“Hard to blame her,” Susan said.

“Yes,” I said, “of course it is. I think for her it was love at first sight.”

“It happens to her a lot, I understand.”

“You mean there’s someone else?” I said.

Susan’s smile widened. She sipped a little more tea, assessed its impact, added another small splash of cognac.

“I think so,” she said.

“Oh, well,” I said. “There’s always you.”

“I adore it when you sweet-talk me,” Susan said.

“Emphasis on the always,” I said.

“Yes,” Susan said. She finished the first crab taco. “So,” she said, “she made a pass at you?”

“Almost an assault,” I said.

“And you turned her down.”

“I didn’t get the chance to. She passed out.”

“Tell me about it,” Susan said. “Everything. Every detail.”

I did. By the time I’d finished it was time for another brandy and soda. When it arrived I slid down a little in my chair and stretched out my legs in front of me and watched the amusement play on Susan’s face. Outside in the darkness life barely moved in the sullen cold. Inside was food and drink and Susan and the whole evening ahead. Susan made the measuring gesture with her hands, mimicking Jill Joyce. “This Iong?” she said. “Good heavens.”

She looked at me, looked back at the measured distance between her hands, looked at me again, and slowly shook her head. I shrugged.

“I thought I could bluff it through,” I said.

“You think that about everything,” Susan said. “Are you going to take the job?”

I turned the glass around in little circles on the table in front of me, holding it lightly with both hands, watching it revolve.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“She’s awfully difficult,” Susan said. She had her elbows on the table and she held her teacup in both hands, talking to me over the rim.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Today was not unusual,” Susan said.

“What about the four and a half pages they had to shoot this afternoon?” I said.

“Sandy will shoot around it,” Susan said. “He’s amazing.”

“Why don’t they just fire her?” I said. “Get someone who’s sober all day?”

“TVQ,” Susan said and smiled like she does when she’s able to kid me and herself at the same time. The maitre d’ came over and told us our table was ready for dinner.

“Whenever you’re ready, sir. No hurry.” He went back to his post near the door.

“TVQ?” I said sadly.

“Television Quotient. It’s a way of rating star appeal,” she said.

“Of course,” I said.

“Jill Joyce has the highest TVQ of anyone now on television,” Susan said.

“And to think she wanted to jump on my bones,” I said.

“Makes you feel sort of humble, doesn’t it?”

“And a TVQ like that translates into ratings which translate into renewal which translates eventually into a big syndication deal which translates…”

“Into money,” I said.

“Bingo,” Susan said. “Mucho dinero, sweetheart.”

“Have you gone, just a twidge, ah, Hollywood?” I said.

“I’ll say. Film is my life.” Susan’s eyes crinkled and her smile was brighter than Jill Joyce’s TVQ.

“And it doesn’t cut into your work?”

“My patients? No. Nothing cuts into that.”

“Nothing? I remember a Monday morning three months ago… ”

“Except you,” Susan said. “Occasionally, and, if it’s the Monday morning I’m thinking about, I feel that you overpowered me. That doesn’t count.”

“Then how come I was on the bottom?”

“Just never mind,” Susan said. “It’s time to go up for dinner.”

We went up and sat and looked at the menus. The room looked out over the Public Garden which was lit with concealed spots and stiller than death in the brute cold evening.

“Actually,” Susan said as she scanned the menu, “my formal duties don’t require me to be on the set. I read scripts and make suggestions. That’s really the extent of my technical advice. The rest of the time I come around and watch because it fascinates me.”

I nodded, contemplating the herbed chicken with mashed potatoes.

“It doesn’t fascinate you?” Susan said.

“Fascinated me for about ten minutes,” I said. “But I gather they do this for more than ten minutes.”

“Twelve hours a day,” Susan said. “Six days a week. More if they’re behind.”

“And a show starring Jill Joyce often gets behind,” I said.

“Sandy and most of the directors have worked with her before,” Susan said. “They try to arrange to shoot most of her scenes before lunch. Close-ups and stuff. Long scenes they can use a double, or they can loop her dialogue afterwards.”

“Loop her dialogue,” I said.

“Aren’t I awful?” Susan said. She smiled happily about it. “I’m totally stagestruck. I talk the jargon. I’m not sure I can be saved.”

“In fact, one of the eighty-two things, by actual count, that I like about you is the totality of your enthusiasms,” I said.

“What are the other eighty-one?” Susan said.

“I think I mentioned them to you that Monday morning.”

“Actually, I think you concentrated rather heavily that day on maybe one or two,” she said.

The waitress came, we ordered, the waitress went away. Susan leaned toward me a little, her chin resting on her folded hands. The play was gone from her eyes.

“Actually, I hope you will help her,” she said.

“Jill Joyce?”

“Yes. I don’t know if someone’s bothering her or not; but she is so lost.”

“I’m supposed to be the detective,” I said. “You’re supposed to be the shrink.”

“I can’t help her,” Susan said. “She won’t come near me. She doesn’t have anyone. Sandy tries to take care of her, but he’s got to make the pictures. She has no one who’s simply looking out for her. Not because of her TVQ, or the syndication deal we can get five years down the road. Not because she’s Jill Joyce.”

“Think anyone’s ever done that?” I said.

“No,” Susan said.

I looked out at the Public Garden, at the leafless willows through whose spidery branches the back lighting showed.

“And you think I should,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Even at the risk of my, ah…” I held my hands out in the two-foot measuring motion.

Susan smiled at me as sweetly as a convent acolyte.

“You have little to lose,” she said.

Chapter 5

I SAT in the production office on Soldiers Field Road I and talked with Sandy Salzman. Without his tasseled ski cap he was balding.

“Do you want me to protect Miss Joyce,” I said, “or do you want me to find out who’s harassing her?”

“Or if, ” Salzman said. Through the picture window in his office you could look across Soldiers Field Road at the Charles River, and across the Charles to Cambridge on the other side. The river was frozen now and snow covered. There were cross-country ski tracks on it, and trampled paths where kids and dogs had cut across. It was a steady-moving river, and it took a deep chill to freeze it enough to walk on. Every year there was a thaw and someone went through.

“Or If, ” I said. “But someone needs to decide. I can’t do both at the same time.”

“What’s Jill say?”

“Jill says she’s looking for one this long.” I made the measuring motion for him.

“Yeah, Jill says stuff like that,” Salzman said. “What’d you say?”

“I told her she was in luck.” Salzman laughed.

“Then she had another glass of wine and fainted at me.”

Salzman nodded. “She does that too,” he said.

“Makes a swell date,” I said.

Salzman spread his hands and shrugged. “Jill’s a television star,” he said. “She’s been one for twenty years in a medium where a lot of people are reading weather in Topeka six months after their first show is canceled. You got Jill Joyce on a project and you’ve got a thirteen-week on-air commitment, and all three networks fighting to make it.”

“That explains why she gets loaded every lunch and swoons on strangers?” I said.