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“Dexter is getting an under-five,” Jackie said. “So I said I’d show him where wardrobe is.” She smiled at Robert, not a happy smile. “Is that okay, Robert?” she said, as if his name was in quotation marks.
“What’s an under-five?” Astor demanded.
“Well,” said Robert, looking right at Jackie and showing her his teeth, “he can’t be any worse at acting than some people who do it fo
r a living.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Jackie said sweetly, showing her own teeth right back. “He’s almost certainly better than … some actors.”
“Mee-ow,” said Sylvia, stepping over and pushing between them. “Are you two still at it? After all these years?”
“Some things are forever,” Robert said, scowling. “Like herpes.”
“Robert has such trouble letting go,” Jackie said lightly. “And it was such a small thing, too.”
Robert turned bright red and clenched his fists. “I guess you’re the expert.”
“Well,” Jackie said, with that same acid-coated sweetness, “you certainly aren’t any expert.”
Robert opened his mouth to say something crushing. But he never got the chance; Sylvia took him by the arm and said, “Enough, you two. Let’s get your pants fitted.”
“He’s going to show me the makeup room,” Astor said.
“Work comes first,” Sylvia said. “Come on, Bob.”
“Robert,” he said automatically. He smiled at Astor and added, “It’ll just take two minutes.” Sylvia tugged at his arm, and with a last glare at Jackie, Robert allowed Sylvia to drag him away.
Astor watched him go, pouting heavily, and then, with a sidelong glance at me to see whether I was going to stop her, she followed along.
I looked at Jackie, hoping for some hint to what was going on. This had gone beyond the normal sniping between her and Robert. It was clear from the venom, as well as the words, that they had some kind of history together, and equally clear that it was unpleasant. I waited for Jackie to say something that might fill me in. But she just watched Robert’s back, and when he was finally gone into one of the suite’s bedrooms, she turned to me at last and said, “Well, now we have to get you an under-five.”
“Isn’t that some kind of tuxedo?” I said.
Jackie smiled and patted my cheek, and even though it was a very clear statement that I was an adorable moron, her hand felt very good, so I concentrated on the “adorable” and forgave the rest.
“So much to learn,” she said. “So little time.” She left her hand on my cheek for just a moment, and I could smell that same faint scent of perfume coming from her wrist. Then she dropped her hand.
“With Kathy gone, I’ll have to do this myself,” she said. “But the director owes me a favor. So—”
She smiled and then, very much like Astor had led Robert away, she took my hand and led me out the door.
TWENTY-THREE
MY FOSTER MOTHER, DORIS, USED TO SAY THAT YOU LEARN something new every day. I had always taken that as a subtle threat, but in this case what I learned from Jackie was harmless and delightfully useless. It turned out that I had been thinking of “plus fours,” and that was not a tuxedo but a kind of Three Stooges golfing outfit. An “under-five,” as it happened, was an acting part, so called because the actor in question—and in this case he was highly questionable—got to say under five lines. I wasn’t completely clear on why that number was so important; something to do with the unions, I think. The more I learned about show business, the more it seemed that almost everything was about one union or another.
In any case, giving a speaking part to a forensic geek with no acting experience—at least, not in front of a camera—didn’t seem to be a big deal to the director, Victor Torrano. He just sighed and said, “All right, what the hell, fine, stop batting your eyelashes at me.” And I was relieved to see he meant Jackie, not me.
Victor turned and looked me over, head to toe. “Huh. Okay, I got a few parts I was gonna cast local anyway. Um, not butch enough for a cop. Not evil-looking enough for a drug dealer …” He looked at my face and squinted. “Yeah, sorry, what’s your name?”
“Dexter Morgan,” I said. I hoped it was all going to be this easy.
“Dexter, right. You know anything at all about forensics?”
I could not stop myself from smiling just a little as I said, “As a matter of fact …”
And lo! He spake the word, and Dexter was an actor.
Jackie led me back to Sylvia’s lair, a note from Victor clutched in my hand, stating that I was now and henceforth for all time, or at least for one episode, Ben Webster, scene forty-nine, and was to be garbed appropriately.
