Stardust(198)

“Like something out of the movies,” Bunny said flatly.

The others were moving in now, filling the lobby. Liesl was posing with the servicemen, two on each side. Her father, looking slightly lost, had arrived with Salka. She was beaming, reminded perhaps of the old opening nights at the Ufa Palast, but no one in the bleachers paid any attention. Only Polly recognized them, nodding to Ostermann, her neighbor at the hearing, now someone she mentioned in her columns. The Conscience of Germany. There was talk of a Nobel, she’d heard. Behind her, Kelly was holding her mike, doing a remote check. When he looked up he caught Ben’s eye for a minute, an odd questioning, the sound stage accident mixed up with the Cherokee somehow, a scent nobody was following, Ben an inexplicable connection. But Kelly had moved on to another beat, no longer doing Cagney, and Dick Marshall was getting out of his car, the story he’d come for.

Ben went in, sitting in one of the back Continental rows, watching the rest of the audience kissing and waving across aisles, a party. Bunny hurried down front with Rex and Sam and some men from the front office, talking as he went, Lasner on the carpet at Grand Central. Little Brian Jenkins, quick as a bunny. Then Liesl came in between the Army and the Navy and the lights started to dim.

It was the kind of company audience that applauded the credits, little salutes to their friends. Imre Tabor, ten years out of Budapest, had directed, and Epstein had done the music and Simco the photography, all Europeans, but whatever edge they may once have brought had been smoothed out, maybe forgotten. It was a studio picture, bright, every eyebrow in place. Ben wondered for a second what might have happened to Kaltenbach if he’d stayed, got lucky with Exit Visa, shepherding Danny’s story through rewrites. A vehicle for Dick. Stranger things had happened.

On the screen a process shot of ruins dissolved to a studio interior, the family waiting for the Allied liberation. Then Liesl’s first appearance, riding a bicycle, hair blowing. Applause. Her face in close-up, young, fearless, the one Danny must have known. In a second a retreating German soldier would grab the bicycle, force her into the doorway, struggle with her until she got his gun, shot him. The scene that would come in handy in real life, holding the gun steady in the nightclub set, standing over Dieter on the floor. Ben standing there, too. Are you finished now? Bunny had said. Danny finally avenged. But how could you ever be finished with murder? An endless accounting. There was always more. Reasons. And once you did know, what did you do? Not all deaths are alike.

Liesl was heaving, distraught, racing to safety. Now the advancing GI who would discover her, deliver her, and then come to call. The war as Continental saw it. Not the rest of it, not what Ben had seen. He glanced down toward Bunny. There were a hundred ways he could interfere, keep the faces off the screen. Would it matter? What was it worth to them, already gone? Had it mattered to Danny, Dieter finally lying in a pool of his own blood? But it had to, somehow. To us. What if we never saw the faces, stayed in the dark?

He felt the hand on his shoulder just as the screen Liesl shot the gun, making him jump. An apologetic publicist, drawing him quietly out to the lobby, a waiting phone.

“He’s asking for you,” Fay said. “I know you’re in the middle—”

“Is he—?”

“I don’t know. He keeps coming back. An ox.”

“But you called.”

“I have a feeling, that’s all,” she said, her voice small, afraid.

“I’ll be right there.”

The same hospital smell as he walked in, sharp disinfectant cutting through air thick with blood and waste, the same as Danny’s hospital, all of them. The linoleum in the corridor, just mopped, glared in the overhead light.

Fay was sitting in the room with Paulette Goddard, waiting together, maybe as they’d once waited in casting offices to show their beautiful legs. Now they both looked drawn, sober, their usual sparkle muted. The way his mother might have waited for Otto, if she had been there, if any of them had. They squeezed his hand, a silent hello.

Sol was lying half propped up, eyes closed, his skin gray, thin hair pasted down with sweat. A plastic tube hissed oxygen in his nose, and a bottle hung next to him, dripping fluid through an IV. His face looked slack, old, the corners of his mouth white with dried saliva.

“How’s her picture?” he said, opening his eyes a little.

“The audience likes it.”

Sol grunted. “They’re on the payroll.”

“How are you?” Ben said, coming over to the bed, resting his hand.

“I’m signing up with Arthur Murray.”

“I’ll teach you for free,” Fay said.