Stardust(7)

“So come now.” He glanced at his watch. “We’ve got the eight seating. It’ll be a help to me. You have dinner with Katz, you always feel a hand in your pocket. Look at this, what did I tell you?”

Katz was slipping through the crowd, drinks in hand.

“Looks like a full train,” he said. “You see Julie Sherman over there?” He nodded toward the starlet from the bond drive. “You know Fox isn’t picking up her option.”

“Lou, don’t peddle,” Lasner said. “Anyway, what would I do with her?”

“Nobody ever lost money showing tits. Your health,” he said, raising his glass.

“Then what happened at Fox?”

“Too much like Tierney. Who needs two? She should be somewhere they work with the talent. You know she can sing? Test her. See what she can do. You can’t run a studio on loan-outs.”

“How many times, Lou? Contract talent’s okay for the programmers. That’s your base,” he said, demonstrating with his hands. “Up here you don’t want to carry around that kind of expense. You get top-heavy. For A pictures, buy what you need. How many A’s do I make? Sell her to Metro, they can afford it.”

Katz shook his head. “You got it backwards. You should do the loan-outs. Look at Selznick—he’s living on his contract list. Every time he loans out Bergman, he’s making what? A couple of hundred?”

“There’s a name for that.”

“Producer.”

“Producer. What’s he doing now, some farkakte Western with that girl played the saint? One picture. You know how many pictures Continental’s releasing this year?”

“That’s my point. You’re not a small studio anymore. People should be coming to you for the talent.”

Lasner held up his hand. “You got something going with her, is that what?”

“Just ten percent.”

“Do you believe this guy?” Lasner said to Ben. “She’s gone down on half the Fox lot and with him it’s still business.”

“You’ve got her wrong. She can sing.”

“You remind me of Gus Adler. The way he was with Rosemary. All he could talk about. Test her, test her.”

“And you did. And signed her,” Katz said smiling, sending a ball over the net.

Lasner shrugged. “All right. Set it up with Bunny. Then we’ll see.” Katz started to speak, but Lasner stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Now take a step back. You push too hard, you knock people over. Learn from Abe. You know what he decided? Act like a gentleman, people always take your calls. There are ways to do things.”

“Jesus, Sol. I was just trying to say thank you.”

There was a stirring in the car, a shift in the air, as if someone were holding a door open. Paulette Goddard was walking toward them, people pretending not to notice as they let her pass. The bond drive dress was gone, traded up for a dark silk top that glittered with sequins, almost as bright as the diamond earrings setting off her face. It wasn’t just being beautiful, Ben thought, amused—she seemed to have brought her own lighting with her, a spot following her through the car.

“Sol, I had no idea you were on the train,” she said, kissing him, the air denser now with perfume.

“You look like a million,” he said fondly.

“I should,” she said, holding up her wrist to show off a strand of diamonds. “You like?”

“If I don’t have to pay for it. What is it, from Charlie?”

“Are you kidding? He still has the first dollar. Well, from him in a way. The settlement.” She laughed, an infectious giggle. “Imagine his face.”

“So everything’s friendly?” Lasner said, a concerned relative.

“Darling, it was ages ago. You know Charlie. He’s wonderful. He’s just impossible to live with.”

“You two go way back,” Lasner said.

“Not that far, Sol,” she said, laughing again, then turned to Katz. “Hi, Lou. How’s Abe?”

“Busy,” he said, almost blushing, grateful to be recognized. Ben smiled to himself. No one was immune to stardust, not even those who lived on it. “Can I get you a drink?”

“Can’t. Date with the Major. To celebrate the end of the drive. Sol, would you believe it, we set a record? And it was just me and Carole and a few other girls.”

“Julie Sherman,” Katz said, getting the name in.

“Yes, Julie.” She had turned her head to him and now took in Ben, her smile as bright as the bracelet. “I’m sorry—”

“Ben Kohler,” Lasner said, the way he now remembered it. “Otto Kohler’s boy.” Ben could tell from the fixed smile that the name meant as little to her as it had to Katz. “He makes pictures for the Army.”