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

sunny “Hi, I love you…” I felt blue, for Bonnie’s sake. “So you know I have someone.”

“Yes.”

“I’m getting married.”

“Congratulations.” Direct. No bitchiness.

“Thanks. She’s really a find. Teaches learning-disabled kids. Wants all the things I want, you know? Stability. A family. And she’s Catholic. That’s important to me.” Bonnie double-knotted her sneakers. “Lately—I guess since AA—I’ve been feeling this need to return to the Church. To have a place to pray. And for the ritual too, I suppose.”

I was really going on. But I wanted to tell her that the last time I’d been to church, I was eight, and the Mass had been in Latin. I was wondering what it would be like if you understood it, whether you’d wonder, This is what the big deal was all about? and lose your faith. I was a little worried about that.

And I wanted to tell her about how when my mother had married my father, she’d agreed to raise any children Catholic. She knew her obligations. She dropped me off once a week for confraternity class, but after I made my First Communion she’d said: Steve, dear, you’re a big boy. If you want to go to Queen of Whatever, you’ll have to go on your bike.

I would take you, but I’m on my feet all week. Sunday is my day of rest. I’d gone every single Sunday from that May until right after Christmas, when it began to snow. It was such a cold winter; the roads became a solid sheet of ice. After the spring thaw I never went back.

I started to smile then; I’d gotten to know Bonnie so well I could almost hear her: You’re forty years old. Stop blaming your mother.

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But I wanted to tell her how my mother hadn’t sent Easton at all. She’d protected him from the killer Roman virus. Years later, when he was hanging out with the Southampton summer crowd, I’d heard him on the phone, going on about how his great-great-grandfather had been the Episcopal bishop of Long Island. I had no idea if my mother had told him that or if he’d made it up, but I knew it was a lie. What kind of person would lie about a God thing?

I was jabbering again. “Listen, I know I’m going to feel ridiculous when I go in and say, ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been thirty-two years since my last confession.’

But it’s something I want to do, and Lynne’s so supportive.

Okay, I don’t need someone to hold my hand and drag me over to the priest. But it’s nice that the Church will be part of our life together.” Bonnie turned away from me, braced herself against the wall with both hands and leaned forward to stretch out her calf muscles. I felt so dumb. I was babbling like a silly woman trying to make an impression on a man fast, before he could bolt, and I couldn’t stop. “Lynne’s young for me. Twenty-four. But she’s a really solid person. And great-looking. Long dark-red hair—”

“Calm down,” Bonnie said, taking one last stretch. “I’m not going to make a pass at you.”

“I am calm,” I said, trying to sound it. “I just thought it wouldn’t hurt if you knew what the score was.”

“The score was, and is, that you’re not looking for a sterile, forty-five-year-old Jew. Believe me, I know I’m not a hot ticket. But since you’re going back in the prayer biz, which is admirable, you might want to check out your conscience with your Big Three. Would you have told me the score if you hadn’t thought there was a good chance I’d heard your machine?”

310 / SUSAN ISAACS

“I don’t know the answer to that.”

“If I hadn’t found out the score, would you have made a pass?”

“I don’t know that either. I think there’s still a certain attraction between us.”

“It’s more than a certain attraction.”

“Okay, it is more. A lot more. All I can say is I hope I would have had the strength to fight it. But now that it’s out in the open about Lynne, I feel a lot better. A lot safer, to tell you the truth. Don’t you?”

Bonnie laughed, a delighted, spirited laugh. I would have loved it, except it was at my expense. She said: “Well, I wasn’t worrying about my safety. But I’m glad it’s out in the open. I’m glad for you. I wish you well. And I wish myself well too,” she added. “I want to try to get out of this mess, if that’s possible. I want a future.”

“I hope you have one.”

“Well, you’re the detective. What’s the next step?”

“I want to check Lindsay’s alibi. It sounds as if she was over in East Hampton, glued to the camera, the whole time, but I want to make sure. There’s supposed to be a lot of dead time making a movie, right?” She nodded. “Tell me how that works.”

“Whenever they change the setup to get another angle, they have to move the lights, the tracks, the camera. It depends on how complicated the shot is: If the crew hustles, it can take twenty minutes, especially if all they’re doing is moving in a little for a close-up. But if they’re turning around, reversing the angle completely, all the lights that were in the background need to get put into the foreground. And crew members had been standing behind where the lights and camera had been, so the grips and prop men have to get in and hang pictures, put back furniture, that sort of thing. Then the script supervisor has to check the continuity; if a chair had an afghan

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draped over the left arm in the last scene, it has to have the afghan draped in the exact same way again. It can take an hour. Sometimes more.”

“I want to find out if there was about forty minutes of dead time. Twenty minutes between the set and