“I’m not—”
“What did they do anyway, that was so wrong? Send me to camp. I’m supposed to apologize for that?”
“No. Stop,” he said, raising his hand a little.
“They’re my parents—”
He raised it higher, a halt. “My father was a Communist, Rosemary.” He looked at her. “So was Danny.”
“What?” Her head tilted, as if it had been literally jarred, hit by something.
“He never said?”
“No,” she said, still off balance.
“I thought he might have talked about it, that’s all. That’s the only reason I asked.” He trailed off, letting them both take a breath. “I’m not trying to—”
“Never. He never said anything like that,” she said, her voice vague, groping. “It’s true? He was?”
“In Germany. Then he changed. That’s what I’m trying to understand. What made him change.”
“But all this time,” she said, moving, her body restless, unsettled.
She dropped the cigarette with a willed half smile. “What my parents always wanted. A boy from—well, but not married.” She shook her head, a physical clearing out. “But how could it be true? He wasn’t like them. He wasn’t even interested.”
“It was a while ago. He was younger.”
“My parents never changed. Every time my father read the paper— But not Daniel. Not even that, what was in the paper. Or maybe he just never talked about it with me. Anything he cared about. Not with the girlfriend.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Oh, you know that, too? What he was thinking. Tell me. I don’t understand any of it. Why would he—?”
“I’ll tell you this. If he never asked you, it means he cared about you.”
“I don’t understand that, either.”
“He was protecting you.”
She looked at him quizzically, then smiled to herself. “Protecting me. It sounds better, anyway. Or maybe you like making him look good. What’s next? Maybe he was in love with me, too.”
“Maybe he was.”
She glanced up, her eyes suddenly moist, but her voice still edged. “Well, that’s something to hold on to.”
RIORDAN CALLED late in the afternoon while Ben was drafting the last of the voice-overs.
“You’re going to love this.”
“What?”
“John MacDonald.”
“You found him?”
“Army records. Once you’re in—”
“He’s alive?”
“Wounded. Discharged ’forty-four,” he said, reading from notes. “VA Hospital over by Sepulveda until May. Then you follow the disability checks. They thought he was dead because they started coming back for a while, then the change of address came through.”
“So where is he?”
Riordan paused, a delivery line. “Care of Continental Pictures.”
“What?”
“But that’s not the part you’re going to love.”
Ben waited.
“Previous address?” Riordan said, teasing him with it. “Cherokee Arms.”
Ben sat for a minute afterward, his mind racing, then reached for the studio directory. No MacDonald. But had he really expected to find him there?
The mailroom was in the basement of the Admin building, filled with sorting boxes and the deep canvas bins for fan mail, hundreds of envelopes waiting to hear back from Dick Marshall, with his own signature on the photograph. One of the mail boys pushed an empty cart through the door.
“Help you?”
“I’m trying to find somebody. He’s not in the directory, but he gets mail here. So where does it go? You have a list or something like that? MacDonald.”
“Sure. Give me a sec.”
He went over to a clipboard hanging beneath the rows of pigeonholes and started flipping pages. An eternity of minutes, everything in slow motion. Or maybe it was just that Ben already knew what he would say.
“That goes to Mr. Jenkins’s office.”
Joel had only been working at the Cherokee since winter and had never heard of MacDonald, but the name was there on the rent rolls. A few months and then gone, no forwarding address. Danny hadn’t taken 5C until later, so there was nothing to connect them but coincidence. And Danny’s source entry in Minot’s file, familiar. And now Bunny collecting his checks.
But what did he do with them? Bunny got to the studio a little after the first makeup call and usually stayed late to watch the dailies. He took scripts home to an apartment on Ivar, handy to the studio, and seemed to have no personal life at all. According to his calendar, he spent Sundays making the rounds of tennis parties and open houses, and since he organized most of the Lasner dinners, there were frequent entries for Summit Drive, but otherwise the schedule was a long list of business appointments and business in disguise: a premiere, a night at Perino’s with an agent, a producer’s birthday. He was invited to Cukor’s for dinner about once a month and appeared to have standing dates with Marion Davies and Billy Haines, presumably old friends. He never saw Jack MacDonald.
Ben had actually followed him home a few nights, stopping short of his building, but Bunny had stayed in, the reading lamp burning in the corner window. A working Hollywood life, none of the samba bands and white furs that twinkled in Polly’s column every morning.
At the studio, Ben began staying closer to him, spending more time at Admin. Stein had pulled his pickets, which Bunny assumed was a favor to Ben, and a quiet Gower Street was worth an uneasy truce. He even included Ben in the sneak-preview car, usually restricted to the line producer.
“Always Glendale,” Lasner said.
“It’s anywhere.”
“This hour, it’s going to be kids.”
“We want kids,” Bunny said.
“With all the wiseass response cards. Go on the Boulevard, later, you get the swing shift, it’s a better crowd.”
“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.
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