When the Stars Come Out (31 page)

“talent manager,” an occupation he assumed for himself on the

spot as he watched the virginal teenage girls walk the stage at the county fair, first took her under his wing. Two months later, Kathy was no longer virginal and no longer single.

Soon, and through no fault of her new husband, Kathy found a

role on the stage of a Philadelphia theater. At that point—earning her own income and now, thanks to the older girls in the chorus,

wise enough to understand that her husband was little more than a

garden-variety pedophile—she filed for divorce. And she never

spoke of that marriage again. It ceased to exist. The creep went

back to stalking southern New Jersey county fairs and Kathy Fisher moved on.

“Kathy Fisher?” asked the next smooth-talking man she would

marry. “That’s . . .
banal
.”

She didn’t know what the word meant, but Kathy Fisher soon be-

came Kitty Fisher, a name apparently less banal. The second hus-

band also soon disappeared. But by then she had adopted his last

name and, after scrubbing his existence from her life, she reemerged as Kitty Randolph.

She was a worldly twenty-one-year-old by the time the actor Bert

Cooper came to Philadelphia to star in a play. And after Kitty had once again been wooed and wed she thought,
Finally, I have a husband I can actually list in a biography
.

Bert Cooper was a chronically depressed mess who could stay in

W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

207

bed for seventy-two hours at a time, but he
did
have a real acting resume dating back to adolescent roles in the 1930s. Kathy—no,
Kitty
!—

thought she had married an icon. He took her from Philadelphia,

set her up in Hollywood, and got her those all-important screen

tests, which led to her first film roles.

Too bad about him
, she thought, as she sat in the sunroom of her Bel-Air mansion almost fifty years later, sipping something bubbly and nonalcoholic.
Poor Bert
. But that hadn’t been her fault. Theirs was an age-old Hollywood story, one career ascending as another

was falling into the Pacific Ocean. The fact that Bert had
literally
fallen into the Pacific—on purpose—was not her fault. He had always been so sad . . .

Her fourth husband—
no, second
, she reminded herself, because the continuity of her Official Life Story was important—well, he

was another story.

In an earlier period in her life, Quinn Scott would have disap-

peared from her biography as effectively as husbands number one

and two had vanished. But when they married she was already a

screen legend, and there was no hiding it. And so for more than

three decades the ghost of that relationship had followed her.

It wasn’t just that she had learned he was gay a few years into the marriage, although that was quite bad enough. It was that even

after she made arrangements for Quinn to go quietly away, indus-

try gossip kept growing. Her ex-husband, it seemed, was not merely gay, but gayer than gay. And when rumors finally reached her that

Rock Hudson was preparing to go public and not only profess his

homosexuality, but also his love for her ex-husband, well, that had to be stopped.

And she had stopped it. For thirty-six years.

And then, a few months earlier, word came from reliable sources

on the East Coast that Quinn Scott was finally stirring after decades of dormancy. That would not do. Her lawyers were immediately dis-patched to put out the fire, and she thought no more about it.

Quinn knew better than to take her on in 1970, and he would cer-

tainly know better than to try it in 2006. Also, she had very good lawyers.

Kitty had moved on, and so should he. Discreet people—
proper

people—did just that. Why on earth would he dredge up old skele-

tons so many decades later?

208

R o b B y r n e s

And yet . . . there it was, in black and white, staring at her from an inside-page of
Variety
. Barely remembered actor Quinn Scott’s autobiography would be released in September, and—lest any

reader forget—
Variety
had to add that he had once been married to Kitty Randolph.

As she read the short item over and over again, she thought her-

self remarkably calm. Much calmer than she had the right to be.

She had the right to be furious, but she wasn’t.

The fury would come a few hours later, when the Valium wore

off.

Books are not just written. Books are published, printers churn-

ing out page after page, more sophisticated than the days of Guten-berg but still following the same general principle.

In the case of Quinn Scott’s autobiography,
When the Stars Come
Out
, factories in three different states were all churning out the same pages and binding them the same way. And Johannes Guten-berg met Henry Ford as volume after volume rolled off the presses; the unexciting but necessary production side of publishing.

Before that came the writing and editing—David Carlyle’s touch

on Quinn Scott’s book, as told to Noah Abraham, was notably

light—and after that came the promotion.

Which is how Lindsay Flynn came into play.

Nine out of ten clients would agree: Lindsay Flynn was a pain in

the ass. She was pushy, she was insistent, she was abrasive, she was annoying. On a professional basis, she had almost no redeeming

personal qualities.

But all ten of those theoretical clients would still retain her. Because they weren’t hiring a dinner companion, or even a hooker.

They were hiring a publicist, and Lindsay Flynn—for all her flaws, or maybe because of them—was among the best.

David Carlyle was one of those clients. After the spectacularly

dramatic meltdown of Palmer/Midkiff/Carlyle’s overworked, under-

paid, in-house publicist Angela Keenan—who finally cracked one

afternoon when the local pharmacy ran out of nicotine gum, al-

though the meltdown was bound to happen eventually—David

reached out to Lindsay Flynn Communications, and he never looked

back.

W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

209

But while David had never looked back, he also didn’t look for-

ward to their occasionally necessary face-to-face meetings. Not only did he consider her pushy, insistent, abrasive, and annoying, he

also tagged her with what he considered perhaps the worst of char-

acter traits: she was crass.

On the Wednesday morning she was due in his Sixth Avenue of-

fice for their first meeting in four months, David, steeling himself for the visit, was alarmed to note that he was sweating. As an over-sized man, he was used to a touch of perspiration, but not in his office, which building management kept at a fairly consistent

sixty-two degrees 365 days a year. Lindsay Flynn had just that effect on him. Disgusted with himself, not to mention the effect that one woman—a consultant, at that—could have on him, he wiped his

brow with a monogrammed handkerchief and prepared for her

visit.

And then she was there, suddenly braced in the doorframe to

his office. “David!” she exclaimed through an affectedly stiff lower jaw. She was short and painfully thin, wearing a mismatched ensemble of varied stripes, her hair an unnatural yellow for any age, let alone her fifty-something years. And when she spoke through

that clenched jaw, mimicking something she must have picked up

that she thought made her look and sound sophisticated, the veins

in her neck bulged unattractively.
Crass
, he thought again.
Just
plain crass.

But infusing the unwashed masses with class and poise was his

avocation; his paycheck came from selling books. So he welcomed

her into his office with air-kisses and feigned good cheer.

“Lindsay, dear! Please have a seat.”

“Oh, I will,” she promised, and David found himself strangely

hypnotized by those throbbing neck veins, popping like strings

plucked on a guitar. “But first I need to make a quick call. Do you mind?”

Well, yes, he
did
mind. But rather than argue the point he shrugged in resigned agreement, and she hit a speed dial button.

“Rosalyn? It’s Lindsay Flynn.” As she chattered along about some-

thing that, to David’s ears, sounded somewhat less than urgent, he wondered again why he kept retaining
this woman
for PMC publicity purposes, and how she could possibly have any measure of suc-

cess. Yes, unlike fashion industry publicists, she didn’t need to be 210

R o b B y r n e s

chic and refined to fit in; and unlike event publicists, she didn’t need to be ready to appear before the camera at a moment’s notice. But dammit, she was a
publicist
! Just because the only people she communicated with were other ink-stained publishing-industry

types was no reason she couldn’t be truly sophisticated, rather than affecting that faux sophistication that was more reminiscent of

high-school theatrics than true refinement.

Lindsay flipped off her cell phone and sat. David looked at her

across his desk, noting unpleasantly that she sat like a trucker, with her legs spread apart. He did not consider himself a misogynist,

but he had to force a crude thought about the female anatomy out

of his head before he continued.

“Thank you for coming.”

“Not a problem. So what’s up? Glenda Vassar again?”

“No,” he said, referring to PMC’s best-selling, although regret-

tably bipolar, romance novelist. “Glenda is in Maine, breathing in the fresh air and writing very, very, very slowly.” Only in his last “very”

did he let slip his impatience. As one of the Good Guys, David Carlyle wanted his writers to be emotionally healthy. But he also wanted

them to produce, because production meant paychecks.

He continued. “Lindsay, we have a new book coming out in a

few weeks—a very special book—and I think you’ll find this assign-

ment quite interesting.”

She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her splayed knees.

“Try me.”

“
When the Stars Come Out
, by Quinn Scott.”

Confusion crossed her face. She squinted. “The
Philly Cop
guy?

Or his son?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “The father! Of course!

When the Stars Come Out
was his last movie!”

There were, David realized, some benefits to hiring a woman of

a certain age, even one with all her rough edges intact. Not having to explain somewhat recent history was one of them.

“Exactly,” he said. “Quinn Scott is writing his memoirs.” He

smiled. “And . . .”

“And?”

“And he’s coming out.”

She gasped, and almost swallowed the gum he realized she was

somewhat discreetly chewing. “He’s a gay? Quinn Scott is a gay?”

“Gay as, uh,
me
.”

W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

211

“Gay as you?
That
gay?”

“Well . . .” He wasn’t sure if he should be offended, but in any

event he lost his opportunity to rebut when her cell phone rang.

She held up a finger, signaling him to wait.

“Veronica, hi! I’m in a meeting. But wait until you hear—”

“Careful,” David cautioned her, and, for once, she fell silent.

“Never mind. I’ll have to call you back.” She closed the phone,

terminating the call, and said, “Are you sure about Quinn Scott?”

“Very sure.”

“But he was married to Kitty Randolph!”

“Yes, he was. And that’s why you’re here. Quinn has written quite

the tell-all, and I think there are countless PR possibilities.”

“Right,” she agreed. “Maybe I can get him on
Oprah
.”

“Uh . . .” David lifted a finger, stopping her. “I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but I need to warn you about something.”

He cleared his throat and continued. “You need to understand that

Kitty Randolph is a killer.”

“
I’m
a killer,” she replied confidently.

“Well, there are killers, and there are
killers
. Kitty Randolph is a
killer
. I thought I already knew that she was tough, but after reading these memoirs . . . I had no idea. She’s already threatened us with her lawyers.”

“Whatever,” said Lindsay. “I can handle her.”

“I just want you to be discreet,” David said. “The next thing you

need to know is that no one remembers Quinn Scott anymore.”

“
I
do!”

“Let me rephrase that: no one who is younger than fifty remem-

bers Quinn Scott.” Lindsay flinched. “Don’t worry, I’m right there with you in the older demographic. The point is that you’re going

to have your work cut out for you reintroducing him to the world.

You’re going to have to essentially reinvent the Quinn Scott of the 1960s. The book only works if people think of ‘the gay guy’ as the macho, rough-hewn action star of the past. There will be quite an

educational component to this.”

“I should meet him.”

David thought about that. An analogy involving water and oil was

all that sprung to mind. “I’ll think about that, but it’s probably unnecessary. You’ll want to meet with his ghostwriter, though: Noah

Abraham.”

212

R o b B y r n e s

“When? Where? Give me a number.”

Five minutes later she was out of his office, armed with Noah’s

contact information. David said a silent prayer for the young writer, then wiped down the chair where Lindsay had been sitting.

If Lindsay Flynn had to choose the first word to describe her