Last Scene Alive

"The one and only." I'd inherited Madeleine after Robin left Lawrenceton, but I remembered writing him about the big orange cat.

The patio forgotten, Robin bent to hold out his hand to Madeline. She glared at him after she sniffed it. Pointedly, she turned her back to him and waddled off to her food bowl. It was empty, and she sat in front of it with the air of someone who could wait all day. She would, too. I got out her kibble and filled her bowl. When food was in front of her Madeleine ignored the rest of the world, and she dove in as eagerly as usual.

Catherine came downstairs, her feet heavy on the treads. Catherine was the most consistent "help" I'd ever had. Mostly women came to work for me, showed up on time at first, and then drifted on to some other job. Sometimes they'd tell me; sometimes they just wouldn't show up. Cleaning houses is not for everyone. It's not high-paying, at least in Lawrenceton, and some people seem to feel it's degrading. So I was grateful for Catherine's consistency, and I tried hard to be a good employer.

"I'm fixing to leave," she said, after I'd introduced her to Robin. "You need to get some more Clorox and some more Bounce sheets. I put it on the list on the refrigerator."

"Thanks, Catherine," I said.

"See you next time."

"Okay."

We were never going to be best friends, but at least our exchanges were always civil. After she'd left, I poured some iced tea for Robin and we went into the study, den, downstairs room—I'd called it all three. There was a red leather couch with its back to the window. Robin settled on that, so he'd have plenty of room for his long legs. I had a low, comfortable armchair that allowed my feet to sit firmly on the floor. We looked at each other a little anxiously, not knowing what to say next.

"Are you very unhappy about the movie?" he asked abruptly.

"I was. I'm still not exactly thrilled." I took a deep breath, exhaled. I was making an effort to be honest, with a little tact thrown in. "But the town is very excited, and the money will be good for its economy."

Robin nodded, and seemed to want to change the subject. He started playing "How is?" and we went down a list of names rapidly. It was an unpleasant surprise to me to find how long it had been since I'd seen some of the people Robin asked about. There seemed no excuse for it in a town the size of Lawrenceton.

"Tell me about your husband," Robin said out of the blue.

I sat and stared at my hands for a minute. "Martin was ... a senior executive at Pan-Am Agra," I said carefully. "He was older than me by almost fifteen years. He was a Vietnam vet. He was very... dynamic. He had done some shady things in his life. He was always looking for that to come back at him." He loved me deeply. He was fantastic in bed. He was extremely competitive with other men. He was domineering even when he didn't think he was being so. He really listened to me. He broke my heart. I loved him very much, though our marriage had loose edges and rough patches. All this.

"I know you must have some hard times," Robin said quietly. "My mother lost my dad earlier this year, and she's been struggling."

I nodded. Hard times, indeed. "I'm sorry about your dad," I told him, and for a minute we sat in silence.

"Are you going to marry the actress?" I asked brightly, trying to get us back on a less dangerous track. "I saw you-all's picture in the magazine."

"You can't believe the stories about me and Celia," he said. "At one time they had some truth to them, but not any more. We're just barely friends, now."

I raised my eyebrows at him, making a skeptical face.

He gri

I gave his disenchantment a moment of respectful silence. Then I asked, "So, what did you want from this visit to me?" He must want something, I was sure.

He paid me the compliment of not protesting he'd just wanted to see me again. "I want you to come to the set, at least once. I want you to see this being filmed, read the script."

"Why? Why on earth would you want that?"

"Because I want you ... to approve. At least, not to hate it so much."

"Does it really matter to you?"

"Yes." Robin was dead serious.

For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why my approval made any difference at all. But what did I have to lose? I wasn't scheduled to work tomorrow until late afternoon.

"Okay, Robin. I'll come tomorrow to observe for a little while."

"Great," he said, brightening. "I'll set it up."

Chapter Four

You would've thought the circus had come to town.

It was the biggest mess I'd ever seen, but I was pretty sure that was because I didn't understand what was happening. There were people everywhere, standing in clusters talking seriously or buzzing busily around the area that had been delineated with sawhorses. A sizeable number of the cast and crew found time to stop by a table laden with bagels and fruit and coffee, a table supervised by a stout, auburn-haired young woman in a white uniform with "Molly's Moveable Feasts" embroidered on the chest.

It appeared that Robin himself was barely tolerated on the set, which surprised me. No one seemed pleased to see him or gave him more than a nod. Writing fame was no guarantee of special treatment here.

"How come they're not happy to have you on the spot?" I asked.

"Writers are just a pain on the set," he explained. He didn't seem at all ruffled or surprised by the indifference shown him. I couldn't believe that Robin was being herded into a corner and practically treated as if he were invisible. To me, writers were the most important people around. I noticed that I was invisible by extension, and that was fine with me.

I only dared talk to Robin in whispers. I tried to figure out what I was seeing, and after a while I asked him to interpret the scene for me.

"That's the director," he said in a low voice, nodding toward a tall, gawky man with five earrings on one ear, a shaved head, and an irritating black goatee. He was wearing an absolutely conventional oxford-cloth shirt and khakis, not only clean and pressed, but also starched. Somehow, with the shaved head and goatee, the shirt and khakis looked odder than a Limp Bizkit tee shirt and cutoffs would have. "His name is Joel Park Brooks, and he's smart as hell. That's his assistant, Mark Chesney, to his right." Mark Chesney was as su

"Who's that?" I indicated the graying, rough-looking man I'd seen with Starlets One and Two yesterday.

"That's the head cameraman, Will Weir. He's worked everywhere," Robin said admiringly. "He's easy to work with, they say, and very good."

"Is that Celia?" Starlet One had come out of a trailer and was striding toward the churchyard. She was recognizable only by her walk, as far as I was concerned. Her hair was tame, her makeup looked very moderate, her clothes were definitely more modest than yesterday's outfit. As I watched, she stumbled on something on the sidewalk, and righted herself with a little jerk. Joel Park Brooks didn't seem to notice, but the cameraman—Will Weir, I reminded myself—frowned as he observed the misstep.

"Yes," Robin said, and he didn't sound glad, or unhappy—any reaction I would have expected from someone seeing the woman he'd dated until fairly recently. He sounded... worried, concerned. Odd. After all, anyone can stumble. I am no graceful swan myself.