A Knife to Remember

relieved.
    “... and by the time the fire trucks, they arrived, the fire was out!“ Cavagnari finished up his story with a flourish. Jane and the rest took this to be meant as a humorous ending and she joined the polite tittering. The only one who made no pretense was Olive, whose face was set in a grim, angry mask, although what there had been in the story to offend her, Jane couldn’t guess.
    “This is great! Just great!“ the producers’ nerd said. “I’ve been taping you!“
    “What!“ Cavagnari and Jake objected in unison.
    Only George Abington went on eating, bending forward at the neck slightly and confirming Jane’s guess that his underwear prevented him from bending at the waist.
    The young man came forward from where he’d been lurking. He had a camcorder. “Well, we’ll need all the promotional clips we can get and I told “Entertainment Tonight“ that I’d get some casual shots before their crew gets here. That was a great story, sir, and people will love seeing you tell it.“
    “I did not authorize this taping!“ Cavagnari shouted. “I will not have it on my set!“
    “But, Roberto, people like seeing the cast out of character,“ Lynette said softly. “I think it’s a good idea.”
    Jane looked at the beautiful star and guessed that she alone had noticed the faint whir of the camcorder and had been eating so daintily because she realized that it was being filmed.
    “No, no! I authorize filming!“ Cavagnari shouted. “Nobody else!“
    “I’m sorry, sir,“ the young man said. “But that’s not quite right. The producers authorize—”
    Cavagnari stood up, green poncho swirling, flung his chair aside, and lunged for the camera, wrenching it from the startled young man’s grasp. Cavagnari pushed a button and popped the tape out. “The producers? The secret, chickenshit, afraid-to-show-their-faces producers? This is what I think of your producers!”
    His accent had been pure Bronx for a moment. He strode to the trash container by the craft service table and dropped the tape into it with a flourish.
    Then he thought better of that. Accent back on track, he said, “Ah-hah! I see your look! You think when my back is turned, you will come back and remove it!“ He fished the tape back out and looked around for a means by which to destroy it on the spot.
    “I’ll throw it away if you like,“ Jane said. “Who are you!“ Cavagnari demanded.
    “This is my yard. I live in this house,“ Jane replied sweetly. “I’ll put it in the trash inside.“ Maybe, she thought to herself. Or maybe she’d just keep it as a nice little souvenir of having had lunch with a bunch of famous people. She noticed that Mike was smiling at her, making her wonder if her son could read her mind as well as she read his.
    Cavagnari lobbed the tape at her, which she managed to catch before it hit her. Jane felt her face reddening with anger and embarrassment. This man needed to go back to preschool and learn manners from the ground up. She slipped the tape into the kangaroo pouch on the front of her sweatshirt.
    The producers’ representative was muttering fiercely to himself and studying his recently assaulted camcorder for damage.
    “If I see you use that again, I’ll smash it to bits,“ Cavagnari said to him.
    A tense silence fell over the group. Only Lynette Harwell seemed immune. She was still eating; slowly, delicately, relentlessly finishing everything on her plate. Perhaps this was why Olive Longabach insisted on serving her, Jane speculated. Knowing Lynette’s appetite and her need to stay slim, Olive probably chose precisely the number of calories Lynette could afford to eat.
    Jane was still seething with anger at Cavagnari’s rudeness, but she had come out of the scene with the tape and was feeling an odd hostessy urge to make conversation. After all, they were all eating in her backyard, even if she hadn’t invited them. “I understand you’re originally from Chicago, Miss Harwell,“ she said.
    “Oh, hundreds and hundreds of years ago,“ Lynette said with a coy laugh, which was presumably meant to cue somebody to say that it couldn’t have been so long ago.
    Nobody did.
    “From this part of town?“ Mike asked.
    Cavagnari fell to eating his lunch, having ignored it while telling his endless story. Jake was studying a script with notes in the margins. George was making conversation with two people at the far end of the table who Jane hadn’t even noticed were there until