Stardust Read online

  “I’m just saying—”

  “Besides, she’s a friend. Who hires friends?”

  “Everybody.”

  “I don’t mean relatives. She and Fay started out together, for chrissake.”

  “Another round?” Katz said, letting it drop. A porter had started the first dinner chimes. “One for the road,” he said, beating the rush to the bar.

  “Your wife was an actress?” Ben said, curious.

  “Actress. They were Goldwyn Girls. On the Cantor picture. The Kid From Spain, whatever it was called. That’s how we met. The wrap party. I’m meeting with Sam, and he says, ‘I’ve got to go put in an appearance.’ So we met. Thirteen years now. Thanks,” he said, taking a new drink from Katz. “But Paulette, that was something different. She wanted it—pictures. After Goldwyn she was with Hal Roach. Then Chaplin found her. Or maybe she found him. Anyway, Charlie’s a great teacher. And she learned. But fresh—that you can’t teach. You look at Modern Times, that’s just the way she was.”

  “Before the bracelets.”

  Lasner glanced up. “There’s nothing wrong with bracelets. Depends how you get them.” He made a face, as if he were stifling a belch. The porter came through again with the chimes.

  “I don’t know about you, but this drink is going right through me,” Katz said. “I gotta take a leak. Sol, I’ll see you in the dining car.” He took Ben’s hand. “Nice talking to you.”

  Ben watched him head for the restroom, then heard a gasp and turned. Lasner was looking at the floor, bent over. “You okay?”

  Another gasp. Ben took Lasner’s arm. Not just the drink. He felt a clenched spasm. Lasner reached behind with his other hand, grabbing onto the window curtains for support. Geometric flowers. Around them the cocktail buzz went on, not noticing. Lasner looked up, his face contorted, white, sweat forming on his forehead.

  “Help me,” he whispered. “Don’t let him see.”

  Ben grabbed Lasner’s elbow, propping him up and hiding him from the rest of the car. “Do you need a bathroom?”

  Lasner shook his head. “Heart. Get me out of here.” His mouth tight, a grimace.

  “Don’t move. I’ll get a chair.”

  But Lasner was already stepping forward, leaning on Ben. “Next car,” he said hoarsely. “Before he sees.”

  They started toward the other end, away from the crowd moving into the dining car, away from the restrooms, each step heavy as lead, his whole weight falling on Ben. Only the bartender seemed aware of them, a blank expression taking in another one-too-many. At the end of the car, another gasp and shudder as Ben fumbled with the door handle.

  “I’ll get a doctor.”

  Lasner sank into a porter’s jump seat, his face tight with strain. “No, make some excuse,” he said, short of breath, waving toward the dining car. “Make some excuse. With Katz. Before he comes looking. Then come back.”

  Ben opened the top of the window, a rush of air.

  “Lean back,” he said. He started to undo Lasner’s tie. But did it matter? It occurred to Ben for the first time, a moment of panic, that Lasner might really be in trouble. The chimes went again. In the next car over, people were sitting down to dinner.

  “I have pills,” Lasner said, as if that answered anything. “Come back. After.” He looked over at Ben, eyes large. “Please.”

  The word, so completely unexpected, had the force of an order. Ben nodded.

  “Just try to breathe normally. Don’t force it, okay?” Which came from where? An old first aid manual? How to tie a tourniquet.

  He waited until Lasner had taken a breath—steady, not a rattle— then hurried back into the club car. And what excuse could he make? An agent expecting dinner. Ben looked into the dining car. Not there yet. No one he recognized, in fact. The Major must be hosting the bond drive table in the other dining car. Maybe a private party. Behind him, he heard the bathroom door close with a whoosh.

  “There you are. Sol asked me to wait. Look, he’s sorry but he has to beg off dinner. Miss Goddard came back for him. You know Sol, he can’t say no to her.” This all in a rush, as if he were short of breath. “He said he’ll make it up to you. It’s just—”

  “What? Just now?”

  Ben shrugged. “I think she didn’t want to be alone with the Major. Sol couldn’t say no.”

  “No,” Katz said, evidently used to excuses.

  “He said he’d make it up to you.”

  He left Katz standing in the dining car, wondering how, and raced back through the club car, pushing past the crowd at the bar. Lasner hadn’t moved, leaning against the window, holding on to the rail underneath, still white.

  “All right, now let’s get you a doctor.”

  “Next one,” Lasner said, pointing down the corridor toward a drawing room car, presumably his own. He leaned again on Ben. “No porters. They tip them.”

  “Who?” Ben said as they started to move. Was Lasner becoming confused? Did that happen?

  “Polly. All of them. They tip the porters.”

  Meaning Paulette? Ben glanced at him, then let it go. “The pills are in your room?”

  Lasner nodded, clutching the handrail as they moved down the car. “What did you tell him?”

  “That Miss Goddard sent for you.”

  “He buy it?”

  “I think so. You shouldn’t even be moving.”

  “So they can lay me out in the club car? We’re almost there.”

  It was a two-chair drawing room, top of the line, the settee already extended and made up, crisp white sheets folded over at the head. Ben lay him down, taking off his tie, his shoes, then suddenly went shy, not ready to draw the pants off the bird-like legs.

  “Dopp kit,” Lasner said, pointing to the bathroom.

  Ben rummaged through the leather case and pulled out a brown pill bottle. Hillcrest Pharmacy. As needed. He splashed some water in a glass.

  “These?”

  Lasner took two, then lay back, half closing his eyes, as if he expected instant results. Ben stood for a minute, helpless, then put the water down next to Lasner and went to the door.

  “I’ll find a doctor.”

  “I don’t need—”

  “I’ll be right back,” Ben said, ignoring him.

  “No porters,” Lasner said, raising his voice so Ben could hear it after he closed the door.

  But, in fact, how could he find a doctor without one? Another story, a sick wife, the porter too polite to contradict.

  By the time he got the doctor back to the compartment the pills seemed to have had some effect. Lasner’s breathing was deeper, pushing some color back into his face. The doctor glanced with a quick nod at the pill bottle and took out a stethoscope at the same time. “There still some pain?” He reached into the shirt, placing the metal disc on Lasner’s chest.

  “Not as much.”

  “This happen before? Must have, if you have these.” He nodded again at the pills. “And you kept walking around? Don’t you know better than that?”

  “I’m here.”

  “You’re lucky.” He leaned over, listening more carefully.

  “With doctors,” Lasner said. “It’s like lawyers? It’s all private?”

  “You should be in a hospital. To be on the safe side. I can ask them to stop the train,” he said, glancing out at the open prairie, “or wait until we get to Kansas City. We can wire ahead, have things ready.”

  Lasner shook his head. “Carry me out? In front of the Morris office? No.”

  “What’s he talking about?” the doctor said to Ben.

  “Nothing,” Ben said, not bothering. “Is he really in danger?”

  “He could be.”

  “Listen to me,” Lasner said, his voice steady. “I know what this is. It gets better, or it doesn’t. You ride it out. What are they going to do in a hospital? Put me in bed. I’m in bed.”

  “Well, I can’t take the responsibility then,” the doctor said, sounding so exactly like George Brent that for an
instant, thrown, Ben almost laughed.

  “Kohler will keep an eye on me,” Lasner said.

  The doctor sighed. “Anyway, you’re not in bed. Here, give me a hand, will you?”

  “What do I do?” Ben said to the doctor as they undressed the head of Continental Pictures. The stork legs, just as imagined. Boxer shorts. The suit hung up neatly. Wispy gray hair laid back against the propped pillows.

  “Nothing. He’s right about that. You ride it out. Just keep him quiet. I’ll check in again in the morning.” He wagged his finger at Lasner. “Stay in bed. Or they will carry you out in Kansas City.” He turned back to Ben. “I’ll leave these,” he said, handing him a small envelope with pills. “In case he can’t sleep. If it gets bad again, you know where to find me.” He picked up a cigar from the standing ashtray. “Wonderful,” he said to Lasner, “just what you need.” Another Brent line, shaking his head as he left.

  “Fascist,” Lasner said when the door closed. “They’re all fascists.”

  Ben looked at him for a second, then dropped into one of the chairs, drained, holding on to the armrests to calm his hands.

  “What’s the matter, I give you a scare?” Lasner said, a faint smile now on his face.

  “It’s not funny. You should do what he says. Get off in Kansas City.”

  “He’s just covering his ass. If I’m going to peg out, I’ll do it at Cedars. Here’s what we do. Kansas City, that’s two twenty-two.” Ben looked over at him, impressed again. On schedule. “We get five minutes there, not enough to call and get through. Anyway, that hour she’s asleep. So send an overnight. Are you getting this? There’s some paper over there. Tell Fay to meet the train in Pasadena. Not downtown. Pasadena’s eight thirty-five. She always forgets. And tell her to bring Rosen. Then another wire to Jenkins at the studio, tell him not to meet the train. Tell him Fay’s meeting me. Otherwise, he’ll start calling people.”

  “Anything else?” Ben said, playing secretary. “You’re not supposed to be talking, you know.”

  “I’m not supposed to be breathing, either,” he said, but his voice was softer, winding down. “Don’t forget the wires, okay? The address is in my wallet.”

  “I’d better go. Let you get some rest.”

  “No, sit. Sit. Stick around,” Lasner said, trying to sound casual.

  Ben turned off the overhead, leaving just a small side lamp and the faint light from the sky outside. The land below was already dark, anonymous.

  “At least till Kansas City. Make sure they don’t take me off. Okay?” he said, asking something else.

  “Okay,” Ben said, taking a chair and turning it so that he was facing both Lasner and the window. A clean horizon line, flat, the dark beginning to take over the sky, too. He lit a cigarette, watching the red tip glow in the window reflection.

  “You want something to eat? We can have something brought.”

  “No, I’m fine. Go to sleep.”

  “Who could sleep now. You just wonder if you’ll wake up.” But he half closed his eyes.

  Ben said nothing, listening to the wheels.

  “Talk to me,” Lasner said after a while, still there.

  “What did you mean about the porters? Who tips them?”

  “The columns. Hedda. Polly Marks. All of them.” Polly, not Paulette.

  “What for?”

  “Items. Who’s in whose compartment. Who got tossed out of the bar. Who’s on the train. You know, N.Y. to L.A. Everybody meets the Chief.”

  “Like the boats in New York,” Ben said, looking at the land outside, now as black as the night sea. Soon they would cross the Mississippi, something out of books. “And you don’t want them to know. What does it matter? I mean, what if Katz sees you? Any of them?”

  Lasner said nothing for a minute, then grunted. “You’re not in pictures. You don’t know the first thing about it. Not the first goddam thing.”

  Ben sat back in the chair, waiting for more, but Lasner was quiet, drifting. When he spoke again even his voice had changed, pitched to a different role.

  “You know how I got started?”

  “How?” Ben said, the expected response.

  “Fourteenth Street. On the east side, near Third.”

  Ben looked over, surprised to start with an address. But Lasner was smiling to himself, his voice stronger, buoyed up by memory, as if the past, already known, could steady his irregular heart.

  “By Luchow’s, where the cheap beer gardens were. Next to one of them there’s a dry goods store. Like a shoe box, you know, just a long counter, some drawers for notions. Lousy space for retail, long, but at night they clear the counter and put a projector in. There’s a sheet at the end of the room. For this the space is perfect. So, a nickel. On benches. The first time, I’ll never forget it. I didn’t even have English yet. Just off the boat, and I’m sitting there laughing like everybody else. An American. This thing—I thought, here is something so wonderful, everybody will want it. A nickel. You couldn’t move in the place. I wonder sometimes what if I hadn’t gone in, on Fourteenth Street. But you know what? I would have gone in somewhere else.”

  “And after that you wanted to make pictures?”

  “Make? No. Show. You rent the stores at night—who was using them at night?—and you rent some chairs, you got a film from the exchange, and you were in business. Get a little ahead, you take over the store in the day, too. People came. Of course I’m not the only one seeing this. Then it’s theaters and it’s serious money. Banks. Fox, that prick, is squeezing right and left. Zukor. How do you compete with this? You don’t. I thought, I don’t want to be in the real estate business. They can gobble up everybody and then what? They still need something to show. So I sold the theaters and came out here to make pictures.”

  Already “out here,” Ben noticed, still two thousand miles away.

  “The right place,” Ben said.

  “Well, not then. That all came later. There was nothing here then. Oranges. Goyim with asthma. Nothing. But every kind of country, sun every day. It was all outside then. You put up walls and hung cheesecloth over it. To cut the glare. Right out in the open. We used a ranch out in the Valley for Westerns. For years, the same ranch.”

  “That’s how you started? With Westerns?”

  “Everybody started with Westerns. What’s to know? A man rides into town. That’s it. Just go from there.”

  Ben smiled. “But what happens?”

  “What happens. Guns. Chase. Gets the girl. It’s a picture.”

  He stopped, distracted for a moment, then picked up the thread again, enjoying himself, and Ben sat back, letting the words circle around him. The Lasner style, growls and purrs and easy intimacy under the sharp eye.

  “The first place we had was on Gower. In the gulch, right across from where Cohn was. With all the fly-by-nights. They go out of business, we’d pick them up. Just kept moving down the street. Those days, it was hand-to-mouth. Sometimes not even.” He looked up at the ceiling, absentmindedly smoothing the blanket. “You know what you miss? That age? You never think about being sick. Dead, maybe, the idea of it, but not sick. Your body’s just something you carry around with you. Then one day you’re lying here with a bomb in your chest, waiting for it to go off. Just when things are going—since the war, everything’s doing business. Then something you never figured. I’m on two kinds of pills. And you know what Rosen says? Slow down. In pictures. You show weakness for five minutes and—”

  He let the words hang in the room. Ben got up and went over to the wash basin.

  “Well, it wouldn’t be a weakness to get some rest. Here, take this.” He handed him a pill from the small envelope.

  Lasner held it in front of his mouth, a bargaining chip. “But you’ll stick around.”

  Ben nodded, watching him lift the water glass. “Don’t worry. I’ll stay till you’re asleep.”

  “And after that?” Childlike, pressing.

  Ben took the glass away. “After that you’ll be asleep. If a
nything happens, ring for the porter. I don’t care who’s tipping him. You don’t want to take any more chances with that.” He pointed to Lasner’s chest.

  Lasner grunted. “People try to see me all day long and here you are, and all you can say is go to sleep.”

  “Mr. Lasner—”

  “Sol. For chrissake, you took my pants off.”

  Ben sat down. There was nothing to do but wait for the pill to kick in.

  “All day long,” Lasner said. “No wonder I get episodes. You think it’s a picnic, running a studio?”

  “Maybe you should think about retiring.”

  “Hah. Then who would call me?” Said so simply that for a second Ben thought he was joking.

  “But if you’re sick—”

  “What do you think, it’s something you can just walk away? I built the studio. All of it.” He sat back against his pillow. “Nobody sees the work. They think it just happens. But it’s work. Look at Paulette.” He raised a finger. “You’re wrong about her. I saw it in your face. You thought she was a Peggy Joyce.”

  “Who?”

  “Gold digger. She had a career for about two minutes. You never heard of Peggy Joyce? She was in a song for chrissake.”

  Ben shrugged his shoulders. “Before my time.”

  “I forget you’re a kid. She married—well, who remembers? Her they remembered. Or did,” he said with an exasperated look at Ben. “Paulette never married for that. You know how old she was, she started to work? Fourteen. She’s fourteen and making a living.”

  “On the stage?”

  Lasner nodded. “Chorus. Then Ziegfeld. Next thing, she’s out here. Pretty. But that wasn’t it. Pretty you can get anywhere. She was raring to go. Fun. That’s what Charlie spotted in her. Not just pretty. You know where they met? Joe Schenck’s boat. So, another girl for Charlie. But no. He works with her. And the way he works, every little thing perfect. And she does it. Even now, you see the picture, she’s terrific. Casual, like she’s not working. But she’s working since she was fourteen. And now she’s a star.” He lowered his voice, suddenly pragmatic. “But not to carry a picture. Not yet. And they want to put her in a hoop skirt— where’s the sense in that? The way she wears clothes? What do you see in a period picture? Shoulders.”