“Why would he make up a story like that?”
“Because he’s jealous. You’re going to be a star. Valentine used to clean dog poop off W. C. Fields’s lawn. Anthony Quinn lived next door. Valentine thought he’d hit the big time when he was allowed to clean both their yards. This is the guy you’re taking seriously. Where are you?”
“At home,” she said, her mouth suddenly dry. “I just got back to town.”
“You’re alone?”
“Yes,” she replied, trying to control the beating of her heart and the catch in her throat.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked.
“Hershel will be back this weekend. I’ll be fine until then.”
“You don’t sound like it. Would you like me to come over?”
“I wouldn’t want to impose on you.”
“Stay there.”
Her fingers were shaking when she set the receiver back in its cradle.
When he arrived, he was wearing a white suit and an open-necked crimson silk shirt and shined loafers. He was holding a bottle of nonalcoholic champagne in one hand and a 78-rpm phonograph record in the other. His cheeks were like apples, his skin glowing, his hair barbered and wet and neatly combed.
“Do you have a phonograph?” he said.
“Yes, right there,” she replied, pointing at the walnut-encased combination radio and record player she and Hershel had just bought.
He opened the top of the console and slipped the 78 out of its paper jacket onto the flat on his hand. She had closed all the curtains, and when the record began to play, she felt that she and Roy Wiseheart had become the only two people on earth.
“That’s Bunny Berigan,” he said.
“What’s the name of the song?”
“‘I Can’t Get Started with You.’ You have some glasses?”
“Roy?” she said.
He looked at her, his face warm. “You don’t like champagne?”
“I’m weak. I want to do right, but most of the time I don’t.”
“You’re stronger and braver than I, nobler, and much more gifted than you think. Don’t ever speak badly of yourself.”
He slipped his right arm around her waist and lifted her right hand in his, his body barely touching hers. “I wish I married someone like you, but I didn’t. That doesn’t mean I can’t be your friend. The movie business is full of bad people, individuals who are far worse than Jack Valentine. They’re cruel and unscrupulous when they don’t have to be. Do you know why they’re cruel?”
“No.”
“They have no talent of their own. They have to steal it from others. They don’t deserve their success, and they know it. They’re always frightened someone is about to catch on to them. Six months ago some of them were pumping gasoline in Peoria.”
“I don’t understand you. You’re so wise, yet you seem so unhappy.”
She felt his fingers spread across her back, his breath like a feather on the side of her face. “I think I used up all my luck in the South Pacific. I don’t worry about it, though. We’re born and we live and we die. What we do along the way isn’t that important.”
“You shouldn’t say that.”
He released her hand and held her with both arms, his cheek against hers. Her temples were pounding.
“I’m not a philanderer,” he said. “I take care of my wife, but I don’t love her. By the same token, I try not to cause grief in the lives of others. I haven’t always done the right thing.”