My Lucky Star by Joe Keenan Page A

sweat-dampened and his square dimpled jaw was darkened by a two-day growth of beard so
     sexy as to make death by razor burn seem the happiest of fates. The dreamy hazel eyes regarded Gilbert and me with what may,
     I suppose, have been mere courtesy, but which seemed, after Diana’s Gorgon glare, like the radiant compassion of some benevolent
     yet fuckable saint.
    “Stephen!” cried Diana, wheeling dramatically. “Thank heaven you’re here!”
    “Hey, Mom,” he said. Casually. As though mortal.
    “Where have you been, Stephen! I’ve been calling you for the last hour!”
    “We were out taking a run.”
    He turned to Gilbert and me, who were staring at him like two dogs eyeing a rotisserie. He smiled, extending his hand for
     us to shake, and though I was a good half foot closer to him, Gilbert darted in first.
    “Hi. Stephen Donato.”
    “Gilbert Selwyn.
So
good to meet you,” he trilled. He continued to shake Stephen’s hand well past any seemly span of time, compelling me to nudge
     him discreetly aside. I gave Stephen’s hand a firm masculine shake while offering a wry smile meant to convey that I shared
     his politely concealed amusement over my colleague’s absurdly kittenish behavior.
    “Phil Cavanaugh,” I said crisply even as a voice within me cried,
“I want your T-shirt for a pillowcase and death to the maid who washes it!”
    “Sorry we’re late,” said Stephen.
    “They were just going,” said Diana.
    “Oh, did we miss the meeting?”
    I wondered what he’d meant by “we.” Then I noticed that Diana was gazing past us with a look of weary distaste. I turned around
     and there, framed in the doorway, was Stephen’s wife, Gina Beach.
    It will give you some idea how swiftly and completely desire had unhinged me when I confess that I viewed her on first sight
     with that beady critical eye we reserve for our rivals in romance. Her wee nose seemed to me insufferably pert, her hair unpersuasively
     blond. Her breasts, I granted, were bouncy perfection but so large in relation to her scrawny torso as to render their authenticity
     dubious in the extreme. She had, it appeared, joined Stephen on his jog. Sweat did not become her.
    “Gina,” said Diana, her voice swooping a disappointed octave, “I hadn’t realized you’d be joining us.”
    “Stephen asked me to. I read that book
A Song for Greta
last night — cried my eyes out!”
    How uncultured her voice was. How lamentably twangy.
    “I thought,” she continued, “that is, Stephen and I
both
thought, that I could play Lisabetta. Y’know, the one Heinrich falls for?”
    “You’d be
perfect!”
fibbed Gilbert.
    Gilbert’s endorsement won a grateful smile from Gina and we introduced ourselves.
    “So, you’re the ones who know Max?” she said.
    “Know him? He’s practically my dad.”
    She gazed around the foyer as though doing a head count.
    “Weren’t there three of you?”
    We said that our partner Claire sent her regrets but she was nursing a cold and would never have forgiven herself if she’d
     passed it along to any of them.
    “Well, you tell her thank you for me,” said Gina emphatically. “I wish more people were considerate that way. I had a photo
     shoot last week and this guy doing my hair, he’s hacking his lungs out and, I’m like,
hello!
”
    “Did you hear the way she said that, Philip? Pure Lisabetta.”
    We were now facing away from Diana, and I wondered nervously how she was taking all this. Not only were we blithely ignoring
     our banishment, we were bolstering her daughter-in-law’s impertinent assumption that she was ft to share a screen with her.
     I stole a glance at Diana and saw that my anxiety was well-founded. She was standing ramrod stiff by the stairs wearing an
     expression that called to mind Hedda Gabler as portrayed by Yosemite Sam. Stephen, noting her demeanor, asked gently—such
     tenderness in his voice!—if something was wrong.
    “YES! As I thought I’d made perfectly damn