Laura Lippman - Another Thing to Fall

The television droned in the background, keeping him company. One of the cable channels was doing an all-weekend marathon of The Boom Boom Room with “extras” – shopworn trivia that would be old news to diehard fans, and who but diehard fans would watch a marathon of The Boom Boom Room ? Besides, some of the so-called trivia was just plain lies. He and his mom had not lived in their car when they first went out to Los Angeles. They had a perfectly nice apartment, in a building favored by lots of young actors. And, yes, he had been in the Mickey Mouse Club, but not the cool one, which spawned Britney, Justin, Christina, et al. He had been in the lame 1970s version. But no reason to sweat that inaccuracy, given that it made people think he was a lot younger than he was. Then again, if people thought he was doing the Mickey Mouse Club back in the early 1990s, they might conclude he had aged horribly.

It was so odd, watching his young self. He was a better actor now, no doubt, and his face was more interesting. But who knew that age was so thickening ? Not just the waistline, but everything – face, features, even his feet. Then again, some of his peers seemed to get thinner, and that wasn’t attractive either. They looked gaunt, dried up. Maybe it was just his imagination, but it seemed the previous generation of actors – Nicholson, Connery, Hackman – had aged much better.

Depressed, he grabbed the remote by the sink and clicked away, running through the channels rapid-fire. He rested for a moment on the news story about Greer’s boyfriend, getting killed when he wouldn’t surrender. Man, that was weird. But then, other people’s passions always struck Johnny as mildly ludicrous. In a movie or a television show, when both people were hot, you could get it. Besides, it was in the script. But just two ordinary people, getting all crazy over each other? Johnny had been married briefly in his twenties and taken a big financial hit in the divorce, and that had been enough to decide for him that he didn’t want anything long-term, ever again. In California, he used an escort service – very discreet, with nice girls, ones who weren’t too hard or used up, and he was careful to keep things relatively kink-free, lest he ever show up on a client list; you’d never catch him having to explain some girl dressed up like a Brownie. God, he would kill for a brownie. Maybe he should find someone, sublimate the hunger with sex. Here in Baltimore, he had assumed he would hook up with someone in the production, but it hadn’t happened. Yet. He still thought the scary blonde, the one who had pretended not to know who he was, had potential. Yes, she was kind of terrifying, but he found that attractive in a woman.

But she was assigned to watch Selene, and he would be crazy to try and get close to anyone who was part of Selene’s camp.

Fully oiled and moisturized, he slid into bed, switching the television back to his own marathon. The trivia box popped up beneath his chin, his beautifully sharp chin: Where is he now ? The answer was provided after a string of commercials for erectile dysfunction cream and some magic stain remover. “Johnny Tampa has retired from Hollywood, but a comeback is rumored for 2008.”

You betcha, he thought.

“That was fast,” Marie said sleepily, watching the ten o’clock news. “People will get mad, wait and see.”

“People will get mad because they solved a murder?”

“They’ll say that it was because it was a white girl, and she worked on that television show, that they never put that much effort into the drug murders. But it’s so obvious that the boyfriend must have done it.”

He shouldn’t ask any questions, shouldn’t draw the conversation out. Change the topic, change the channel. But he couldn’t help himself. “Obvious because he ran away and didn’t surrender?”

“Exactly. It would make a good Law and Order episode, only it would need more twists. On television, the boyfriend wouldn’t be guilty. It would be someone else.”

Change the topic, change the topic, change the topic . “Who?”

“Why, someone with the production. Like, she’d be having an affair with her boss, and maybe his wife found out. Or that skinny little actress girl killed her because… she wouldn’t sell her urine so she could pass the contractual drug test.”

“The actress in the movie has a contractual drug test?” News to him, but Marie often knew such things, thanks to her steady diet of magazines.

“Not in real life. I’m making stuff up. Like you and Bob did, when we were younger. Remember? I never said anything out loud because you thought I was just the stupid little sister, but I would be doing my homework at the dining room table while you talked in the kitchen. You had the best ideas.”

“Bob did. I could barely keep up with him.”

“Bob added the flourishes, fleshed them out. But all the ideas started with you. Bob always gave you credit.”

“Talking about Bob makes me sad.” And anxious, so very anxious .

“I’m sorry.”

Only he was not thinking of Bob just now but of Marie, the Marie he re-met the summer he and Bob graduated from college, the Marie who had somehow outgrown her scabby knees and pigtails and turned into a really striking girl. Not exactly beautiful, but sexy. The early 1970s had suited her. He supposed he should have realized then that one dramatic transformation indicated there could always be another. If it had been hard to find little Marie in that long-haired girl, then it was impossible to see the traces of twenty-one-year-old Marie in the puffy features and swollen ankles of the woman lying next to him on the sofa. And yet, he didn’t love her any less. The case could be made that he loved her more than ever, especially since they had lost Bob. Oh, Bob – why didn’t you come to me earlier, tell me the truth sooner? Why did you let it get so out of hand, why did you lie to me?

“ Law and Order always has a second twist, in the second part,” he said to Marie. “A legal maneuver, a conflict of interest. So there would have to be a third thing, something really mysterious.”

“Like what?”

“I haven’t a clue. As you said, Bob was the one who made my ideas work.”

“But you had good ideas, too,” she said, her voice soft with sleep. She would be asleep before the weather forecast. He couldn’t carry her to bed anymore, but he would shake her gently, guide her there, as if she were a sleepwalker. “You always had the best ideas.”

Oh, yes, he was just teeming with good ideas. They were in this fix because of his good ideas, because he thought he knew better than Bob how to go about things.

Stop, his mind advised him, in the cadence of a telegram. Had he ever received a telegram, or did he know of them only via the movies and cartoons? Had he ever lived a life, or was he still waiting for life to start? Fate had given him a chance to make things all right. Stop. Stop. Stop.

Why was it taking so long for Marie to fall asleep tonight?

Lottie sat in her office, free at last to still her mind and try to absorb the news. Alone, she allowed her legs to swing free, kicking against her chair, a little-kid habit she was careful to police around others, because she knew it made her look cute, precious. But it was going on eleven-thirty, the end of a long and turbulent day. She should feel relieved, not anxious. Not only was Greer’s murder essentially solved, but there hadn’t been an incident on set for almost a week – unless you counted Johnny Tampa’s complaint that someone had mailed him an unflattering tabloid article, and no one was taking that seriously – except Johnny. No fires, literal or figurative, to put out, no locals trying to State-and-Main them, no snafus with permits. Even the weather had been kind, beautiful October day after beautiful October day. The production had been blissfully uneventful – except, of course, for Greer’s death, and the police had removed that from the movie’s moral balance sheet as well.