And now all bets were off.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Dave Williams knew that his sister was up to something.

He was making the pilot of Dave Williams and Friends, his own television show. When first it was proposed he had taken the idea lightly: it seemed a superfluous augmentation of the tidal wave of Plum Nellie’s success. Now the group had split and Dave needed the show. It was the beginning of his solo career. It had to be good.

The producer had suggested inviting Dave’s movie-star sister to appear as a guest. Evie was hotter than ever. Her latest film, a comedy about a snobby girl who hired a black lawyer, was a huge hit.

Evie proposed to sing a duet with her costar in the movie, Percy Marquand. The producer, Charlie Lacklow, loved the idea but worried about the choice of song. Charlie was a small, belligerent man with a grating voice. “It has to be a comedy song,” he said. “They can’t sing ‘True Love’ or ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside.’”

“Easier said than done,” said Dave. “Most duets are romantic.”

Charlie had shaken his head. “Forget it. This is television. We can’t even hint at sex between a white woman and a black man.”

“They could sing ‘Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better.’ That’s comic.”

“No. People will think it’s a comment on civil rights.”

Charlie Lacklow was smart, but Dave did not like him. Nobody did. He was a bad-tempered bully, and his occasional attempts to be ingratiatingly nice only made it worse.

Dave tried: “How about ‘Mockingbird’?”

Charlie thought for a minute. “‘If that mockingbird don’t sing, he’s gonna buy me a diamond ring,’” he sang. He reverted to speech. “I guess we can get away with that.”

“Sure we can,” Dave said. “The original recording was by a brother-and-sister duo, Inez and Charlie Foxx. No one thought it suggested incest.”

“Okay.”

Dave discussed the sensitivities of the American television audience with Evie, and explained the choice of song, and she agreed—except that she had a gleam in her eye that Dave knew too well. It meant trouble. It was how she had looked just before the school production of Hamlet, when she had played Ophelia in the nude.

They also discussed his breakup with Beep. “Everybody reacts as if it was just a typical teenage romance that didn’t last,” Dave complained. “But I stopped having teenage romances long before I stopped being a teenager, and I never much liked screwing around. I was serious about Beep. I wanted kids.”

“You grew up faster than Beep,” Evie said. “And I grew up faster than Hank Remington. Hank has settled down with Anna Murray—I hear he doesn’t screw around anymore. Maybe Beep will do the same.”

“And it will be too late for me, just as it was for you,” Dave said bitterly.

Now the orchestra was tuning up, Evie was in makeup, and Percy was putting on his costume. Meanwhile the director, Tony Peterson, asked Dave to record his introduction.