Radiance

He recoiled. I don’t suppose anyone had roared at Franklin Edison since he crashed his tricycle into a swing set. But then, I did have the .22. Roaring has more oomph with a Martian pistol behind it. “Don’t be ridiculous, Mary. I have disputes with everyone over unpaid fees for sound recording. If I started killing anyone who owes me money, the Moon would be a ghost town inside of a week.”

“What about you, Dante? He fired you from Death Comes at the Beginning. No one’s called you for so much as a footman’s role since.”

“Mary! I had no idea you thought of me that way—as so ruthless or so abject. I was with Maud, stargazing, just out there on the starboard rail. We heard the shot—we’re perfectly innocent. I loved Thad, you know that. He looked after my dogs when I was on location.”

This gave me an idea. I pounced upon it before it could get away. “I have a question. If I feel you have answered honestly, I shall let you go on your way. Who among us loved Thaddeus Irigaray? I believe that may tell us more than asking who hated him.” Proper Maxine Mortimer, from first syllable to last. “I certainly did,” I answered first. And it was true. He’d kept me in steady work for a decade and let me bring my cat on set. Hell, he’d proposed eight times. When Laszlo Barque left him, he stayed in my guest room for a month.

No one else spoke up. Percy stared determinedly at his feet. Maud and Dante looked quite thoroughly bored, smoking together by the piano. Finally, Maud stubbed out her cigarette and said, “All right, fine, I loved him. He looked after me post my little spot of nastiness with Oxblood. I was supposed to get the Mortimer contract, you know. The studio wanted me. But Thad wanted…I don’t know, I suppose he wanted a blonde.” She hurried to correct the bitter edge in her voice. “But no hard feelings! Why, that was ages ago.”

Freddy’s mouth kept running away from him. It twitched; it grimaced. It wanted to say something his brain knew it oughtn’t. He was drunk as a lord, careening from side to side, as though that great huge ballroom were too small for him, that coarse, awful elephant of a man.

“How about you, Penny?” Freddy hissed. Penelope Edison looked as though she were going to split apart at the seams. She kept rubbing her arms as though she were freezing to death. She stared at her husband, such a horrible stare, full of pleading and misery. Helpless tears started rolling down her face and they didn’t look like they’d ever stop. “Penny? Cat got your tongue? Who do you love, Pen? Me? Percy? How about Algernon over there? Or that sad sack of shit?” And he pointed to the ruin of Thaddeus Irigaray.

“Please, Freddy,” she whispered. I have never seen anything quite so wretched as Penelope Edison weeping.

“Please what? I didn’t do anything. But if somebody asks a question, it’s only polite to answer. And being polite is so important, isn’t it? If I forget one little P in an ocean of Qs, it’s the end of the goddamned world, but you can just stand there and quiver and not answer the fucking question?”

“Freddy, stop.” Percy put a hand on his shoulder and Edison swung wild, whacked him right in the eye. Percy doubled over, holding his face. “Fred! I’m trying to help you!”

“You need help, not me,” Freddy snarled back. “After everything I’ve given you people! Without me, without my family, you cunts are just flouncing around on a stage in hell with nobody fucking watching. And what do I get back? What’s my fabulous fee for making your entire disgusting existence possible?” He crossed to the body in two enormous strides and kicked Thaddeus’s shoulder, kicked him over onto his back, and kept on kicking him. Thad’s poor limp arm fell onto the floor.

Everyone started hollering, grabbing Edison, and gnashing their teeth—but all Maxine Mortimer saw was Thad’s left hand, the one poor softhearted Mary had worried would go all pins and needles on him. He’d curled his fingers into a fist. He had something in there, clutched in his bloody fingers. Nobody else saw it. They were too busy wrestling a drunk tycoon, sliding around in a good man’s death.

“That garbage shit-fucking cocksucker fucked my wife,” wailed Freddy, dogpiled under the biggest stars in Tinseltown. “That’s who loved him. My Penny. That’s who!”

Penny shook her head back and forth, her mouth hanging open, not breathing. She flopped onto the floor. “I didn’t…” she gasped. “I didn’t…”

No, she didn’t. Penelope Edison most certainly did not. She couldn’t have. Not in a year of Easters. What the hell was going on here?

“Jesus, someone get her a paper bag,” Maud Locksley said.

“Tell them!” shrieked Edison. The King of Sound and Colour was bawling his eyes out in a pool of cold blood. “That fucking whore snuck around on me while I was in Elish for the Worlds’ Fair! And when I got back, you were all slim and trim again, weren’t you, you bitch, you goddamned gold-digging Jezebel—”