Stardust(62)

“No. You have to know. I don’t know why. Look, they’re going in. No more about this. The way people talk. Who knows what’s true. My father’s applying for citizenship. How would it look? A Communist son.”

“A dead one.”

“Well, my father’s alive. Talk like this—”

“We have to know. It might be important.” He took her elbow. “Don’t run away from this. Help me. We owe it to him.”

“Owe it to him.” She smiled to herself, then looked up. “I was trying to help. Before you started with all this. Politics. They don’t kill you for that yet. Maybe not love, either. You want to know the girlfriend? Rosemary.” She nodded. “Maybe not the only one, I don’t know. So does that help? Does she look like—”

“How do you know?”

“I know. I knew at the table. The way she was with me. She wouldn’t look at me. Not once. I could see her do it, not looking. And then she heard who you were and she was upset. She wasn’t ready for that. The wife, that’s one thing. But you—”

“That’s it, the proof?”

“You can prove it any way you like. I already know. It’s her,” she said, turning away so that before he could say anything else she had already joined the people moving toward the screening room.

He followed, his mind darting again, his feet moving on their own, in another place. Around him people were talking about the movie, overheard but echoing, like voices in a train station.

Warner’s treat turned out to be Saratoga Trunk, a Bergman not yet released.

“I’ve been sitting on this since over a year,” Jack said.

“You’re worried?” Sol said.

“Not worried. Sam Wood, you’re always going to get an A product. Getting the time right. They put her in dark hair, in period, and I’m thinking, they want Casablanca again, not this. A totally different type. So I wait, we hold the picture. Then what? The Bells of St. Mary’s for Christmas. Talk about timing. I figure after that they’ll like her in anything. Put it out right after, you can’t miss. Same season. You can’t get into the Crosby, see the other.”

“Well, the Crosby,” Sol said. “They’re already counting the money.”

“Hundred bucks it grosses more than anything this year. The Catholics alone. You know how they come out for nuns.”

“Jack.”

“A hundred bucks.”

There were no assigned seats in the theater, so Ben and Liesl sat together toward the back. Minot and his wife, still being charmed, were in the front row with the Lasners and the Warners. Bunny walked up the aisle like someone counting the house, making sure everything was in place. The lights dimmed, followed by a blast of music. When the Warner logo came on, people applauded, a jokey tribute to Jack.

Within minutes Ben saw why Warner had waited. Ingrid Bergman was in a bustle, pretending to be Creole. There was a dwarf and Flora Robeson in blackface as a maid who knew voodoo. Gary Cooper was Gary Cooper, a Texan. His name seemed to be Clint Maroon. None of it made sense, and Ben drifted, not really paying attention. Somewhere upstairs Fay’s cousin was lying on a bed smoking, seeing a splotch of blood on a wall. He thought of her bony hand on his. How can you use your own? But Otto had. Like a religion to him. Abraham ready to sacrifice Isaac—by whose orders? The priests of the International? Wherever orders came from. Your own son. Who wanted to do it. Fearless. He went through the dinner again, trying to piece the parts of Danny’s life together, looking for some clear thread that ran from Berlin to the Cherokee. But what? It seemed as patchy and unlikely as the movie, even without the dwarf.

Liesl wasn’t watching, either. He could feel her beside him, restless in her seat, maybe looking for Rosemary. Knowing it was her, a feeling. The girl most likely. Someone Bunny would make a call for. Dating Ty Power while they built her up, not a B director on a B lot. But when Liesl leaned toward him to whisper, her mind was somewhere else.

“Why would he keep it secret? From me? Why that? I wouldn’t have cared about that.”

He felt her breath against him before he heard her, warm, reaching into him. When he turned her face was even closer, her eyes shiny, anxious. He sorted out the words. Not about Rosemary. But then he saw in her eyes that it was really the same question, another betrayal.

“I don’t know,” he said, less than a whisper, but feeling her breath again, the warmth coming off her skin with the last of the perfume, and suddenly, a trace memory, he was a teenager with a girl in a dark theater, so close, trying not to be overwhelmed by it. Wanting to lean forward, afraid to. In a second she would move back, the contact broken. But she didn’t. The whispers became tactile, like a hand against the side of his face.