Magic Hour, Susan Isaacs [life changing books txt] 📗

come before the judge, I can arrange to have a lot of reporters at the courthouse. You can explain to them how I’m not scaring you—even though I’ve arrested you for withholding

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information in the matter of the death of Sy Spencer.”

“You are a low-class shit,” she said.

“Yeah, but a low-class shit with the power to arrest.”

There was a too-long moment of silence. I felt like closing my eyes, relaxing, but in the interests of projecting authority and macho intensity, I glared at her. At last, Lindsay propped herself on her elbow. “Sometimes I like low-class shits,” she said, her voice lazy, husky. She extended her hand to me.

“Ms. Keefe, let me be honest with you. As far as I can see, you’re not in that much trouble that you have to fuck a cop.”

She pulled away her hand. “You just have to answer a few questions, and chances are, your answers won’t get any further than me. All right?”

“Yes.” Brusque. The momentary fake desire was supplanted by her normal disdain.

“Did Sy confront you about your affair with Victor Santana?”

“Yes.”

“This isn’t Twenty Questions. Tell me about it.”

She finished glugging the water and took a second bottle.

“He didn’t raise his voice, not once, the whole time. He told me, very calmly, as if he were giving me the next day’s weather forecast, that I was a whore. That I’d lost my ability as an actor.” She stopped. She didn’t want to talk to me.

“Keep going,” I said.

Finally, reluctantly, she did. “He wanted me off the film.

He followed me around the house all that evening and the next morning, calling me Whore, as though that were my given name. ‘Going up to bed so early, Whore?’ He kept telling me I was ruining Starry Night. Always in that calm voice.”

“When did this start?”

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“The week he was killed. Monday night.”

“Was he threatening to fire you?”

“No. He wanted me to quit.”

“Why?”

“Why? ” she demanded. She gave a snort of contempt, as if I’d just asked the stupidest question of the twentieth century. “So I’d be in violation of my contract, that’s why. So he wouldn’t have to pay me. So he could get the guarantors to pay the completion insurance and start all over again.”

“Is that possible?”

“Of course it’s possible. And then the insurance company could sue me to recover their costs.”

“So you wouldn’t quit.”

“Of course not. It was an insane suggestion.”

“Why would he expect you to quit if the consquences to you would be so bad?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“Because he was trying to make me so upset, so frightened of him, that I’d do anything he wanted.”

“What was he doing?”

“Before he told me he knew about Victor, he’d already started being cold. Very cold.”

“He stopped sleeping with you?”

She gave me a look that showed her distaste; I was getting off on her sex life. “He wouldn’t touch me,” she said. “Do you want to know more? Of course you do. When I tried to take his hand, he pulled it away—as though I had leprosy.”

“But he wouldn’t say what was wrong?”

“Not at first. Just horrible coldness.”

“Was he cold in front of other people? On the set?”

“No. That threw me off. He was delightful to me on the set.”

“And how were you to him?”

“Oh, grow up. What do you think? That I was go-402 / SUSAN ISAACS

ing to let everyone know I was having terrible problems with the executive producer? He was acting very loving to me, so I acted loving to him. I thought: Well, he hasn’t made anything public; maybe we can work it out. I stopped seeing Victor—in a private sense—on Wednesday.”

“You told Santana it was over?”

“No. I never burn bridges. What if I couldn’t fix things with Sy? I just told him I was having a messy, painful period.

Very bloody.”

“That’s nice.”

“I know men. It works. In any case, I did everything I could to heal the breach with Sy. If not personally, then professionally. But it was so strange. And even when things got really terrible, we were still playing loving in front of everybody else.”

“Like the day he was killed, taking a wad of cash from him? Loving like that?”

“Don’t make it sound like I was picking his pocket! It was a homey, wifely gesture.”

“You said things got terrible. When?”

“Thursday morning. My car came a little before six, and when I left the bedroom to go downstairs, Sy was out there in the hall, waiting.” Her face, under the sweat and layers of makeup, went rigid. Her mouth began to move mechanically, like a marionette’s. She was somewhere between unsettled and petrified. “He told me—he sounded so detached—that he had all kinds of friends. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I wanted to get away from him. He was standing right up against me. His face was less than an inch from mine. I could see each whisker where he hadn’t shaved. He said some of his friends weren’t very nice people, but they’d invested in Starry Night and they’d heard that the dailies were terrible. They were very unhappy, and they wanted MAGIC HOUR / 403

me to quit. If I didn’t, Sy said he couldn’t be held responsible for the repercussions.”

“Did you ask what the repercussions were?”

“Yes.” Her body gave a fast, powerful involuntary shudder, almost a convulsion.

“What did he say would happen?”

“Acid in the face.”

“Jesus! What did you do?”

“I told him I was calling the police. I marched back into the bedroom and picked up the phone, but he grabbed it from me. I let him take it. The whole scene was so predictable.”

“Did he make any more threats?”

“No, of course not. He backed down. I knew he would.

He actually lost his cool, the little bastard. Apologized all over himself. Begged me to forgive him.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told him I’d consider it.” Lindsay’s lips arched into something like a smile. “I knew how to handle Sy. I’d let him go out to