“I’m gonna give you candy,” Katie said, purring the lyric that had become a part of the Stepanov family lore for its spectacular inappropriateness when it came from the lips of six-year-old Katie.
“Ross Bagdasarian,” said the accountant.
Katie was impressed that he knew this. “And William Saroyan,” she added. “They were cousins and wrote it together. The tune is based on an Armenian folk song.”
“Katie’s father has passed away, but he was friends with Saroyan. Broadway is a very small world,” David told his accountant.
Cal seemed to think about this. “I’m going to ask this with whatever is the accountant equivalent of attorney-client privilege. I won’t tell a soul what you tell me—not even my wife.”
David seemed uncertain, a little wary. “So, it’s a question for me?”
“I guess it’s a question for both of you.”
She and David exchanged a glance, and she knew he was thinking the same thing she was: he had nothing to worry about. The accountant was starstruck. It was actually kind of adorable.
“Go ahead,” she said.
“Are you two dating?”
David was silent, which might have been an answer itself. But she wasn’t going to make the mistake she had made the other night after dinner, when she had accepted his subdued kiss on the cheek and done nothing more than say good night. If he was involved romantically with that Russian defector, this was a way to find out—or, at least, glean a little insight. “Yes,” she told Cal, “we are.” Then she went to David’s side, stood on her toes, and kissed him fully on the lips, the sapid taste of the fresh stick of gum on his breath.
Before the accountant left, she gave him personalized autographs on gallery stationery that he could bring home to all three of his daughters.
* * *
.?.?.
The packaging for the Fruit Stripe gum had colorful stripes: a psychedelic zebra, David had remarked one time back in Hollywood. He told Katie that he went through at least a pack a day before they met and even more when they started to date because she admitted to him that she liked the taste of it on his breath. He had brought gobs of it to the Serengeti, and they had joked about the striping the first few times they saw actual zebras.
Katie glanced at him now in the Land Rover, waiting. Wondering. Was her plan a pampered actress’s idiotic fantasy? Was she keeping her panic in check with the sort of delusions that screenwriters created for her and her peers who lived on soundstages and backlots?
Maybe.
But the driver looked a little woozy from the heat and from staring into the bright sun as he drove. His eyes were heavy, his gaze glassy and nebulous. Billy would not be able to take him in a real fight, but he didn’t have to: all he needed to do was distract him for a couple of seconds, because David and Terrance would do the rest. His pistol was under the seat, for God’s sake. Why was David not leaning forward to whisper into Billy’s ear? So few words were necessary: Terrance and I will get the guy behind us. You jump the driver. On three.
She elbowed David discreetly. She could see it all so well in her mind, the blocking clear and precise. She, too, would help. She would fall into the lap of the fellow behind her and press herself flat on the rifle. David would grab the guard’s wrist and point the handgun straight into the air, Terrance then prying it from their captor’s fingers. Meanwhile, Billy would ambush the driver. They could do this. They could. Stage combat, but real.
On three.
But David stared away from her out the window and the Land Rover bumped along, and her fear morphed into frustration.
“David?” she said softly but intensely.
He shook his head, a movement that was barely perceptible but still clear. She wanted him to meet her eyes, but he wouldn’t, and she began to suspect there was more to the way he was ignoring her than a simple refusal to take her seriously.
Billy turned around to look at them. He must have overheard her. When he did, the driver seemed to wake up. “Eyes forward,” he snapped.
Once more, Katie studied the driver’s face in the rearview mirror. She had supposed he had been staring ahead at the grass and the track as he fought somnolence. She was wrong: he was watching them carefully too, one eye on whatever passed for a road in this part of the Serengeti and one on the five Americans. She hoped this was why David was sitting there, unmoving, and not because he was afraid. But she honestly wasn’t sure.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Billy Stepanov
Billy Stepanov, like all psychologists and psychiatrists, won’t speak of his clients. But rumor has it that many are the stars we see on the big screen who have the sorts of problems that are no different from the milkman’s: they just have the money to “talk” about them.