“I am smart. I am sensible. It wasn’t my fault. I am not afraid.”
Dr. Gimble had reeked of cigar smoke and had cat hair on his sofa, but he’d given her this. As Dr. Gimble had put it, all the soothing words in the world wouldn’t help if Kate didn’t believe them herself.
Today, she repeated the final want with a little more conviction. “I am not afraid.”
She showered and dressed and emerged from the bathroom eager for breakfast.
The kitchen table was cluttered with dirty dishes and orange peels, with two untouched pancakes on a plate in the middle. Kate thought the room was deserted, then noticed a pair of khaki legs sticking out from under the sink, with the mangy dog beside them. Hugo’s voice drifted out, muffled and slightly off-key. “It dooon’t meant a thing … if it aaain’t got that swing. Doo-wah, doo-wah, doo-wah, doo-wah.”
A smile crept up on her.
Hugo slid out from under the sink but didn’t notice her as he dropped a wrench into a toolbox and dug for something else. He looked less like a killer in daylight, but still like trouble. Like the good-looking boy who’d worked at the gas station near her private school, making all the clean-cut girls of Blakely Academy flirt like fools as he’d washed their windshields—until he’d been arrested for stealing car parts and never seen again.
Hugo noticed her and his humming faded. “Morning,” he said a bit warily, and she remembered that he’d probably read her telegram.
“I forgot to pay you last night.” She went to her room and returned with two dollars.
But when she held them out, he didn’t take them. “It was only seventy-eight cents.”
She took away one of the bills. “Keep the change.”
Hugo frowned but took the dollar.
Reuben entered the kitchen, short and bald, his scowl deepening as he looked at the table. “Those pigs. They didn’t leave a single orange. I’m the one who got them.”
“Stole them, he means,” Hugo told Kate. “Neighbor’s tree.”
Reuben scraped back a chair and sat. “The rich don’t own the earth. They let their fruit rot on the ground while the working class starves. That’s the problem with this country—sheer greed. And the people in this house are no better. There were seven of those oranges.”
“See, Figs, that’s the problem with being the only communist in the house.” Hugo stood and set the toolbox on the counter. “You’re morally obligated to share everything you have, while we capitalists get to take anything we can get our hands on.”
“Food is shared equally. That’s the arrangement.” Reuben stabbed a fork into one of the two remaining pancakes and plopped it onto an already-used plate.
“Are you really a communist?” Kate asked, fascinated.
“Well, I don’t go to meetings or anything, but I’ve read stuff, and I’m sick of the rich thinking they’re better than everybody else.” His eyes narrowed on Kate. “People in fancy clothes who don’t do a lick of work, just happened to be born with a silver spoon in their mouth.”
Kate felt stung for a second but quickly rallied. “As we’ve already established, if I had a silver spoon, I wouldn’t be here right now, I’d be eating breakfast at the Huntington Hotel—with oranges.” She saw Reuben reaching for the last pancake and quickly lowered her hand on top of it. “That one is mine. As Marx would say, ‘to each according to his needs,’ and I need that pancake.”
Hugo whistled. “Careful, Figs, I think you just found your match.”
“Captain of my debate team last year.” Kate considered the pancake and decided to eat it straight off the serving plate, which looked relatively clean. She pulled the plate closer and sat. “No hard feelings, Reuben?”
“He doesn’t have any feelings,” Hugo pointed out.
“Are you kidding?” Reuben hadn’t taken his eyes off her. “Finally—someone who can talk about something besides auditions and fourth walls. Do you really know about Marx?”
“Not really. I got an A in my government class, but I get A’s in all my classes. I don’t suppose there’s a clean fork around here?”
Hugo opened a drawer.
“Why do you keep calling him Figs?” Kate asked as she took the fork.
“Reuben Feigenbaum.” Hugo leaned back against the counter. “A name no casting director would forget, but he thinks Jim Anderson is more distinctive.”
“Charles Kensington,” Reuben said, sawing the side of his fork into his pancake. “I changed it last week.”
“Right.” Hugo’s eyebrows lifted. “Because you’re a perfect fit for all those yachting, lord-of-the-manor roles.”
Kate reached for the syrup, studying Hugo from beneath her eyelashes. Eighteen, she guessed. This morning, his nice shoulders were covered by a short-sleeved shirt, and his almost-black hair had a freshly washed sheen to it. Maybe he’d cleaned up for her.
His gaze shifted to Kate and she looked away.
“So, Reuben, you’re an actor too?” She poured syrup. “I thought you were a musician, the way you played the violin.”
He speared a wedge of pancake with his fork. “There’s no work for musicians anymore. The music is all canned.” He looked at her, the fork dangling. “I’m a bookkeeper, really, until this nitwit convinced me to quit my job and go into acting. So now I’m as broke as he is.”
“Less deadly than that number-crunching job,” Hugo said.
“Unless I starve to death.” Reuben shoved the fork into his mouth.
Kate sensed more to the story. “How can a bookkeeping job be deadly?”
Reuben and Hugo exchanged a look. “Go ahead,” Reuben said around a mouthful. “Ollie’s gonna tell her anyway.”
“Reuben used to count money for the wrong people, at this nightclub called the Galaxy. Then his boss got arrested, and Reuben had to go into hiding because he knows where all the bodies are buried.”
“Hey,” Reuben griped.
“Sorry, figure of speech—where all the money is laundered. So now the feds are parked outside Reuben’s apartment with a bunch of questions. But if he talks to them, his boss’s thugs will drop him off a dark pier. So he can’t go home until the case is dropped.”
“Which it will be,” Reuben said. “He owns the judge.”
“So, Reuben came here to hide out for a while.”
It sounded like a gangster movie. Kate looked from Hugo to Reuben. “Are you making this up?”
Reuben swallowed. “Sadly, no. I’ve been stuck in this asylum for five months with this nitwit dragging me to auditions.”
Hugo shrugged. “I told him there’s no better place to hide than Hollywood. I’ve been going to casting calls for two years, and I’m completely invisible.”
“Yeah, and it’s depressing as hell.” Reuben took another bite.
“One phone call, Figs, and your whole life will change. Those studios are made of money.” The dog whimpered, and Hugo crouched to scratch its ears. “How’d that audition go yesterday? I forgot to ask.”
Reuben talked out of the corner of his mouth. “Said I’m too bald.”