Free Show Business Kills by Iris Rainer Dart Page B

white.”
    “Don’t fret, sweetheart,” she told him with the implacable ironic deadpan she used so well in her comedy performing. “As soon
     as you leave, the man I move in here will be black.”
    Billy had laughed at that. She could always make himlaugh. But he searched her eyes to see if there was any truth in that.
    “You’re not seeing Arsenio, are you? I mean, that would be a mistake! He’s not even on the air any more.”
    He knew she might not be kidding because she was a flaming liberal, which was another thing that drove him crazy. The way
     she fought the bleeding-heart fight for every injustice anyone could name. She was always on a tear about some liberal cause
     or other. Fighting for gun control or against oil rigs, against animal testing or for bicycle helmets. She was on top of every
     controversial issue. Always at some shopping mall or other, passing out pertinent leaflets.
    And when her dazzling persona strolled through the Galleria, where she was speaking out on one issue or another that week,
     dressed in white jeans and a white cashmere sweater and white cowboy boots, pretty Marly Bennet still turned heads. The fans
     all remembered her from “Keeping Up with the Joneses,” a television situation comedy on which she played Ali Jones for seven
     years. The character was the outspoken mother of seven children, and Marly’s comedy timing, together with an intellect behind
     the eyes, had reviewers comparing her to greats like Eve Arden.
    The show had been off the air for two years, and the acting jobs for women her age were rare, with only a TV movie now and
     then and a commercial once a year or so. But that wasn’t enough, and she was worried. She went on interviews but did so reluctantly,
     hating the humiliation inherent in the process. Now and then she considered going into politics but decided there would be
     even worse humiliation in Washington.
    This morning, after she dropped the twins at school, shecame home and spent an hour on the Nordic Trac in the home gym she and Billy had built, then took a bath. She was sitting
     at her dressing table putting moisturizer on her long white legs, trying to decide what to wear on a commercial interview
     that afternoon, when she heard the unmistakable
voom-bah
of a Ferrari pulling into her driveway. Billy.
    From the bedroom window she saw him hop out of the car, watched the top of his head, balding a little in the middle of the
     blond curly hair. As he moved toward the front door, she felt her panic rise. What in the world did he want at her house in
     the middle of the day? She threw open her closet and tried to decide if she should change out of her robe and into something
     decent.
    Ellen would tell her, “It doesn’t matter how you look. He doesn’t see you anyway, he only sees himself.” Rose would tell her
     she should ignore the bell and pretend to be out. Of course her car was in the driveway, so she couldn’t do that. And Jan,
     the only one of them who always believed there was still hope for Marly and Billy to get back together, would say, “Gussy
     up, honey. Make him eat his heart out.”
    Oh hell. She ran down the stairs through the large marble foyer and pulled the door open. Billy, still six inches shorter
     than she was, stood leaning on the door jamb, and she hated the way seeing him there made her melt. That wild blond hair and
     little-boy look of his made every woman in America want to pull him to her bosom and still did her in.
    “Hey,” he said, smiling his most adorable Billy smile. It was one of a repertoire of smiles Marly knew so well that one night,
     when they were still wildly in love, she’d described them and named them for him, and he’d laughed in her arms about how well
     she knew him. This was one shecalled, “Howdy, Ma’am.” It had a degree of reticence, a politesse, and a humility Billy didn’t possess anywhere in his actual
     emotional makeup, only as an arrow in his performer’s