A Knife to Remember

out here doing commercials and fashion shows.“
    “Shelley, you’re right,“ Jane said. “Now that you mention it, I recall having a pretty heated discussion with someone about how I remembered seeing her doing the weather on one of the local stations once, but I was told I had rocks in my head. I’ll bet I was right. It was—oh, sixteen or seventeen years ago that I saw her doing the weather. When Mike was a baby.”
    Maisie grinned. “Watch out with that ‘years ago’ talk. She still pretends she’s barely thirty.“
    “No!“ Jane exclaimed. “She’s my age, at least.“
    “Come on, Jane. Nobody’s that old,“ Shelley said, with a grin. “Who else is in this movie, Maisie?“
    “The principal male is George Abington. Do you know him?“
    “I don’t think so,“ Shelley said.
    “Sure you do, Shelley,“ Jane said. “He was in a spy series on television for a couple years, then he showed up on all the game shows for a few more years. Real good-looking, but seemed like an ordinary kind of guy. He was married to Lynette once, wasn’t he?“
    “Jane, you amaze me, the junk you know,“ Shelley said.
    “They were married once. For about five minutes,“ Maisie said. “It was during the movie I worked on with her ages ago. She’d just married George in a big splash of publicity, then they both went off to do some potboiler that Roberto Cavagnari was directing. Before the film was even in the can, she’d filed for divorce and moved in with Cavagnari.“
    “Who’s Cavagnari?“ Shelley asked. “Should I have heard of him, too?“
    “Probably not,“ Maisie answered. “He’s done a ton of high-testosterone things. Terminator-type movies. Spaghetti westerns. War stories. I can’t imagine why he was hired to do this movie, but like Lynette, he’s doing a great job. Far better than you’d ever expect.”
    Jane forgot herself so much that she put her cookie down where Willard could get it. “You mean Lynette Harwell is starring opposite George Abington, the man she abandoned for Cavagnari, the same man who’s directing this movie?”
    Maisie smiled wickedly. “Stranger things have happened in this business.“
    “Stranger, maybe. But that sounds downright dangerous,“ Shelley said.
    Maisie got up and started putting her layers of clothing back on. “As I said, you’ll find watching the process very, very interesting.”
     
     

3
     
    Vehicles and people kept arriving until well after ten o’clock that night. Jane watched, fascinated, from the back windows of the living room. An enormous piece of equipment that she later learned was called a condor, unfolded itself and lifted bright lights attached to a cherry picker–type basket high above the activity. The huge floodlights illuminated the field with harsh, heavy shadows. It was a truly eerie atmosphere, reminiscent of the scenes she’d sometimes seen on the news of nighttime catastrophes. It wouldn’t have been inconceivable to discover a downed airplane in the midst of the scurrying mob of technicians. All that was missing was the wail of sirens and the flash of red lights. The noise and mob and sense of purposeful urgency were all there.
    From the moment they’d come home from school and seen the extent of the production, Katie and Todd, Jane’s two youngest children, both had been enraged that Jane wouldn’t let them go out and wander around in the midst of it. “Just in the backyard, Mom,“ Todd pleaded after a quick, early dinner. “I’ll take Willard out to his pen.”
    They were all crowded around the window with the best view. “You know he’s afraid to go in the pen with anybody but me,“ Jane said, looking at the dog with irritation. “The big sissy.“
    “Poor old Willard is going to be one constipated doggy by the end of the week, aren’t you, boy?“ Mike said, grabbing Willard’s ears and wrestling his head around—to Willard’s absolute delight.
    “Mike, please don’t talk about the dog’s digestive tract,“ Jane said with a shudder. Mike had given the dog a banana a week earlier, with results Jane was afraid she was never going to be able to forget.
    “Come on, Mom,“ Katie nagged, tossing her hair dramatically. Katie was at the age that nearly all her conversations with her mother involved hair-tossing, flouncing, and/or door-slamming. Often all three. Jane had to keep telling herself that someday Katie would be a nice young woman and a wonderful companion to her—if they both survived