Death of a Blue Movie Star

atmosphere. She stretched and took a shower, and ate a cheese sandwich for dinner.
    Afterward, she walked to a pay phone and called Sam Healy.
    “I got fired.” She told him the story.
    “Oh, no. I’m sorry.”
    “My one regret is that we didn’t ship it to the networks,” she joked. “Can you imagine?
Lusty Cousins
on an ad during prime time? Boy, would that’ve been wholly audacious.”
    “You need any money?”
    “Aw, this is no big deal. I get fired all the time. I think I get fired more often than people hire me. Probably doesn’t work that way but it seems so.”
    “Well, you want to go out and get drunk?”
    “Naw, I’ve got plans,” she said. “Let’s make it tomorrow.”
    “Fair enough. My treat.”
    They hung up and Rune took a couple dollars in quarters out of her pocket, called directory assistance.
    She needed most of the coins. It took her quite a while to find a dance school that promised to make her an expert Texas two-stepper in just one night.

     
    The place didn’t exactly live up to that promise. It took a while to convince them she wasn’t interested in signing up for a series of Latin dances or the “Chic to Chic” Fred and Ginger special.
    But after the lessons got under way she picked up the moves pretty fast and she figured she could hold her own. The next night she surprised Healy by showing up at his place in a gingham skirt and blue blouse.
    “I look like Raggedy Ann. I’ll never be able to show myself south of Bleecker Street—I hope you’re happy.”
    They went to his Texas club again and danced for a couple hours, Rune impressing the hell out of him with what she’d learned. Then an amateur caller got on stage and started an impromptu square dance.
    “Enough is enough,” Rune said. They sat down and started working on a plate of baby back ribs.
    At eleven a couple of cops Healy knew came in and in a half hour the place was so crowded that they all left and went to another bar, a dive of a place on Greenwich Avenue. She expected them to talk about guns and dead criminals and bloodstains but they were just normal people who argued about the mayor and Washington and movies.
    She had a great time and forgot they were cops until one time there was a truck backfire out on the street and three of them (Sam wasn’t one) half-reached for their hips, then a second later, when they understood it was just a truck, dropped their hands, never missing a beat of the conversation and not laughing about what they’d done.
    But that made Rune think of Tommy and that reminded her of Nicole and the evening went sour. She was happy to get home and into bed.
    The next day she applied for unemployment at the office on Sixth Avenue, where she knew most of the clerks by name. The lines weren’t long—she took that as a barometer reading of a good economy. She was out by noon.
    Over the next week she saw Healy three times. She sensed he wanted to see her more but one of her mother’s warnings was about men on the rebound. And getting too involved with an
older
man on the rebound didn’t seem real wise at all.
    Still, she missed him and on Thursday when she called she got a pleasing jolt when he said, “Tomorrow’s my day off, how about we go—”
    “Blow things up?”
    “I was going to say, have a picnic someplace.”
    “Oh, yeah! I’d love to get out of the city. The streets smell like wet dogs and it’s supposed to hit ninety-seven. The only thing is I’ve got this interview at a restaurant.”
    He said, “You’re making a movie about a restaurant?”
    “Sam, I’m applying for a job as a waitress.”
    “Postpone it for a day. We’ll get out of the city.”
    “You’re twisting my arm.”
    “I’ll call you tomorrow with details.”
    “I haven’t said yes.”
    “Tomorrow.”
    He hung up.
    “Yes,” she said.

 
    CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
     

    Kent was a small town in Putnam County, sixty-seven miles north of New York City, near the Connecticut state line. The population was 3,700.
    The town hadn’t changed much since the day it was incorporated in 1798. It was too far from New York or Albany or Hartford for commuters, though a few people drove to and from Poughkeepsie for work at Vassar. The residents mostly made their money from farming and tourism and the staples of small-town economics: insurance, real estate and building trades.
    Travel books about the area generally didn’t mention Kent. The
Mobil Guide
gave the restaurant in the Travel-lodge near the