Stardust

by Joseph Kanon

  “You’re here late,” Lasner said, pleased. “You meet Hal?”

  “We’ve already started. He’s just what I need. Thanks for-”

  “What did I tell you? He’s got an instinct. His father was a cutter, you know. With Sennett. It’s in the blood. Like you. You on your way out? Come look at the rushes.”

  “Sol,” Bunny said, his tone suggesting a breach of some unspoken protocol.

  “If you’re going to learn the business,” Sol said.

  Bunny looked at Ben, annoyed, then bowed to the inevitable.

  “Mostly bridge shots tonight. Fair warning. No comments to the directors, understood? They’re touchy about tourists.”

  But in fact, slumped down in their chairs, they seemed to expect a barrage of arrows, at least fired by Lasner.

  “Eddie, what the hell’s the light on the left? What is that, sun on the wing? Except he doesn’t see it? Just us?”

  “We can cover it, Sol,” the director said, not bothering to turn around. “It’ll be fine.”

  Sol and Bunny were perched in the last row of the small screening room, everyone else scattered at random, leaving them a buffer zone of space. Lasner talked throughout, a back-and-forth flow, but Bunny sat quietly, looking over fingertips raised to his mouth in a pyramid, a line manager, carefully checking for scratch marks.

  On the screen, Dick Marshall was leaning forward in his pilot seat, eyes squinting, taking sights on an unseen fighter plane. Then a closeup, his face registering the hit. A cover shot, another. There was no sound of gunfire or people yelling or the popping of AA fire outside-all the things Ben remembered-just Dick Marshall’s face, taking aim, taut with cold calculation.

  After a few more cockpit shots they were in a western saloon, the camera turning away from the bar to take in the front door, the looming shadow behind it. The same shot, another angle. There seemed to be no order to the sequence, just what had come out of the lab first. Now a city street, someone getting out of a cab. The cab pulling away. A woman’s back, squaring her shoulders as she walks into an apartment building. Ben wondered how many pictures were in production, who kept track of the output, not just dialogue scenes but these, bridge shots, filler, seconds of screen time, the whole day’s work reduced to a few nuts and bolts, then welded to other pieces of film, like steel sections in the Kaiser yard, one ship a day rolling down the slipway. When the clip ended, Lasner started squirming, bored by the sudden lull.

  “Where’s Rosemary?”

  “She’s coming,” Bunny said, his head still resting on his fingertips. The screen crackled to life, the first clip with sound, the snap of the clapper with the take number. Rosemary was standing at a bar, smoking, her low-cut dress lined with beads, little darts of light. Dana Andrews, the star on loan, was questioning her, the kind of detective who didn’t bother to take off his hat indoors.

  “We can do this hard or easy,” he said, the rich baritone turned tough.

  “I don’t know where he is,” Rosemary said, disillusioned, not meeting his eye.

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “I’m telling you, I don’t know.” She rubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray. “He left me.”

  “Then one of you got lucky.”

  A new clip, a fresh cigarette, this time facing him. “I’m telling you, I don’t know.” The ashtray. “He left me.”

  “Then one of you got luck.” A second. “Lucky. One of you got fucking lucky.” Laughing now, the crew laughing behind him, somebody yelling cut.

  “Wonderful,” Lasner said. “A thousand a week, he’s laughing.”

  Another clip, this time without a flub, Rosemary turning away, a more sympathetic nuance, the camera close on her.

  “Better,” Bunny said. “How do you like the dress?”

  “Another inch and her tits are in the shot.”

  “That’s her character.”

  “No, what you want here is she should show them but she doesn’t want to show them.”

  “Eddie?” Bunny said to the director, a few rows down.

  “Keep watching,” a voice said in the dark.

  And there it was, in the next clip, Andrews looking down, a gesture with her arm, the camera more aware of her body than before, but her own feelings more ambivalent, just what Lasner seemed to have ordered up.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Christ, Eddie, I don’t have to tell you anything.”

  “You know where I got that? Andrews. He said, ‘Let’s try it. I look down her dress but don’t tell her I’m going to, see how she reacts.’ And he’s right, the arm goes up, she doesn’t even know she’s doing it. But now we know her. Nice.”

  “Actors,” Lasner said.

  There was more of Rosemary, reaction shots, close-ups, all gleaming, like her beads, then a kiss with Andrews, which she first resisted, then gave in to. After that, a series without Andrews, simply raising her head, her hair swept up now, the way Liesl’s had been at Union Station. Ben leaned forward. Not unlike Liesl-harder, her mouth thinner and her face lacquered tight in studio makeup, but the same kind of look, the same cheekbones. Men married the same woman, over and over. Or was that just an old wives’ tale? But she’d be someone the studio would protect, worth safety shots and endless close-ups, a simple phone call. Then she looked to the side, a different profile, not Liesl. Grasping at straws. Still.

  The woman who’d got out of the taxi was back, now full-face, Ruth Harris on the building’s penthouse terrace, confronting a gangster Ben didn’t recognize. The picture was clearly a B, shot for speed, not star making. No dewy close-ups. The scene seemed barely blocked out, the man uncertain of his marks. He had grabbed Ruth by the shoulders, a prelude to roughing her up, pushing her against the balcony. She fought back, trying to scratch his face, slipping out of his grasp. When he reached for her again, she pushed him hard and then, before Ben could react, it happened. The man staggered against the rail, off balance from her push, wheeled around, his weight now plunging forward, pulling the rest of him with it, too late to reach out, a scream, falling over the side. Close on Ruth’s eyes, wide now with terror. Ben blinked. Could it have happened that way? A fight, a push, the unintended pitch over-then, appalled, running. Ben looked away from the screen. The way he wanted it, not the way it had been.

  “This is a woman’s picture?” Lasner said.

  “The DA falls in love with her,” Bunny said, deadpan. “Well, here’s your little friend,” he said to Ben as the next clip appeared.

  Ben looked back at the screen, but the terrace scene kept playing itself in his mind. Couldn’t it be possible? Not intentional, not someone coming up from behind. A woman, a love quarrel gone wrong. Two men struggling. Over what? It might even have gone the other way, Danny left standing with the appalled face. But it hadn’t.

  On the screen, Julie Sherman was getting up from a piano and walking over to an older man in what looked like some variation of Intermezzo. She had been talking earlier, but Ben hadn’t been paying attention. Now her voice caught him, the same surprising modulation he’d noticed when they said hello. Nothing remarkable happened. She kissed the man, patting his arm, then walked across the room, turned, and said good-bye.

  “Satin,” Bunny said. “Lou would dress his mother like a hooker.”

  “Forget the dress,” Lasner said. “Sam likes her. He thinks he can do something with her.”

  “She can’t move her arms.”

  “So she can practice yanking his dick.”

  “Sol,” Bunny said, then picked up the phone. “Any more dailies? Okay.” He looked down toward the directors. “We’re done here. Thanks. Rosemary looked great, Eddie.” He watched them leave, then turned to Lasner. “Sol,” he said, the rest unspoken.

  “Sam’s girl-she looks good,” Lasner said stubbornly.

  “She’s last year, somebody you could get into the sack before you ship out.”

  “You’re an expert on this.”

  “And now they’re coming back. What do
they want? A quickie with a waitress or somebody you can bring home?”

  “They want to fuck Loretta Young?”

  “Sol, I’m serious. We don’t need her.”

  “Sam Pilcer’s been with me a long time,” Lasner said quietly, a little embarrassed. “He doesn’t ask much.”

  “So let him slip her a fifty every time.”

  “We can always use a girl.”

  “Fox dropped her.”

  “Zanuck doesn’t see it. It wouldn’t be the first time. Lou doesn’t see it, either-he keeps saying she can sing. We could get her for a hundred a week with steps, and he’d be grateful.”

  “Not as grateful as Sam,” Bunny said.

  Lasner turned to Ben. “What do you think? You’re a guy off the boat. She look good to you?”

  “Everybody looks good to me.” He glanced at Bunny, an offering. “She has a nice voice.”

  “You want to sign her for her voice?”

  “Try a shorter option,” Ben said, the thought too sudden to be filtered. “You don’t have to pick it up.”

  Bunny looked at him, surprised, then waited for Lasner’s reaction.

  “It never lasts long with Sam,” Lasner said finally, staring at Ben. He turned to Bunny. “Tell Lou you like her voice,” he said, amused now.

  “Start her with a voice-over,” Bunny said, thinking. “If we had any.” He looked at Ben. “You could request her. For your picture.”

  Ben nodded. An easy chance to make an ally.

  “That picture? What voice-over?”

  “One of the victims,” Bunny said. “The voice-over tells her story.”

  Lasner stared at him for a second, then snorted. “You’re going to tell Lou you want her to play a dead Jew? Let me know what he says.” He stood up, shaking his head. “That’s some pair of balls you got on you,” he said to Bunny, heading for the door.

  Bunny picked up a clipboard. “Good night, Pete,” he yelled to the projectionist, then turned to Ben. “Clever you,” he said, his voice without edge, as if he were trying to decide how he felt.

  “If it works.”

  “With Lou? He’ll grab it. It gets his foot in the door.” He sighed. “My new best friend,” he said, then looked up. “It’s hard for Sol to say no to Sam. They go back.” He hesitated. “You don’t have to use her. If she’s not right for the picture.”

  “I can find something. Maybe buy myself a favor.”

  “I wonder what that could be.”

  Ben looked at him. It wouldn’t be Ruth Harris, not even worth safety shots anymore. “You do any favors for Rosemary?”

  “My whole life is doing favors for Rosemary,” Bunny said. “Did you have a particular one in mind?”

  His tone, a pretend innocence, drew a line, his eyes daring Ben to cross it. But what would be the point? Ben answered by saying nothing, a kind of standoff.

  “I hope you’re not still going on about people making calls. You don’t want to be a nuisance.” He paused. “Rosemary’s been seeing Ty Power, since he got out of the Marines. She’s been photographed seeing him. They make an attractive couple. She’s going to keep seeing him. Until her picture comes out.”

  “A one-man woman.”

  Bunny tucked the clipboard under his arm and turned to the door, then stopped, looking back over his shoulder. “Why Rosemary?”

  “She’s Danny’s type.”

  “Oh,” Bunny said, his voice sliding an octave. “And here I thought you were just guessing.”

  “And she’s important to the studio.”

  “Everybody’s important. Until they’re not.” He turned fully, facing Ben. “Look, I don’t know where you think you’re going with this, but if I were you, I’d park it outside the gate. You don’t want to be bothering people. Mr. L likes to keep things running. Anything interferes with production- Right now he likes you. He gets these little enthusiasms. You could have a future here. But he can blow hot and cold. You should know that. It’s a studio. People come and go all the time.”

  “Except you.”

  Bunny nodded. “I keep things running.”

  S HE WAS in the pool when he got home. He followed the faint sounds of splashes through the quiet house and out onto the terrace, stopping for a second by the lemon tree near the door. Only the pool lights were on, a grotto effect, with blue light rising up, not spilling down, and he saw that she was naked, her body gliding through the water with a mermaid’s freedom, alone in her own watery world. He knew he should make a sound but instead stood watching her, the smooth legs, the private dark patch in between when they opened out. When she became aware of him, a shadow at the end of the pool, she swam toward him without embarrassment, faintly amused at his own.

  “I thought I was alone,” she said smiling, glancing toward the crumpled bathing suit on the edge of the pool.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean-” Still looking, only her head above water, but the rest of her clear in the pool lights.

  “That’s all right. I was getting out anyway.” She reached for a towel, more of her out of the water now, her nipples hardening a little as the air touched them. “Quiet as a mouse.”

  She looked at him, still amused, then began to climb the shallow end steps so that he finally had to turn away, a show of modesty. Behind him he could hear the towel rubbing, another rustling as she put on a robe, watching her now by sound.

  “Have a drink.” She moved to the open wine bottle on the table, tying her belt. “Iris left something in the fridge, if you’re hungry. I didn’t know-”

  “I should have called.”

  “No, don’t feel that. Come and go as you like.” She poured out two glasses from what he saw was an almost empty bottle. “Did you have a good day?” she said, handing him one.

  He laughed, a reflex.

  “What?”

  “That’s what people say in movies.” What wives said.

  “So how do I say it then?” She sat down on a chaise and lit a cigarette, turning to sit back but keeping one leg up, poking through the folds of the robe.

  He shrugged. “Same way, I guess.”

  “Ha, art and life. Like my father’s lectures. So, was it? A good day?”

  He leaned back on the other chaise, taking a sip of the wine. “This is nice.”

  “Mm. Maybe I’ll take to drink.”

  But he hadn’t meant the wine: the warm night, the liquid light of the pool catching her bare leg, Danny’s wonderful life. Is that how it had been? Comparing their days, listening to night sounds, the soft air rubbed with hints of chlorine and eucalyptus.

  “Did you go to your father’s?”

  “No. He says it’s too soon.” She took another drink. “How long do people sit at home anyway? Do you know?”

  “A week, I think.”

  “Two more days. Then what? Ciro’s. Ha. Every night. Das susse Leben.”

  “How about dinner at Sol Lasner’s? Saturday.”

  She turned to him, eyebrows raised.

  “He said to bring someone,” Ben said. “Who else do I know?”

  She sat back, smiling. “Such an invitation. But you’re in luck. I’m free. Every day, in fact. Well, not Sunday.”

  “What’s Sunday?”

  “My father’s birthday. Salka makes a big lunch. Dieter comes and makes a toast-he writes it out before, a real speech. My father thanks him. Then he says something. It goes on like that, every year. Then chocolate cake.”

  “The one Danny liked.”

  “Yes,” she said, a sudden punctuation mark. She stubbed out her cigarette, then got up and poured more wine in their glasses. “They sent the medical report you asked for. It’s on the desk.”

  “What does it say?”

  “He died,” she said, sitting back down.

  “I’ll look at it later.”

  “Why?”

  He said nothing for a minute, listening to the pool water hit against the drain flaps.

  “I don’t know. How he died. It’s something we should kn
ow-it’s part of it all.”

  She looked over at him for a second, about to speak, then let it go.

  “If you say so,” she said wearily. “So what do we wear to Lasner’s? They dress up?”

  “I’ll ask Bunny.”

  She turned, a question.

  “His right hand, his- I don’t know what you’d call him. He used to be a child star.”

  “That’s what happens to them? I never think of them grown up.”

  “Neither do they. Then they are and they have to do something else. But they look the same. Just older. Remember Wolf Breslau? The little boy in the Harz Mountain films? He became a Nazi. They put him on trial. For killing Poles. In open pits. The same baby face.”

  She was quiet for a minute. “Someone you saw in the Kino, ” she said to herself. “How can anybody go back?” She shook her head. “My father says Heinrich’s making plans. To go back to that.” She took a sip of wine. “And what about you? What are you going to do? Now that you’re grown up. Make pictures?”

  “No.”

  “No? Lasner must like you. Inviting you to dinner.”

  “He likes me this week. One in the family’s enough.” Was. “My father always expected Danny to-”

  “But not you. So.” Another sip, thinking. “Did you like him?”

  “My father?”

  “No. Daniel.”

  The question, never asked, took him by surprise, something tossed in the air that hung there, incapable of being answered.

  “I mean, families, people don’t always- So many years, you didn’t see each other. I just wondered.”

  “That was the war.”

  “Ah,” she said, the sound floating up to join the question, still suspended.

  He looked out toward the city. “I wanted to be him,” he said finally.

  “When you were boys.”

  “Yes.” When did that stop? Does it? He smiled, moving away from it. “He was good with girls.”

  “And not you?”

  “I got better.”

  “They say in Germany now you can get a girl for a pack of cigarettes. One pack.”