Said I had natural talent.”
“Your uncle?” I asked.
“Melvin Kronstein. He started the Karpet King chain. But then I met Edgar, and he didn’t think it would be proper for a married woman to lounge around seductively on broadloom. Men had very old-fashioned ideas back then.” She sighed, her voice growing wistful. “If not for Edgar, who knows where my career would have taken me? My Lady Macbeth received rave reviews in nineteen-fifty-eight.”
“On Broadway?” I asked.
“In Newark. Weequahic High School. But that’s all in the past. I married Edgar. Then I married Stanley. Then I married Irving. Three husbands, five children. Who had time for anything else?”
The way Sylvia rambled and jumped headlong from one subject to another sounded eerily familiar. She reminded me of someone. When I caught the expression on Blake’s face, I knew. Blake was giving Sylvia The Look . My God! Sylvia reminded me of me!
This was not good. Poor Blake! Is that what he had to look forward to twenty-five or thirty years from now? I made a mental note to work on curbing my excessive right-brain-itis. It was the least I could do for my husband. I refused to doom the poor man to living with the likes of Sylvia in his golden years.
The scatterbrain in question patted the chair beside her. “Sit. Tell me what sort of trouble that conniving, phony uncle of yours got himself into.”
My jaw dropped. “You know he wasn’t my uncle?”
Sylvia’s eyes twinkled. “I wasn’t born yesterday, sweetie. You think I don’t keep up? You’re a wing woman, right? That lovely Katie Couric did a piece on them a few months ago. Pegged you for one the moment you started chatting me up during the reception for that local politician. You have chutzpah ; I’ll give you that much. When I was your age...” She shrugged the thought away. “No matter. Like I said, things were different back then.”
I glanced at Blake. Having lost interest in Sylvia, he had strolled over to the corner of the room and was pretending to ignore me, his attention engrossed instead on an oddly shaped, sepia colored water stain that spread across several ceiling tiles.
Like my handyman-challenged husband cared a flying fig about water stains! Or ceiling tiles. I could tell he’d heard every word and was forcing himself to keep from laughing. He’d warned me no one would believe I was my client’s daughter. Or niece. Or third-cousin-twice-removed.
I didn’t care. Authors create successful fiction by getting their readers to suspend disbelief. Especially in romance fiction. Considering the rate of divorce in this country, the idea of happily-ever-after is as humongous a suspension of disbelief as there is. I merely applied the same theory to my business model. The setup was just the feather that initially tickled the interest of the women I approached on behalf of my clients. Whether they believed my relationship to the men who hired me or not, I was satisfying their need for companionship and mine for money.
And just to prove my point to my Doubting Thomas husband, I asked Sylvia, “But it didn’t bother you that Sid wasn’t really my uncle?”
“Not really. Like I said, you’ve got chutzpah .”
I tossed Blake a so there smirk. I knew what I was doing. After all, it worked for the twenty and thirty-something crowd, so why not the sixty, seventy, and eighty-something crowd?
“So what can I do for you?” asked Sylvia.
I inhaled a deep breath, uncertain how to begin. Although I thought I could do a decent job of communicating murder and mayhem on the written page, conveying such news to little old ladies was uncharted territory for me.
Sylvia tapped her index fingernail on one of the Mahjongg tiles. “Spit it out, dear. I’m growing closer to the grave with each passing tick of the clock, you know.”
I didn’t spit; I blurted. “Sidney Mandelbaum was murdered last evening.” Then I held my breath, waiting for I wasn’t sure what.
Sylvia
“Your uncle?” I asked.
“Melvin Kronstein. He started the Karpet King chain. But then I met Edgar, and he didn’t think it would be proper for a married woman to lounge around seductively on broadloom. Men had very old-fashioned ideas back then.” She sighed, her voice growing wistful. “If not for Edgar, who knows where my career would have taken me? My Lady Macbeth received rave reviews in nineteen-fifty-eight.”
“On Broadway?” I asked.
“In Newark. Weequahic High School. But that’s all in the past. I married Edgar. Then I married Stanley. Then I married Irving. Three husbands, five children. Who had time for anything else?”
The way Sylvia rambled and jumped headlong from one subject to another sounded eerily familiar. She reminded me of someone. When I caught the expression on Blake’s face, I knew. Blake was giving Sylvia The Look . My God! Sylvia reminded me of me!
This was not good. Poor Blake! Is that what he had to look forward to twenty-five or thirty years from now? I made a mental note to work on curbing my excessive right-brain-itis. It was the least I could do for my husband. I refused to doom the poor man to living with the likes of Sylvia in his golden years.
The scatterbrain in question patted the chair beside her. “Sit. Tell me what sort of trouble that conniving, phony uncle of yours got himself into.”
My jaw dropped. “You know he wasn’t my uncle?”
Sylvia’s eyes twinkled. “I wasn’t born yesterday, sweetie. You think I don’t keep up? You’re a wing woman, right? That lovely Katie Couric did a piece on them a few months ago. Pegged you for one the moment you started chatting me up during the reception for that local politician. You have chutzpah ; I’ll give you that much. When I was your age...” She shrugged the thought away. “No matter. Like I said, things were different back then.”
I glanced at Blake. Having lost interest in Sylvia, he had strolled over to the corner of the room and was pretending to ignore me, his attention engrossed instead on an oddly shaped, sepia colored water stain that spread across several ceiling tiles.
Like my handyman-challenged husband cared a flying fig about water stains! Or ceiling tiles. I could tell he’d heard every word and was forcing himself to keep from laughing. He’d warned me no one would believe I was my client’s daughter. Or niece. Or third-cousin-twice-removed.
I didn’t care. Authors create successful fiction by getting their readers to suspend disbelief. Especially in romance fiction. Considering the rate of divorce in this country, the idea of happily-ever-after is as humongous a suspension of disbelief as there is. I merely applied the same theory to my business model. The setup was just the feather that initially tickled the interest of the women I approached on behalf of my clients. Whether they believed my relationship to the men who hired me or not, I was satisfying their need for companionship and mine for money.
And just to prove my point to my Doubting Thomas husband, I asked Sylvia, “But it didn’t bother you that Sid wasn’t really my uncle?”
“Not really. Like I said, you’ve got chutzpah .”
I tossed Blake a so there smirk. I knew what I was doing. After all, it worked for the twenty and thirty-something crowd, so why not the sixty, seventy, and eighty-something crowd?
“So what can I do for you?” asked Sylvia.
I inhaled a deep breath, uncertain how to begin. Although I thought I could do a decent job of communicating murder and mayhem on the written page, conveying such news to little old ladies was uncharted territory for me.
Sylvia tapped her index fingernail on one of the Mahjongg tiles. “Spit it out, dear. I’m growing closer to the grave with each passing tick of the clock, you know.”
I didn’t spit; I blurted. “Sidney Mandelbaum was murdered last evening.” Then I held my breath, waiting for I wasn’t sure what.
Sylvia
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