Magic Hour by Susan Isaacs (i want to read a book TXT) 📗

I assumed what he was trying to tell me was that he fucked Katherine Pourelle in Vail while her husband was out schussing. I gave him what I hoped was a knowing smile.

“Well, I got a call from her Tuesday night. From L.A. She wanted to know what was with the production. At first I thought she’d heard about how lousy Lindsay was doing and just wanted to dish. Kat hates Lindsay and loves to dish.

She did a play with her, years ago. Everybody who ever worked with Lindsay loathes her. Fine, I figured, so we talked about Lindsay and Santana, how he was her first non-Commie Hispanic. Oh, and about how Lindsay always closes her eyes when the director is talking, like she’s concentrating on the voice of God, and how you wish you could 110 / SUSAN ISAACS

smack her. Anyway, we had this long, really great talk, but there was something left unsaid. I could sense it. I mean, Steve, I earn my living by being open to feelings.”

“Right,” I said encouragingly.

“So I said to her: ‘Come on, Kat. Tell me what you heard.’

So she makes me swear not to tell a soul. She’d gotten a call from Sy that morning!”

“And?”

“He asked if she would give Starry Night an overnight read.

Super secret. Do you get what I’m saying?”

“He wanted her to look at the part Lindsay was playing?”

“You got it!” Nick said. “I think Sy knew that this was a potential twenty-million-dollar catastrophe. And I think he’d also found himself someone with blonder hair, or plus grande boobies. Lindsay had lost her hold on him. You know what, Steve? I think Sy was getting ready to pull the plug on Lindsay.”

When Lynne took me on, she knew we had a lot going for us. I wanted what she wanted: love, companionship, a family, plus—since she seemed to average one marriage proposal every two weeks—a chance to stick it to her stick-up-the-ass family. But in taking me on, she knowingly, willingly and of her own free will bought the whole package: recovering alcoholic (to say nothing of a guy with a former fondness for pot, hash, barbiturates and heroin), recovered fucker-arounder, about-to-be-old fart, compulsive runner, workahol-ic. Her acceptance of me was absolute, unquestioning.

Was she perfect? No. She was a pain in the ass about order, the type who in sixth grade would have won Neatest Three-Ring Binder. I was neat; she was nuts. She had to restrain herself from making the bed

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the minute I got up to go to the bathroom. She actually inspected her pencils every night to make sure they were all sharpened for the next day. Lynne’s idea of wild spontaneity was going out for a nude moonlight swim—after she finished her lesson plan but before the eleven o’clock news. Still, as much as I bitched about it, deep down, her order comforted me. I needed a structured life filled with perfect pencil points and lights out immediately after Johnny Carson’s monologue.

Her imperfections turned out to be virtues.

So why was I less than wild with happiness? Why couldn’t I accept Lynne without reservation, the way she’d accepted me? How come I couldn’t say: Sure, she’s a little serious, but who gives a shit with that hair, those legs? Why was I wasting time worrying that I wasn’t one hundred percent ecstatic? Wasn’t ninety-nine percent enough? What was wrong with me? She had five million sterling qualities. Why was I zeroing in on the one she lacked? Why the hell was I waiting for Fun?

It wasn’t that Lynne didn’t have a sense of humor. She did. But it was a sense of other people’s humor. She’d smile whenever I’d say something even mildly clever. She’d laugh at Eddie Murphy and Woody Allen movies, at my friend Marty McCormack’s stupid minister-rabbi-priest jokes (where the priest, naturally, always got the punch line) and at any attempt at comedy by any member of grades K through 6 at Holy Spirit Academy, especially her kids, the ones with learning disabilities.

What Lynne lacked was liveliness. I knew it wasn’t fair to hold it against her. It was like saying to a woman, I want you to be five foot two and built like a brick shithouse, when she is, in fact, tall and willowy.

Still, I couldn’t shake the low feeling that had come over me on the blanket in my backyard the day be-112 / SUSAN ISAACS

fore. More than disappointment, less than dread. I didn’t know what the hell it was. But there I was, taking a phone break, my feet up on the Xerox machine, making it worse—giving her an opening I knew she didn’t have the capacity to fill. “Okay, who do you think is sexier? Me or Nicholas Monteleone?”

And as Lynne, predictably, was responding, “You,” I found myself ashamed of myself for wanting: “Are you kidding?

Nicholas Monteleone!”

She asked: “Is he a nice person?”

“Yeah. Friendly; a good talker for someone who speaks other people’s lines for a living. When I finished questioning him, I felt: Too damn bad he has to leave; he’s great company. But he’s so terrific that you start wondering whether it’s him or it’s an act. Like, if he thought that running around the room and imitating an aardvark would put him in a better light with Homicide, would he forget the congeniality bit and start licking up ants?”

“What do you think?”

“Ants,” I said. I looked at my watch. It was after five.

“Listen, honey, were you counting on lobster?”

“No, but that’s what you told me you were counting on.”

“Did you melt the butter?”

“No, of course not. And you didn’t buy the lobsters. I know you. I know you so well that right now I know I’m going to have a Lean Cuisine and then about ten you’ll pop in—just to say hello.”

“I’m a very friendly guy.”

“Guess what? You won’t be able to be too friendly. My roommates