Stardust (38 page)

“For someone you’d never met.”

“I didn’t do it for him. I wouldn’t have lifted a finger for him.”

“But Minot—”

“Is important. We need him on the consent decree.”

“So why not help him—what? Tidy up?”

Bunny shrugged. “Very scrupulous they are. Afraid a little of the soot would rub off, I suppose. But who cares? So let’s just say he tripped. Nicer for them. And the family. For you, come to that. Much nicer. And you keep hounding me about it.” He paused. “Now Ken. You’re not hounding him, I hope. He could have you for breakfast before you noticed.”

“And that’s why you jump when—”

“I don’t jump. The studio needs him.”

“For the studio. Not because he has something on you. That’s his specialty, isn’t it?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“If he does, he didn’t get it from Danny. If that’s what you think. I checked. All he ever did was put you at a meeting. As a tourist. That’s it.”

“Well, there’s a comfort. He doesn’t ‘have’ anything. There’s nothing to have.”

“Only a meeting? You scare easy. How did Danny know, by the way? Who told him about it?”

“Nobody told him,” Bunny said, dismissive. “He was there.”

Ben looked up, caught off guard. “I thought you said you never met him.”

“I didn’t. We were never introduced. People weren’t. Not exactly a garden party. But I knew who he was.”

“And he knew you.”

“He must have. And, think, to remember all those years. Just store it up here and wait till you need a little mud to throw.”

“So it wasn’t MacDonald.”

Bunny hesitated for a second, either rattled or genuinely confused. “Who?”

“He was at the meeting, too.”

Bunny shook his head. “I told you, nobody was introduced.”

“Danny said you were with him.”

“With him?” Bunny said, wrinkling his brow, acting out thinking. He dropped the cigarette and started rubbing it out. “Oh,
Jack
. It’s been years. He was in the Pasternak unit, over at Universal. An arranger. He worked on some of the Durbin pictures.”

“A friend?”

“Just someone around.”

“Who took you to meetings.”

“Once. I didn’t know—well, we all say that now, don’t we? Anyway, I didn’t. Not really my idea of a good time.”

“Where is he now?”

“No idea. We’re talking about years—”

“He went into the Army.”

“Did he? I didn’t know.” He looked up. “How did you? Oh, Brother Tell All. What else did he say?”

“Nothing. Just the one meeting.”

“Then what’s this all about?”

“A loose end. I just wanted to know.”

“A loose end of what? You want to hound him, too? Sorry to disappoint. I don’t have the faintest. I expect if the Army got him, he’s probably dead. Not much of a fighter.” He paused, checking himself. “You don’t want to get mixed up with Minot. They don’t fight like this,” he said, waving at Ben’s shirt. “You won’t even see it coming. I don’t want Continental involved in any of his—” He stopped again. “Not one person on this lot.”

“I don’t work for him. I’m not Danny.”

He looked at Ben, then backed off. “Better get a shirt from Wardrobe. Before you start scaring people. I’ll see what’s happening outside. I suppose they’re arresting people.” He sighed. “But they won’t
stay
arrested.” He started to move off, then stopped. “How much does she know? About all this. I mean, married to him.”

Ben shook his head.

“You’d want to keep this to yourself, then. Not clutter things up.” He tapped a finger against his temple. “You don’t want anything here now but the part.”

Before Ben could answer, the doctor came through the screen door.

“Is he going to be all right?” Ben said.

The doctor nodded. “Just a little agitated. About being on the lot.”

“While we’re so tickled pink,” Bunny said. “So to speak.”

“I’ll go in,” Ben said.

Stein, his head now bandaged, opened his eyes when Ben approached the bed.

“We’ll get you to a hospital. Just take it easy.”

“This wasn’t supposed to happen. Now they’ll say we started it.”

“Probably.”

Stein grimaced. “So thanks for—”

Ben nodded, cutting him off. “We’ll get you an ambulance.”

“You know, with your brother? That was all right. A lot of people lose interest.”

Ben said nothing, confused for a minute, until he realized Stein meant the union.

“I don’t want you to think—he wasn’t a friend. People lose touch, that’s all.”

After Stein was taken away, Ben stopped by the cutting room to check on Hal, already back splicing film, as if nothing very much had happened. But something had. The lot had a hospital quiet, and, even though the police had now cleared the street, people kept looking toward the gate, an accident after the tow truck had pulled away.

“On Gower,” Hal said. “Lasner—it’s like somebody knocked the wind out of him.”

“Nobody’s had a raise since wage controls. He had to expect—”

“It’s not the money. It’s his studio. He knows everybody’s name.”

R
OSEMARY WAS
in Post-Production, recording, the red light on. Why did he have to know? To salvage one piece of decent behavior? Find one line Danny hadn’t crossed, after crossing all the others?

When she came out on break she was in street clothes, her skin pale, not made up for the camera.

“I heard you got beat up,” she said, noticing the cut on his forehead.

“You should see the other guy.” He smiled. “Cheap line. How’s it going? I thought you wrapped.”

“Dubbing. They want to sneak it and the sound’s still not finished.”

“I need to ask you something. I hope you don’t mind.”

“About Daniel?”

“Yes. Well, about you.”

“Me.”

“Did you ever tell him about Pine Hill? When you were with him, I mean, did you ever mention it?”

She stared at him, clearly thrown. “You have a great way of coming up from behind,” she said finally.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Sure you did.”

“Did you? Talk about it?”

“No.” She took out a cigarette and let him light it for her. “Why, did he?”

“No,” he said, a relief audible only to him.

“How do you know about it, then?”

“I read something. It said you’d been there as a kid. I wondered if he knew.”

“Why? Am I supposed to be ashamed of it? Eight years old? Read something where?”

Ben shrugged.

“Or are we going to? Is that what this is, a shakedown? ‘Rosemary Miller: Red Diaper Baby.’ ” She moved her hand through the air, a headline.

“No.”

She looked at him sharply. “I always knew somebody would someday. You never see it coming, though, do you?”

“It’s not coming now. This is just between us.”

“You think I’m afraid of this? There are pictures. Me and Aaron Silber, who later went on to—who knows? His father was a button supplier, he’s probably running that now. Anyway, we’re on a raft. In the lake. Cute. They ran it in the
Daily Worker
. My parents still have a copy, if that’s what you’re after.”

“I’m not after anything.”

“No, just curious. Want to know what it was like? Nice. We had a lake. Campfires. No running water in the bunks, but that was all right. Everything looks good when you’re eight. Eight.” She looked directly at him. “A child. Who didn’t know it was any different from the other places in the mountains. I felt lucky to go. The classes with the lessons? Only one a day and who listened in class anyway? Not with Aaron
Silber around. Shows, too. I was on the stage. My parents came up for it. They thought it was wonderful. They thought the whole
thing
was wonderful. What the future would be like. One big Pine Hill.” She looked down, her voice lower. “Maybe I would have thought so, too. If I’d had that life. You see these fingers?” She held up her index and middle fingers. “My mother has no feeling in them. Ever operate a sewing machine?” She held her hands in front of her, mimicking pushing material toward a bobbing needle. “Sometimes it slips, you get your fingers caught under the needle. It hurts. Not like a saw or anything. You don’t lose them. But after a while, it happens enough, it kills the nerves, so you lose feeling. My father, with him it’s the cough. From the fabrics, the dust. It gets in your lungs, you never get it out, just keep coughing. So maybe they were right, what they thought. If you have that life.” She looked up at him. “But I don’t. I have this life. But there’s always somebody looking to dump you right back, isn’t there?”

“I’m not—”

“What did they do anyway, that was so wrong? Send me to camp. I’m supposed to apologize for that?”

“No. Stop,” he said, raising his hand a little.

“They’re my parents—”

He raised it higher, a halt. “My father was a Communist, Rosemary.” He looked at her. “So was Danny.”

“What?” Her head tilted, as if it had been literally jarred, hit by something.

“He never said?”

“No,” she said, still off balance.

“I thought he might have talked about it, that’s all. That’s the only reason I asked.” He trailed off, letting them both take a breath. “I’m not trying to—”

“Never. He never said anything like that,” she said, her voice vague, groping. “It’s true? He was?”

“In Germany. Then he changed. That’s what I’m trying to understand. What made him change.”

“But all this time,” she said, moving, her body restless, unsettled.

She dropped the cigarette with a willed half smile. “What my parents always wanted. A boy from—well, but not married.” She shook her head, a physical clearing out. “But how could it be true? He wasn’t like them. He wasn’t even interested.”

“It was a while ago. He was younger.”

“My parents never changed. Every time my father read the paper— But not Daniel. Not even that, what was in the paper. Or maybe he just never talked about it with me. Anything he cared about. Not with the girlfriend.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Oh, you know that, too? What he was thinking. Tell me. I don’t understand any of it. Why would he—?”

“I’ll tell you this. If he never asked you, it means he cared about you.”

“I don’t understand that, either.”

“He was protecting you.”

She looked at him quizzically, then smiled to herself. “Protecting me. It sounds better, anyway. Or maybe you like making him look good. What’s next? Maybe he was in love with me, too.”

“Maybe he was.”

She glanced up, her eyes suddenly moist, but her voice still edged. “Well, that’s something to hold on to.”

R
IORDAN CALLED
late in the afternoon while Ben was drafting the last of the voice-overs.

“You’re going to love this.”

“What?”

“John MacDonald.”

“You found him?”

“Army records. Once you’re in—”

“He’s alive?”

“Wounded. Discharged ’forty-four,” he said, reading from notes. “VA Hospital over by Sepulveda until May. Then you follow the disability
checks. They thought he was dead because they started coming back for a while, then the change of address came through.”

“So where is he?”

Riordan paused, a delivery line. “Care of Continental Pictures.”

“What?”

“But that’s not the part you’re going to love.”

Ben waited.

“Previous address?” Riordan said, teasing him with it. “Cherokee Arms.”

Ben sat for a minute afterward, his mind racing, then reached for the studio directory. No MacDonald. But had he really expected to find him there?

The mailroom was in the basement of the Admin building, filled with sorting boxes and the deep canvas bins for fan mail, hundreds of envelopes waiting to hear back from Dick Marshall, with his own signature on the photograph. One of the mail boys pushed an empty cart through the door.

“Help you?”

“I’m trying to find somebody. He’s not in the directory, but he gets mail here. So where does it go? You have a list or something like that? MacDonald.”

“Sure. Give me a sec.”

He went over to a clipboard hanging beneath the rows of pigeonholes and started flipping pages. An eternity of minutes, everything in slow motion. Or maybe it was just that Ben already knew what he would say.

“That goes to Mr. Jenkins’s office.”

Joel had only been working at the Cherokee since winter and had never heard of MacDonald, but the name was there on the rent rolls. A few months and then gone, no forwarding address. Danny hadn’t taken 5C until later, so there was nothing to connect them but coincidence. And Danny’s source entry in Minot’s file, familiar. And now Bunny collecting his checks.

But what did he do with them? Bunny got to the studio a little after
the first makeup call and usually stayed late to watch the dailies. He took scripts home to an apartment on Ivar, handy to the studio, and seemed to have no personal life at all. According to his calendar, he spent Sundays making the rounds of tennis parties and open houses, and since he organized most of the Lasner dinners, there were frequent entries for Summit Drive, but otherwise the schedule was a long list of business appointments and business in disguise: a premiere, a night at Perino’s with an agent, a producer’s birthday. He was invited to Cukor’s for dinner about once a month and appeared to have standing dates with Marion Davies and Billy Haines, presumably old friends. He never saw Jack MacDonald.

Ben had actually followed him home a few nights, stopping short of his building, but Bunny had stayed in, the reading lamp burning in the corner window. A working Hollywood life, none of the samba bands and white furs that twinkled in Polly’s column every morning.

At the studio, Ben began staying closer to him, spending more time at Admin. Stein had pulled his pickets, which Bunny assumed was a favor to Ben, and a quiet Gower Street was worth an uneasy truce. He even included Ben in the sneak-preview car, usually restricted to the line producer.

“Always Glendale,” Lasner said.

“It’s anywhere.”

“This hour, it’s going to be kids.”

“We want kids,” Bunny said.

“With all the wiseass response cards. Go on the Boulevard, later, you get the swing shift, it’s a better crowd.”