Nina Berry - City Of Spies

Which was as close as Jerry Allenberg would ever come to making sure Devin Black wasn’t blackmailing her into doing this movie.

“I’m great, Jerry. Really. If we’re lucky maybe the movie will be so bad they won’t release it.”

“Your lips to God’s ears,” he said.

“Have the studio’s dancing instructor call me so I can brush up on the tango, okay?”

“Sure, sure.” And he hung up.

“Jerry doesn’t think it’s a good idea,” Pagan said, setting the handset back in the cradle of the phone on the kitchen wall.

Mercedes didn’t look up from her astronomy book. “Too late. You’ve crossed the event horizon.”

“Is that a tango step?” Pagan grinned.

“It’s a boundary that surrounds a black hole.” Mercedes looked up from the book. “Do you know what a black hole is?”

“What Jerry Allenberg has instead of a soul?” Pagan shrugged off Mercedes’s look, “Oh, come on, you know I was either drunk or distracted between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. My high school diploma’s strictly ceremonial, thanks to Universal Pictures and all those lovely tutors fudging my scores.”

“A black hole is this area in space with gravity so strong it sucks everything, even time, into itself. Nothing, even light, can escape.” Mercedes wasn’t reading from her book as she spoke, and her eyes lit up as she went on. “This physicist, Finkelstein, discovered the event horizon, which is like a boundary around the black hole. Once you cross the event horizon, you can’t go back. You’re trapped forever.”

“So you’re saying I’ve been sucked into a one-way pit of darkness?” Pagan nodded. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Mercedes went back to reading. “The constellations are different in the southern hemisphere,” she said. “Maybe I can find a telescope while we’re there so I can see them.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Burbank, California

January 2, 1962

PATADA

A kick between the legs, usually executed by the follower.

The Warner Bros. studio lot lay shrouded in morning fog at the foot of the January-green Hollywood Hills. Pagan rolled down the window of the limousine as the guard waved them through the gate to inhale the crisp air and get a better view of the famous water tower perched like a long-legged heron over the blank-faced soundstages and trees still leafy for the California winter.

Pagan had always loved the bustle of the Warner lot, but she hadn’t been there since they’d shot exteriors on its Western street for Little Annie Oakley, when she was ten. It was 7:00 a.m., and the studio was abuzz, an uncanny small town all its own, but one populated by time travelers and circus folk.

Transferred from the limo to a golf cart driven by an assistant in a Yankee hat, Pagan watched an eight-seat electric vehicle hum past, carrying a flock of flappers in feathered headbands and spit curls.

Her cart zoomed by the commissary, turned left and nearly smacked into a clutch of cowboys, guns at the hip. Nearby, three ten-year-old girls practiced a soft-shoe in an empty parking space. Their mothers sat in folding chairs nearby, knitting or watching critically. “One and two and ba-da bam!” one woman shouted, smacking her hand hard on her thigh. “Do it again.”

Hang in there, kid, Pagan thought. She’d been that girl. Mama had been that woman. No tap dance had ever been good enough. No line reading was ever exactly right. That was how excellence was earned, Mama had said. She may have been right, but it was so very exhausting.

The cart purred onward. The soundstages loomed like windowless mausoleums on either side as grips and wardrobe assistants ambled along, paper coffee cups steaming.

“What are you shooting?” Pagan’s driver asked.

“Not shooting yet,” she replied. “We’ve been rehearsing at a dance studio since Christmas, but now we need a soundstage big enough to choreograph this big number before we head to Buenos Aires to shoot.”

“All the stages at Universal taken?” He shook his head. “Didn’t know they had such a busy slate.”

“Maybe yours are just better,” Pagan said. “But don’t tell anyone over there I said so.”

He laughed as they pulled to a stop in front of Stage 16 and she alighted from the cart. “But I’ll be sure to tell everyone here you said it.”

Smiling, she sailed through the door cut into the side of the soundstage with its Authorized Personnel Only sign, and stepped into the echoing dark of the stage. She stopped to let her eyes adjust to the spot of light along the back wall. A dusty piano crouched there. A wizened woman with a face like a walnut, her hair pulled severely back in a bun, sat on the bench smoking and flipping through sheet music.

“She’s here!” More lights flickered and came to life, illuminating the empty cavern of the space and a tall, graceful man she knew, the movie’s choreographer, gliding toward her. He wore flowing black trousers and a black turtleneck over his long, sinewy limbs, and he paused to extend one leg in front of himself, bowing with hands to his chest to her as if he were a courtier paying homage to the queen.

“Jared!” Pagan leaned in as he rose and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “You look marvelous. How was your New Year’s?”

“Busy, my beautiful. Busy and scandalous and everything New Year’s should be!” Jared said, taking her arm as they walked toward the piano together. “And yours?”

“Sober and boring and everything my New Year’s should be,” she said.

He laughed. “Which means you won’t have forgotten everything we practiced last week.”

“I better not,” Pagan said. She’d spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s with Jared at his dance studio, learning the steps to the dances for Two to Tango, with him standing in as whatever partner she had in the dance. Today was the first time she’d be dancing with one of her costars. That must be him in the T-shirt, trousers and scuffed dance shoes, stretching out his calf muscles by the back wall.

“Do you know Tony Perry?” Jared left her to take the man by the elbow and tug him toward her. “Tony, you’ve heard of Pagan Jones, of course! Your delightful and delicious dancing partner.”

“Miss Jones,” Tony said, taking her hand in a grip that was a shade too tight. “I’m a big fan.”

Tony Perry was a hair under six feet, with thick hair dyed so black the bright stage lights didn’t reflect off it. His dark tan, overlaid with a new painful pink burn, had been so recently acquired she could still smell the coconut oil. His lips disappeared when he smiled. It was a tight, fake, assessing kind of smile. His eyes did the elevator, riding up and down her body in a way that made her want to throw off her trench coat and yell, “How’s this?”

She’d heard of him vaguely: he’d recently starred in some semipopular Broadway musical. Two to Tango was his first movie, and his overly curious, voracious energy announced that he was on a mission. He was going to be a big star if it killed him. Or her.

She hoped he’d relax a bit so they could dance together, but she didn’t tell him to call her by her first name. “Miss Jones” was fine with this guy for now. “Hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”

“Not at all, not at all!” Jared lifted a finger at the piano player, who carefully rested her half-finished cigarette on the edge of the piano before hitting a chord. “But shall we warm up a little? I have such plans for you, my lovelies.”

“Can’t wait.” Tony lifted an eyebrow at Pagan and smirked. “Shall we?”

Pagan removed the trench coat and threw it and her purse into the corner. “Let’s.”

Jared led them through a quick series of ballet warm-ups—pliés, ports de bra, coupés and posés, while the wizened one pounded out stately chords. Tony looked limber enough. But then the tango didn’t require great kicks, leaps or lifts. It involved close, complex footwork between the two partners and perfect timing, but you didn’t have to be a complete athlete to look good doing it.