Read The Right Thing to Do for Free Online Page B

clipboard and a
Production Assistant
name tag had run up to the car. “Good you’re here. Mussolini’s foaming at the mouth.”
    “Is he?” said Steve, getting out, taking her in a tango stance, dipping her low, and kissing her on the cheek. As she spun away giggling, he held out steady hands. “Notice how I’m quaking.”
    —
    Inside the trailer, Flo the makeup lady was smoking and reading
Photoplay.
She said, “Time for the magic. Not that you need much, darling.”
    “My kind of gal,” said Steve. “Hey, Ivy League, want to know what pancake feels like when they slap it on your face?”
    —
    At two thirty p.m., after sandwiches with Steve during lunch break, Malcolm admitted Ramona had been right: He should’ve stayed in L.A., this was boring—mind-numbing, really. How did actors stand it?
    Rather than stand around for the remainder of the afternoon shoot, he returned to Steve’s trailer, picked up the
Photoplay
that Flo had left behind, and gave it a try. Imagining what his suite-mates would think to see him immersed in studio flackery disguised as actual articles. Same for the abstract-art-loving Cliffies in their sweater sets, the girls on the Wellesley bus.
    Especially Sophia Muller; no one more sophisticated than her, she’d lose whatever respect she had for him.
    Assuming she had any to begin with.
    Maybe he’d chance calling her when the semester began. Nothing ventured and what was there to lose other than a bit of self-esteem?
    He wondered what being Steve was like, drawing upon a seemingly endless store of confidence. He supposed you needed that in order to hitchhike across the country at barely eighteen, somehow make it in the most improbable of professions.
    And here his brother was, still a young man, talking about retiring in comfort. About to settle down with a woman who adored him. To help kids.
    Malcolm had never risked anything. At eighteen, he’d been a dutiful grind at Stuyvesant High. At twenty-one, what he had to look forward to was three years of sitting on his ass, pretending to care about torts.
    Suddenly he felt closed in, short of breath, the trailer a coffin about to slam shut. Heaving his massive self toward the trailer door, he flung it open and hurled himself into the cooling desert air.
    He set out in the same direction he had yesterday. No chance of losing context, evening was hours away.
    There you go, Cautious Boy. Propelled along.
    He tried to shake things up by trotting, then running. Telling himself he didn’t care when his brand-new Florsheims picked up rocks and grit and each footfall smarted. Picking up his pace even further, he pushed himself harder than he ever had, rasping, feeling his chest grow tight.
    Clenching his eyes shut and chancing a single blind step. Then two, then three.
    Using every inch of the giraffe legs that had so often betrayed him as puberty set in. Propelling himself forward into nothingness, arid air searing his lungs.
    When he returned an hour and a half later, he felt ragged and joyful. He hadn’t been alone, the desert revealed companions as he covered ground: fearful lizards, antsy jackrabbits, scattering fire ants, an unmistakably hostile rattlesnake. A mangy coyote that regarded Malcolm balefully before slinking off behind a Joshua tree.
    As he neared the clump of trailers, his eyes shifted to Randolph Eddowe’s unit. No sign of the old sot. But then, several steps later, he heard the creak of a door and ducked to the side and saw someone emerge from Eddowe’s trailer.
    The sour-faced horse-trainer, again in those jodhpurs that were kind of ridiculous when you thought about it. The woman hurried the same way Eddowe had last night.
    The same furtive look as in Eddowe’s eyes.
    Something going on in there? Eddowe making himself scarce because he had some sort of racket going?
    None of his business.
    But as he thought about it, it began gnawing at him and now his boredom was gone, replaced by uneasiness.
    He turned to