Tales of the City 03 - Further Tales of the City

uncannily accurate. One by one, the young men began arriving, long-limbed and Lacosted to near perfection.
    “What is this?” asked Michael, hovering near the kitchen. “The summer spread of GQ?”
    “They wish, ” said Guido, frantically fluffing the parsley on a tray of deviled eggs. “They’re anybody’s spread, at this point … and honey, when you’ve been in this business as long as I have, you see them come and you see them go. Mostly come … ya know?”
    “They’re so gorgeous,” said Michael. “Are they actors or what?”
    “What, mostly. Starlets. Harry Cohn knew all about it, only he did it with girls. Same difference. Same dumb dames standing around the pool.” The houseman wolfed down a deviled egg and scurried out the door with the tray.
    Michael found Ned by the swimming pool.
    “I need a joint,” Michael whispered, surveying the crowd. “If I’m going to be paranoid, I want there to be a good reason for it.”
    “I wouldn’t do it here,” Ned warned him.
    “Huh?”
    “________’s kind of old-fashioned.”
    “Right,” said Michael, looking around him. “Gotcha.”
The movie star’s arrival was heralded by joyful barking at the front gate. The dogs, in fact, provided the only official greeting that Michael could observe. While most of the men around the pool exuded airs of easy familiarity with their surroundings, none stepped forward to welcome the host.
    They don’t know him either, Michael realized.
    The idol was grayer than he had expected—a little paunchy, too—but he was truly magnificent, a lumbering titan in this garden of younger, prettier men. When he knelt and scooped the three-legged dog into his arms, he won Michael’s heart completely.
    “C’mon,” said Ned. “I’ll introduce you.”
    “Couldn’t we save it?”
    “Why?”
    “Well, won’t he be swamped for a while?”
    Ned smiled at him indulgently, rising from his chaise. “Come on over when you feel like it, O.K.?”
    Michael stayed by the pool, watching silently as the chatter resumed.
    “He must be on great drugs,” said a voice behind him.
    “Who?” said another.
    “The Pope.”
    “Huh?”
    “Well, they’ve had him on painkillers since the shooting, right? And he’s the Pope, right? He must be getting great stuff.”
    “Yeah, I never thought of that. Did I tell you that Allan Carr wants me for Grease II?”
    Michael rose and headed for the buffet table, where Guido was emptying ashtrays and grumbling. He was no longer Mrs. Danvers at Manderley; he was Mammy at Tara, entertaining the resident Yankees against her better instincts.
    “Where’s Ned?” asked Michael.
    “In the screening room,” said Guido, “with_______.”
    So Michael took a deep breath and went in to join them.

Buying Silence
    A S PROMISED, MARY ANN ENJOYED A LUNCH OF COLD salmon and Grey Riesling on the flagstone terrace overlooking the swimming pool at Halcyon Hill.
    Mrs. Halcyon was extraordinarily solicitous, oohing and aahing melodramatically over Mary Ann’s brief, but snappy, repertoire of true-life TV horror stories.
    “It certainly is,” she agreed, when Mary Ann had finished. “It’s just like the Mary Tyler Moore Show. They didn’t exaggerate one bit, did they?”
    “I love it, though,” Mary Ann hastened to add. “I’ll just love it more when they let me do some nighttime work.” She smiled a little ruefully. “They will, sooner or later. They just don’t know it yet.”
    “That’s the spirit!” Mrs. Halcyon clamped her plump, bejeweled hands together, then appraised her guest, smiling. “Edgar always said you were ambitious. He told me that many times.”
    “He was a great boss,” Mary Ann replied, returning a dead man’s compliment. She felt increasingly uncomfortable under the matriarch’s steady gaze.
    “He also said you were tactful,” continued Mrs. Halcyon, “and extremely discreet.”
    “Well, I always tried to be.” What the hell was going on here?
    “He trusted you, Mary Ann. And I trust you. You’re a young woman with character.” A kindly twinkle came into her eyes. “I wasn’t trained for much in this life—outside of opera guilds and museum boards—but I’m a pretty good judge of character, Mary Ann, and I don’t think you’ll let me down.”
    Mary Ann hesitated. “Is there something … uh, specific you had …”
    “I need a PR person. The Halcyon family needs a PR person. On a short-term basis, of course.”
    “Oh … I see.” She didn’t,