Something snapped and a white star of light glinted beneath Florence Sommer’s chin. My eyes darted toward it and I saw a clean blade jutting from the hand of the one who was restraining her. She yelped hoarsely. I froze in place, staring like the aliens had just landed.
One of the men nearest the sink fired up a smoke. I wondered if he was trying to assert his dominance by doing so. Old Florence wouldn’t have minded.
He said, “Graham Woodard, yes?”
I nodded.
The man sucked deeply from his smoke, sighed the poison back out. He looked to his compatriot with the knife at the woman’s throat. Then he nodded, too.
It happened in slow-mo. Sort of. I realized what was going to happen before it happened, a sort of well-informed premonition. Then I tried to lunge for the knife, but my body wasn’t on speaking terms with my brain by then. All I managed to do was stumble forward a few paces so I could get a better look at the blade slicing a poor old woman’s neck open, right in front of me. The skin parted like a puppet’s mouth, exposing red that stayed inside a second too long before it all spilled out at once. The blood formed a curtain that draped down over her cat-hair-infused sweater, soaking it in no time at all. Florence Sommer’s tongue lolled out of her mouth and she made a wet sound that turned my stomach over twice before it seized like a fist. I wanted more than anything to throw up, but my stomach wasn’t cooperating any better than the rest of me. So instead I just screamed.
Somewhere nearby but out of my field of vision, one of her cats hissed.
“Shoulda stayed in Beantown, shit-bird.”
That was the guy by the sink again. I turned to him as the killer let Mrs. Sommer’s body slump to the dirty linoleum. She slid in her own blood, which smeared up the side of her face. She was dead.
I said, “Hey.”
It was all I had time to say in my defense. The third man, a phantom until now, produced a small black gun from the inside of his jacket. The gun went up, pointing at me. I raised my hands. Pointlessly, it seemed at the time, I memorized the gunman’s face. Gray eyes, blonde hair. Clean shaven. Vertical lines on his cheeks, like some people have. I could pick him out of a lineup if I had to.
He squeezed the trigger and the gun barked fire.
PART TWO: JAKE
14
In Boise, at the Knights of Columbus Lodge and, later, for the Elks, and the Masons, and the Buffaloes, little Gracie Baronsky sang, pirouetted, and acted out scenes from popular plays. She brandished an oversized lollipop at her thin audiences, serenaded them with Irving Berlin. Lifted her skirts to reveal plump bloomers in imitation of Gold Rush dancing girls, though she was only nine herself. She earned chortles and smatterings of applause. Aunt Eustace earned twenty dollars a week for her protégé’s efforts, when the week was good. And when a given week wasn’t so good, Eustace had other means for procuring Idahoan stages for her sister’s only child, her meal ticket. Everyone had to make sacrifices when the prospects looked so bright. The stage aunt lifted her skirts, too — and when that wouldn’t do, she waited in lobbies, worrying the fray of her shawl, while the starlet-to-be secured her place in another variety or benefit show in the balmy embraces of men who could determine her immediate future.
But Idaho, the elder woman knew, was peanuts. Nobody in Boise would have thought twice about the pictures when little Gracie was prancing around the lodges, but that was before the Empire Theatre opened its doors to reveal the wondrous spectacle that was Intolerance. Then they knew, Eustace and Gracie. They knew the heartland was dried up, a dustbowl. It was time to Go West.
It was time to make Grace Baronsky a real star.
Frank stood in the doorway in a threadbare seersucker suit with a wilting dandelion protruding from a buttonhole. He smiled abashedly, and Grace stifled a laugh by covering her mouth.
“I almost never wear it,” he said by way of apology. “My ma’s funeral was the last time, I guess. Only suit I ever owned.”
“I think you look delectable.”
“Is that a good thing to look like?”
His cheeks reddened. Grace shook her head, grabbed her bag, and went out to the walkway with him. When they reached the curb, she looked out at the half dozen cars parked on either side of the street and said, “Which one is yours?”
“None of ‘em,” Frank answered. “I walked here.”
“Nobody walks in Hollywood, Frank.”
“They do if they don’t have a car.”
“That’s what taxicabs are for.”
“I only earn so much, Grace — a taxicab would cut into our entertaining budget.”
“God almighty,” she said with a small chuckle. “You’re really not the Hollywood type, are you?”
“I’m just an apprentice electrician,” he said. “I’m no type at all.”
She squinted at his square face in the lean light of the street lamp and tried to find falsehood, a chink in his armor. When she found none, she swung her hip out and walked around him, due west.
“Come along then, Mr. Electrician. I know a grand place to walk to.”
Over roast lamb with currant jelly, the imminent star and the apprentice electrician looked to fellow diners like a lady and her valet, but neither of them noticed or cared. Frank devoured his meal with relish, as a man starved, while Graced picked at hers and asked pointed questions of her escort.
“Do you make it a habit,” she began, “to invite actresses to dinner in your racket?”
“I have a heap of habits,” said Frank, “but no, that ain’t one of them.”
“What led the charge then, Custer?”
“The truth?”
“Not one of the most seen habits in my racket, but sure — why not?”
“You seem lonesome,” he said, and he stabbed the second-to-last piece of his lamb into his mouth.
Grace knitted her brow and paused, stricken silent for a moment. When she recovered, she said, “I’ve heard it said that the bigger the city, the more lonesome its people.”
“You weren’t lonesome back east?”
“Boise is hardly back east…” she said, deflecting. “I guess I was. I guess everybody is, in their own way. Aren’t we all just kind of trapped up here?” She tapped her temple with her index finger. “There’s a lot of skin and bone between my brain and yours, and all those miscommunications and different perspectives, besides.”
“Why, Miss Baron. I didn’t know you were a philosopher, to boot.”
“I’m a clever old girl, all right.”
“A clever, lonesome girl.”
“We’re back to that.”
“I’m sorry,” Frank said. “I was only trying to be honest. Maybe it’s just the character. The girl you play in the movie, I mean. Seems like I sort of know her a bit better than I know you.”
“Poor Clara,” Grace lamented. “She is a lonely sort, isn’t she? But I’d hate to get confused with her.”
“You don’t come from any abyss,” he assured her. “An angel, maybe. But just the regular kind.”
“The kind that strums harps on clouds?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I never went in for all that Sunday school hocus pocus. Just the pretty kind, I suppose. The good kind.”
“I wouldn’t want to be any kind of angel,” Grace said. She poked at what remained of her supper, moving the pieces around the plate. “I thought angels were what used to be people. The good ones, sure. But, you know. Dead.”