Joseph Kanon - Stardust

“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 know-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.”

“That’s not all you’d get.”

“So it’s not for you, the easy ones. I can see that. It wouldn’t be- how do you say schicklich?”

“Proper. Seemly.”

“Seemly,” she said, trying it, then took another sip of wine. “The first time I met him-he’d undress you. Look right at you. He wanted you to know he was doing it. So people are different. You look at me from the side. You don’t want me to know you’re looking.” She waved her hand at him before he could say anything. “It’s all right. It’s nice, someone looking. Don’t be embarrassed.” She paused. “I like you looking.”

He turned to her, not sure how to respond.

“If it makes you uneasy, my being here-”

She shook her head. “No. It doesn’t matter. That’s not the way it would happen. I know you a little now. You look from the side. You’d wait. You’d wait for me to say. To start it. That’s how it would happen.” She looked at him. “Don’t you think?”

A direct look, not from the side, holding his. He felt blood rise to his skin, as if she had touched him. Danny’s wife.