I’m guessing.”

“Take a walk with me,” she said. “It’s gorgeous outside.”

They wandered through the Tide Point complex. Built on the old Procter & Gamble site, it had taken the names of P &G products for the various buildings – Cascade, Joy, Dawn, Ivory. Perhaps the developers thought it a whimsical tribute. Tess remembered the hundreds of jobs lost when the plant was closed and found the theme in dubious taste.

“Want coffee?” Ben asked, gesturing to the outpost of Daily Grind just outside the fenced parking area.

“A little late in the day. I try not to drink coffee after ten or so.”

“Vodka, then?”

She laughed. “Maybe a little early.”

“Ah, it was ever thus for me. Too late or too early, never right on time.”