Joseph Kanon - Stardust

“How about the guest list for Lasner’s party Saturday?”

Her head went up, immediately protective.

“I was there,” he explained, “and I talked to somebody and I can’t remember her name. I thought if I could go through the list, you know, it might come back to me. Does he keep them, the lists?”

“Uh huh.”

“Don’t worry. I’m sure it’ll be okay with him.”

She said nothing.

“I could go down to the screening room, have him phone up.”

She hesitated, trying to guess what Bunny’s reaction would be to either course.

“No, it’s here,” she said finally, turning to a drawer. “I just filed it, in fact.” She got it out and handed it to him.

“You mind? I’ll bring it back?”

“You want to take it?” she said, suspicious again.

He began to read down the list. Everyone there, with marks next to the Warners people. Seating plans, names on spokes around a circle, everything thought out. Liesl listed as Ben Collier guest. Rex Morgan, who owned 8 percent. But who had talked to Genia, spotted her across the room? A German speaker, so not Ann Sheridan or one of the starlets. Maybe not at the party at all, just someone who knew she was in town. But it would be easy enough to come up with a short list of possibilities, then use Dennis to check them, routine for a Bureau man. Start somewhere. She hadn’t taken a random turn off Sunset. Someone had told her where to go.

He looked up to find the secretary watching him. “He doesn’t like things to leave the office,” she said, expecting trouble.

“It’s a party list,” he said, folding it. “I’ll tell him downstairs.”

They had already started running the dailies, so Ben slipped into the screening room quietly and took a seat at the back. Bunny was in his usual watching posture, chin resting on a pyramid of fingers, while Lasner made running comments to the directors. It was Dick Marshall again, out of the fighter plane, making a sentimental visit to another pilot in the hospital.

“Why a profile,” Lasner said. “They’re paying to see the face.”

“Watch the eyes when he turns,” the director said. “Now you see the tears. He’s been holding them back.”

“Why? He saw the picture?”

“Sol.”

“The buddy dies? Wonderful. Something upbeat.”

“What can I tell you, Sol? It’s a war picture.”

“All right, all right.”

“He looks good, Jamie,” Bunny said to the director, placating. “Think you can wrap this week?”

There was another clip, Lasner quiet, his silence acting like a sigh, then the directors left.

“Jesus Christ, Bunny,” Lasner said.

The room was still dim, Ben invisible in the back shadows.

“I know. It’ll be okay if we can get it out fast. We can book it with Rosemary’s picture, recover the costs.”

“We’re supposed to be making money, not recovering costs.”

“Sol, you’re the one who taught me. Pay the overhead with these, your wins are twice as big.”

“And what about Dick? We got an investment there, too. Another war picture-”

“I had an idea about that. I want you to see this test.” Bunny picked up the phone. “Could you run the test now? The first one.”

This would have been the moment, Ben knew, to cough, declare himself, but he sat still, too interested to move.

It was the same scene they’d used with Julie, the young girl getting up from the piano and saying good-bye to the older man-her father? her teacher? — who was sending her away, better for everyone for some reason. Liesl was wearing a simple white blouse and skirt, her hair brushed straight, the whole effect young, on the brink. When she lifted her face at the piano, it seemed to draw the key light to it, a sudden radiance. Ben knew that it was framing and makeup and well-placed arcs, that it was Liesl playing the piano, but knowing all of it made no difference. Film transformed everything. Even the piano gleamed. She smiled now at the keyboard, slightly wistful, a girl he had never seen before.

“Watch this?” Bunny said.

“What am I watching?” Lasner said.

“The way she moves. It’s the first thing I noticed. Like a dancer. Watch how she gets up. You know who does that? Cary Grant.”

“He was an acrobat,” Lasner said, “not a dancer.”

“Same thing,” Bunny said, still fixed on the screen. “Now the hands. Watch her with his arm, she just grazes it.”

The way she might have touched Ostermann, a gesture Ben had seen her make, protective.

“Listen,” Bunny said.

“I’m hearing?”

“Someone who went to school.”

The clip ended.

“With an accent,” Lasner said.

“Never mind. That’s part of it. Stay with me. Watch it again.”

He asked the projectionist to rerun it. This time neither of them spoke, paying attention. Lasner was quiet afterward.

“A nice girl,” he said finally.

Bunny nodded. “Exactly. She looks like she could actually play the piano.”

“So? What was with the piano, by the way?”

“You don’t miss much, do you? Vegetable oil. You spray it on and the lights pick it up.”

Lasner shook his head, delighted, another magic trick.

“They don’t line up for nice.”

“This is something else, Sol. Maybe another Bergman.”

“You’re serious about this?”

Bunny picked up the phone. “Run the other one.”

“You made two tests?”

“Nice with something behind it. Watch.”

Liesl was on a terrace now, outside a pair of French windows, about to kiss Dick Marshall. It was a night scene, their faces lit by moonlight, her white skin glowing in a low-cut dress.

“You used Dick in a test?”

“Watch.”

Marshall kissed her and she responded, then began kissing his face all over, devouring it, an eruption of kisses that seemed to well up out of her control. When Dick pulled back, breathless, the camera went to her, leaning forward, still eager, her eyes darting all over his face, as if she were kissing him now with her eyes.

“Somebody’ll see,” Marshall whispered.

“I don’t care,” she said, her breath a gasp, moving up to kiss him again.

Ben’s own breathing stopped for a minute, hair bristling on the back of his neck. Not just the same words, the same face.

“Turner does that with her eyes,” Lasner was saying.

No, Ben thought, Liesl does that, a look printed in the back of his head, just for him. When her lips reached Dick Marshall, he knew how they would open, the same soft yielding. He felt his hand tighten on the armrest. An actress borrowed from life. The look in her eyes now was real, as real as it had been with him. But what if it hadn’t been? Maybe it was just the way she played the scene, with him, with Dick, acting both times. How had she played it with Danny? Something he hadn’t allowed himself to think about before. The same expression, the same eyes all over his face? Or had it been different with him, a different acting, or not acting at all. The way they felt about each other.

“How do you like her with Dick?” Bunny said as the clip ended. Ben scarcely heard him, his mind flooding with scenes-in the pool, on the chaise, her hand reaching up to his neck. Had any of them been real? None of them? Didn’t everybody react this way when they saw someone they knew on film? They seemed the same because the gestures came from the same place-a protective pat on a father’s arm. But not the eyes. Intimacy wasn’t something you could carry away with you, turn into a character touch.

“That’s why you used him?”

“It works, the two of them.”

“So she can kiss. There’s still the accent. You know what it would take? Smooth that out?”

Bunny nodded. “But not yet. The accent’s part of it. Remember Dearly Beloved?”