Free Make Out with Murder by Lawrence Block

hard. You can’t imagine.”
    “I guess it’s very hard to get started.”
    “It’s almost impossible. You saw how many people we had in the theater tonight. Maybe thirty.”
    “If that.”
    “I know. It was closer to twenty, and most of them were friends who didn’t pay for their tickets. And the actors didn’t get paid anything, we’re all working for free in the hope that somebody important will see us on stage and have something else for us, and—”
    She told me a lot more about what was wrong with trying to act for a living. And then she said, “Sometimes I think I should just forget the whole thing and marry Gordie. That’s what he wants me to do. It’s a temptation, you know. Just give it all up and have babies and enjoy life. Except I worry that I would wake up some day years from now and wonder what I had done with my life. It’s very confusing.”
    She looked straight into my eyes during this last speech and I felt as though I could see clear through to the back of her head. I found it easy to understand why Gordie was overprotective. There was something about Kim that made you want to put your arms around her and tell her everything was going to be all right. Even if it wasn’t.
    I was just about to reach across the table and take her hand when something changed on her face. She raised her eyes over my shoulder, then waved a hand. I turned, and of course it was good old Gordie.
    He pulled a chair up and sat down. He did not seem overjoyed to see me there. (Which made it mutual, actually.) Kim introduced us, and I found out that he had a last name, McLeod. Then he found out that I was a friend of Melanie’s and some of the suspicion left his face. Not all of it, but some.
    “You see the play?” I admitted that I had. “Saw it myself a couple of times. Rather catch a movie myself. All these people just talking back and forth. What did you think of Kim?”
    “I thought she was very good,” I said.
    “Yeah, only good thing about the play, far as I’m concerned. She’s very talented.”
    I said she certainly was, or something equally significant.
    “But I don’t like the people she has to hang around with. It’s a well-known fact they’re all fairies in that business. A well-known fact. Still in all, as a way for her to pass the time until she settles herself down—”
    He went off on a speech that Gloria Steinem would not have enjoyed. I have to admit that I didn’t follow it too closely. It was already becoming clear to me that Gordie McLeod and I were never going to become best buddies. I was noting Kim’s reactions to what he was saying and trying to figure out just what it was about this ape that attracted her. I had no trouble figuring out what it was about her that appealed to him.
    “Well,” he said, “it’s gettin’ to be about that time. Nice meetin’ you, guy.”
    “There was something I wanted to discuss with Kim,” I said.
    “Oh, yeah?”
    “About Melanie,” Kim said.
    He settled back in his chair. “Well, sure,” he said.
    “It’s a little public here,” I said. “Could we go somewhere more private?”
    “What for?”
    “So that we could talk in private.”
    “What’s this all about, anyway?”
    I wasn’t making much headway. Kim came to the rescue and suggested we all go back to the apartment. She didn’t say her apartment or their apartment, just the apartment. He didn’t seem wild about the idea, but we went anyway. He insisted on paying for my coffee. I have to admit I didn’t put up a fight.
    The apartment, which did turn out to be their apartment, was on Bethune Street a few doors west of Hudson, which made it about equidistant from Kim’s theater and the Hudson docks where Gordie did something muscular. It was on the second floor of a good old four-story building. There were three high-ceilinged rooms and a little balcony with a view of nothing spectacular.
    There was a good feeling to the apartment, and it was hard to believe Kim had rented