Show Business is Murder

Betty came on. “David?”

“Listen, Betty, there’s something I have to do.”

“Yes? Is everything okay?”

“We’re working things out. And Betty?”

“Yes?”

“I love ya, pal.” He hung up the phone.

Where was he? Oh, yes. He was sorting his papers. Ticket stubs. So many. They wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else, but it made sense to him. It was their life together.

Miranda went on the road with Dancin’ and he flew out to see her every weekend.

“I loved touring,” she said. “We’d go dancing after the show. I met so many people. It was so much fun.”

“I hated not seeing you every day. I hated that you were with them.”

“Them, David? Who is them?” He caught the exasperation in her voice. Didn’t she know he adored her?

“Anyone you were with when you were not with me.”

He placed the stubs back in their place. All except one. The Naked Truth. His play. A review with sketches written by a dozen famous writers on erotic subjects, the performers either all or semi-nude. It had been done before, and it hadn’t been successful. But that was because he wasn’t involved. It needed someone with vision. He would do it better.

“And you did,” Miranda said.

“Yes. And then I bought the theater, too. You have to own the real estate,” he said, “otherwise, you’re always paying the man.”

“Where did the money come from, David?”

“What difference does it make? I have friends who believe in me.”

“Why the hell not? You were laundering their money.”

“I didn’t hear any complaints from you. You have the best of everything. Clothes, the penthouse, everything you could ever want.”

“Yes.” She gave him a sad smile. “Like the hot tub.”

“You loved the hot tub.”

“With you sitting in it doing business, a phone on each ear, making your deals, raising money, negotiating with the unions. Oh, yes, I loved the hot tub.”

“I was really something. Admit it.” He made another grab for her, but she eluded him. “I never understood how you could let Bobby talk you into going back. You had everything.”

“That was part of the problem. I felt as if I was just something valuable that belonged to you-”

“Oh, come on. I never heard anything so crazy.”

“And I missed dancing.” She raised a long elegant leg and rested the back of her heel on the table without dislodging the lines of scrap paper. “You never-”

“There wasn’t any work for you.”

“You never let me talk. You never let anyone-”

“Talk? Anyone who wants to talk can talk. I’m the one with something to say.”

“You see what I mean? You finish my sentences. You do it to everyone. Bobby’s offer to be his assistant choreographer was perfect timing.”

“You wanted to get away from me.”

“You chased me away. You chased our friends away. You compete with everyone, even to the point of where to buy the best focaccia.”

“Your lousy friends couldn’t handle how successful I was.”

“They were our friends once.”

“They were jealous.”

“That’s not true. You made them nervous. You talk nonstop right through everyone.”

He took the coffee beans from the refrigerator and poured some into the grinder, then ground them to drown out her sound. She was gone when he finished, back to the bedroom, back to her barre. She was always walking away from him.

He poured the hot water through the grounds. “There’s coffee,” he called. She didn’t answer. He could hear her singing as she worked. “Razzle Dazzle.” She’d replaced Ann Reinking in the revival of Chicago. Bebe Neuwirth herself had called and asked Miranda to do it. And Miranda had been a sensation.

David had hated it. He put his hands over his ears. He didn’t want to hear “Razzle Dazzle.” It reminded him of Fosse and the old days before everything got so complicated, when you knew who your enemies were.

THEY’D JUST BEGUN to live together. She was sewing elastic across the instep of her new ballet shoes and the needle kept piercing her fingers.

He licked the blood from her punctured fingers. “You can buy them with the elastic already there,” he said.

“It’s not the same,” she said. “It has to be perfect. That’s why I do it myself.”

He knew in that moment she was what he wanted. It was how he felt his life should be. But in the end she was not perfect.

“DAVID,” SHE SAID. “What will you tell Patrick?”

“I’m working on it,” he said. He began looking through the scraps on the table for a clean piece of paper. Patrick was fourteen, almost a man. The best part of Miranda and him.

The jagged corner of a receipt caught his eye. He knew what it was though no one else would. Dick Boodle & Associates. Boodle was a former cop who’d set up a detective agency. David had used his services for body guards and stage door security for The Naked Truth cast.

“You’ve been having me followed,” Miranda said, an aura of sweet perspiration surrounding her. “Since the spring.”

“I found out who he was. Advertising. A loser. You fucked me over for a loser.”

“David-”

“After everything I did for you. How we live, the clothes on your back, and it’s not enough for you.”

“What you did for me? Having me followed for the last six months? I haven’t seen him in-”

“You saw him yesterday.” David knew all about it. She’d met him at the Mark Bar. He shook the memo at her. “It’s here in black and white.”

“I had a drink with him is all-”

This time it was David who walked away. He opened the door to the terrace and stepped out on the roof. The fog had lifted but the sky was gray and dense, and the temperature had dropped. Snow was in the air. At the edge of the terrace was a low brick wall that separated the terrace from thin air. Below was the closed courtyard, earth and stone now. In the spring, grass and daffodils.

He heard the phone ringing. He charged back into the apartment. He didn’t want Miranda to get it. The answering machine picked up and the ringing stopped. He listened. She said he had a love affair with the phone. But it was like an extension of his personality. When the Times did the feature on him, they took his picture with a phone on each ear and another on his desk. God, he loved it. But lately, since he’d stopped going to the office, he’d just let it ring, or let the answering machine get it.

“Miranda?” It was Nora, the bitch, her sister. Always butting her nose in. “Are you there? Pick up. I’m worried about you.”

He got hot, seething, began screaming at her, though she couldn’t hear him. “We’re working everything out, not that you care, you trouble-making bitch.”

“You say that, David,” Miranda said, “but we’re not working anything out. It’s too late for that.” Her cheeks were pale, her eyes distant.

“I swear, Miranda, I’m turning over a new leaf.”

“Yes. Like when you don’t let me go to the dentist, and to even the supermarket by myself.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to you. Most wives would be thrilled to be taken care of like I take care of you.”

Miranda sighed. “We’ve been married twenty-five-”