Page 110

“Bear with me,” she said. “Not too long before she died at seventy-three, looking gorgeous even at the end, Anne Bancroft—”

She paused and looked at him questioningly.

Matt said, “Sure. Wife of one of the funniest guys ever, Mel Brooks.”

“Not just a wife. She was a successful actress on her own, you know.”

“Really? Like what?”

“She’s one of the few with a Tony, an Emmy, and an Oscar to her name. And you still only know her as Mel Brooks’s wife?”

Payne shook his head. “Sorry.”

“She was Mrs. Robinson.”

“Mrs. Robinson?”

“The Graduate ?”

“Never heard of it.”

Frustrated, she sighed. “Matt! You can’t be that dense.”

He grinned. Then he started whistling the Simon & Garfunkel hit tune from the soundtrack, appropriately titled “Mrs. Robinson.”

Amanda punched him in the shoulder. He thought it was somewhat playfully done, but the sad look on her face didn’t seem to support that.

“Oh, you are just impossible!” she said, her tone exasperated, then upended her wine stem, emptying it.

He made an attempt at a smile, but she was having none of it. Then he leaned forward, touched her chin with the thumb and index finger of his right hand to lift her head, and kissed her on the cheek.

“Sorry. I was just playing. What were you going to say?”

“Well, Matt, I’m not playing. Goddammit, I’m serious.”

She inhaled deeply, exhaled, then said: “Not too long before Anne Bancroft died—and she didn’t say it because everyone knew she had cancer; she was very private, and no one knew she was dying but Mel Brooks and her doctors—she was asked in an interview what the secret was to her successful—and quite clearly loving—forty-year marriage.”

Oh, shit. I think I see where this is going.

He said: “Okay . . .”

“And what do you think she said, Matt?”

Watch out, Matty, ol’ boy.

This is a minefield.

Step carefully or . . . BOOM!

He thought for a long moment, then said, “I don’t know. What with being married to a brilliant writer, actor, director, probably something about patience. And about respect. And real love, of course.”

“Yes and no.”

“She said ‘yes and no’?”

“No! What she said was all that you said—and more. But she didn’t list them. It was the way she phrased it.”

With his right hand, somewhat anxiously, he made a gesture that said And that was? Then he saw her face, and immediately regretted it.