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

ran into the ocean, fully dressed. On the TV, a stewardess with no underwear in a tiny skirt was bending over to serve a passenger a drink, and the hairstylist kept turning back to watch her, like he’d never seen a bare ass before and couldn’t get over how wondrous it was. Lindsay, I reminded him. We’re talking about Lindsay. Right, he said.

Lindsay’s own hair had been under a wig cap, and they’d put on dry wigs for when she ran and a wet wig for when she came up out of the water, he’d stood there in the surf, styling it for her. When they’d called her for a scene, she’d always been ready. Where was she when she wasn’t acting?

In wardrobe or her trailer. Yes, it was possible for her to have gone out and come back. Sometime late afternoon, there had been a turnaround that took over an hour. There MAGIC HOUR / 323

was no big deal with the lights, but the Steadicam operator was having trouble with his harness. No one saw her during that time; she always liked her privacy. Nobody knew what she did: probably read magazines, because the trailer was filled with every magazine ever printed—she was probably looking for her name or her picture; they all did that. But maybe she slept, or meditated. Who knew? Who cared?

I thought that Lindsay would have been taking a big chance if she’d tried to slip away unnoticed, because of the time factor. Besides, as the hair guy explained, there could always be a wardrobe or script crisis that required her presence. Also, she was just too noticeable.

I asked if there were any other wigs around. Not white-blond ones. He said there were a couple of dark-brown ones in the makeup trailer, but they were for Nick Monteleone.

On the TV, one of the airline stewardesses was starting to play with another one’s nipples; they were standing in the galley with their blouses off. I yawned. I was so wiped out.

The grips gazed at the screen, nudged each other. I lost the hair guy’s attention. I was too tired to care. I left the room.

The Summerview was standard motel, an elongated two-story rectangle with a balcony running the length of the upper floor. It was not for the socially ambitious visitor to East Hampton: no famous newspaper columnists or politicians or fashion designers would be found rubbing shoulders over the toaster waffles in the King of the Sea Coffee Shop. It was a place for normal people who wanted to sit on a perfect beach by day and get a little glamour by night: browse in shops they couldn’t afford, or squint into passing Rolls-Royces to see if Steven Spielberg was inside.

The Starry Night production company had taken 324 / SUSAN ISAACS

over the whole second floor of the Summerview. I walked along the balcony. From the sounds coming from room 237, either that TV was on, too, and one of the stewardesses had found a guy—or a couple was making it in a major way. I yawned again and waited about thirty seconds for them to come, but they didn’t sound like that was on the agenda for a while, so I knocked, hard. About a minute later, the costume designer, Myrna Fisher, opened the chained door about two inches and peered out at me. She was a woman in her fifties, in an inside-out negligee. I showed her my shield and said I was sorry if I’d woken her, but I had some questions, and could I come in. She said she had a…a guest. I said I wouldn’t keep them long. Just a few questions.

She unchained the door and let me in. In the bed, with the sheet pulled up to the top of his neck so just his skeleton head showed, was Gregory J. Canfield, Sy’s production assistant—all one hundred and ten pounds and twenty years of him. “Hi, Gregory,” I said.

“Hi,” he peeped.

I wanted to tell him it was okay, I wouldn’t call his mother, but instead I motioned to Myrna to take a seat at the round Formica table that stood in front of the tightly closed drapes. I sat on the chair across from her. “Tell me about Lindsay Keefe last Friday. How was she behaving?

Did she see Sy Spencer when he came to the set? Anything you can think of.”

For a minute, Myrna kept feeling for the buttons of her negligee, but since it was inside out, she finally settled for holding it closed. I couldn’t believe she was a costume designer; with her dumpy figure, gray hair and blotchy skin, she looked like a Suffolk County payroll clerk. “It’s the big party scene under a tent. Originally I was going to put her in a canary-yellow Scaasi—halter top, pouffy skirt—but then MAGIC HOUR / 325

they changed the script and she had to run into the ocean, so she was in saffron silk pants and blouse. Cheapies: we had six of them. Elizabeth Gage jewelry. Charles Jourdan mules, but she loses them in the sand.”

Gregory chimed in from the bed. “Mules are shoes. Backless, with heels.” I nodded thanks. Myrna beamed at him before she turned back to me.

“Sy came into the wardrobe trailer sometime around eleven. We’d just gotten Lindsay out of her wet clothes, wrapped her in a bath sheet. They said hello.”

“Did they kiss or show any signs of affection?”

Myrna considered the question. “I think—I won’t swear to it—he kissed her on the neck or shoulder. But I didn’t believe it. They’d lost it.”

“Lost what?”

“Their thing for each other. Well, his thing. It was always his. I’ve worked on three films with her, and I don’t think she really…” She gave me a Know-what-I-mean? look; I gave her a Gotcha nod. “But Sy Spencer was crazy for her.”

“What was the attraction, other than her looks?” I liked Myrna. She was a shrewdie. “That she was such an intellectual?”

“Sleeping with brainy men doesn’t make you