And they did. They were chatting, even smiling a little. Not warm; cool as the unlit fireplace, actually. But not feuding. One having invited the other, and the other having accepted.
“Tim sold McClain to the movies,” Cynthia explained. “Lawrence Kasdan took an option on the whole series, and the first of them, McClain’s Score, is in preproduction now.”
“Lawrence Kasdan,” Jill said. “Body Heat! Wow!”
“Movie buff,” I explained to Cynthia. “Ignore her. She won’t take me seriously until I sell to the movies.”
“You did sell to the movies,” Cynthia said.
“TV doesn’t count,” Jill said.
“Especially at Mohonk,” I added. “But as for the brotherly feud — am I right to assume that the glowing reviews Kirk Rath lavished on Curt helped smooth things over between him and Tim?”
“It certainly did,” Cynthia confirmed. “Rath may not be liked — scratch the ‘may’ — but he is influential. Other reviewers pay attention to him and the Chronicler; a lot of critics have been reassessing Curt’s work since Kirk started championing him.”
“So he and Tim,” I said, “have no reason to be jealous of each other anymore.”
“Happy ending, darling,” Cynthia said, with her best cocktail party smile.
Jack Flint lumbered over, like a small tank; he was dressed as I’d seen him this morning — seemed not to be in costume. On closer look, he had extra gold chains around his neck; otherwise, business as usual.
He answered my unasked question with a shrug, saying, “The character I’m playing is so close to me, I didn’t bother with dressing up. My wife, on the other hand, is not cast to type.”
I looked around for her, and finally spotted Janis, sitting in a chair to one side; frankly, I felt she had been typecast: the outside of her had just been made to match her shy, quiet, inner nature; her cheery, bright California dresses had been replaced with a drab brown one. Her hair was pulled back and she wore no makeup.
I went over to her. “Nervous?”
Her smile was just a slight pulling back of the upper lip over tiny teeth. “Terrified.”
“Don’t be. The game is the thing, here. Our performances don’t need to be Oscar level. Besides, aren’t you a teacher? You should be used to being in front of people.”
“I got out of teaching,” she said. “It made me nervous, too.”
“You’re still in education, though.”
“Yes. I’m assistant principal, primary level.” She smiled again. “Peter Principle, I suppose. I wasn’t much of a teacher so I got kicked upstairs.”
“I’m sure you do a fine job. And I’m sure you’ll do fine today, too.”
“You’re a nice man, Mr. Mallory.”
“Call me Mal. And today I’m not a man, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“You seem to be more a mouse.”
“I do at that.”
She smiled more broadly now. “They really gave you a ribbing about that prank last night.”
“They sure did.”
“I wish it were true.”
“What?”
“What you saw last night. That, or this mystery we’re acting out.”
“In what sense?”
She talked through her tiny teeth. “In the sense that that awful little bastard Kirk Rath would really be dead.”
“Oh. That sense.”
Still waters run deep.
I wished her luck with her performance and wandered back to Jill, who was talking with Cynthia and getting along well.
“I don’t see Curt’s wife anywhere,” I said.
“She’s in the loo,” Cynthia said. Cynthia was the only person I knew who would use that expression. “Putting the finishing touches on her makeup and costume. Oh. There she is, now...”
And there she was.
Poured into a slinky black gown. Like Mary Wright, her figure was shown off to great advantage. Kim was slightly top-heavy, and a lot of creamy skin was showing.
“I’m just looking,” I said to Jill. “No pinching, please.”
“We’ll just both keep our hands to ourselves,” Jill said agreeably.
Kim’s eyes locked on mine and she grinned and, snugging her tight dress in place on the way, she came over to us. I hadn’t seen her since my last New York trip the year before.
“I hate tight clothes,” she said, not at all coy, as if she were unaware the clinging dress made the most of her voluptuous figure. She had a high, slightly breathy, Judy Holliday sort of voice, and exaggerated Madeline Kahn features, which landed her a lot of second female leads in Neil Simon comedies on the bus-and-truck circuit. Kim had only been in one Broadway production, and then late in its run, though she’d appeared in several off-Broadway shows.
I introduced Jill to her, and Jill immediately started asking her what films she’d been in. Kim had some impressive credits — everything from King of Comedy to The Muppets Take Manhattan — but she’d only done extra work in them. Jill was wowed anyway. Then Pete Christian, dressed to the nines in a rented tux, stole Jill away to talk film buff talk.
Kim smiled like an ornery kid and said, “I hear somebody auditioned for you last night.”
“Out my window, you mean.”
She nodded, batted her big brown eyes. “I’ve heard of off-off-Broadway, but this is ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous is right.”
“You make a fabulous nerd, Mal.”
“Gee, thanks. Have you been working, Kim?”
“Here and there. I’m curtailing the roadshows for a while.”
“Why’s that?”
She smiled a little, not showing her teeth. “Curt and I are buying a little house in Connecticut. After five years of marriage, we’re finally going the whole domestic route.”
“I thought you’d stay in Greenwich Village forever. Surely you’re not giving up the stage?”
“No! Just the traveling. And the Village is getting a little lavender for Curt’s taste. Anyway, I can commute to Manhattan for any theatrical or TV work that comes along.”
“Does ‘going the whole domestic route’ mean to imply that you and Curt are expecting an addition to the family...?”
“Not yet,” she said. Smiling a little. Then, in a whisper: “But we are trying.”
“Well, that’s great, Kim.”
She got serious all of a sudden. “It would mean a lot to Curt. He... he lost Gary six months ago, you know.”
Gary was his son, his only child, by his first marriage; his wife Joan had died in an automobile crash seven years ago. The novel he wrote thereafter — It Feels So Good When You Stop — was his first brush with critical acceptance; it had dealt, in a tragicomic manner, with the loss of Joan.
As for Gary, I’d never met him; knew nothing about him, except that he was an artist and Curt was proud of him.
“When you say ‘lost’...”
“I mean dead,” she said, with a sad shrug. “Pneumonia.”
“Damn. Aw, shit.”
“Curt took it pretty hard; but he’s getting over it. He’s working on a book, after a dry spell of a few months, and he took on this Mohonk weekend, at Mary Wright’s urging.”
“I wish I’d known,” I said. “I feel awful, not giving him any support...”
“You know Curt. He’s very open in some senses, but private in others.”
“Aw, damn. I’m so removed, living in Iowa. Something like this happens to a friend and I don’t even hear about it till six months later.”
She touched my arm. “Don’t give it another thought.”
“Is it too late for me to express my sympathy?”