Free Jump by Mike Lupica Page B

retirement from show business, she figured out that she had been in restaurant scenes on all three networks. The two stars would be having some earnest conversation and there, behind them, acting like she was talking to some guy, looking a lot more animated than she ever felt, was Hannah. Twice she played a dead body in one of those simulated murders on
Inside Edition.
She was in the toy store in
Home Alone 2
the first time little Kevin went in there to shop. She was an extra in Scorsese movies. She actually got two lines of dialogue in a
Kate & Allie
; she was an admitting room nurse and Susan Saint James—for the life of her, Hannah still couldn’t remember whether she was Kate or Allie—had gotten sick on her way to some formal dance.
    But it wasn’t the shit work that made her give it up finally, even as Jimmy kept going. Jimmy used to tell her to hang in there, he had enough confidence for both of them. Only they both knew that was a lie. What little Hannah had, what little her mother had left her with, was completely gone at the end. She would go to these miniature casting theaters, reading for television movies. The casting people would be there, the director, sometimes the writer. They would hand her the page and she would read what she was supposed to read, and there would always be that moment she dreaded when she was through, when she’d look up at them, see the awkward smiles, and feel like some dog outside the back door, begging.
    God, she hated that.
    It was one of the things she hated most about the night in Fulton, the way she ended up begging …
    The movie with Mary Stuart went to six o’clock. Hannah turned to the news. Wednesday night, she had gone crazy with the switcher watching the eleven o’clock news, like Jimmy watching football games on Sunday afternoons. She’d gone from channel to channel to see how they handled Marty Perez’s first story.
    Hannah didn’t even know what channel she had now, but therewas Jimmy Carey rolling around in some parking lot with Richie Collins, then being pulled off by DiMaggio, who looked bigger than he had in the backseat of the car, big enough to throw Jimmy inside a door and drag Collins in there, too.
    What was Jimmy doing in Fulton?
    She hit the display button for the set. It was Channel 2. She didn’t recognize the anchorwoman in the studio. There was just a split screen, and the woman was talking to a reporter in the field, and underneath the reporter in the field it said, “Live, Fulton, Connecticut.”
    The reporter in the field, a kid with a lot of hair, said, “Bryne, one minute we were trying to get a comment from Collins, Ellis Adair having already gone inside, then the accuser’s brother seemed to appear out of nowhere. We thought he was trying to get an autograph. Then the other man jumped in.”
    The kid with the hair said the Knicks were going to make some kind of official statement. Then the anchorwoman said they, meaning the media, were in an awkward position because identifying the attacker would be another way of violating the victim’s right to privacy.
    The kid with the hair smirked and said, “Accuser, not victim, Bryne.”
    Hannah said “Screw you” to the television now, wondering what the kid with the hair would think about rape, what any man would think, if it ever happened to them.
    The phone rang. Hannah hadn’t been answering it when she was in Jimmy’s apartment alone, just letting his machine pick up.
    Hannah grabbed for it, thinking it might be Jimmy.
    “Hannah, is that you?”
    Mother.
    Without waiting, she said, “My God, it’s you, isn’t it? The rape? You couldn’t even tell your own mother, all this time? Where is your brother, disgracing me on television that way in front of the whole world.”
    It was always about her and always about the whole world.
    Hannah said, “Is there one question in there you’d like me to address first? Or should I just start anywhere?”
    She knew she shouldn’t take that