Death of a Blue Movie Star

fragments weighing no more than several pounds. The theater screen vanished, the first four rows of seats shredded into splinters and shrapnel, the floor rocked with a thud that was felt a mile away.
    Mixed with the roar of the explosion was the whistle of wood and metal splinters firing through the air as fast as bullets.
    Then, almost as quickly, silence returned, accompanied by darkness filled with smoke.
    No lightbulbs remained in the theater. But from the ceiling came a tiny green light, swinging back and forth. It was an indicator light on the videotape player, a large black box dangling from a thick wire where the projection booth had been. It blinked out and a second light, a yellow one, flickered on, indicating that
Caught from Behind, Part III
had finished, and
High School Cheerleaders
was now playing.

 
    CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
     

    Detective Sam Healy, lying on his couch, was thinking about the women he’d had in his life.
    There hadn’t been a lot.
    A couple of typical college romances.
    Then he’d lived with one woman before he met Cheryl and had one affair just before they’d gotten engaged.
    A little flirtation after he’d been married—a few drinks was all—and only after Cheryl had mentioned for probably the hundredth time what a nice sensitive man the contractor doing the addition to the bedroom was.
    Though Cheryl hadn’t been unfaithful. He was sure about that. In a way he wished that she had been. That would’ve given him an excuse to do a John Wayne number: kick in the door, slap her around, and in the aftermath give them a chance to pour out their hearts and express their fiery love for each other.
    Nowadays, that wouldn’t work. Think about
The Quiet Man
—Maureen O’Hara’d call the cops the minute John Wayne touched her and he’d be booked on second-degree assault, first-degree menacing.
    Times were different now.
    Ah, Cheryl …
    He stopped the VCR when he realized he hadn’t been watching the tape for the past ten minutes.
    The problem was that
Lusty Cousins
was just plain and simple boring.
    He found the other remote control—the one for the TV—and turned on the ball game. Time for lunch. He walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He took out one of the thirty-six Rolling Rocks it contained and popped it. On a piece of Arnold’s whole wheat bread he laid four slices of Kraft American cheese (four of the hundred and twenty-eight) and added mayonnaise from a quart jar. Then topped it with another slice of bread.
    Sam Healy had been grocery-shopping that morning.
    He walked back to the living room. He gazed out the window at quiet Queens. Silhouettes showed on window shades in the houses across the street. Seeing them depressed him. He couldn’t concentrate on the game either. The Mets were having less luck than both of the lusty cousins.
    He looked at the cover to the cassette of the film and decided he didn’t like adult films in the first place. They were as interesting as watching a film about someone eating a steak dinner. He also didn’t like the weird, slutty makeup and lingerie contraptions the actresses wore. They looked prosthetic and artificial: the fingerless lace gloves, the garters, the black leather bras, the orange fishnet stockings.
    And he didn’t like silicone boobs.
    He liked women like Cheryl.
    He liked women like Rune.
    Were they similar? He didn’t think so. Why would he be so interested in both of them?
    He liked innocence, he liked pretty…. (But how innocent was Rune? She’d loaned him
Lusty Cousins
. And what was the message for him
there?)
    But whatever he liked, Sam Healy didn’t think he had any business being involved with somebody like Rune. When he’d seen her the other night he’d promised to call her. But each of the dozen times he’d thought about picking up the phone he’d resisted. It seemed like the better thing to do. The more stoic. And safer for him. It was ridiculous. The weird clothes she wore. The three wrist-watches. She only had one name and it was fake, of course, like a stage name. On top of that, she was probably fifteen years younger than he was.
    Oh, no—that damn number fifteen again.
    No business at all.
    Add to that, she was playing detective, which really upset him. Good citizens, wound up to the excitement of police work by the cotton candy of TV, often tried to play cop. And ended up getting themselves, or someone close to them, killed in the process.
    So why was he thinking about Rune so