Femme Fatale and other stories. Laura Lippman
weight, but no more than five or six pounds, and it was better than Botox, plumping and smoothing Mona’s cheeks. She sipped her drink, stared into space, and listened to the curious non-music on the sound system. It wasn’t odd to be alone in Starbucks, quite the opposite. When parties of two or three came in, full of conversation and private jokes, they were the ones who seemed out of place. The regulars all relaxed a little when those interlopers finally left.
“I hate to intrude, but I just had to say—ma’am? Ma’am?”
The man who stood next to her was young, no more than forty-five. At first glance, he appeared handsome, well put together. At second, the details betrayed him. There was a stain on his trench coat, flakes of dandruff on his shoulders and down the front of his black turtleneck sweater.
Still, he was a man and he was talking to her.
“Yes?”
“You’re … someone, aren’t you? I’m bad with names, but I don’t forget faces and you—well, you were a model, right? One of the new-wave ones in the sixties, when they started going for that coltish look.”
“No, you must think—”
“My apologies,” he said. “Because you were better known for the movies, those avant-garde ones you did before you chucked it all and married that guy, although you could have been as big as any of them. Julie Christie. She was your only serious competition.”
It took Mona a second to remember who Julie Christie was, her brain first detouring through memories of June Christie but then landing on an image of the actress. She couldn’t help being pleased, if he was confusing her with someone who was serious competition for Julie Christie. Whoever he thought she was must have been gorgeous. Mona felt herself preening, even as she tried to deny the compliment. He thought she was even younger than she pretended to be.
“I’m not—”
“But you are,” he said. “More beautiful than ever. Our culture is so confused about its … aesthetic values. I’m not talking about the veneration of age as wisdom, or the importance of experience, although those things are to the good. You are, objectively, more beautiful now than you were back then.”
“Perhaps I am,” she said lightly. “But I’m not whoever you think I was, so it’s hard to know.”
“Oh. Gosh. My apologies. I’m such an idiot—”
He sank into the purple velvet easy chair opposite her, twisting the brim of his hat nervously in his hands. She liked the hat, the fact of it. So few men bothered nowadays, and as a consequence, fewer men could pull them off. Mona was old enough, just, to remember when all serious men wore hats.
“I wish you could remember the name,” she said, teasing him, yet trying to put him at ease, too. “I’d like to know this stunner that you say I resemble.”
“It’s not important,” he said. “I feel so stupid. Fact is—I bet she doesn’t look as good today as you do.”
“Mona Wickham,” she said, extending her hand. He bowed over it. Didn’t kiss it, just bowed, a nice touch. Mona was vain of her hands, which were relatively unblemished. She kept her nails in good shape with weekly manicures and alternated her various engagement rings on the right hand. Today it was the square-cut diamond from her third marriage. Not large, but flawless.
“Bryon White,” he said. “With an O, like the poet, only the R comes first.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said. Two or three seconds passed, and Bryon didn’t release her hand and she didn’t take it back. He was studying her with intense, dark eyes. Nice eyes, Mona decided.
“The thing is, you could be a movie star.”
“So some said, when I was young.” Which was, she couldn’t help thinking, a good decade before the one in which this Bryon White thought she had been a model and an actress.
“No, I mean now. Today. I could see you as, as—Catherine, the Russian empress.”
Mona frowned. Wasn’t that the naughty one?
“Or, you know, Lauren Bacall. I think she’s gorgeous.”
“I didn’t like her in that movie with Streisand.”
“No, but with Altman—with Altman, she was magnificent.”
Mona wasn’t sure who Altman was. She remembered a store in New York, years ago, B. Altman’s. After her first marriage, she had changed into a two-piece going-away suit purchased there, a dress with matching jacket. She remembered it still, standing at the top of the staircase in that killingly lovely suit, in a houndstooth check of fuchsia and black, readying to throw the bouquet. She remembered thinking: I look good, but now I’m married, so what does it matter? Mona’s first marriage had lasted two years.
Bryon picked up on her confusion. “In Prêt à Porter.” This did not clear things up for Mona. “I’m sorry, it translates to—”
“I know the French,” she said, a bit sharply. “I used to go to the Paris collections, buy couture.” That was with her second husband, who was rich, rich, rich, until he wasn’t anymore. Until it turned out he never really was. Wallace just had a high tolerance for debt, higher than his creditors, as it turned out. Mona didn’t leave because he filed for bankruptcy, but it didn’t make the case for staying, either.
“It was a movie a few years back. The parts were better than the whole, if I can be so bold as to criticize a genius. The thing is, I’m a filmmaker myself.”
Mona hadn’t been to a movie in ten years. The new ones made her sleepy. She fell asleep, woke up when something blew up, fell back asleep again. “Have you—”
“Made anything you’ve heard of? No. I’m an indie, but, you know, you keep your vision that way. I’m on the festival circuit, do some direct-to-video stuff. Digital has changed the equation, you know?”
Mona nodded as if she did.
“Look, I don’t want to get all Schwab’s on you—”
Finally, a reference that Mona understood.
“—but I’m working on something right now and you would be so perfect. If you would consider reading for me, or perhaps, even, a screen test … there’s not much money in it, but who knows? If you photograph the way I think you will, it could mean a whole new career for you.”
He offered her his card, but she didn’t want to put her glasses on to read it, so she just studied it blindly, pretending to make sense of the brown squiggles on the creamy background. The paper was of good stock, heavy and textured.
“In fact, my soundstage isn’t far from here, so if you’re free right now—”
“I’m on foot,” she said. “I walked here from my apartment.”
“Oh, and you wouldn’t want to get in a car with a strange man. Of course.”
Mona hadn’t been thinking of Bryon as strange. In fact, she had assumed he was gay. What kind of man spoke so fervently of models and old-time movie stars? But now that he said it—no, she probably shouldn’t, part of her mind warned. But another part was shouting her down, telling her such opportunities come along just once. Maybe she looked better than she realized. Maybe Mona’s memory of her younger self had blinded her to how attractive she still was to someone meeting her for the first time.
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll call you a cab, give the driver the address. Tell him to wait, with the meter running, all on me.”
“Don’t be silly.” Mona clutched the arms of the so-called easy chair and willed herself to rise as gracefully as possible. Somehow she managed it. “Let’s go.”
She was not put off by the fact that Bryon’s soundstage was a large locker in one of those storage places. “A filmmaker at my level has to squeeze every nickel until it hollers,” he said,