THREE DAYS AFTER the drowning, a visibly distraught Lily Svetgartot arrived at my door at about five o’clock. “I haven’t slept in ten years,” she said. In appearance she was entirely disheveled, a mess. No surprise there. I stepped aside and she walked in and began talking as if in midsentence: “And Istvakson figured he had only three or four days left to shoot the movie. Contractually, Emily Kalman’s work was done, but Istvakson begged her not to leave yet. So Emily gave him a week more. She likes Halifax. Istvakson was at wit’s end. He was drinking like a fish. That expression, ‘like a fish,’ and everyone on set was quite put off, you see. Quite put off, and quarreling, everyone was quarreling. Over the smallest things quarreling.” At the counter, she started to make coffee. She turned and said, “Sam—okay, I’m going to say this straight out. Michiko Zento has come up with an ending. She’s been burning the midnight oil—right way to say it? Studying hard Istvakson’s research notes. I’m just going to say it. The ending she’s come up with—and I think that this comes from Istvakson’s notes—rest in peace, Peter Istvakson. Though he probably won’t rest in peace.”
“Miss Svetgartot—Lily. Please, just tell me what ending she’s going to use.”
“What happens is, a psychiatrist that you—that is, your character—has been talking to. This is in the script, after the wife Elizabeth is murdered. Your psychiatrist reveals confidential information. About your seeing Elizabeth on the beach at night.”
“A psychiatrist does this? Unlikely. Whom does he give this information to?”
Lily took a deep breath and said, “Well, we don’t actually see who. We just see the psychiatrist in a pub, and he’s talking to someone. We don’t see who he’s talking to. The psychiatrist is all nervous and fidgety. He looks like he knows he shouldn’t be talking about any of this, but he’s doing it anyway.”
“Right now! I’ll drive to Halifax and have a little chat with Miss Zento.”
Lily wrapped her arms around me, pressing her face close to mine. Then I felt her tighten her embrace as she said, “I’m afraid it’s too late. They have already shot the ending. And Miss Zento and Mr. Akutagawa have left for Japan. Separate flights.”
“Lily,” I said, “please sit down.”
She let go of me and sat at the kitchen table. Her face was flushed and she began to comb her hair rapidly with her fingers. “Lily, five deep breaths,” she said, then loudly inhaled and exhaled five times. “The final ending won’t please you in the least, either, Sam. It can’t. See, what happens is, we are now on the beach behind Philip and Cynthia’s house. There’s all sorts of people there. We haven’t seen any of them before. Except for Elizabeth—Emily Kalman, I mean. And the actor playing the dance instructor Arnie Moran. There’s a bandstand. On the beach. There’s a big wooden console radio. This radio is playing loud dance music from the 1930s. And the characters of Arnie Moran and Elizabeth are dancing to jitterbug music. It’s supposed to be taking place in the 1930s, you see. A sudden time travel, and it’s a kind of dance hall. And then along comes the Sam Lattimore character. He is all nicely dressed. He walks right up and cuts in on Arnie Moran. He takes his wife in his arms. The camera holds on her face a long time. She’s staring right into the camera. The music gets louder. Then the screen goes dark.”
I sat down at the table. “But if Istvakson already had this in a notebook—”
“Yes, exactly,” Lily said. “Then why would he need to go down to the beach?”
I asked Lily Svetgartot to leave.
“Sam, I’d like to give you my address in Norway. The city of Bergen. I leave tomorrow for there.”
“You’re a good person, Miss Svetgartot,” I said, purposely sounding as formal as humanly possible. By her expression, I could see the formality had struck a chord. “But no thank you.”
“Having my address on a piece of paper can’t hurt,” she said. “That’s a phrase I learned, ‘It can’t hurt.’ But then again, I suppose you’ll always associate me with this movie you’re going to hate. Associate me with everything else that’s happened. How can you not?”
I walked her outside and stood on my porch and watched as she made her way over to Cynthia and Philip’s door. More goodbyes. A short time later, I heard her car start up, and from my bedroom window I saw her taillights fade and finally disappear down the road.