The Lioness(30)

But that afternoon, Katie had hugged her friend and told her how amazing she was, all the while thinking to herself that she couldn’t have done it. She couldn’t have found it inside herself to put on a show for an audience of two. And suddenly both she and her friend were weeping in each other’s arms. Their mothers were confused, and later that night Katie would explain to Glenda why she had started to cry. Why her friend had started to cry. At dinner she asked her father to find a role for her friend in a better, bigger show, but it never happened and Katie went to Hollywood and lost touch with the girl. She’d heard her friend was married and living in Westchester and had two little kids.

Now she was about to call out for someone at the gallery. Perhaps shout “hello” into the hollow air. But then David emerged from the small office he kept in the back, and there was another man with him. The fellow was a decade or so older than he was, and he was wearing a black suit and carrying an attaché case. Katie felt a little rush of joy at the idea this might be a client who had just spent gobs of money on one of the monster birds.

David was unwrapping a stick of Fruit Stripe gum and putting it in his mouth, and he stood a little taller when he saw her: happiness did this to people, and more times than not, her presence simply made people happy. “Well, this is a surprise,” he began. “Katie, this is my accountant, Cal Lemont. Cal, this is Katie Barstow.”

The accountant smiled at her and for a beat said nothing. He looked at her like she was a Martian. Or she was an alligator walking upright on its hind legs. Or one of the monster birds come to life. It happened. This was as common a reaction as was the adulation of the autograph seekers. Then he looked at David, the realization dawning on him that he had just heard David Hill call this movie star by her first name and they were, at the very least, friends. She extended her hand to Cal so he could shake it.

“Really love your work,” the fellow said, gathering himself. “So does my wife and so do my girls.”

“Thank you,” she said. “How old are they?”

“Missy is forty-three—”

“I just meant your children. Your daughters.”

Cal put down his briefcase on the Tuscan tile floor that David had added to the gallery and shook his head good-naturedly at his own awkwardness.

David laughed, and that diminished everyone’s embarrassment. “You have three girls, right, Cal?”

“I do,” said the accountant. “They’re sixteen, fourteen, and nine.”

“You have a handful,” she told him. “Or, at least, I was a handful at all of those ages.” But was she? No, she wasn’t. It was her parents who were the handful. Their demons and the way they quite literally tortured poor Billy and would have continued to torture her if she hadn’t served a more important purpose: a public affirmation of their genetic theatrical talent.

“Oh, she knew precisely how to drive her older brother crazy,” David said, as if he had started to read her mind but only intercepted a part of the thought. “Her brother and I have been friends forever.”

Cal took this in and looked back and forth between David and her. “So, you two have known each other since you were children?”

“I knew Katie when she was six years old and singing ‘Come On-A My House’ from the window seat in the family dining room. She used a soup ladle as her microphone. She would stretch the neck hole of her modest little sweater over her shoulders so much it ripped—so it looked like a strapless gown.”

“I’m gonna give you candy,” Katie said, purring the lyric that had become a part of the Stepanov family lore for its spectacular inappropriateness when it came from the lips of six-year-old Katie.

“Ross Bagdasarian,” said the accountant.

Katie was impressed that he knew this. “And William Saroyan,” she added. “They were cousins and wrote it together. The tune is based on an Armenian folk song.”

“Katie’s father has passed away, but he was friends with Saroyan. Broadway is a very small world,” David told his accountant.

Cal seemed to think about this. “I’m going to ask this with whatever is the accountant equivalent of attorney-client privilege. I won’t tell a soul what you tell me—not even my wife.”

David seemed uncertain, a little wary. “So, it’s a question for me?”

“I guess it’s a question for both of you.”

She and David exchanged a glance, and she knew he was thinking the same thing she was: he had nothing to worry about. The accountant was starstruck. It was actually kind of adorable.

“Go ahead,” she said.

“Are you two dating?”

David was silent, which might have been an answer itself. But she wasn’t going to make the mistake she had made the other night after dinner, when she had accepted his subdued kiss on the cheek and done nothing more than say good night. If he was involved romantically with that Russian defector, this was a way to find out—or, at least, glean a little insight. “Yes,” she told Cal, “we are.” Then she went to David’s side, stood on her toes, and kissed him fully on the lips, the sapid taste of the fresh stick of gum on his breath.

Before the accountant left, she gave him personalized autographs on gallery stationery that he could bring home to all three of his daughters.