“Wait,” Scarlett said. “Neither of you got the part on the show you wanted. Only Rick got in. What was the problem?”
“Thank you for asking, O’Hara. Weeks passed. I figured Donna would come home. But she said she liked the warm weather—it was horrible in New York that winter—and that she would be back in a few weeks. Rick and his new cast bonded, developed their characters, enjoyed themselves in LA. He called all the time to tell me he missed me. And then one day, two weeks before the big premiere, Rick called me one night, all tears, saying how sorry he was. He and Donna had decided that they liked the new climate, and each other.”
“I was told you had long been on the rocks,” Donna said.
“On the rocks! Did we look on the rocks?”
“So this is about Rick?” Scarlett asked. “This is about a guy?”
Donna was nodding, but Mrs. Amberson uttered a grave, “No.”
“No?” Donna said.
“No,” Mrs. Amberson said. “I found out the truth.”
“What truth?”
“Evil deeds,” Mrs. Amberson said. “They’ll always haunt you. Three years later I was having lunch with a mutual friend, someone else who was connected with that show.”
“The show never aired,” Donna explained to Scarlett. “Some producer changed his mind, and the whole thing was pulled at the last moment.”
“That’s correct,” Mrs. Amberson said, annoyed at the interruption. “My friend said to me, ‘You were smart to turn that show down. It was a disaster.’ Naturally, I had no idea what he was talking about. He said I had gotten the call and that the casting director had spoken to me.”
Donna almost dropped her tea.
“You see, I got the part, Scarlett,” Mrs. Amberson said, forcibly enough to cause a visible crack in her crust under the plastic. “They called me to tell me I made the last cut. They called me the next Gilda Radner on the phone, but some woman in my apartment pretending to be me said I wasn’t interested because live television was too scary!”
“You think I did that?” Donna said. “This is the first I’ve ever heard of this! This certainly explains your actions. There’s only one problem.”
“The only problem I’m seeing right now is that I’m entirely wrapped in plastic and can’t come over there and feel your peach fuzz.”
Scarlett was worried for a moment that Mrs. Amberson would get up and throw her clay-encrusted figure on top of Donna. She struggled to move, but Katiya had wound her too tight.
“I never took any phone call,” Donna said, standing up. “If you had gotten the part, I would have told you, Amy. You were my best friend, my partner. I couldn’t get through the last audition without you. I couldn’t keep up with Rick, so he played to the other actors.”
“Don’t try to deny it,” Mrs. Amberson said. “The person on the phone was female, Donna. Who else could it have been? The three of us were the only ones in that apartment.”
Donna fell silent. Mrs. Amberson gloated triumphantly.
“Can’t get out of it, can you?” she said.
Donna didn’t look like she was paying any attention. She drummed her nails on the arm of the chair.
“This is starting to make sense,” she finally said.
“Oh, is it?”
“There was someone else, Amy,” Donna said. “One time, when you were out and Rick was doing his phone shift—I came home unexpectedly and found another girl in our apartment, sitting at the table with Rick. Alice. The redhead from the audition. Do you remember her?”
It was hard to read Mrs. Amberson’s expression, but she nodded slightly.
“He said she had just come by for moral support, and she left right away. But it gave me a strange feeling, like I’d caught him doing something, but I had no idea what.”
“If this really happened, why didn’t you tell me?” Mrs. Amberson said skeptically.
“There was nothing to tell. I didn’t want to make you suspicious about nothing. All I had was a funny feeling and nothing to back it up. Then when Alice left, I remember that Rick said to me that he wanted to get you something special, to celebrate what he thought was going to be a big week. I suggested that case…”
She pointed at the red cigarette case.
“You did?” Mrs. Amberson was clearly shocked now. “How did you…?”
“You babbled about it all night when we were coming home from some party. You were a little drunk. I remember you said how much you liked it, and how you wanted to buy it when your big break came. He told me not to tell you that I suggested it. You believed in all that mystical stuff. He said you would take it as a good omen if it looked like he had read your mind. He seemed so concerned for you.”
It was Scarlett’s turn to fill in the silence that followed.