Stardust

by Kanon, Joseph

  Ben went in, sitting in one of the back Continental rows, watching the rest of the audience kissing and waving across aisles, a party. Bunny hurried down front with Rex and Sam and some men from the front office, talking as he went, Lasner on the carpet at Grand Central. Little Brian Jenkins, quick as a bunny. Then Liesl came in between the Army and the Navy and the lights started to dim.

  It was the kind of company audience that applauded the credits, little salutes to their friends. Imre Tabor, ten years out of Budapest, had directed, and Epstein had done the music and Simco the photography, all Europeans, but whatever edge they may once have brought had been smoothed out, maybe forgotten. It was a studio picture, bright, every eyebrow in place. Ben wondered for a second what might have happened to Kaltenbach if he’d stayed, got lucky with Exit Visa, shepherding Danny’s story through rewrites. A vehicle for Dick. Stranger things had happened.

  On the screen a process shot of ruins dissolved to a studio interior, the family waiting for the Allied liberation. Then Liesl’s first appearance, riding a bicycle, hair blowing. Applause. Her face in close-up, young, fearless, the one Danny must have known. In a second a retreating German soldier would grab the bicycle, force her into the doorway, struggle with her until she got his gun, shot him. The scene that would come in handy in real life, holding the gun steady in the nightclub set, standing over Dieter on the floor. Ben standing there, too. Are you finished now? Bunny had said. Danny finally avenged. But how could you ever be finished with murder? An endless accounting. There was always more. Reasons. And once you did know, what did you do? Not all deaths are alike.

  Liesl was heaving, distraught, racing to safety. Now the advancing GI who would discover her, deliver her, and then come to call. The war as Continental saw it. Not the rest of it, not what Ben had seen. He glanced down toward Bunny. There were a hundred ways he could interfere, keep the faces off the screen. Would it matter? What was it worth to them, already gone? Had it mattered to Danny, Dieter finally lying in a pool of his own blood? But it had to, somehow. To us. What if we never saw the faces, stayed in the dark?

  He felt the hand on his shoulder just as the screen Liesl shot the gun, making him jump. An apologetic publicist, drawing him quietly out to the lobby, a waiting phone.

  “He’s asking for you,” Fay said. “I know you’re in the middle—”

  “Is he—?”

  “I don’t know. He keeps coming back. An ox.”

  “But you called.”

  “I have a feeling, that’s all,” she said, her voice small, afraid.

  “I’ll be right there.”

  The same hospital smell as he walked in, sharp disinfectant cutting through air thick with blood and waste, the same as Danny’s hospital, all of them. The linoleum in the corridor, just mopped, glared in the overhead light.

  Fay was sitting in the room with Paulette Goddard, waiting together, maybe as they’d once waited in casting offices to show their beautiful legs. Now they both looked drawn, sober, their usual sparkle muted. The way his mother might have waited for Otto, if she had been there, if any of them had. They squeezed his hand, a silent hello.

  Sol was lying half propped up, eyes closed, his skin gray, thin hair pasted down with sweat. A plastic tube hissed oxygen in his nose, and a bottle hung next to him, dripping fluid through an IV. His face looked slack, old, the corners of his mouth white with dried saliva.

  “How’s her picture?” he said, opening his eyes a little.

  “The audience likes it.”

  Sol grunted. “They’re on the payroll.”

  “How are you?” Ben said, coming over to the bed, resting his hand.

  “I’m signing up with Arthur Murray.”

  “I’ll teach you for free,” Fay said.

  Sol smiled. “Let me talk to Ben for a minute. Why don’t you and Paulette get something to eat? Like birds. A celery stick, they call it a meal.”

  Paulette came over and tapped his nose. “You want me to get fat?” she said fondly.

  “Fat.” He smiled at her. “Another pound wouldn’t hurt.”

  “We’ll be outside,” Fay said to Ben. She nodded silently to a buzzer on the nightstand. “If you need me—”

  “Go eat,” Sol said. He waited until they left. “They’re good girls. You know they go way back?”

  Ben nodded. “How are you feeling?” His hand still on the sheet, seeing Otto’s bed again. But there hadn’t been one, no hospital room, a bullet somewhere, no one waiting outside.

  “I feel like shit,” Lasner said. “Don’t bother with the pills next time.” He closed his eyes, drifting a little. “You know on the train? The way you were? It reminded me. My first trip out here. Looking at everything. I didn’t know what to expect. A desert. For asthma. Now—” He opened his eyes fully, lifting his head. “I want to talk to you.”

  “Minot called off the hearings,” Ben said, heading him away.

  “Yeah?” he said, pleased, then sank back against the pillows. “And then who? All these years. We made something great here. From nothing.” He looked out, as if there might be marquee lights, not just dull hospital windows. “It’s all going to fall apart now, isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s going to change.”

  “At my age, same thing. That union business,” he said, another thought. “On Gower Street, for chrissake. To see something like that on Gower. Clubs.” He was quiet for a minute, thinking. “We had the audience. Now, I don’t know. You know what I think it was? The war. Everything made money. You didn’t have to think about the audience, maybe they want something else. Whatever you gave them. You think they don’t change. But how do you go through something like that and not change? How’s your picture?”

  “Done. We’ll put it out after Christmas.”

  A weak smile. “First Crosby and the nuns. Then the dead Jews.” He looked at Ben. “So we did that. I want to talk to you,” he said again. “I have to make some decisions.”

  “You just have to rest.”

  Lasner waved his hand. “I still get tired. I’m tired all the time now. You notice they don’t send me home? I couldn’t have nurses there? So what do they know I don’t know?” He paused. “Nothing,” he said, answering himself. “So maybe the only way I’m getting out of here is in a box.”

  “Don’t talk that way.”

  “You don’t have kids, you have to think about things. Who’s going to take over? Keep things going. You remember on the train? Even then I had an idea. Somebody moves like that. Keeps his mouth shut. You don’t always say what’s up here.” He pointed to his head. “That’s like me. And Otto’s kid. Christ. In the blood.”

  “Sol—”

  “They even give you a—what’s it? MOS? Even the government, for chrissake. You know what I’m saying to you? What I’m thinking?”

  “I can’t, Sol,” Ben said simply.

  Lasner waved his hand again. “Fay helps. You’d be surprised what she knows. And maybe I’m not out of here so fast, either, who knows? You pick things up. Me and Fay want it, New York goes along. Believe me, that’s how it works.”

  Ben looked away, embarrassed, and reached for the water glass on the table. The way it used to work.

  “Here,” he said. “Drink a little.”

  Lasner took a sip. “There’s no surprise here,” he said. “Don’t tell me that. I see you watching everything, figuring it out. You know what I’m saying.”

  Ben looked at him, feeling suddenly winded, caught. Be my son. Something no one had ever asked him before. Otto and Danny, one life passing to the other. He felt as if he were actually being touched, a stroking along his skin. Chosen. For something already decided, no longer in Sol’s hands. And for a second he wondered if it were possible, Bunny’s hold fragile enough to loosen. Would New York really say no to Fay, would Sam? A dying man’s wishes? A fight he might be able to win, if he really wanted to. But even as he imagined it happening, shuffling people in his head, he knew that things had already been arranged in a new
order, any attempt to upset them as futile as Lasner’s grandstanding in the hearing room. Sol had already lost the studio. The point now was to salvage the rest.

  “We’ve always been straight with each other, haven’t we?” he said.

  “Somebody says that, they’re going to start pulling something,” Sol said.

  Ben shook his head. “You want to do the right thing for the studio? Call Bunny. He’ll be good at it.”

  “He’s a pansy.”

  “No,” Ben said, not flinching. “He’s you. He got everything from you. He can do it.”

  “And you can’t?”

  “Not like him. It’s all he cares about, pictures. Like you. He’s got the instinct.”

  “For pictures, maybe. But look with Minot. Just roll over. So who’s going to fight the next one, him? There’s always somebody coming after the studio. You want somebody’s going to fight. You would. I saw you do it for Hal.”

  Ben shook his head again. “I don’t even know who the bad guys are anymore.”

  Lasner made a face, impatient. “It’s just this business with your brother. Whatever the hell he was up to. It’s not like that. You don’t know what’s right, something like that happens with family.”

  “That’s just it. I think everybody’s like him now. Maybe that was the war, too. I think we’re all in-between. Somewhere gray. Pictures were never good at in-between.”

  “What, gray? I’m offering you the studio,” Lasner said, his voice rising, a gift so priceless any hesitation seemed crazy.

  “Offer it to Bunny, Sol. He can fight. He’s tougher than I am.”

  “You’re tough enough to say no. To this. You don’t want this? What do you want?”

  He looked around the hospital room. What did he want? He thought of watching Liesl in the pool, of wearing Danny’s clothes, a life that didn’t belong to him.

  “I don’t know yet,” he said. “Not this.”

  “Just like that,” Lasner said, opening his fingers. “The whole goddam world.”

  Meaning it, Ben realized, the rest just something vague, east of Gower.

  “I want the picture to come out. I want that.”

  “There’s some problem with that?” Lasner said, suddenly alert.

  “No, no. Bunny wants to give it a big release.” He paused. “Talk to him. He’d appreciate it, I think, coming from you. Personal.”

  “Like you did.”

  “You know what it means to me? That you asked?” He looked down. “I’ll probably regret it.”

  Lasner leaned his head back into the pillow. “That’s what he said, too. Otto. When he took a powder. For Germany, yet. Christ, what a family. If he had stayed here, think where he’d be today.”

  At Cedars, Ben thought, the odd transference happening again, listening to the oxygen. Thinking about his credits. Wondering.

  Sol closed his eyes.

  “I’d better go.”

  “Stay a little,” Lasner said, reaching his hand out to anchor Ben’s. Don’t leave me.

  Ben felt the hand, still warm but light, as if it were disappearing.

  “Think about it,” Lasner said. “You don’t want to decide too quick. Something like this.”

  “Okay,” Ben said. Both of them saving face.

  He glanced out the window, feeling claustrophobic. Another hospital room. His mother had held on to him, too. Danny. Now Sol— Otto—whoever he was. One more loss. How many people could you lose before there was no one left?

  He stayed like that for a while, watching Sol’s face, almost expecting the shallow breathing to stop, both of them at an end. You could hear the footsteps outside, rubber-soled, nurses answering calls. Just like the ones outside Danny’s room, Dieter waiting in the hall. Picturing it over and over in his head, making the final cut. Not all deaths are alike. Then even the footsteps stopped, the hospital asleep. How long should he stay? Fay would want to be here. He slid his hand out from under, a silent good-bye. Sol opened his eyes again.

  “What do you want?” he said, still puzzled, a real question.

  Ben stood there for a second, then patted Sol’s hand. “I want you to get some rest,” he said, because it was better not to say anything else.

  WAR BRIDE would be over now so he headed straight to the Grove. The afterparty was even more lavish than the premiere, fake palm trees this time but an orchestra and passing trays of champagne glasses. Liesl was being photographed yet again, hundreds of pictures tonight alone. Primitive peoples thought one could rob the soul.

  “I wonder what her mother would have said,” Ostermann said, making conversation, but stiff. “All this. Your own child. You’re well? I haven’t seen you since Dieter’s funeral.”

  An endless afternoon in Pasadena, all the émigrés, long tributes from faculty members, flowers from Continental. Henderson deep in the back, just to see who came.

  “She’s a success,” Ben said, nodding toward the photographers.

  “Maybe it takes her mind off things. It’s a difficult time for her. She was his favorite. Always spoiling her.”

  Ben thought of her looking down, the gun still in her hand. Another thing that had never happened. The camera bolt loose in the rigging, nobody’s fault.

  “I wish I’d known him better,” Ben said, a polite phrase, now surreal.

  “I’ve been wondering—you don’t mind? When you asked me about the hospital. Daniel. Why did you want to know?”

  Ben shrugged. “Loose ends. I was remembering that day, and then I couldn’t. Like a crossword you can’t finish. It bothered me, that’s all.”

  “Ah,” Ostermann said, looking at him blankly, a translation he didn’t quite get.

  “Don’t mention it to Liesl. I think it still upsets her, thinking about it.”

  “Yes, but you know one has to be sensible. It was a mercy. So much brain damage. All the doctors said. He would have been—what? Who knows? But not himself.”

  “Still. Her husband.”

  “And your brother,” Ostermann said slowly, wanting to say something, then deciding to hold back instead. “Ah, Liesl.”

  “Salka’s looking for you,” she said, kissing him on the cheek.

  Ben could smell her perfume, something new. Her hair was shiny, lit up, and he thought of Paulette on the train, the same glow. Movie stars. She turned to face him, suddenly awkward.

  “How have you been?”

  “Congratulations,” he said, taking in the party.

  “You moved from that place,” she said, ignoring this.

  “I’m bunking in with Hal. Until the picture’s out. Then I’m going back,” he said, a decision just made, but clear, as if someone had turned on a light. “Work for the newsreel.”

  “Back? To Germany?”

  “Wherever they send me,” he said, suddenly filling up with it, the whole world east of Gower, where it wouldn’t matter what Polly thought, whether Minot held a grudge, if you knew things you shouldn’t know. Where everyone else lived.

  “You’re leaving here?” Liesl said.

  “The picture’s finished. There’s no reason to stay.”

  “Maybe it’s better,” Ostermann said, then, self-conscious, began to back away. “Well, I’ll find Salka.”

  “What did he mean?” Ben said, watching him go.

  “He doesn’t understand. The newspaper, what you said about Daniel. How you could do it. I can’t explain. You know it’s one of those things we can’t talk about.”

  “Danny was spying on him.”

  “But to tell a newspaper—it’s confusing to him.”

  “People always made excuses for Danny.”

  “Maybe we all need that. Someone to make excuses.” She bit her lower lip. “Why are you leaving?”

  “Too many people to avoid. It’s easier to get out of the way.”

  She said nothing for a minute, taking this in. “You can’t even look at me anymore. I always thought, a secret, it makes people closer, but it’s the opposite. That’s all we’re g
oing to see now, when we look at each other. What happened.”

  “Let’s not talk about it. It didn’t happen, remember?”

  “That’s why you never come to the house anymore?”

  “I didn’t think you’d want to see me. After everything. The things I said in the office.” He looked over to her. “I made a mistake. I’m sorry. But that doesn’t count for much, does it?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does. To think that. You must have—” He stopped, meeting her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, don’t be sorry. Not about anything.”

  He was still for a second then looked away, uncomfortable. “I have to go.”

  “Not like this. Come with me a minute.” She began pulling him away from the club floor.

  “The party’s for you.”

  “For them. No one will notice. Come.”

  They went down the side hall to the parking lot entrance. Outside, the same scent of orange trees, the row of palms outlined beyond the cars.

  “We’ve been here before,” he said, the memory of it tangible.

  “Yes. And then up with Dieter. And all the time he—” She broke off and reached up, putting her hand behind his neck.

  “What are you doing?” he said, feeling her breath.

  “We can’t leave it like this. I know you. Why you said those things. You know what I remember? You said, ‘Was any of it real?’ So bitter. You already knew the answer. But it’s wrong. It was real. I never lied to you.”

  “You just pretended I was someone else. Maybe I did, too.”

  She looked down. “Always the same. Always putting him there. He wasn’t.”