Joseph Kanon - Stardust

Lasner turned to Bunny. “What did they say?” He nodded to the cards. “The ones that weren’t okay.”

Bunny met his eyes, then picked up one of the cards. “ ‘Didn’t I see this last year? But I liked Dana Andrews. Yes, I’d recommend.’” Then another. “‘Usual hard to believe junk.’” He looked up. “One of the kids. This one says the picture’s okay, but why not in color.” He looked at Lasner. “I’ve seen worse, Sol. It’ll do business.”

Lasner said nothing, then went back to the window. The car was through the pass now, heading west on Fountain. “You feel it in the lobby? We didn’t have the audience,” he said, still looking out. “We used to have the audience.”

The rest of the trip back was dispiriting, Shulman worried, everyone staring at the half-lit billboards, a funeral quiet. Bunny had tried putting a pragmatic good face on things. Seven or eight, even with South America, was respectable and nobody had been expecting Going My Way. But they’d been hoping for something more.

When he got back to the Cherokee, Ben walked down to Hollywood Boulevard to get a sandwich at the Rexall, still brooding. He looked at his reflection in the glare of one of the storefronts, a disembodied image, as if he were not actually there, invisible to the people passing behind him. Why couldn’t Danny, another shade now, appear in the glass beside him, tell him what had happened? Or just talk? Tell one of his jokes.

At the lunch counter, while dishes and coffee cups slammed around him, he took the family picture out of his wallet. All of them together in the Tiergarten, his mother in the cloche hat, Danny grinning, him smiling, held next to each other by Otto, one hand on each shoulder. How could they have changed so much? He looked at his father, holding his boys tight against his coat. Not putting them at risk. His mother leaning against him, eyes laughing, before the bitterness. And Danny, mischievous and daring, who got him into trouble, but protected him, too, who never told on him, gave him away. Partners in crime. None of them the same. But they had been like that once. Maybe you always carried it with you, what you used to be. Danny hadn’t told on Rosemary. Then why the others? Put yourself in his place. But he couldn’t. He was still the boy in the picture, too, wanting to be his brother, before they changed.

The night clerk barely looked up when Ben got back, fixed instead on the crossword he was filling in, his voice lazy, almost a drawl.

“Any luck finding that mail key? Management was asking.”

“No.”

“They’ll charge you, get another one made.”

“Don’t bother, then. I’m not expecting any mail.”

Officially that would still go through the APO, sent on by Fort Roach. But who would write, now that Danny was gone?

“You’ve got some in there now.”

Ben looked at his box, the see-through holes backed white with an open piece of paper, another Current Resident flyer.

“It’ll keep.”

“You have to turn one in when you leave, so you’ll still have the charge.”

“Maybe I won’t leave.”

The clerk didn’t rise to this, his hand still moving across the puzzle. “I’ll order it,” he said indifferently. “Here’s a message.”

He reached over to a box and handed Ben a slip. Liesl. Out tonight, talk tomorrow. Another evening with Dick, the perfect gentleman. And then sleep, because the camera sees everything. But she’d called, hoping to catch him in. He felt a warm stirring on his skin. Just from a message slip.

Upstairs, he poured a drink of the brandy and sat up on the bed with one of Danny’s scripts. The partners were foiling a blackmail scheme. The victim, someone Rosemary might have played, was a woman with a past who was about to marry into society. Danny was coming to her rescue, flirting, and Ben was doggedly following leads. He smiled to himself. There was some business with post office boxes- maybe the lost key downstairs put to use here-and a confrontation in a gambling club. Danny and the blackmailer play cards. “You give yourself away.” What Danny used to say when they played cards, Ben’s eyes apparently acting like mirrors into his hand. But unlike Ben, the blackmailer wasn’t intimidated. He tosses a chip. “You’re wasting your money. That’s all right with me. I own the place. But don’t waste your time, too. You work for her, what have you got? Be a friend to the house, you’ll come out ahead.” Ben sat up straighter, hearing Minot’s voice. He flipped back. Even the physical description fit, an athlete’s swagger. Would he have recognized himself? Was this how Danny saw him, a blackmailer? But why risk offending him? An actor might read it differently, but the likeness underneath would be unmistakable. If you saw yourself that way. And of course Minot didn’t.

What else? Ben kept reading, looking for anything real, the stray detail that might lead somehow to the balcony outside. But Partners ran to formula. After a few kisses, Danny sends the girl back to her rich suitor-better for her and better for the series. The blackmailer goes to jail. Danny remains uncompromised. The brothers drive off together. Everything that didn’t happen. Ben closed the script. But the way he’d wanted it to happen. That was something at least, wasn’t it?

He got up, restless. She’d be home now, before the second set started at the Grove. Talk tomorrow. But there was still tonight, a drink by the pool, his hand idling on her leg, no files with coded sources, scripts with Minot. Just the soft air. Afterward, when she slept, he’d lie next to her, the scent of her still on him.

The driveway was empty. Should he wait? But maybe the car had already been put in the garage, tucked away for the night. There was a faint light coming from around back and he got out and followed it. The way Riordan’s man had come, slipping through the French windows to look for a name. He heard her before he reached the corner of the house, still awake, an easy murmur, leaving part of it behind in her throat. Now a laugh, louder, maybe reading something by the pool. He should call out, not startle her, coming out of the dark. He turned the corner and stopped.

She was kneeling on the chaise, someone beneath her, lowering her face to his. Another murmur, playful, the light catching her bare back now, naked, moving gently, like pool water. Ben felt his stomach clench, punched in. Her hair came up again, white shoulders. He stared, unable to move, step away. Now he took in the rest, the robes lying on the ground, the wine on the table, the blue light coming from the pool. She dipped her head again, then raised it, her face visible over the back of the chaise. His breath was coming back a little, blood rushing to his head. In a second, his face would be flush with it, surprise replaced by something else. She arched her neck back, and her face came up, eyes closed, then opening, then locked on his.

For a second there seemed to be no sound at all, no gasp, not even crickets. They looked at each other, too shaken to react. Then her eyes moved, one thought chasing another, and she reached for her robe, her breasts showing. She said something to the man in the chaise as she put it on, presumably an excuse, improvised, keeping him there as she got up to go into the house, any excuse, moving steadily, not alarmed, not seeing anybody standing by the house. An arm dropped over the side of the chaise and picked up cigarettes. Then a head leaned down, lighting one. Dick Marshall. Liesl stood between him and Ben, but Dick wasn’t looking. He lay back on the chaise, a bare arm flung out. The rest of him would be naked too, waiting for her. Liesl started across the patio, belting the robe, her eyes on Ben again, a flicker of panic. He turned away, heading back to the driveway.