“Sesame or poppy, okay? And butter, no margarine.”
Even as I was smiling, I was aware that Katie had never been prepared for anything. That had been her charm, and now it was her downfall.
—
Holding a brown deli bag, I stood outside the glitzy Times Square Marriott Hotel, where Graus’s story had so abruptly ended. Crime scene tape was already sagging on the front doors; tourists and other gawkers were starting to thin out. Everyone was moving on. For most people, after all, Graus was just a guy who played Nazis. A few cops, however, still hung around.
Looking up, I was distracted by something. A huge new billboard featured Marthe in a repeat of her old ocelot campaign. This time, though, she was selling a sciatica pill from the conglomerate that owned the perfume. At least she was bringing in some cash for the taxes, I thought. Then I gazed back down at the street.
Standing near a patrolman was Detective Florent.
Why was everything always in his precinct? This was what happened when you lived near “the crossroads of the world”; I made a mental note to move.
At the moment, however, it was too late.
“Hey!” he shouted. “You!”
He’d been whispering to a cop; I bet he was saying something like, “There’s that loser I’m always running into.”
Then he was in my face.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“It’s a free country,” I said, brilliantly, and tried to get by.
“How come when there’s something bad, you’re always around?” Florent seemed genuinely confused.
“See, you’re a cop. You’re only around when something bad is happening. I’m around when good things are happening, too. But you’re not there.” This had the makings of a decent joke, but it was too long-winded. Florent didn’t get it, and it only made him angrier.
“Don’t give me that. Tell me what—”
“Look, I heard about it on the radio,” I said, to mollify him. “I just thought I’d take a look. I’m a movie fan, remember?”
Florent stopped for a second. Then his cheesily handsome features shifted. “Hey, Graus Menzies was an extra in The Day the Clown Cried, wasn’t he?”
I was getting out of there. His trivial qualifications were growing by the encounter, and it worried me.
“Wasn’t he?” he shouted, now in the distance.
—
I barged into my apartment suddenly enough to startle Katie. Dressed in T-shirt and shorts, she was sitting up, against the bed’s pillows, clicker in hand. She pressed it to mute.
“Wow,” she said. “You scared me.”
“Sorry.” I was agitatedly handing her the deli goods.
“Look. He’s dancing on the ceiling, like in that Lionel Richie video.”
I glanced at the classics movie channel, LCM. Fred Astaire was doing his famous number from Royal Wedding.
“That was copied from this,” I said, curtly. “And Jane Powell replaced Judy Garland who replaced June Allyson.”
“Know-it-all.” Katie was peeking at her bagel in its wrapper. “Hey, I said sesame or poppy, and this is whole whea—”
“Just eat it, for chrissake!” I found myself screaming at her.
There was a long pause. Katie looked hurt. She rewrapped the bagel very, very slowly. She pressed the mute button again. Fred could be heard tapping on the wall.
“If I want to be yelled at, I’d go back to Graus,” she said, softly. “Oh, wait a minute …” Then her bottom lip began to tremble.
Beaten by her childlike quality, I sat down beside her. “Look, Katie. I can’t guarantee your safety here. The cops could show up, any minute. We’ve got to figure out what to …”
Katie was nuzzling at me now. In another second she was kissing me, gently, all over my neck. Another man could have resisted this obvious attempt at diversion. But another man might have had more women in his apartment recently. Besides, as I mentioned, I liked Katie.
“Mute it again,” I whispered.
—
When we woke up, Royal Wedding had ended, and the station was showing an old short from the thirties where dogs played all the parts. A bulldog judge was sentencing a poodle prisoner to death. Silly as it was, it gave me a chill.
“It’s nicer with you than with Johnny,” Katie was murmuring. “He was never really there, you know.”
I took the compliment, but a police siren cut short my pleasure. Only when it faded did I relax back into the pillow.
Katie kept complaining about Johnny, and I looked as much as listened. Left with only her T-shirt, she leaned languidly against the pillow. She looked like Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind after Clark Gable carried her up the stairs. Only, you know, without pants.
Suddenly, my mind raced, as if toward an answer. George Cukor was replaced by Victor Fleming as director of Gone With the Wind … Fleming directed The Wizard of Oz, in which Jack Haley replaced Buddy Ebsen …
“And Johnny always did things for the worst reasons. You’ve at least got a real passion, Roy.…”
Dudley Moore replaced John Malkovich in Crazy People … George Segal was replaced by Moore in 10… and twenty years later, Segal replaced Moore in The Mirror Has Two Faces.…
“Johnny just talked about how much money he could make off trivial stuff …” She started teasing my foot with her own, ready to go again.
Barbra Streisand replaced Lisa Eichhorn in All Night Long … Eichhorn starred in Yanks with Richard Gere, who replaced John Travolta in American Gigolo.… Recently, Travolta was starring in a film co-starring Isabelle Adjani and directed by Roman Polanski, which was scuttled over “creative differences,” even as Steve Martin prepared to take over the lead. It was to be an adaptation of Dostoyevky’s The Double.
“… and Johnny had a nose job, did you know that? I mean, what’s with that? He wasn’t an actor, he was a director …”
Someone who was Gone With the Wind … who had Two Faces or was a Double … and had something to do with a 10 …
I quickly sat up, yanked my pants from the floor, where I’d flung them. I scrambled in the pockets, for the last vestiges of Johnny’s cash, which had paid for Katie’s breakfast.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
Dollar bills flew out and were thrown aside. It was the change I was after. A quarter and a nickel rolled onto my rug. Then, at long last, so did another one of Johnny’s coins.
A fake dime.
