Death of a Blue Movie Star

knife in the man’s hand, the bloody blade retracting.
    The bum tried to shout for help. But the blood was gushing fast from the two wounds and his vision was going black. He tried to stand but fell hard to the cobblestones. The last thing he saw was the man reaching into his Lord & Taylor shopping bag, pulling out a red wind-breaker and pulling it on. Then stepping out of the alley quickly as if he were, in fact, late for his commuter train home.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
     

    The next morning Rune was lying in bed—well, a bunk—listening to the sounds of the river. There was a knock on her front door.
    She pulled on her jeans and a red silk kimono, then walked to the front of the boat. She opened the door and found she was looking at Shelly Lowe’s back. The actress was examining the water lapping under her feet as she stood on a small gangway painted egg-yolk yellow. She turned and shook her head. Rune nodded at the familiar reaction.
    “It’s a houseboat. You live on a houseboat.”
    Rune said, “I used to make wisecracks about having water in the basement. But the material’s limited. There aren’t a lot of houseboat jokes.”
    “You don’t get seasick?”
    “The Hudson River isn’t exactly Cape Horn.” Rune stepped back to let Shelly into the narrow entryway. In the distance, along the roof of the pier to the north, a flash of color. Red. It reminded her of something disturbing. She couldn’t remember what.
    She followed Shelly into the boat.
    “Give me a tour.”
    The style: nautical suburban ranch, mid-fifties. Downstairs were the living room, kitchen and bath. Up a narrow staircase were two small rooms: the pilot house and bedroom. Outside, a railing and deck circled the living quarters.
    The smell was of motor oil and rose potpourri.
    Inside, Rune showed her a recent acquisition: a half-dozen Lucite paperweights with flecks of colored plastic chips in them. “I’m very into antiques. These are guaranteed 1955. That was a great year, my mother tells me.”
    Shelly nodded with detached politeness and looked around the rest of the room. There was a lot to put politeness to the test: turquoise walls, a painted vase (the scene: a woman in pedal pushers walking a poodle), Lava lamps, kidney-shaped plastic tables, a lampshade made out of Bon Ami and Ajax cleanser cartons, wrought-iron and black-canvas chairs you sank down into like hammocks, an old Motorola console TV.
    Also: an assortment of fairy-tale dolls, stuffed animals and shelves filled with old books.
    Shelly pulled a scaly, battered Brothers Grimm off the shelf, flipped through and replaced it.
    Rune squinted at Shelly, studying her. A thought occurred to her. She laughed. “Know what’s weird? I’ve got a picture of you.”
    “Me?”
    “Well, sort of. Here, look.”
    She took a dusty book from the shelf and opened it up.
Metamorphoses
.
    “Some old Roman dude wrote these stories.”
    “Roman?” Shelly asked. “As in Julius Caesar?”
    “Yeah. Here, look at this picture.”
    Shelly glanced at the color plate of a beautiful woman being led out of a dark cave by a man playing a lyre. The caption read:
Orpheus and Eurydice
.
    “See, you’re her. Eurydice. You look just like her.”
    Shelly shook her head, then squinted. She laughed. “I do, you know. That’s funny.” She looked at the spine of the book. “This is Roman mythology?”
    Rune nodded. “It was a sad story. Eurydice died and went down to Hades. Then Orpheus—he was her husband, this musician guy—went to rescue her. Isn’t that romantic?”
    “Wait. I’ve heard that story. It was an opera. Didn’t something go wrong?”
    “Yeah, those Roman gods had weird rules. The thing is he could take her out of the Underworld as long as he didn’t look back at her. That makes a lot of sense, right? Anyway, he did and that blew the whole thing. Back she went. People think myths and fairy tales have happy endings. But they don’t all.”
    Shelly gazed at the picture for a moment. “I collect old books too.”
    “What kind?” Rune assumed erotica.
    But Shelly said, “Plays mostly. In high school I was president of the drama club. A thespian.” She laughed. “Whenever I tell somebody in the Industry—I mean, the porn business—tell them that, they say something like, ‘What’s that, a dyke with a speech problem?”’ She shook her head. “My profession’s got a pretty low common denominator.”
    Rune clicked on an ultraviolet light. A black-light poster of a