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hard time explaining to myself. I suppose that I derived some kind of comfort from the fact that my relationship with young Hannah Green remained a disaster waiting to happen and not, as would normally have been the case by this time, the usual disaster.
    “I’m just fine,” I said. “I think I’m coming down with something. Where are those two?”
    “Upstairs. They went to get their coats.”
    “Great.” I started to call up to them, but then I remembered James Leer, and the piece of Walter’s collection I had promised I would show him. He was leaning against the front door of the house, looking out at nothing at all through the mist on the sidelights, right hand jiggling in his overcoat pocket. “Hey, uh, Hannah, could you take them for me, and I’ll drive James? We’re not, uh, we’re not quite through here.”
    “Sure,” said Hannah. “Only your friends went up there to get their coats, like, ten minutes ago.”
    “Here we are,” said Crabtree, holding Miss Sloviak’s upraised fingers in one hand as he followed her down the stairs. She chose her steps with care, and the escort Crabtree was giving her seemed to be not entirely an act of gentlemanliness. Her ankles were wobbling in her tall black pumps, and I saw that it could not be an easy thing to be a drunken transvestite. Crabtree’s metallic green suit showed not a wrinkle, and he was wearing the smug, blank expression he assumed whenever he thought he might be causing a scandal, but as soon as he saw James Leer his eyes got very wide, and he let go of Miss Sloviak’s hand. She took the last three steps all at once, unintentionally, and fell against me, enveloping me in her long smooth arms and a disturbing odor of Cristalle and something else that was rank and spicy.
    “I’m so sorry,” she said with a tragic smile.
    “Hello there,” said Crabtree, giving James Leer his hand.
    “James,” I said, “this is my oldest and best friend, Terry Crabtree, and his friend, Miss Sloviak. My editor, too. Terry, I’ve told you about James, I’m sure.”
    “Have you?” said Crabtree. He had yet to let go of James Leer’s hand. “I’m sure I would remember.”
    “Oh, listen, Terry,” said Hannah Green, tugging at Crabtree’s elbow as if she had known him all her life. “This is the guy I was telling you about. James Leer. Ask him about George Sanders. James will know.”
    “Ask me what?” said James, freeing his pale hand at last from Crabtree’s grip. His voice shook a little and I wondered if he was seeing what I saw in Crabtree’s eyes, the mad conquistador glint, looking at James Leer with a wild surmise. “He was in Son of Fury .”
    “Terry was saying how George Sanders killed himself, James, but he didn’t remember how. I told him you’d know.”
    “Pills,” said James Leer. “In 1972.”
    “Very good! The date, too!” Crabtree handed Miss Sloviak, her coat. “Here,” he said.
    “Oh, James is amazing,” said Hannah. “Aren’t you, James? No, really, watch this, watch this.” She turned to James Leer, looking up at him as though she were his adoring little sister and thought him capable of limitless acts of magic. You could see the desire to please her freezing up all the muscles of his face. “James, who else committed suicide? What other movie actors, I mean?”
    “All of them? There are way too many.”
    “Well, then, just a few of the big ones, let’s say.”
    He didn’t even roll back his eyes in his head, or scratch reminiscently at his chin. He just opened his mouth and started counting them off on his fingers.
    “Pier Angeli, 1971 or ’72, also pills. Charles Boyer, 1978, pills again. Charles Butterworth, 1946, I think. In a car. Supposedly it was an accident, but, you know.” He cocked his head sadly to one side. “He was distraught.” There was a trace of irony in his voice but I had the sense it was there for our benefit. It was clear he took his Hollywood suicides—and Hannah Green’s