“I think I’ll head over now, if you and Cara don’t mind,” said Gray. “He’s probably in the bar, hounding Murphy for an autograph.” His lover’s disapproval of Western cultural influences did not extend to movie Westerns either. They’d met in the air-conditioned Majestic Cinema at a matinee of The Cimarron Kid where my brother (no fan of Audie Murphy) had gone to escape the heat. Tam was watching the picture for the second time, and might have stayed for the five o’clock showing had the usher not insisted that he purchase a new ticket.
Jakub shook his head. “Murphy cleared out on Thursday. Mankiewicz gave him the a-okay after they ran the rushes of the disaster scene. Most of the stars left yesterday afternoon.”
“Before the wrap party?”
“That was just for the crew.”
Too late I perceived the flaw in the story we’d concocted, Tam and I, to explain his sudden disappearance. He couldn’t have been chaperoning the louche members of the cast around Saigon’s pleasure palaces if they were already en route to Rome. I braced myself for the inevitable follow-up question: if Tam wasn’t carrying out his duties, where was he last night? But of course Gray had no reason to suspect that I knew more than he did regarding Tam’s whereabouts. It was an indication of how successfully he’d distanced himself from the production of The Quiet American, that he’d lost track of the actors’ comings and goings.
My husband was more astute. In the short time we’d been sitting outside, I’d smoked four cigarettes, my vermouth cassis untouched on the table between us. The pedicab bearing Gray to The Rainbow had barely pulled away from the curb when Jakub reached for my hand.
“Najdroższa,” he said, employing the Polish endearment he always used in place of my name. “What’s going on?”
I wondered how long I could keep the truth from him.
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