“Milano,” he said, but didn’t rise.
The men glanced up and smiled, politely, but neither shook my hand. I caught a glimpse of myself in a gold-framed mirror. In my wrinkled On the Waterfront T-shirt and cargo pants, I realized I must look like Abner’s homeless and deranged friend. The two could enjoy the bohemian style of a kooky writer they had hired; his revolting pals were something else again.
“Take a seat,” Abner went on. “I was just telling Sandy and Toby about my little, uh, situation.”
I sat, uneasily. The lack of welcome filled me with dread, and I suddenly recalled that George Cukor had replaced Robert Mulligan as the director of Rich and Famous; it was the old director’s last film.
Abner was gesturing to a sheet of paper on a glass table between them. I made out the threatening e-mail he had shown me.
“And if that isn’t bad enough,” he was telling them, “take a look at this …”
Again, Abner started to undress.
My eyes rolling, unhappily, I checked out the view from his and Taylor’s Riverside Drive penthouse. As I watched boats chugging up the Hudson, I heard the uncomfortable sighs of his bosses as they were exposed to his flesh. Then, picking up sounds of a shirt being pulled back on, I returned my gaze.
“Check this out, too.”
Abner had placed a few photographs on the table. They were hastily snapped shots of the bullet-grazed diner window.
“Milano here took these, as part of his investigation.” Abner gave me a quick glance that warned me not to contradict. “I got his name from a friend who’d had a nasty divorce.” Then he spoke to his two guests in a mano-a-mano undertone. “And I wouldn’t have hired someone like him if things weren’t this far gone. If the threats continue, I’ll have no choice but to charge him to the studio.”
The two execs checked out the pictures and then me, with equal distaste.
“You got anything to add before I rest my case?” Abner asked me, and his cold stare told me I did not.
Ticked off at being treated like disreputable help—and lied about, to boot—I shook my head very, very slowly.
“Good.” Abner turned back to his friends. “Now I don’t mean to pressure you, but if you want me to make the deadline for my first draft, somebody’s got to pull the trigger about the love story … in a manner of speaking.” He chuckled, but I could sense he was nervous.
The two execs looked thoughtfully at each other. Then one leaned in close to Abner, and his sweet cologne wafted into my nose.
“Can we speak in private?” he asked, discreetly.
“Sure,” Abner answered. Then, without hesitation, he told me, “There are grapes in the kitchen.”
—
I sat in Abner and Taylor’s immaculate kitchen, looking at a mounted set of knives, debating whether to carve my initials into their fancy, Fifties-style Formica table. I had no more moral qualms. I would lie to Abner outright, tell him I had no idea who was threatening him, then mount a lengthy investigation and bleed his walrus body white. If he got killed in the meantime, that was life. I might be able to help my mother and get to see The Day the Clown Cried.
I heard muffled talk from the next room, then people standing up, and a back or two being slapped. Leather and suede were pulled and zipped. The front door opened and closed. Then Abner hissed out, “Yesss!”
In a second, he was spread across the kitchen doorway.
“Well,” he said, smiling broadly, his face a shocking shade of pink. “Looks like that’s the end of the story. The love story, I mean.”
Whistling, he marched forward, his short arms swinging, like a merry squire in an operetta. He placed his fingers into a bowl of grapes and broke off an entire stem. Then he tried to fit them all into his mouth at one time.
A second later, they were stomped on the floor, and I wasn’t making wine.
“What the hell are you doing?!” I screamed.
“What do you mean?” he asked, stunned, looking down at his flattened snack. “Saving the project. It worked perfectly. They’d rather eighty-six the love story than incite the whole fan base, let alone pay for my protection. I played them, like a—what do you call it?—a fancy violin.”
Grumbling at the mess, Abner stooped to retrieve the fruit but didn’t, to my surprise, put it back in his mouth.
“Then you mean—” I was stammering now. “That’s it?”
“Look, we scratched each other’s backs. You got a check. And I got a final spur to get the L.A. boys to cave. It’s just lucky I went shopping for bread that day, right?”
Abner chuckled, fingering a new batch of grapes, but tentatively, assessing my mood. As I saw my meal ticket—an appropriate name for him—disappearing, I desperately grabbed onto any argument I could find.
“But … what about … the guy? The fanatic? He’s still out there, you know.”
Abner’s answer was at the ready. “Prince Corno and Lady Beluga won’t be making kissy-face anymore. So he’ll have nothing to be mad about. He’ll fade back into the ether. Case closed.”
He was right, of course. Abner had thought of everything and with more savvy than I would ever have given him credit for. It left me out in the ether, too, or the cold, or in the dust, or wherever the worst place was. It left me with just my mother. And she might soon be gone.
I lunged across the table at him.
The two of us crashed down onto his slick, parqueted floor. We rolled into the legs of the kitchen table, toppling two of the chairs. No fighter, Abner was slapping both of his hands into my back, like he was playing a bass. Not doing much better, I was pinching his cheeks like a psychotic relative.
I remembered that Lee Remick had replaced Lana Turner in Anatomy of a Murder. Something about the costumes.
“Milano,” Abner cringed, kneeing me continually in the thigh, “what the hell are you doing?”
The question didn’t stop me; something else did. Abner had pushed a small gun into my head.
“DON’T WORRY,” HE SAID. “IT ISN’T REAL.”
