Stardust (21 page)

“It’s not something you stop, just like that.”

“Things change. People change.”

“Do they?”

“You think that? That’s what you’re looking for in his desk? A card? A letter from Stalin? I would have
known
.” She looked away, hearing herself, yesterday’s certainty. “He made movies here, that’s all. Silly movies.”

“So did my father. And he ran a cell. According to her.”

“If you want to know, ask them. The Party.”

“I don’t think they’re handing out membership lists these days.”

“Ask Howard Stein. It’s always in the papers about him. That he must be one. Polly says he is. Ask him. Why is it so important anyway?”

“Because we have to know everything about him. What he was doing. Why anyone would—”

“No. You have to know. I don’t know why. Look, they’re going in. No
more about this. The way people talk. Who knows what’s true. My father’s applying for citizenship. How would it look? A Communist son.”

“A dead one.”

“Well, my father’s alive. Talk like this—”

“We have to know. It might be important.” He took her elbow. “Don’t run away from this. Help me. We owe it to him.”

“Owe it to him.” She smiled to herself, then looked up. “I was trying to help. Before you started with all this. Politics. They don’t kill you for that yet. Maybe not love, either. You want to know the girlfriend? Rosemary.” She nodded. “Maybe not the only one, I don’t know. So does that help? Does she look like—”

“How do you know?”

“I know. I knew at the table. The way she was with me. She wouldn’t look at me. Not once. I could see her do it, not looking. And then she heard who you were and she was upset. She wasn’t ready for that. The wife, that’s one thing. But you—”

“That’s it, the proof?”

“You can prove it any way you like. I already know. It’s her,” she said, turning away so that before he could say anything else she had already joined the people moving toward the screening room.

He followed, his mind darting again, his feet moving on their own, in another place. Around him people were talking about the movie, overheard but echoing, like voices in a train station.

Warner’s treat turned out to be
Saratoga Trunk,
a Bergman not yet released.

“I’ve been sitting on this since over a year,” Jack said.

“You’re worried?” Sol said.

“Not worried. Sam Wood, you’re always going to get an A product. Getting the time right. They put her in dark hair, in period, and I’m thinking, they want
Casablanca
again, not this. A totally different type. So I wait, we hold the picture. Then what?
The Bells of St. Mary’s
for Christmas. Talk about timing. I figure after that they’ll like her in anything. Put it out right after, you can’t miss. Same season. You can’t get into the Crosby, see the other.”

“Well, the Crosby,” Sol said. “They’re already counting the money.”

“Hundred bucks it grosses more than anything this year. The Catholics alone. You know how they come out for nuns.”

“Jack.”

“A hundred bucks.”

There were no assigned seats in the theater, so Ben and Liesl sat together toward the back. Minot and his wife, still being charmed, were in the front row with the Lasners and the Warners. Bunny walked up the aisle like someone counting the house, making sure everything was in place. The lights dimmed, followed by a blast of music. When the Warner logo came on, people applauded, a jokey tribute to Jack.

Within minutes Ben saw why Warner had waited. Ingrid Bergman was in a bustle, pretending to be Creole. There was a dwarf and Flora Robeson in blackface as a maid who knew voodoo. Gary Cooper was Gary Cooper, a Texan. His name seemed to be Clint Maroon. None of it made sense, and Ben drifted, not really paying attention. Somewhere upstairs Fay’s cousin was lying on a bed smoking, seeing a splotch of blood on a wall. He thought of her bony hand on his. How can you use your own? But Otto had. Like a religion to him. Abraham ready to sacrifice Isaac—by whose orders? The priests of the International? Wherever orders came from. Your own son. Who wanted to do it. Fearless. He went through the dinner again, trying to piece the parts of Danny’s life together, looking for some clear thread that ran from Berlin to the Cherokee. But what? It seemed as patchy and unlikely as the movie, even without the dwarf.

Liesl wasn’t watching, either. He could feel her beside him, restless in her seat, maybe looking for Rosemary. Knowing it was her, a feeling. The girl most likely. Someone Bunny would make a call for. Dating Ty Power while they built her up, not a B director on a B lot. But when Liesl leaned toward him to whisper, her mind was somewhere else.

“Why would he keep it secret? From me? Why that? I wouldn’t have cared about that.”

He felt her breath against him before he heard her, warm, reaching into him. When he turned her face was even closer, her eyes shiny, anxious.
He sorted out the words. Not about Rosemary. But then he saw in her eyes that it was really the same question, another betrayal.

“I don’t know,” he said, less than a whisper, but feeling her breath again, the warmth coming off her skin with the last of the perfume, and suddenly, a trace memory, he was a teenager with a girl in a dark theater, so close, trying not to be overwhelmed by it. Wanting to lean forward, afraid to. In a second she would move back, the contact broken. But she didn’t. The whispers became tactile, like a hand against the side of his face.

“Do you believe her, the cousin?”

“Yes.”

“But why would he?”

“I don’t know,” he said again.

“Everything secret.”

Now she did look away, dismayed, reminded of other secrets. She sat back, pretending to watch the movie, seemingly unaware that he didn’t move, his head turned, as if her face were still next to his. Then someone coughed and he went back to the screen, wondering whether anyone had noticed, whether it showed on your face, the way he used to think it did when the lights came up, kids necking in the balcony.

Think about something else. Why had Danny kept it secret? Even from his wife. Politics were public, argued about. Unless there’d been a turning away, a new life that made the past embarrassing, something to put behind you. Howard Stein had said he’d even faded away from the union, no longer interested. You get to want other things. Which still didn’t explain how he’d ended up in the alley at the Cherokee.

Saratoga Trunk
was a hit with the party, ending to applause and pats on the back. Then everyone began to leave at once, pouring out of Lasner’s chateau as if it were a downtown theater, without red trolley cars and taxis, just harried teenage parkers. The Warners and the Minots were the first to go, Bunny hovering nearby, followed by a halting line of impatient guests.

“Did you meet the Honorable Ken?” Bunny said, waiting with them.

“I heard him. That was good enough. Who voted for him anyway?”

“The same people who go to the movies.” He looked up. “We don’t make the world. Right now, he’s what they like.”

“Jack liked him anyway. That was the point, wasn’t it?”

“Jack likes Jack. But it’s a start. Glad you enjoyed the evening,” he said to Liesl, another question mark, still working.

When she thanked him, a bland response, Ben noticed the quick flicker of relief in his eyes. Relieved about what? That she’d got on with Dick Marshall? Or that nothing more awkward had happened, placed at Rosemary’s table? Something Bunny hadn’t expected.

Another car left, the line moving forward. Bunny was looking at her again.

“Do you mind my asking? Are you a dancer?”

“A dancer?” Liesl said. “No. Why?”

“You move very well,” he said, still looking at her.

“Oh,” she said, not sure how to respond. A professional appraisal, not a pass.

“Maybe it’s the theater,” Ben said. “Same training.”

“You’re an actress?” Bunny said.

“Before, in Vienna. Not here.”

Bunny tilted his head, taking her in at a slightly different angle. “But not in pictures. Would you make a test?”

“A test?”

“To see how you look,” Bunny said simply. “People are different on film.”

“Oh, and with my voice.”

“Never mind about that. It’s just—it gave me an idea, the way you moved. If you’re interested.”

Liesl nodded, still too surprised to answer.

“I’ll send you some pages, then. Here we are,” he said, opening the door as the car pulled up.

Liesl stood there for a second, hesitant, then got in, taking direction. Bunny bent forward, eye level with the window.

“Maybe nothing,” he said. “Let’s just see. We’ll call you.”

In the car she was quiet, looking out the open window at the dark hedges and driveways, Beverly Hills asleep.

“This place,” she said, partly to herself. “Years. And then one night you walk into a party. So I should thank you for that.”

“He’s not doing it for me. You really interested?”

She shrugged. “It doesn’t mean anything. They test everybody. Favors.”

“Not Bunny.”

“Ha. Place your bets. So maybe it comes up.” She looked out again. “And maybe it doesn’t. So let’s see, what else am I going to do now?”

She pushed in the dashboard lighter, then rummaged in her purse for a cigarette.

“Do you think she’s pretty?”

“Who?”

“Who,” she said, waiting.

“I think she looks like you.”

She stopped the lighter in midair, then put the red coiled tip to the cigarette.

“You do?”

“Maybe they were all you.”

She went quiet again, smoking. “That’s nice,” she said softly. “To say that.” She turned from the window. “Then why have them.”

“I don’t know,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road. “Did you?”

“What, have others?” She turned up her lips slightly. “You mean since he did?” She shook her head. “Only before. You want to know how many?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I don’t even remember. That life, it made you that way. You never knew when you’d have to leave. Go somewhere else. So you took what you could. I was no different. But not after.”

“Why not?”

“I wasn’t brought up that way. When you’re married— You know I can cook? Sew. All those things. A good wife, for somebody. But not him.”

They entered the house through the garage, turning off the driveway lights behind them.

“Do you want a swim?” she said, unclasping her pearls as they walked. “It’s good after a party—for hangovers.”

“You go ahead.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, I won’t watch.”

“Well, then good night. Thank you for the party. My evening with the stars.”

She reached up and kissed his cheek, then stopped, her face as close as it had been in the theater, but this time looking at him, her eyes moving, as if she were reading him, deciphering. He stood still, feeling her breath again, then the graze of her hand behind his neck drawing him closer to kiss him on the mouth. He opened his, almost dizzy with surprise and the taste of her. They broke, a gasp for air, then kissed again, her mouth open to his, both of them eager.

“What are you doing?” he said, moving down to her neck, smelling perfume and warm skin.

She pulled back. “I wanted to know what it would be like.”

He looked at her, their faces still close. “I’m not him.”

She smiled, moving her hand to his forehead, gently brushing the hair away.

“No. Someone else.”

He felt her hand, fingertips barely touching his skin but drawing him back, a kind of permission, then lowered his head to hers again, no longer thinking, all instinct. Her mouth was moist, all of her warm, rubbing against him so that his blood rushed, excited. She started unbuttoning his shirt, her mouth still on his, then pulled away, both of them panting, holding each other. Are we going to do this, a look, not words, and she answered by taking his hand, leading him into the bedroom, the furniture just shadows outlined by the pool lights outside. She turned her back to him so he could undo her zipper, move the dress off
her shoulders, letting it slide down, then hold her there, kissing the back of her neck, no longer groping, smooth, wanting to kiss every part of her, this shoulder, that one.

She arched her back, an involuntary intake of breath, then a small sound, dropping her head so that he could kiss more of her neck, giving it to him. When he reached around to her breasts, holding them underneath, moving his thumbs against her nipples, her body came up again, pushing back against him, and he felt her bare behind, the soft round cheeks, press against the erection in his pants. They stood that way for a minute, her nipples growing hard, his groin tight against her, until he thought he would burst from it and he turned her around, kissing her mouth, then her breasts, faster, tearing off his clothes, then laying her on the bed and falling over her, his mouth covering hers, his hand moving down between her legs, feeling her wet, beginning to move against his hand.

There was no waiting, no drawn-out stroking, everything that might come later. Only an urgency, mindless. She pulled him into her, one thrust, a second to feel her wrapped around him, the wonderful fullness, and then they were moving again, not a steady rhythm, but a heedless plunging, impossible to wait, both of them grunting. He saw her in the pool, opening her legs to the patch of hair, where he was now, then he didn’t see anything, could only hear her, next to his ear, breathing, then noises, little cries, as exciting as the slick feel of her pushing against him. When she came, a louder cry, broken, like a shuddering, he could feel her grip him inside and he wanted to shout, let something out before he exploded, and then the come shot out of him and he stopped, feeling the last jerks, his whole body emptying, then flooded with relief, inexplicable pleasure. He moved his elbow, falling on her, and it was only then that he felt the sweat, both of them shiny with it.

When he rolled away, she turned with him and they lay on their sides, heads touching, not saying anything, drained, then her body began to shake, not crying, a trembling.

“What?” he said quietly, touching her.

She shook her head. “Nothing. It’s just—to feel something again.” She put her hand on him.