Death of a Blue Movie Star

grab your breath and her voice remained steady. “You were with her when it happened?” She hadn’t heard Rune’s refusing a drink, or had decided to ignore it, and was pouring Stoly over small, half-melted ice cubes.
    “I was in the street, waiting for her. We were going to a party.”
    “The AAAF party, sure.”
    The memory of which set off another jag of tears. Nicole handed Rune the drink. She wanted to leave but the actress looked at her with such wet, imploring eyes that she eased into the hissing leather cushions and took the offered glass.
    “Oh, Rune … She was one of my best friends. I can’t believe it. She was here this morning. We were joking, talking about the party—neither of us really wanted to go to it. And she made breakfast.”
    What should I say? Rune thought. That it’ll be all right? Of course it won’t be all right. That time heals all wounds? Forget about it. No way. Some wounds stay open forever. She thought of her father, lying in a Shaker Heights funeral home years ago. Death changes the whole landscape of your life, forever.
    Rune sipped the clear, bitter drink.
    “You know what’s unfair?” Nicole said after a moment. “Shelly wasn’t like me. Okay, I do a pretty good job. I’ve got big boobs so men like watching me and I think I know how to make love pretty good. And I like what I do. I make good money. I’ve even got fans send me letters. Hundreds of ’em. But Shelly, she didn’t like the business. It was always like she was carrying around a, you know, burden of some kind. She would’ve done something else if she had a chance. Those religious nuts … It’s not fair they picked her.”
    Nicole stared at the bookcases for a moment. “You know, one time we went to this movie about this hooker who was also a blues singer. She had a terrible life, she was so sad…. Shelly said that was her, that’s how her life was. Blue. We saw it twice, and, boy, did we cry.”
    Which is what she did now.
    Rune set the vodka down and put her arm around Nicole’s shoulders. What a pair
we
are, she thought. But there was nothing like tragedy to bring out sisterliness.
    They talked for another hour until Rune’s head began to ache and the cuts on her face began to throb. She said she had to leave. Nicole was sentimental drunk and still segued into tears every few minutes but she also would be asleep in a few minutes. She hugged Rune hard and took her number at L&R.
    Rune waited for the elevator to take her down to the shiny marble lobby of the building.
    Thinking how it was really sad that now with Shelly gone, Rune wouldn’t be able to make the movie that would tell everyone about her—about how she was really a serious person, despite what she did for a living, how she wanted to rise above it.
    But then she thought: Why not?
    Why
couldn’t
she make the film?
    Sure she could.
    And remembering something that Nicole had said, about the blues, suddenly the title for her film came to mind. She thought about it for a minute and decided that, yes, that was it.
Epitaph for a Blue Movie Star
.
    The elevator arrived. Rune stepped in, rested her face against the cool brass plate holding the buttons and sent the car on its journey to the first floor.

 
    CHAPTER SIX
     

    Just look like you know what you’re doing and he won’t stop you; he’ll let you right in.
    Life is all a question of attitude, Rune knew.
    She was wearing a blue windbreaker. On the back, in white, were the letters NY . She’d stenciled them on that morning with acrylic poster paint. She kept the Sony Betacam on her shoulder as she walked past the uniformed policeman standing in the lobby of Lame Duck Productions. She nodded in a distracted way, cool, a civil servant nod, confident he’d let her pass by.
    He stopped her.
    “Who’re you?” he asked, a guy who looked like—what was his name?—Eddie Haskell on
Leave It to Beaver
.
    “Film unit.”
    He looked at her black stretch pants and high-top Keds.
    “Never heard of it. What precinct you out of?”
    “
State
police,” she said. “Now, you don’t mind, I got five other CSs to do today.”
    “What’s a CS?” Eddie didn’t move.
    “Crime scene.”
    “CS.” He was nodding. “Shield?” he asked.
    Rune reached into her purse and flipped open an ID wallet. On one side was a bright gold badge and on the other was an ID card with a sullen photo of her. It gave her name as Sargant Randolf. (The man who sold her the ID an hour before, in an arcade