Stardust(14)

Outside, they were heading up through cactus and sage into the wild high desert. At this time of day even the rocks glowed, golden with trapped heat, the shadows around them streaked with violet and terra cotta, as if the Chief had planned it all for dramatic effect, a show before dinner. He imagined Lasner on that other train forty years ago, the dry goods store behind him. No air-cooled compartment then, just hot gritty air and something new at the end. Maybe that’s what all of them had wanted, not just sunlight for film, a new place. What Danny wanted, too, and didn’t find.

Ben looked down at the paper, disturbed. Everything about it was wrong, not just between the lines, but in the lines themselves. He thought of the high railing along the Embankment, Danny perched on it like on a balance beam, arms outstretched and fearless, a boy who had never been dizzy in his life.


BEN SAW Lasner once more before they arrived, this time by accident. He’d been up since dawn, watching the last of the desert slip by, the brick sand turning white in the Mojave. They passed Barstow, houses without shade, then over the ridge to San Bernardino and the miles of orange groves, planted straight to the San Gabriels, at this hour still smelling of the night perfume the guidebooks promised. Ben had lowered the window, leaning out in the morning air. In Europe there had been no oranges at all, not for years. Here the land was bursting with them, an almost supernatural abundance. Royal palms began to appear in front yards, rows of peeling eucalyptus along the tracks.

On the rest of the train, he knew, suitcases were being snapped shut, lipstick dabbed on for the last half hour to union   Station, but the morning held him at the window, head stuck out like a child’s. It was still there as they pulled into Pasadena, sliding by tubs of bright flowers, so Lasner saw him when he stepped onto the platform. He came over to the window, his face troubled, oddly hesitant.

“That was your brother that fell? You didn’t say anything? All this time.”

Ben looked for a response, feeling caught, but said, “How did you hear?”

“Katz said it was in the trades.”

Ben imagined the news spreading through presses, across wires, all the way to tables on the Chief, Katz bending forward to gossip, a montage of rumor. But at least Danny hadn’t been ignored, forgotten. News for five minutes.

“It wasn’t your trouble,” he said finally. “I figured you had enough of your own.”

“A shame,” Lasner said, shaking his head. “I never heard he was a drinker. They must have had some party. Him and the skirt. It’s a hell of a thing. He gonna be all right?”

So now he drank, the rumor swelling, branching. A drunken party, something Lasner could understand. Where did the woman come from? His own invention, an inside tip from Katz? But before Ben could say anything else, Paulette Goddard got off the train with a group of porters and a cartload of suitcases. Her hair was brushed out, shiny, every inch of her in place.

“She doesn’t trust me to find my own car,” he said as she came up, putting her hand on his arm.

“I’m just cadging a lift,” she said.

The lift, or at least its colored driver, was moving toward them on the platform, behind a blonde in a wide-shouldered dress and spectator pumps, still trim but thickening a little now.

“Paulette,” she said with a quick hug, then turned to Lasner and put her arms around his neck and held him, not caring who saw. “Dr. Rosen’s in the car,” she said, nodding toward a black Chrysler waiting at the curb.

“I feel fine.”

“Big shot,” she said fondly. “Just get in the car. Stanley’s sniffing around somewhere. Florabel Muir’s old leg man—he’s working for Polly now. You want to talk to him or to Rosen?”

“That’s the choice?”

“Oh god,” Paulette said, “not Stanley. He’s been after me since Charlie. Fay—”

“I know, I know. Henry, get her to the car, will you?” She turned to Lasner. “You send a telegram from Kansas City and now you don’t even want to see him?”

“He sent it,” Lasner said, pointing at Ben.

Fay looked up, puzzled, then went back to Lasner. “I was worried sick.”

“I just hired him. We met in Germany.”

This seemed to make even less sense, but she smiled up blankly, polite, the boss’s wife.

Lasner held his eye for a minute, what Ben took as a last silent exchange about the train, then moved on.

“Call Bunny Jenkins at the studio,” he said to Ben. “He’ll fix everything for you. And order the stock now—they say tomorrow, it’s always next month. Check the list at Roach, see if they’ve still got a cutter, Hal Jasper.”