Death of a Blue Movie Star

Rune had wakened at seven-thirty. She'd been having a nightmare but it wasn't about Tommy or Shelly. Just some kind of forgetting-to-study nightmare. She had those a lot. But she relaxed at once, seeing Sam asleep next to her. She'd watched him breathing slowly, the slight motion of his chest, then climbed out of bed and walked into the house.

Pure burbs, pure domestic.

She made coffee and toast and looked at all the beer bottles and cheese slices and junk food in the refrigerator. Why did he refrigerate Fritos?

No, this whole thing didn't seem right. She ate junk food, sure, but he was a man. And a policeman. It seemed that he ought to eat something more substantial than beer and corn chips. In the freezer were TV dinners, three stacks, each different. He must work his way from right to left, she figured, so he wouldn't have the same thing twice in a row.

She walked around an ugly yellow kitchen, with huge daisies pasted on the refrigerator and pink Rubbermaid things all over the place-wastebaskets, drying racks, paper-towel holders, dish drains. Pictures of Adam were everywhere.

Rune studied it all, as she made coffee and burned bread into toast.

Was this what it was like to be a wife?

Probably what it was like to be a Cheryl.

Rune wandered through the one-story house as she sipped coffee from a white mug that had cartoons of cows on it.

One bedroom was a study. There were odd gaps in the room where furniture should have been. Cheryl had done okay, it seemed; from the looks of what was left she'd taken the good stuff.

In the white shag-ragged living room she looked at the bookcases. Popular paperbacks, textbooks from school, interior design. Explosive Ordnance Disposal -Chemical Weapons… The Claymore Mine: Operations and Tactics.

The last one was pretty battered. It was also water-stained and she wondered if he'd been reading it in the bathtub.

ImprovisedDetonation Techniques was right next to Masteringthe Art of French Cooking.

Sam Healy might be an easy person to fall in love with, and have fun with, but Rune could see it'd be tough to be married to him.

She walked back into the kitchen and sat at the table, which was covered with diseased Formica, and stared out into the backyard.

Nicole…

Nicole, suckered in by the glitz and bucks and hot lights. The coke. God, that teased hair, the glossy makeup, the dangerous fingernails, the aerobic thighs… A sweet simple girl, who had no business doing what she did.

Shelly and Nicole.

The Lusty Cousins…

Well, they were both gone now.

It seemed awful to Rune, to stumble into your death like that. It'd be better to face death head-on, to meet it, even insult it or challenge it some, rather than have it grab you by surprise…

For a moment, Rune regretted the whole business-her film, Shelly, Nicole.

These porn films-it was a shitty little business and she hated it. Not a good attitude, dear, you want to make documentaries but, goddamn it, that's how she felt.

Images from last night returned. Tommy's face, Nicole's-worse, the red-stained sheet. The network of blood on Tommy's hands. The heat of the lights, the steady, terrifying eye of the camera lens aiming at her as Tommy walked forward, the sound of the bullet hitting his head. She felt her hand shaking and a terrible spiraling churn begin deep inside her.

No, no, no…

Sam Healy's sleepy voice called from the other room and broke the spell. "Rune, it's early. Come back to bed."

"Time to get up. I made breakfast." She was about to add, Like a good wife, but figured why give Cheryl a plug? "We do the final cut of that House O' Leather job today. The one I told you about? I've got to be at work in an hour."

"Rune," Healy called again, "come here. There's something I want to show you."

"I burned toast just for you."

"Rune."

She hesitated, then stepped into the bathroom and brushed her hair, then sprayed on perfume. Rune knew a lot about men in the morning.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

She didn't intend her life to be violent. She certainly didn't intend to die violently. But Shelly Lowe was an addict-addicted to the power that the films she made brought her, addicted to that raw urge that perhaps all artists feel to expose herself, in every sense, to her audiences.

And just like for all addicts, Shelly ran the risk that that power would overwhelm her.

She understood that risk, and she didn't back away from it. She met it and she lost. Caught between art and lust, between beauty and sex, Shelly Lowe died.

Carved into her simple grave in a small cemetery in Long Island, New York, is the single line: "She lived only for her art," which seems a fitting epitaph for this blue movie star.

FADE OUT To:

CREDITS…

"What do you think?" Rune asked Sam Healy.

"You wrote that?"

Rune nodded. "It took me a hundred tries. Is it too, you know, flowery?"

Healy said, "I think it's beautiful." He put his arm around her. "Is it ready to go?"