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

across from Easton in my brother’s sitting room; it had once been my bedroom. As a kid, Easton had used the table to build his model ships; now it was covered with a huge, square fringed gold cloth, like one of those scarves you see on pianos in old movies. It almost hid the table’s skinny metal legs. I sat directly behind my brother, on a nice old cracked leather couch he must have picked up at some yard sale; the shrink at South Oaks had had one like it, the same dark brown.

My deal with Ray Carbone was that I could be at Easton’s interview without being there. But every now and then my brother would turn his head and glance at me for reassurance as Robby questioned him about the cast and crew. What the hell: I’d nod, letting him know he was doing fine. Well, he was.

“What exactly were you doing in New York yesterday?”

Robby was asking.

“I was meeting with our casting director. Going over deal memos and negotiating a price on some extra work we wanted done. Sy and Santana felt we had to cast the Colombian drug kingpin as threatening, but quietly threatening.”

“You mean all the parts weren’t filled yet, even after they’d started making the movie?” Robby asked.

“That’s right.” Easton sounded casual, like someone who’d been in the business for twenty years in-128 / SUSAN ISAACS

stead of a few months. “It happens fairly often. We knew we could always sign an actor we’d already read, but we were hoping for someone special. The problem was where to look.” I rested my head on the back of the couch’s cool leather, crossed my arms over my chest and checked out my brother. I was impressed: no more of his sweaty, eager, fast-talking bullshit, like when he was selling houses or Jaguars or hand-knitted boat-neck sweaters. Easton had become a genuine movie guy. “We’d seen just about every over-fifty swarthy actor in New York and California. No luck, but we weren’t ready to give up. Well, not yet.” He really seemed to know what he was talking about. I was proud all of a sudden.

He kept plucking at the neck of his sweater, probably to realign the V in front. “The casting director wanted to start looking at actors in Chicago, to farm the work out to her associate there. But the price she quoted us seemed out of line. Sy thought it would be better to negotiate with her in person than over the phone, but he couldn’t do it. He was busy on the set and getting ready to go to L.A., so he asked me to.”

“How long did that meeting last?”

“From before two until—I’m guessing now—three-thirty, four. I’m not sure. You could check with her.”

“Did you speak to Sy on the phone at all during that time?”

“No. I was going to drive over to his house after dinner, around nine, and tie up whatever loose ends there were.”

“Was he expecting any company for dinner?” I interjected.

“No,” Easton said. “Just Lindsay.”

“Did you come straight back here after your meeting?”

Robby asked.

“No. I went to Sy’s shirtmaker to give him a swatch of Egyptian cotton Sy wanted to use and to pick up MAGIC HOUR / 129

some other shirts that were ready.” I couldn’t see my brother’s face from the couch, but Easton must have smiled at Robby because, suddenly, Robby had on his supertoothy grin. “Assistant producer,” Easton continued, “and swatch-carrier. My whole job was to smooth things out for Sy. I went to meetings, made phone calls, wheeled and dealed in a minor way. And even played errand boy.” He fell silent for a minute, then added solemnly: “It was the best job I ever had.”

Outside my old bedroom window, the leaves on the oak tree were almost black against the blue-gray twilight. It’s usually a down time for ex-drunks, but there I was, all of a sudden, feeling pretty up—about Easton.

My brother, obviously, had always had some inner aber-ration that had screwed up his chances at a career. But out-wardly he’d been Mr. Moderate. Balanced, temperate, neat, controlled. No fires burning in his soul. You couldn’t believe he wasn’t able to get a grip on his life, because he seemed so balanced. He did nothing to excess; when he drank, it was a watered-down Scotch or a couple of glasses of wine.

When he drugged, it was one puff of a joint. Even the women he went out with were understated—to the point of invisibil-ity: well-bred, well-dressed, with boobs barely bigger than their tiny noses.

But strangely, the movie business, famous for its bullshit, had managed to make Easton more real. He was much less pompous. Okay, still not the kind of guy you’d ask over for Monday Night Football, but friendlier, looser. A decent man instead of Charlotte Easton Brady’s finely featured, immacu-lately groomed, elegantly dressed prig of a son. Maybe, I started thinking, after all these years, we could really be brothers. Lynne would say, Let’s have Easton to dinner, and I’d say, Great.

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“Why was Mr. Spencer going to Los Angeles?” Robby asked.

“He had four or five different projects he was interested in. He had a lot of meetings lined up.”

I broke in. “Isn’t it a little unusual for a producer to leave town while his movie is being made?”

Easton turned around, giving me the profile that demonstrated who’d gotten the best of the genes. “Not necessarily.

Sy was executive producer. He had what’s called a line producer to supervise the whole production, take care of the day-to-day problems. And he had me to put out smaller fires.

So he could afford to get away for a couple of days.”

“Except things were pretty lousy here.”

“What do you mean?”

“The business with Lindsay.”

“Lindsay.” Easton seemed a little ill at ease, as if by confirming trouble he’d be letting Sy down. “I see you’ve heard the rumors.”

“We heard about the lousy dailies,” I told him. “Were they that bad?”

He shrugged. “I can’t be