“With me. We’re good together, you know?” He blew a lazy smoke ring, ordered another drink, and steered the conversation decidedly elsewhere, leaving me with the creepy feeling, Peter Lorre creepy, that Jonathan and Denise were closer than they ought to have been. I had watched him go through so many affairs, I could have believed a fling. But if it were a fling, why wouldn’t he just say he had bagged her? And Denise? Why would Mrs. Leon Greene bother with a measly actor, no matter how beautiful he was? I dismissed the whole thing as impossible.

I returned to Clara Bow Drive, late afternoon, surprised to see a strange car parked behind the oleanders, and to find Thelma drinking coffee and chatting with a sallow, well-dressed, dark-haired matron. Thelma cleared her throat meaningfully. “Of course you remember Simon Strassman’s daughter, Susan.”

I remembered her, but I certainly didn’t recognize her. Simon’s daughters were older than I, part of Irene’s crowd. Susan Strassman hadn’t so much aged as parched and puckered. She wore a dress cinched at the waist, the skirt and petticoats beneath so voluminous they brushed the doorway on either side as I escorted her into my office. Susan carried a sheaf of scripts that she set on my desk as she started off lavishing praise for my independence, a woman in a man’s business, how brave I was, the long connections between our two families, how her father used to tell her family how cute I was, how smart, how talented, blah blah blah. I listened, saying little. I knew what was coming. I just waited for her to get there. Thelma had gone home for the day by the time she finally did.

“Please, please, Roxanne, find a front for my father. Marian told Mother you did it for Max. Oh, Roxanne, your heart would break to see Daddy. He’s going crazy down there in Mexico with nothing to do but drink and quarrel. He’s diabetic, and asthmatic, and he’s killing himself, and driving my mother mad, and her health is buckling under the strain. He weighs three hundred and fifty pounds, and they had to move to a ground-floor apartment, and when he falls, my mother can’t even get him back into bed. He’s killing her, Roxanne. She won’t leave him. If only he could be working again, think what it would do for him, for her.” Susan collected herself, fumbling in her handbag for a handkerchief. “They’re running out of money. I send them what I can, but I have a husband, you know? Kids. Please, Roxanne, Daddy always thought so much of you, but now I’m begging you to help him. To help us. If he can only work again, you’ll save his life. I mean it!”

“Susan,” I said at last, “I’ll read these, but I won’t promise you anything.”