Stardust

by Kanon, Joseph

  “I had to be sure, that’s all.”

  “Well, now you are. So fuck off.” He looked down. “Sorry. Not very nice, was it? What a hard case I have become,” he said, giving it a hint of a Southern accent. “You get that way when you stop telling yourself stories. You can’t change things. No matter how many stories. I remember standing in front of the mirror, looking at my hair go, just crying and crying because I knew everything was coming to an end, and my face just stared right back at me. There it was. Like it or not.” He turned away. “Like it or not.”

  From the bed there was a soft rustling, Jack’s head moving slowly, still asleep. Bunny went over and watched for a second. The side of Jack’s face with the purple splotch was more visible now. He made a sound without opening his eyes, some fragment line in a dream. Bunny touched his forehead. “Ssh,” he said, calming him. Ben stood in the room, not moving, afraid any sound would wake him, watching Bunny’s hand stroking Jack’s hair. When he finally turned, satisfied Jack was still asleep, his eyes were squinting, in pain.

  “Oh, go ahead and look,” he said, then glanced back at the bed. “He was a hero, did you know? A real war hero. He saved someone’s life. From that grenade. Just—not his. Well,” he said, raising his head. “Mustn’t grumble.” Then he looked at Ben, his eyes brimming. “Do you know what it’s like? When you feel everything slipping away?” He held out his hand, as if it were actually happening. “Like water, right through your fingers.”

  THERE WAS no point going back to the Ambassador so he drove to the Cherokee to change and throw a sweater in an overnight bag. Weather was vertical here: Mt. Wilson would be chilly at night. First tea, an excuse to see the campus in Pasadena, and then by convoy up the mountain. An evening with the émigrés, the last thing he wanted, his head filled now with Bunny and Danny and the unknowability of people.

  He parked in back and was about to take the stairs when he remembered the key and went to the front desk instead.

  “You have a mail key for me yet?”

  “You 5C?” A new clerk, the staff as transient as the guests. He reached under the desk and handed Ben an envelope. “There’s a charge.”

  “Put it on the bill.”

  “Can’t.”

  Ben, exasperated, put a few dollars on the counter and went over to the mailboxes, opening his. For a second he just stared. Empty. But there’d been something there, a flyer for Current Resident, something. The mailman wouldn’t have arbitrarily cleaned out the box.

  “Mail’s late today,” the clerk said, helpful. “Should be here soon.”

  “But I thought—” He closed the box. No white paper visible through the holes. But there had been.

  Upstairs, he packed his small bag, then looked at the key again. If the box had been opened, then someone else must have one. From Danny. He noticed the script on the night stand. Bits of business about post office boxes, something that had been on his mind. Ben glanced at his watch again. Think about it in the car.

  When he got to the lobby, he saw the mailman filling the tilted wall of boxes.

  “Anything for 5C?” he asked.

  The mailman flipped through the stack in his hand. “John Collins, that you?”

  Ben held up his key, an ID tag, and took the envelope, staring at it. John Collins, what Danny had called himself here. He went out the back, threw his bag into the car and stood there, holding the letter. John Collins. A name for hotel registers, hiding out. Who knew him as John Collins? A San Francisco postmark. He opened it carefully, as if he were prying. But wasn’t he John Collins now?

  Not a letter. A sheet with a list of names, grouped, not boxed like an organizational chart but arranged in clusters, some kind of order. He looked down the list. No one he recognized from the Continental list. Men, not starlets. But a list Danny evidently had wanted. Ben studied the names again, wondering whether any of them were already in Minot’s files or whether they were new. More names to feed him. At the bottom of the list there was a group of numbers, also arranged by some unknown scheme. Army serial numbers? He counted one off against his own—no, wrong number of digits. Some other number then, maybe file references. Sent by some friend in San Francisco.

  He looked at the building, half-expecting to see people watching him. Why would Danny get mail here? Where he’d brought his women. Except he hadn’t. Stained sheets in the afternoon—but the maid hadn’t seen any. Rented months before Rosemary. Then used once. But why drive up to Santa Barbara when you had a secret place in town? Ben looked at the list again, then folded it and put the envelope in his pocket. Unless it hadn’t been used for that. No personal items in the bath, no toiletries or leftover boxes of powder. Maybe the point all along had been the mail, not girls. Ben saw him walking Jack MacDonald home, taking in the barely supervised lobby, the anonymous rooms upstairs. Ideal for sex, what everyone would think. Not noticing the boxes. But letters from whom? Not whoever had killed him—he’d have stopped sending them. Someone still unaware that Danny was gone.

  Ben looked at the time. Minot’s office would be closed Saturdays— he’d need Riordan to let him in. And he was already running late. Anyway, why suppose the names were already in the files? Danny’s new list. Maybe with the one who’d thought he’d acted in time, before his name was in the mail.

  He headed east on Hollywood Boulevard, storefronts slipping by in a blur. There had been a flyer in the box. So someone had opened it recently, maybe looking for the envelope now in his pocket. How long would he wait? And why set it up this way? Why not pass a list in a bar? Call from a pay phone. Unless the source couldn’t be too careful.

  He cut down through Silver Lake then crossed the river and followed the winding road through the Arroyo Seco. The old commuter route from downtown, businessmen in starched collars driving home to their Midwestern houses and flowering gardens, what the city had been like before the movies came. Turn-of-the-century lampposts and rows of trees, the streets empty in the yellow afternoon light. He’d expected Cal Tech to be utilitarian, but the look was residential, cloistered quadrangles, the buildings larger versions of the houses down the street. The faculty lounge was even more traditional, dark wood paneling and oil portraits. Dieter was already pouring tea for Liesl and her father. To Ben’s surprise, Kaltenbach rounded out the table.

  “I didn’t realize you were coming,” he said.

  “Yes, maybe a last chance,” Kaltenbach said in German. “To see heaven.”

  “English here, Heinrich,” Dieter said and Ben saw that the purpose of the party had been to show off the lounge, Dieter’s assimilated life.

  “I’m sorry I’m late.”

  “What happened?” Liesl said, not looking at him directly. “You left so suddenly.” Sprinting across a parking lot.

  “I had to see someone in the hospital.”

  “The hospital?”

  “It’s all right. Just a long drive.”

  “Everywhere is far here,” Kaltenbach said.

  “A mission of mercy,” Dieter said. “So now you’re here. Some tea?”

  Liesl looked over at Ben, curious, but caught his signal to wait. They talked idly for a few minutes, Dieter at one point introducing them to a passing colleague. Ostermann, a folded newspaper near his place, seemed preoccupied. Around the room men sat talking quietly or reading papers, formal in jackets and ties, all moving slowly, like people under water.

  “Did you see any of the campus as you came in?” Dieter said to Ben.

  “Just a glimpse.”

  “The grounds are handsome. Of course everything grows so well here. In Europe—you remember the university? Tram lines outside the door.”

  “Another reason to prefer it here,” Ostermann said deadpan, teasing him.

  “You admit, it’s more pleasant.” He turned to Ben. “You’re still anxious about him? Your friend?”

  “No,” Ben said. Did he look nervous? The rest of the room seemed to be moving at a different rhythm, almost placid. “But is there a phone? If I c
ould call—”

  “Downstairs,” Dieter said. “Near the toilets. You have nickels?”

  Ben hesitated for a second, as if he hadn’t heard, then nodded. Of course they’d be pay phones. Not Chasen’s, phones plugged in at the tables. He was back in the real world, where no one cared about the Crosby grosses or who was being fed to Minot. Or who hadn’t been. One name. He stood up, the envelope almost pounding in his pocket.

  “Right back,” he said, hurrying to the stairs.

  Riordan might recognize someone, just hearing the name. The top group, Ben guessed, was the most important. But Riordan wasn’t home. Ben hung up the receiver. How did you find people? Phone books. He took out the list, reading the top names to himself, then started leafing through the flimsy pages. Not in Los Angeles. But why give them to Danny, to Minot, if they weren’t local? San Francisco. He picked up the receiver again and asked for long distance information. The top two names, just to check. It took a few minutes. But they weren’t in San Francisco, either.

  “He’s all right, I hope?” Dieter, on his way to the men’s room.

  “Yes,” Ben said, startled, sticking the letter back in his pocket. “Fine.”

  “We should leave soon. After the light goes, the road—”

  “Meet you upstairs,” Ben said, already moving.

  Why not just rent a post office box if all you wanted was mail? Wouldn’t it have been safe there? But in the script the partners get the police to search the boxes. A court order. Ostermann said his mail was read. Not at his front door, intercepted at the post office, one branch helping another. Maybe something the FBI did all the time, a consulting tip from Dennis. But who had sent the letter? Danny hadn’t just filed reports from scraps of memory. There’d been a source, someone who might be traced. He thought of the paper in his pocket, any fingerprints now smudged by his own. But the police had ways of finding things, paper and postmarks and typewriter strokes, clues invisible to anyone else. Riordan’s friends could tell him. A rush job, a small favor for Congressman Minot.

  Upstairs they had gathered near the door.

  “You can imagine my relief when it came,” Kaltenbach was saying in German.

  “Yes, but will you use it?” Ostermann said.

  “Heinrich, I told you, English here,” Dieter said, joining them.

  “Yes, no German,” Ostermann said. He held out the paper. “What would people think?”

  Ben looked at the news picture—the first group of defendants at Nuremberg, sitting erect in uniforms and proper suits.

  “Don’t be foolish,” Dieter said. “It’s nothing to do with us.”

  “Do they know that?” Ostermann said, nodding to the room. “It’s the language of criminals now, our German.”

  “Criminals. Who, everybody? Are we supposed to be guilty, too? I don’t feel that. Do you?”

  “No, not guilt.” He glanced down at the newspaper. “Shame.”

  “Ach. A literary position.” Dieter arched his eyebrows at Liesl, a what-do-you-expect gesture. “All right, Ben, you take the criminals. Speak all the German you like, nobody will hear. Liesl, darling, come with me.” He held up a finger. “English only.”

  She smiled and put her arm through his. “My car. You still drive in German.”

  Before Ben could say anything, they had paired off, Dieter leading everyone to the lot.

  “All-American,” Ostermann said wryly, watching him. “So he doesn’t feel German anymore. Just like that. When does that happen? Take an oath and—”

  “Any news on your citizenship papers?”

  “Not yet. But my lawyer says it’s a question of time only. I have ‘good moral character,’ ” he said, amused. “How dull I must be.”

  “You?” Heinrich said. “‘The most provocative writer today.’ They used to say that, all the critics.”

  “Well, now just dull,” Ostermann said, smiling. “You heard the good news?” he said to Ben. “Heinrich’s passport came.”

  “An American passport?” Ben said, confused.

  “With my moral character?” Kaltenbach laughed. “No, Czech. You know, before the war they would help us, a passport of convenience, so we could leave. And then, no Czechoslovakia. So after the war it was a question, would the new government honor the old passports? Give us new ones. And, yes! So it came, from the consulate.”

  “But do you want to be Czech? I thought—”

  “I must be something. To travel. You can’t, without a passport. So now I can go anywhere. Not like a prisoner. It’s a wonderful thing.”

  They had reached the parking lot, Liesl fiddling with her keys.

  Dieter looked at Ben’s car. “Daniel’s,” he said, then looked up. “Yes, of course, I forgot. You’re at the house.”

  “Not anymore. Now it’s on Lend-Lease.”

  “You’ve moved? I didn’t know.”

  “Hm. To the Cherokee.”

  “You’re living there?”

  “It’s convenient. To the studio.”

  “Yes, but—” He stopped, slightly flustered. “You don’t mind that—”

  “He never really lived there,” Ben said. “It’s just a room.”

  Dieter looked at him, not sure how to respond, then at Liesl to see her reaction. “Well, that’s right,” he said finally, uncomfortable. “Just a room.”

  “Ready?” Liesl said.

  “Would you show me on the map?” Ben said. “Just in case.”

  “Yes, all right. It’s very direct.” She brought a map over to him and opened it.

  “This isn’t going to be so easy,” he said to her out of earshot of the others. “Tonight.”

  “No. Maybe not. Was that true, about the hospital?”

  Ben nodded. “He was visiting someone. It was nothing,” he said, suddenly protective. “But I need to ask you something. The mail key for the Cherokee. You never found it in Danny’s things?”

  “Again? You asked me that before. No. Look for yourself. Why is it so important? Get them to give you another one.”

  “I want to know where his is.”

  “Maybe he never had one. Why would he? ‘He never really lived there,’ ” she said, quoting, then looked down. “Just sometimes.”

  “I don’t think he used the place for that.”

  “What, then? To write scripts?” She folded the map. “Why are we talking about this? Always Daniel. Right here,” she said, motioning with her hand to the space between them. She stopped and exhaled, collecting herself. “They’re waiting. Now Dieter will want to know. Why you didn’t stay. Family should stay. What do I tell him?”

  “That I couldn’t keep my hands off you.”

  “A nice conversation for an uncle.” She paused. “The key. What does it mean?”

  “If you don’t have it, someone else does.”

  “Yes?”

  “So how did he get it?”

  They drove through the suburbs in the foothills and then started the steep climb on the Angeles Crest Highway, a two-lane road that twisted high into the San Gabriels, the low grassy hills giving way to dry chaparral, clumps of sage and prickly pear cactus and dwarf oaks.

  “Like a Western,” Ostermann said, gazing out the window.

  “Ja, a stagecoach,” Kaltenbach said from the backseat. “It’s an agony back here. I feel sick.”

  “Look straight ahead, not out the side.”

  “All these twists and turns,” Heinrich said as they cut sharply into another hairpin curve. “Look at Liesl, she can’t slow down?” Ahead of them, Liesl’s car kept darting out of sight. “And look how close to the edge. It can’t be safe. Just like Lion’s street. I have to close my eyes when she takes me there. So fast. I don’t know how he can live there.”

  “For the views.”

  “Views. We had views in Berlin and it was flat. Views everywhere.”

  “Not so many now,” Ostermann said gently.

  They kept climbing, skirting a sheer drop beyond the chiseled boulders lining the shoulde
r.

  “You know someone went over the edge?” Heinrich said, back at Feuchtwanger’s. “Near Lion’s house. So you see it’s not safe. I always said.”

  “And yet you go.”

  And so had Genia, Ben thought, but not to see Feuchtwanger. Someone else, familiar with the road.

  “A friendship,” Kaltenbach said. Up ahead, Liesl turned sharply. “My god.”

  “Dieter says the old road was worse. From the south. In the beginning, not even paved. They had to bring everything up in wagons, with mules. All the pieces of the telescopes. Imagine what that was like.”

  The turnoff road for Mt. Wilson seemed narrower, not intended for highway traffic. They had had the sun behind them and now the slopes were becoming shadowy, gathering dark at the bottom. Ben, hunched over the wheel to concentrate on the road, saw what it must be like at night, even headlights swallowed up in the pitch black. Kaltenbach had actually closed his eyes, not wanting to look anymore. There were more trees, forests of conifers.

  “Like Germany,” Ostermann said. “So many pines. The Harz Mountains. Well, a long time ago. Heinrich thinks it’s the same.”

  “What are you saying?” Kaltenbach said from the back, hearing his name.

  “That you should stay here.”

  “Another flag-waver. Like Dieter. Even the oranges are better. It’s easy for him. Numbers. You can do that in any language.” He was quiet for a minute. “I’d have a post. At the university. A professor, like him.”

  “But you’re still here.”

  “You know Dolner, at RKO, is giving Exit Visa to Koerner—he’s the head.”

  “You think they would make it now?” Ostermann said politely. “A war story?”

  “No, an escape story. That has an appeal anytime. Dolner thinks it’s possible. Even now,” Kaltenbach said stubbornly, a man clutching a lottery ticket.