Death of a Blue Movie Star

“Some calls were made. Some questions were asked. Nobody from … over the river, let’s say, had anything to do with it. That information’s gold.”
    She supposed that meant Brooklyn or New Jersey, headquarters of organized crime.
    “So, yeah, I’ll talk to you. I’ll tell you my whole life story. I’ve been in the business for about eight, nine years. I started as a cameraman, and I did my share of acting too. You wanta see some tapes?”
    “That’s okay. I—”
    “I’ll give you one to take home.”
    A blonde woman—maybe last night’s entertainment—appeared, groggy and sniffling. She was dressed in a red silk jumpsuit, unzipped to the navel. Traub raised his fingers as if he were signaling a waiter. The woman hesitated, then walked toward them, combing her long hair—it tumbled to her mid-back—with her fingers. Rune stared at the hair, a platinum-gold color. Neither God nor Nature could take credit for a shade like that.
    Traub said to Rune, “So what would you like? Coke? I mean the real thing, of course.” He held up a saltshaker. Rune shook her head.
    The audience heard: “She’s a Puritan. Oh, my God.” Traub glanced back at Rune. “Scotch?”
    Rune wrinkled her nose. “Tastes like Duz.”
    “Hey, I’m talking single-malt, aged twenty-one years.”
    “Old soap isn’t any better than new soap.”
    “Well, just name your poison. Bourbon? Beer?”
    Rune stared at the woman’s hair. “A martini.” It was the first thing that came into her mind.
    Traub said, “Two martinis. Chop-chop.”
    The blonde wrinkled her tiny nose. “I’m not, like, a waitress.”
    “That’s true,” Traub said to Rune, who had apparently joined his audience. “She’s not
like
a waitress at all. Waitresses are smart and efficient and they don’t sleep until noon.” He turned back to the woman. “What you’re like is a lazy slut.”
    She stiffened. “Hey—”
    He barked, “Just get the fucking drinks.”
    Rune shifted. “That’s okay. I don’t—”
    Traub gave her a cool smile, the creases cut deep into his face. “You’re a guest. It’s no problem.”
    The blonde twisted her face in anemic protest and shuffled off to the kitchen. She muttered a few words Rune couldn’t hear.
    Traub’s smile fell. He called, “You say something?”
    But the woman was gone.
    He turned back to Rune. “You buy them dinner, you buy them presents, you bring them home. They still don’t behave.”
    Rune said coldly, “People just don’t read Emily Post anymore.”
    He missed the dig completely. “You mean like the flier? Wasn’t she the one tried to fly around the world? I did a movie about an airplane once. We called it
Love Plane
. Sort of a takeoff on
The Love Boat
—I loved that show, you ever see it? No? We rented a charter 737 for the day. Fucking expensive and a pain in the ass to shoot in. I mean, we’re in this hangar in March, everybody’s turning blue. You don’t realize how small a plane is until you try to get three, four couples spread out on the seats. I’m talking wide-angle lenses. I mean, almost fish-eyes. Didn’t work out too good. It looked like all the guys had dicks about an inch long and three inches wide.”
    The blonde returned. Rune said to Traub, “My film. Will you help me out? Please. Just a few minutes about Shelly.”
    He was hesitating. The blonde handed out the drinks and put an unopened jar of olives on the thick glass coffee table. Traub started to grimace. She turned to him and looked like she was going to cry. “I couldn’t get it open!”
    Traub’s face softened. He rolled his eyes. “Hey, hey, honey, come here. Gimme a hug. Come on.”
    She hesitated and then bent down. He kissed her cheek.
    “You got any?” she whined.
    “Say please.”
    “Come on, Danny.”
    “Please,” he prompted.
    She said, “Please.”
    He fished into his pants pocket, then handed her the saltshaker—filled with coke, Rune assumed. She took it, then walked sullenly off.
    She hadn’t said one word to Rune, who asked Traub, “She’s an actress?”
    “Uh-huh. She wants to be a model. So does everyone else in this city. She’ll make some movies for us. Get married, get divorced, have a breakdown, get married again and it’ll take and she’ll be out in Jersey in ten years, working for AT&T or Ciba-Geigy.”
    Rune felt Traub’s eyes on her. The feeling reminded her of the time her first boyfriend, age ten, had put a big snail down the back of her blouse. Traub said,