“You’ll drive me home,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

The people who’d been lounging around glancing at my gun were now busy dismantling the set wall in front of us. They swung it out to open up the set and two people moved the camera dolly around into the space where I was standing.

“Excuse me,” someone said, “coming through.”

“We’ll get my coat in wardrobe,” Jill said.

“Sure.”

I followed her off the sound stage and down the corridor past the carpenter shop to the wardrobe office. Jill went in and came out in a moment wearing a silver-tipped mink.

“Kathleen,” she spoke back through the open door, “did Ernie get me that white sable we talked about?”

A woman’s voice from the wardrobe office said, “Got it right here, Jilly.”

“Excellent,” Jill said. “I’ll come in tomorrow for a fitting.”

“Give us a little notice if you can,” the woman’s voice said.

Jill didn’t answer, nor did she appear to have heard the request for notice. We went on out through the production office and into the front parking lot where I had my car.

“You need to tell anybody, drivers, anyone like that?” I said.

Jill made a dismissive motion with her hand. “Which car is yours?” she said.

“The glorious black Cherokee,” I said. “Ideal for all-weather surveillance.”

“Well, it’s better than I expected,” she said.

I held the door, she got in, ran a hand over the leather upholstery, and, nodded approvingly.

“The Charles Hotel?” I said.

“In Cambridge. You know where it is?”

I did my Bogart impression with the flattened upper lip. “I know where everything is, sweetheart.”

She got out a cigarette, pressed in my lighter and waited for it to pop. When it did she put it against the cigarette and the pleasing smell of tobacco lit with a car lighter filled the front seat. She put the lighter back and leaned her hand against the back of the seat with the cigarette glowing in her mouth and closed her eyes. Her face was very white and still, nestled in the big collar of her fur coat. Without raising her hand to the cigarette, she took a big drag and let the smoke out slowly from the corners of her mouth. The early winter evening had settled around us, and the automobile headlights on Soldiers Field Road had a pale cold look to them. I let the motor idle while I looked at her, her hands plunged deep into the pockets of her mink, her body tucked well inside it, a little shivery from the cold as we waited for the heater. In the faint light she looked about twelve, except for the glowing cigarette, a tired child, not yet pubescent, the apple unbitten on the tree, the serpent yet to tempt her.

“I need a drink,” she said.

I didn’t say anything. Across the river lights were popping on as people came home from work. The mercury lamp street lights on our side of the river had the weak orange look they get before it’s fully dark and they turn blue-white. Wind whipped a small dervish of powdery snow off the frozen river and spun it west where the river turned toward Watertown.

“I said I need a drink.” Jill spoke around a slow drift of smoke.

“Yes, you did,” I said.

“Well for Christ’s sake, do something about it.”

“Maybe I could siphon off a little gasoline?”

“Don’t be cute with me, stupid. Just get this thing in gear and get us to the hotel.”

“I saw Gene Tierney do that once,” I said. “Smoked a cigarette just like that. Head back, eyes closed. And Sterling Hayden was her boyfriend…”

“Will you drive this fucking car?” she said.

I did.

Chapter 8

THE doorman at the Charles Hotel was a young guy with a go-to-hell Irish face made red by the cold. He wore a fur-collared greatcoat and the kind of hat Russian ministers wear. He said he’d hold my car for me.

“No problem,” he said, and started the revolving door turning for Jill Joyce as she preceded me into the lobby.

“Come up for a drink,” she said.

“Last time I came to your place for a drink you attempted to molest me,” I said.

She turned with her mink coat open and her hands on her hips. She tossed her head back a little and her pelvis forward a little.

“You scared?” she said.

“Yuh,” I said.

She shook her head in disgust. “Like most men,” she said, “never had a real woman.”

I let that pass. Discussing it in the lobby of the Charles Hotel didn’t seem like a way to bring clarity to the argument.

“Buy me a drink in the Quiet Bar,” she said. “Then if I frighten you, you can yell for the house dick.”

“Okay,” I said, “but you’ve got to promise to talk with me.”

We started up the wide staircase to the second level of the Charles.

“Talk to you?” She stopped one step ahead of me and turned and looked back.

“With,” I said.

She shook her head in open amazement, and continued up the stairs, talking over her shoulder. “What are you?” she asked. “Queer? You some kinda faggot?”

“You’re going to have to talk with me,” I said, “about yourself, your past, your fans, your lovers.”

“You get your rocks off talking?” she said. Her voice was loud. “You are a fucking queer.”

I took a quick two steps and caught her from behind and lifted her, holding her by her upper arms, up the last stair and steered her around the stairwell into an alcove near and to the left of the entrance to the bar. Her feet were still clear of the ground. She started to twist loose, but with her feet in the air she didn’t have much purchase.

“I’m tired of you,” I said. “I was tired of you halfway through lunch the first time I met you. But you need some help, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone else but me. So I’m hanging in there, and I haven’t hit you yet. But I will soon if it keeps going the way it’s going.”

I gave her a little shake.

“You understand that?” I said.

Her breath was coming in little gasps. I shook her again.

“You understand?”

Still making her gasping sound, she nodded her head.

“Now,” I said, “I’m going to ask you about things, and you’re going to answer me and we’re not going to play all this seductive teenager grab-ass that we’ve been playing. Right?”

She nodded again.

I set her down and let go of her upper arms. She leaned forward against the wall for a moment, and then turned slowly, leaning on the wall as she did, and rubbed her upper arms with her hands. Her breathing was still a series of half-stifled gasps and two bright streaks of crimson color smudged along her cheekbones.

“Limp… dick… mother… fucker,” she gasped, and then fell forward and began to sob against my chest. The sobbing wasn’t loud but it was wracking. Her whole body shook with it. Her arms hung straight down and still against her sides. I put my arms around her and patted her back gently while she cried. Two couples got off the elevator and came around the corner and studiously didn’t look at us. The men wore dark suits and red ties. The women wore frilly dresses with padded shoulders. Both men and women had too much hair. In from the suburbs. I had on a leather jacket and jeans and my Adidas Countries-white leather with the green stripes. An oldie but goodie. One of the women glanced back as they headed into the bar. Probably admiring the rakish cant to my watch cap.

Jill stopped sobbing after a while. But she kept her face pressed against my chest.

“Ready for that drink?” I said.

“I can’t go in there,” she said. Her voice was muffled. “I look awful.”

“You could look twice as bad,” I said, “and still look wonderful.”

She leaned away from me and raised her face. It was red and her eyes were puffy and some of her make-up was tear-washed. I revised my opinion, but kept it to myself.

“You mean it?” she said.

“Absolutely,” I said.

She fumbled some Kleenex out of her purse and dabbed at her eyes.