Stardust (39 page)

“That was during the war, Sol. They’re not staying open late anymore.”

“They liked everything,” Lasner said stubbornly.

The Glendale audience, as young as predicted, seemed to like it well enough. There was the usual surprise when the unannounced movie came on, but no groans or jokey demands for the regular feature, and they clapped at Rosemary’s name in the credits, a good sign. The Continental group, sitting in the back, had already seen the picture so they
watched the audience instead, a kind of seismic reading, alert to rustlings and murmurs and pockets of quiet. On the screen sequined women were dancing in a nightclub, the set of the wrap party, but Ben drifted, more interested in the men around him, seriously at work, one of whom had lied to him. A name he hadn’t heard in years, whose mail came to his office. It would be useless to ask him why. He’d already ducked once. Another question would be a warning, drive him further away.

Ben looked down the row. Bunny sat slumped in his viewing posture, hands tipped, the bald patch on top of his head gleaming slightly. How many pictures had he seen? Half a lifetime sitting in the dark. It was hard to imagine him anywhere else. Not on a balcony at the Cherokee. Ben tried to run the scene in his head, Bunny in one of his soft sport jackets, the fawn eyes narrowing as he pushed—but it kept slipping away, impossible. Besides, he’d been home when Dennis called, hadn’t he? A fixer. Fixing something else now.

Only half the audience bothered to fill out the comment cards, but Lasner ignored these anyway, scanning faces as they came out during the break before the regular feature. He stood near the balcony stairs in his suit, watching the lobby, not looking directly at anybody, just taking in the air. The publicity assistants, who’d been collecting the cards, were sorting them in stacks and handing a few to Bunny. Al Shulman, the producer, had already gone outside to smoke, unable to stand still.

“They’re okay,” Bunny said in the car, riffling through the cards.

“Just okay,” Lasner said.

“It’ll do business.”

“With ‘okay.’ “

“A million.”

“Seven hundred. Eight,” Lasner said. “And that’s with South America. Eight.”

“We can recut,” Shulman said.

“There’s nothing wrong with the picture,” Lasner said. “Harry did a good job. What’s to recut?”

“Rosemary,” Bunny said. “They like her.” He held up one of the cards. “Women, too. They just could like her more. She needs this picture,
Sol. It’s time.” He turned to Shulman. “Can you soften the bar scene? Maybe cut to her when he leaves? How it hits her?”

“Sure. From the two shot. Take a day.”

Ben looked at Bunny, hunched forward, calculating, ready to do what had to be done. Another scene, this one easier to imagine: releasing a hand brake, letting gravity do the work, a quick fix. But why? Lasner said nothing, looking out the car window, and after a while his silence became a noise of its own, something audible underneath the talk around him. Ben thought of him looking down at the fighting on Gower Street, distant, thinking something through.

“It’s too late to change the dress,” Bunny was saying. “Anyway, it looks great.”

“You wanted soft.”

“Her
face
. Not the dress. We’ll keep the heat on the trades. They don’t like to back away—the early word was good.”

Even Paulette had said so, flocking around Rosemary with the others, her moment.

Lasner turned to Bunny. “What did they say?” He nodded to the cards. “The ones that weren’t okay.”

Bunny met his eyes, then picked up one of the cards. “ ‘Didn’t I see this last year? But I liked Dana Andrews. Yes, I’d recommend.’” Then another. “‘Usual hard to believe junk.’” He looked up. “One of the kids. This one says the picture’s okay, but why not in color.” He looked at Lasner. “I’ve seen worse, Sol. It’ll do business.”

Lasner said nothing, then went back to the window. The car was through the pass now, heading west on Fountain. “You feel it in the lobby? We didn’t have the audience,” he said, still looking out. “We used to have the audience.”

The rest of the trip back was dispiriting, Shulman worried, everyone staring at the half-lit billboards, a funeral quiet. Bunny had tried putting a pragmatic good face on things. Seven or eight, even with South America, was respectable and nobody had been expecting
Going My Way
. But they’d been hoping for something more.

When he got back to the Cherokee, Ben walked down to Hollywood
Boulevard to get a sandwich at the Rexall, still brooding. He looked at his reflection in the glare of one of the storefronts, a disembodied image, as if he were not actually there, invisible to the people passing behind him. Why couldn’t Danny, another shade now, appear in the glass beside him, tell him what had happened? Or just talk? Tell one of his jokes.

At the lunch counter, while dishes and coffee cups slammed around him, he took the family picture out of his wallet. All of them together in the Tiergarten, his mother in the cloche hat, Danny grinning, him smiling, held next to each other by Otto, one hand on each shoulder. How could they have changed so much? He looked at his father, holding his boys tight against his coat. Not putting them at risk. His mother leaning against him, eyes laughing, before the bitterness. And Danny, mischievous and daring, who got him into trouble, but protected him, too, who never told on him, gave him away. Partners in crime. None of them the same. But they had been like that once. Maybe you always carried it with you, what you used to be. Danny hadn’t told on Rosemary. Then why the others? Put yourself in his place. But he couldn’t. He was still the boy in the picture, too, wanting to be his brother, before they changed.

The night clerk barely looked up when Ben got back, fixed instead on the crossword he was filling in, his voice lazy, almost a drawl.

“Any luck finding that mail key? Management was asking.”

“No.”

“They’ll charge you, get another one made.”

“Don’t bother, then. I’m not expecting any mail.”

Officially that would still go through the APO, sent on by Fort Roach. But who would write, now that Danny was gone?

“You’ve got some in there now.”

Ben looked at his box, the see-through holes backed white with an open piece of paper, another Current Resident flyer.

“It’ll keep.”

“You have to turn one in when you leave, so you’ll still have the charge.”

“Maybe I won’t leave.”

The clerk didn’t rise to this, his hand still moving across the puzzle. “I’ll order it,” he said indifferently. “Here’s a message.”

He reached over to a box and handed Ben a slip. Liesl. Out tonight, talk tomorrow. Another evening with Dick, the perfect gentleman. And then sleep, because the camera sees everything. But she’d called, hoping to catch him in. He felt a warm stirring on his skin. Just from a message slip.

Upstairs, he poured a drink of the brandy and sat up on the bed with one of Danny’s scripts. The partners were foiling a blackmail scheme. The victim, someone Rosemary might have played, was a woman with a past who was about to marry into society. Danny was coming to her rescue, flirting, and Ben was doggedly following leads. He smiled to himself. There was some business with post office boxes— maybe the lost key downstairs put to use here—and a confrontation in a gambling club. Danny and the blackmailer play cards. “You give yourself away.” What Danny used to say when they played cards, Ben’s eyes apparently acting like mirrors into his hand. But unlike Ben, the blackmailer wasn’t intimidated. He tosses a chip. “You’re wasting your money. That’s all right with me. I own the place. But don’t waste your time, too. You work for her, what have you got? Be a friend to the house, you’ll come out ahead.” Ben sat up straighter, hearing Minot’s voice. He flipped back. Even the physical description fit, an athlete’s swagger. Would he have recognized himself? Was this how Danny saw him, a blackmailer? But why risk offending him? An actor might read it differently, but the likeness underneath would be unmistakable. If you saw yourself that way. And of course Minot didn’t.

What else? Ben kept reading, looking for anything real, the stray detail that might lead somehow to the balcony outside. But
Partners
ran to formula. After a few kisses, Danny sends the girl back to her rich suitor—better for her and better for the series. The blackmailer goes to jail. Danny remains uncompromised. The brothers drive off together. Everything that didn’t happen. Ben closed the script. But the way he’d wanted it to happen. That was something at least, wasn’t it?

He got up, restless. She’d be home now, before the second set
started at the Grove. Talk tomorrow. But there was still tonight, a drink by the pool, his hand idling on her leg, no files with coded sources, scripts with Minot. Just the soft air. Afterward, when she slept, he’d lie next to her, the scent of her still on him.

The driveway was empty. Should he wait? But maybe the car had already been put in the garage, tucked away for the night. There was a faint light coming from around back and he got out and followed it. The way Riordan’s man had come, slipping through the French windows to look for a name. He heard her before he reached the corner of the house, still awake, an easy murmur, leaving part of it behind in her throat. Now a laugh, louder, maybe reading something by the pool. He should call out, not startle her, coming out of the dark. He turned the corner and stopped.

She was kneeling on the chaise, someone beneath her, lowering her face to his. Another murmur, playful, the light catching her bare back now, naked, moving gently, like pool water. Ben felt his stomach clench, punched in. Her hair came up again, white shoulders. He stared, unable to move, step away. Now he took in the rest, the robes lying on the ground, the wine on the table, the blue light coming from the pool. She dipped her head again, then raised it, her face visible over the back of the chaise. His breath was coming back a little, blood rushing to his head. In a second, his face would be flush with it, surprise replaced by something else. She arched her neck back, and her face came up, eyes closed, then opening, then locked on his.

For a second there seemed to be no sound at all, no gasp, not even crickets. They looked at each other, too shaken to react. Then her eyes moved, one thought chasing another, and she reached for her robe, her breasts showing. She said something to the man in the chaise as she put it on, presumably an excuse, improvised, keeping him there as she got up to go into the house, any excuse, moving steadily, not alarmed, not seeing anybody standing by the house. An arm dropped over the side of the chaise and picked up cigarettes. Then a head leaned down, lighting one. Dick Marshall. Liesl stood between him and Ben, but Dick wasn’t looking. He lay back on the chaise, a bare arm flung out. The rest of
him would be naked too, waiting for her. Liesl started across the patio, belting the robe, her eyes on Ben again, a flicker of panic. He turned away, heading back to the driveway.

“Wait,” she said, a whisper, no louder than a hiss. Then she was past the patio, following him down the flagstone steps, out of earshot. “Wait,” she said again.

Ben turned, his body still tingling, everything mixed up.

“I guess I should have called,” he said, his voice neutral.

“It’s not what you think,” she said, no longer whispering, but soft, conspiratorial.

“What is it, then?”

“It doesn’t mean anything.”

He looked at her for a second. “Does he know that? I didn’t.”

She stared back, biting her lip. “Don’t.”

Silence again, the air churning, any words likely to wound.

“Talk to me,” she said finally.

He kept looking at her, not speaking, things still shifting inside, falling. “You’d better get back,” he said, turning to the car.

She reached out and they both looked down at her hand on his arm, something out of place. She pulled it back, the movement opening the top of her robe, so that she had to clutch the lapel, covering herself.

“Did you swim first?” he said, nodding to the robe.

Her eyes flashed, then looked away. “You’ve no right.”

“I guess not. What was it? Just one of those things.”

“No,” she said quietly. “You know that.”

“Getting back at him? Something like that?”

“Don’t be—”

“Not that I didn’t enjoy it. Just next time, let me in on it.”

“We can’t talk now. You’re so—”

He waited. “So what?”

“I don’t know. Angry.”

“Ah,” he said, exhaling it.

She looked down. “How could we go on like that? Him always there.”

“Instead of like this?” he said, motioning toward the pool.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” she said again.

“It does to me.”

“We have to talk later. Now it’s—”

He shook his head. “You don’t owe me an explanation. Let’s just— not.” He turned to go.

“It’s nothing,” she said, her head down.

“You must have had a good laugh. Me being so—”

She leaned forward, her head close to his chest.

“No. I wasn’t laughing.”

He could feel the robe near him, aware of her. He stepped back.

“You better go finish him off. Before he starts playing with himself. You should have him about halfway there by now. If I remember it right.”

She looked up, her eyes suddenly filling, stung. “Go to hell.”

He took out his car keys, flipping them, about to say something more, but instead just nodded and held one up, a kind of wave, and got into the car. He turned his head backing out, not wanting to see her standing there in her robe, a good-bye glimpse.

In a few minutes, twisting down, he was out of the hills. He stopped for a red light and sat staring out, jumpy, afraid for a second he might be sick. The light changed, then went red again, unnoticed, no one behind him to make him move. Staring, no longer queasy, his mind blank. When he finally turned onto Hollywood Boulevard, the Rexall, the theaters, all of it was still lit up, as if nothing had happened. But he felt that if he got out and walked by the plate glass windows again his reflection wouldn’t be there, that his heart was still beating but the rest of him had disappeared.