The Hearse You Came in On (23 page)

But it’s a fatuous debate anyway. Helen Simons told Billie the real truth. The veteran newsman’s heart had seized up while he was driving home a point to his young protégée out of Cleveland, Mimi Wigg. As it happened, Simons had been driving home that point in Mimi Wigg’s bed at the time. She was the one who called 911. The car-washing scenario had been quickly fluffed together by station management and rushed out onto the airwaves. Check the tape of Ms. Wigg’s special bulletin and you’ll note the missing earring and the uncharacteristically not-perfect hair,
not to mention the misbuttoned blouse. Neither Simons nor Mimi Wigg were married, so on that count, the libidinous activity of two single adults ain’t nobody’s business but their own. But it would look bad. To those critical of the fast-rising Mimi Wigg, it might even look calculating. Or if Simons were to die … criminal.

It was Sunday, and I had an afternoon rehearsal to attend. I tried reaching Kate several times by phone and several times I failed. I headed off to the theater.

Since granting me my pith helmet and funny mustache and Michael Goldfarb and Libby Maslin their mother and son yarmulkes, Gil was now swamped with special requests from other members of the cast. The guy playing Howie Newsome,
Our Town’s
milkman, had brought his pit bull to rehearsal and wanted to incorporate it into the show. The waitress portraying Lady in the Box was anxious to juggle fruit downstage during scene changes. The guy Gil had picked to play Emily’s father—a pompous locksmith from Lutherville—was lobbying for a silent part for his twelve-year-old daughter, a bob-haired girl of about two hundred pounds. “Why can’t my character have a second daughter? Just set her at the kitchen table and give her something to eat. She doesn’t have to have any lines.” I was fearful that Gil would point out that poor creature was larger than the table itself. But Gil’s razor had been dulled by the onslaught of suggestions and demands. He said nothing.

The part of Mrs. Gibbs was being essayed by Frances Lamm, formerly of Long Island, New York, and formerly a meat eater. Ms. Lamm had suddenly developed a powerful problem with the section of the play where
she is tossing seed to the chickens. She told Gil that maybe this would be a good time to advocate the growing of vegetables for our nutritional needs as opposed to the slaughter of innocent chickens. “The script says chickens,” Gil responded wearily to Lady Lamm’s advocacy. “Well you’re the director, for goodness’ sake,” she shot back. “Is Mr. Wilder going to shoot you if you turn his chickens into vine-ripened tomatoes?”

Ms. Lamm pressed. The chickens were scratched. She got her tomatoes.

As I said, I stood as apart from the swells of this sea of insanity as one can hope to stand on the Gypsy Players’ tiny stage. Julia was still absent from the scene and nobody seemed to know where she had run off to. The obnoxious locksmith shoved a straw hat onto the head of his beloved daughter and walked her over to Gil.

“Emily,” the locksmith snarled.

Gil cried, “No!”

“Why not!”

For a moment Gil looked like he was about to disintegrate. Suddenly he shot to his feet and made a gesture as if tossing a shawl from his shoulders—or better yet, a cape … or perhaps his last fragment of sanity …

“Because
I’m
playing the role of Emily!”

The sound of pins dropping all over the little theater was deafening. Jaws dropped along with them. Even the obnoxious locksmith was momentarily muted. His fat little daughter was grinning from ear to there. Who knew theater was so fun? Gil certainly hadn’t planned it this way, but with this single outrageous shot across the bow he had just regained his directorial control over the production. The old fire
reignited in his eyes as his head swiveled around the room, singeing everyone ever so lightly as his gaze slanted by. The first to speak up was Michael Goldfarb. Yarmulke in hand, like a supplicant, he took a tentative step in Gil’s direction.

“Y-you’re Emily?”

The locksmith finally found his voice. “You’re going to play my
daughter?”
Gil nodded. “But… but you’re a
man!”

“Hasn’t anyone here heard of alternative casting,” Gil snapped. It was his “concept” voice. He had found it. “It’s standard in New York. I think we
rubes
might be able to stretch just a little, don’t you?”

He wasn’t bluffing. I could see this quite clearly from my perch behind the lectern. Gil Vance was voyaging.

“But you’re a man!” the locksmith groaned again.

“That’s right,” Gil said. He grabbed hold of the two-hundred-pound girl and flipped the straw hat off her head. “And the milkman is now a woman.” He pointed to the guy with the pit bull. “You’re not the milkman anymore. I don’t care what you do, but you’re not the milkman. She is. Will there be anything else?”

The question was intended for the entire troupe. No one spoke. After one more triumphant glare at his cast, Gil clapped his hands. Over his head. Flamenco-style.

“Okay. Let’s get started.”

People moved quickly and silently to their places. Libby Maslin was near tears. Betty, the prop mistress, was already rummaging for wigs, muttering under her breath.

I didn’t wait for a cue. I rapped my lectern harshly
with my pointer and began the show. “The name of the town is Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, just across the Massachusetts line: latitude forty-two degrees forty minutes …”

There was still no word from Kate when I got back. And she still wasn’t answering either of her phones, work or home. I had a wake scheduled, so at least I had something to occupy my time while I waited to hear from her. The deceased was a fiftyish man named Harvey Sprinkle. I know that’s a funny name. It’s even funnier in light of the fact that Mr. Sprinkle had apparently taken the name to heart over the course of his life, taking three wives from whom he begat a total of nine children. As if this weren’t enough—and apparently it hadn’t been—the old goat had accompanied each of his marriages with an extramarital affair, spawning exactly one child per mistress, for a total of three Sprinkle bastards. Grand total, a dozen Sprinkle kids, three wives and three mistresses. A grand old party. Apparently the prolific Mr. Sprinkle had kept in active contact with all of these various factions for they all most certainly got word of the man’s untimely demise (heart attack, no real surprise) and they all showed up for the viewing. We certainly had to pull open the curtain for this one; it was a two-parlor affair with Sprinkles and near-Sprinkles and former-Sprinkles from wall to wall.

When the crowd finally began to disperse I was able to duck into my office. My phone machine was blinking furiously. The first message was from the coffin salesman in Nebraska who had been after me to try out a few of his new models. I hit the fast-forward. The
next message was from Kate. It was all of three syllables long.

“Hitch. It’s Kruk.”

Kruk?

I rewound the tape and listened to the message a second time. Maybe she had said “crook,” though that would have made no sense.

But the second time around, she still said
Kruk.

And that made no sense either. I phoned her at both numbers but she still wasn’t answering.
Kruk?
I just couldn’t make sense of it.

No sooner had I hung up the phone than it rang. I snatched it up.

“Hello!”

“Bonjour mon chou. Comment ça va?”

It was Julia.

“Jules! Where the hell have you been!”

“Ici et là.”

“English please.”

“Here and there,” Julia said. “Mainly there.”

“I see.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me where is there?”

“Julia, I’m really not in the mood for your games.”

She clucked her tongue at me.
“Mon Dieu.
Are we in a
pissoir mood?”

“Okay. Where?”

“Do you remember our honeymoon?”

“Vaguely,” I said. “I wore gray, you wore nothing.”

“Well that’s where I’ve been.”

“You’ve been to Paris? What in the world were you doing in Paris?”

Her tone went coy. “Well if you’d come out and play I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Jules…”

“Oh all right. Be a mudstick. I was hoping you’d say, ‘Julia, darling, how fantastic that you’re back. Let’s go get drunk and you can tell me all about your amorous adventure.’ ”

“I’m waiting for a phone call,” I said. I felt sort of foolish saying it to her. “It’s important,” I added.

Just then there was a rapping at my office window. I looked up. Through the blinds I could see a person standing outside tapping on the glass.

Julia was saying on the phone, “You look so handsome in that suit.”

I went over to the window and pulled up the blinds. It was Julia. She was wearing a cranberry beret and holding a tiny telephone to her ear. She gave me a little wave.

“Just one little drink?”

“What happened to your hair?”

Julia and I were in the Admiral Fell Inn. Julia likes their martinis.

“You like?”

“You look like Louise Brooks.”

“A truly wonderful man would have said, ‘I
love
your hair!’ ”

“Aren’t you going to miss fiddling with your braids and all that?”

“I’ve already caught myself grabbing at phantom locks. But I’m getting used to it.”

“You got it cut in Paris?”

“Yes. Three hundred dollars. Isn’t that obscene?”

It was a pageboy cut. Bangs and pointy V-shaped sideburns.

“What would that have cost in Baltimore?”

“I wouldn’t have it done in Baltimore. It’s a souvenir of my trip.”

“I understand those Eiffel Tower thermometers come in at a little under the three-hundred-dollar mark.”

“Watch out, Hitchcock. You’re beginning to remind me why we divorced.”

“Julia,” I said. “I
love
your new haircut. It makes your breasts look even bigger.”

Julia turned to our waiter, who had just come over with our drinks. “This man is trying to seduce me,” she said, batting her eyelashes outlandishly. “And he’s
very
good at it.”

Julia and I drank martinis and got caught up. She asked me about
Our Town.
“Gil left a number of bizarre messages on my phone,” she said, popping an olive into her mouth.

“Bizarre pretty much sums it up. He’s taken your part away from you.”

“I know. I’m so crushed I could dance. Do I gather from his giggles that
he
is going to play Emily?”

“It’s a concept, Julia. You understand.”

She laughed. “I say go for it. Gil will bring something new to the role.”

“Julia. Gil is bringing a penis to the role.”

She told me about Paris. I had already guessed who had financed the spur-of-the-moment jaunt. Peter Morgan.

“It was one of those impulsive things,” Julia said, rolling the martini olive around in her mouth. “Peter and I were having dinner at Marconis. He had been telling me how renowned the place is for its sweetbreads.
Well, they were out. Okay. But Peter got all huffy about it.”

“Huffy over a restaurant’s running out of calves’ glands?”

“I know. I should have seen it right there. But I didn’t. One thing led to another and before I could cry ‘Insane!’ I was sitting up in the lounge of a Paris-bound seven-forty-seven sipping champagne and getting a foot massage from my millionaire boyfriend.”

I know about these foot massages of hers. “You can spare me the carnal details,” I said.

“You’re no fun.” She smiled at the waiter as he brought over a fresh pair of drinks. “I have to say though, Hitch, I had more fun in Paris on our honeymoon than I did this time. I’m not a snob or anything, but too much money really does take the edge off. We started off at the Ritz, which when you get down to it is boring. I finally convinced Peter that we should go to Les Marais, but I could tell he didn’t like it there.”

“Too bohemian?”

“But it’s not bohemian. I don’t know what his problem was. We had a mouse in the house—in our room—and he got all uppity about it. Please, it’s a mouse. I was leaning out the window looking up the block at Place des Voges. Peter was taking a bath and he was bitching about it. Too small or not enough hot water, I can’t remember. Okay, so it wasn’t the Ritz.” She laughed. “Suddenly this mouse appeared on the windowsill right next to me. His little nose was going. I swear, Hitch, he was looking up the block too. Like he was curious to see what I was looking at. It was very
cute. You know these French mice. And then suddenly Peter comes charging out of the bathroom and flips his towel at it like a whip. He knocked the poor thing right off the windowsill and down to the street.”

She took a sip of her martini. “Beginning of the end.”

Julia went on in this fashion. She’s a very elaborate storyteller. I followed her down the side streets and cul-de-sacs of her various tales.

“He’s not my prince,” she sighed at last. “He’s more of a king, which I don’t need. It was fun while it lasted. It’s the old thing about traveling with people. That’s when you learn what you need to learn. Peter’s bossy and he’s self-centered. And you know, Hitch, we can’t have two of those in the family.”

I laughed. Julia frowned. “Answer me this though, will you? Nobody ever dumps
me.
It’s always me dumping them. Why do I always have to do all the work?”

“You’re too beautiful and sexy for any man to dump. We’d all rather suffer along.”

“That’s sweet.” She reached for a nonexistent braid. “Hell. We never even got the damned sweetbreads that supposedly kicked off this little romp in the first place.”

Julia moved on to the breaking-it-off portion. She told me that after one too many snide remarks, she finally read Peter Morgan the riot act in front of a group of sidewalk artists whom she was trying to talk with. “I did it in French, so that they could hear it too. Peter stormed off and went back to the Ritz.”

“Did he make you walk home?”

“I had my return ticket. I ordered champagne for the entire plane. Charged it to Peter.”

“Good girl.”

She batted those lashes again.
“La vie da
.”

After we left the restaurant I steered Julia back to her place. There was an enormous man in the gallery, literally four feet wide. He was standing in front of a large painting of a sandwich. Julia beelined for the counter where Chinese Sue handed her a Polaroid camera. Julia snapped off a shot. When the guy turned around at the sound of the camera’s
wrrrr,
Julia was already aiming the camera at me. She lowered it, a big fake pout on her face.