Some Other Town by Elizabeth Collison

is, given we have no real proof. Still, almost everyone at the Project believes it’s an affair that they’re up to, going on now for almost a year, ever since Steinem first contracted the Personality to make audio tapes for our series.
    I should explain that we call her the Personality, or sometimes the TV Personality, only as our little code, in case Dr. Steinem is near. Actually the woman is Miss MaryBeth Malone. She’s a well-known figure in children’s TV and hosts a national show in L.A. She is also well-known for marrying a famous old crooner reveredfor his hits and a few feature films made during the Second World War. Most people would recognize the crooner and the name Miss MaryBeth Malone.
    We have had visits at the Project from the Personality before, when she’s flown in for one of the tapings. First she records at a university studio in town, then arrives by midday at the Project. The Personality is a small, handsome woman, probably pushing forty-five. Steinem himself, as mentioned, is small, and there’s the matter of that large bald head. It is not clear what the Personality sees in him. But when he comes out to greet her in the fourth-floor foyer, and they stand there together, short and beaming, we all have to admit how much they appear the perfect little, if aging, wedding-cake couple.
    Not that we then see much of them. Always they spend the rest of the day off in Steinem’s office, always with the door firmly closed. The editors and I cannot say, therefore, we have in any way got to know MaryBeth. This does not in the least, however, keep us from disliking the woman.
    Lola in particular seems to hold a grudge. It is, we all think, because of the crooner, that the Personality is cuckolding him. Lola has a thing for the crooner, possibly even a crush. She is, and points it out often, probably the man’s number one fan. She has seen all his movies. She has each of his records, even the early hard-to-find Christmas ones. Long before the Personality came on the scene, Lola has been on the old crooner’s side.
    â€œYou can tell about a man by his work,” she says. “You watch a few of his films, you listen to any of his albums, you hear him sing ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’—it just breaks your heart,” she says. She cannot forgive the Personality for what she is doing to him.
    Actually, Lola takes an interest in the crooner not just from his movies and albums. She tunes in as well every early December for his television Christmas special, with the crooner and MaryBeth and their grandchildren. Well, actually, Lola says, MaryBeth and his grandchildren by a previous marriage. He wed MaryBeth later in life, she is twenty years younger than he and also happens to look great on camera. Together, they put on a fine show every year. The crooner always dons a red wool knit sweater and sings a few songs by the fire, with cutaways to MaryBeth listening sweetly nearby, fulfilled in the season of joy. MaryBeth is good at looking fulfilled, and when the camera moves in for a close-up, she has a way of tilting her head and contentedly closing her eyes that makes you think she might really love the old crooner.
    The show moves on then, Lola says, and when her husband has finished another carol or two, there’s usually one more cut to MaryBeth, this time with a book in her lap. The camera pulls back to show this, to show how she sits by the family’s tree, her full-length taffeta red-plaid skirt spread out strategically around her. And then smiling and dropping her eyes to the page, she begins reading a Christmas story, something short and generally moving. She looks at the camera, Lola says, and pauses after most of the sentences.
    Frances interrupts. “Yes, of course,” she says. “We know all about that show, Lola. It was the Christmas show that sold Steinem on her.” And then Frances quickly runs through the rest. How Steinem liked the way