Stardust (7 page)

“What was
Central Station
? I never—”

“
Anhalter
before. They changed it. So it wouldn’t sound German. You know it?”

“
Anhalter Bahnhof
. Of course.”

“Tell him. He’ll be pleased.”

She made a right on Vermont, pointing them now toward the hills.

“Do we pass Continental on the way?” Ben said.

“We can, if you like.”

“But if it’s out of our way—”

“It doesn’t matter. He’s not conscious, you know. We just sit there. Maybe it’s better for him. There’s so much damage, the brain—if he were awake, what would that be like for him? Sometimes I think it would be better if—and then I think, how can you think that?” She bit her lower lip. “But he did. I don’t know why. But that’s what he wanted. Not this.”

He looked away, across the miles of bungalows.

“Did he leave a note?” he said finally.

“No.”

The crucial prop, the writing of it sometimes a scene in itself, looking up from the paper into a mirror, eyes moist. In the movies. In real life you just did it.

“Just his ‘effects.’ I had to sign. You know that word? I didn’t know it. Effects.” She looked at him. “They would have said. If they’d found anything.” She turned on Melrose. “That’s Paramount down there, where the water tower is.”

After a few blocks he could see the roofs of the sound stages, humped like airplane hangars. She slowed near a gate of swirling wrought iron so that he could get a glimpse behind—a tidy factory yard with people in shirt sleeves gliding past, the tall water tower rising above everything, just like its mountaintop logo, ringed with stars. In front of the gate, a thin line of pickets walked back and forth carrying signs.

“There’s a strike?” Ben said. A prewar image.

“Daniel said it was jurisdictional,” she said, careful with the word. “One union against the other.” She looked away, no longer interested. “He always wanted to work here. More than any of them. Maybe if— well. That’s RKO, at the end.”

They turned onto Gower under the model of a radio tower on a globe.

“Continental’s up there,” she said, pointing. “Across from Columbia.”

This gate was modern, no more than a break in the walls with streamlined trim. Beyond it, unseen, Lasner’s empire, built from nickels, a private world made invisible by sentries and passes. Outside, the street was empty—no pickets, just a small cluster of people near the gate.

“Who’s that?” Ben said.

“They wait here, to see who drives through.”

“For autographs?”

“No, just to see them. For a minute.”

Hans Ostermann was waiting for them in Danny’s room, reading in the corner next to the window. The shades were half-drawn so that even the light seemed hushed, a hospital quiet broken only by the nurses outside and the clank of a meal cart being wheeled down the hall.
Ostermann stood when they came in, taking Ben’s hand. He was wearing a suit and tie, as natural to him as his perfect posture and formal nod. Ben wondered, a darting moment, if he wrote dressed this way, erect at his desk in a white collar, keeping German alive.

Ben approached the bed, his stomach tightening with shock. Not just sick. Danny’s face was beaten in, bruised, one eye swollen shut, jagged laceration marks crossing the rest. What happens when you hit. Ben stared at him for a minute, trying to see something familiar, but all he could see was the fall itself, the smash at the end. Why this way? Danny primping at the mirror for a date, deliberately doing this to himself. Why not sleeping pills, an easier Hollywood exit? Why would he want to look this way?

Ben stepped closer, taking in the IV drip, the monitor, all the hospital tools to keep him alive, bring him back. But you only had to look at the broken face to see the truth. The teases, the grins, were gone. They were just waiting for the rest of him to go. Ben took his hand, half expecting some response, but nothing moved.

“Danny,” he said, keeping his voice low, waking someone who’s just dozed off. He turned to the others. “Can he hear anything?”

“No,” Liesl said.

“We don’t know that,” Ostermann said. “There’s no way of knowing. Talk if you like.”

“Nonsense,” Liesl said, moving over to a vase of flowers.

“No, the doctor said, head injuries—we don’t know. What really happens.” He looked over at Ben, his voice reassuring. “The first two days were the critical ones. So perhaps—”

“But he’s no better,” Liesl said, bluntly pragmatic, facing it. “Why do people send flowers when he can’t see them.”

The room, Ben noticed now, was full of them, covering side tables and window sills.

“It’s a sign of concern,” Ostermann said. “A gesture.”

“For you,” Liesl said. “They send them for you.”

“You’re tired,” Ostermann said, as close, Ben saw, as he would come to a reprimand.

Liesl was reading one of the cards attached to a vase. “From Alma,” she said. “So she’s forgiven you.”

“For now,” Ostermann said, a weak smile.

Ben looked at the bruised face. When you’re unconscious, where does the mind go? Functioning somewhere beyond pain, or simply floating in white? Now that he was here, what was there to do? The usual business of a hospital visit seemed beside the point—fetching nurses, chatting idly to keep up spirits, plumping pillows.

Instead they waited, Ostermann returning to his book, Ben sitting at the bedside gazing at Danny’s damaged face, Liesl pacing, making lists of the flower cards for thank-you notes, glancing over at the bed as if she were still deciding how to feel, wearing herself out with it.

By lunch, in the cafeteria, she was visibly exhausted.

“Go home and rest,” Ostermann said. “You were here all night.”

“How can I leave? What if I’m not here if— What would people say?”

“That the family was here. Get Ben settled in. I’ll stay.”

“How can I sleep?” she said, putting things on her tray, standing up.

Ostermann looked at her fondly. “Then have a swim.” He turned to Ben as she left the table. “It’s no good, being here day and night. Look at her, all nerves. Take her home. He’ll be here later, you know.”

“What if he isn’t?”

“I know how you feel. When Anna was dying, in Paris, I never left. Nuns. I didn’t want to leave her with nuns. Leave her alone. But it was for me, not her. When she died, I was there and it didn’t matter. She was alone. I didn’t know it until then. We die alone.” He looked up. “I’ll call if there’s a change.”

T
HEY DROVE
up into the hills, the narrow road twisting upward in a series of blind curves past tall bushes and steep, hidden driveways. With each turn the houses seemed to get bigger, villas and a few white boxes that once must have been daring and modernist, softened now by middle-aged gardens. The trees were bigger, too, mature oaks and tall
needle pines, as if the cooler air above the flats made it easier for them to grow. The new cars parked along the side of the road were buffed and shiny, like children after a bath.

“Here we are.”

The house, just visible through the driveway shrubs, was Mediterranean, fronted with a row of French windows. They pulled up next to a Dodge coupe.

“Oh, good, Iris is here. I asked her to come in an extra day.” A maid with a car. In Germany, bicycles were traded for food.

The house inside was light and open, filled with books and contemporary furniture, a piano covered with framed photographs in the corner. Iris, a wiry, pale woman in a dress, not a uniform, was in the dining room polishing silver.

“I put the messages by the phone. You better call the caterer again. I told him no ham but he wants to talk to you.”

Ben looked at Liesl, surprised.

“I thought I’d better start arranging things,” she said, flushing, “just in case. So we won’t have to at the last minute. Iris, this is Mr. Kohler’s brother, Benjamin.”

“Reuben. Anyway, Ben,” he said, distracted, noticing her feet in pink bedroom slippers.

Iris nodded. “I’m sorry about Mr. Kohler,” she said, formal but genuine, then cocked her head to one side, appraising him. “You don’t look alike.”

“No, he took after my father.”

Liesl started toward the hall. “You’re down this way. You’ll have your own bath, so it’s private.”

Through an open door on their left he could see a big desk and more shelves. Danny’s real workroom, not rented by the month. A club chair in the corner and, next to it, a day bed made up as a couch.

“I’m here. Daniel’s dressing room opens from the hall, too, so you won’t be bothering me. If you use it. That door.” She pointed, still moving.

“You better call the caterer,” Iris shouted from the dining room.

“All right. I don’t see what’s so difficult. I said poached salmon.”

“Well, he heard ham.”

She opened a door at the end of the hall. “You’re in here. I’d better phone or she’ll nag me about it. If you’d like a swim, just use those stairs—the pool’s out back. I won’t be long.”

A swim. Something he hadn’t had in four years. He gestured toward his bag. “I didn’t bring—” Who had bathing suits?

“Use one of Daniel’s. He’s got a drawer full of them. Just root around and pick what you like.”

He threw his bag on the bed and went over to the window. The pool was below, blue and rippling, catching the light in quick flashes. It had been set off from the rest of the hill by a private wall of trees, with the far end left open, so that the land seemed suspended in air before falling away to the distant grid of streets. Around the edge were large pots of geraniums, a few lemon trees, and a row of trimmed oleanders, high enough to flower but not block the view. Ben stared at the pool, unsettled, as if a wrong note of music had been hit, jarring the whole piece. He’d thought of Danny as somehow desperate, not lying on a chaise in the sun, picking fruit off trees. How did they fit? An acre of paradise and a room at the Cherokee Arms.

He went to the dressing room, curious. More money. Rows of sport jackets on hangers, shoes laid out. A drawer full of bathing suits: tropical flowers, chevron stripes, finally a pair of navy blue trunks that could be anybody’s. He looked through the other drawers quietly, feeling like a burglar. Socks rolled up, a stack of handkerchiefs, pressed and folded. But Danny’s drawer at home had been neat, too. Under the handkerchiefs there were old passports, kept for some reason, filled with the stamps of their childhood, crossing into Germany, crossing out of Germany, Dover and Calais, Berlin-Tempelhof, the last with an eagle on a swastika, just before the pages ran out. He looked at the photo. In his next passport he’d be grown up, but here he was still young, the hair brushed to one side.

Where would the other pictures be? His study, probably. He crossed the hall, carrying the trunks, and surprised Iris, who was putting papers away in drawers.

“I’m just cleaning up in here. You get people in and out, you know they’re going to come snooping. They go looking for the bathroom and next thing they’re at the desk, just happening to read what’s on it. I’ve seen it. Something I can help you with?”

“No, I’m just snooping myself,” Ben said. “Trying to find some pictures. You know, we haven’t seen each other in a while.”

She went over to the shelves where a few small frames rested against the books.

“This is pretty recent,” she said, handing him one.

Ben looked down. A group on the beach, Danny with his lopsided grin, making a face at the camera. The whole row smiling, enjoying the day. Liesl wore a two-piece suit with polka dots, like Chili Williams, her hair blowing behind her.

“You planning to stay long?”

Ben raised his head.

“I only ask because of the food. So I can plan.”

“I don’t want to make things worse for her,” Ben said, a question.

Iris shook her head. “Far as that’s concerned, she could use the company. You know what it’s like in an empty house. She’s already taking it hard. It’s the suddenness of it. And the way—” She stopped and went back to the desk. “Don’t mind me.”

Ben put the picture back, then glanced down at the day bed. “He spend a lot of time in here?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“I just meant—”

“I know what you meant. I suppose you’ve been hearing things? People like to talk. When it’s none of their business. I’ll tell you, I never saw it. But people have different ways. You take Mr. Baker—that’s my ex. That man was a hound. I threw him out. I said, ‘I know you can’t help it, you got to chase anything runs in front of you, but I don’t want
any part of it.’ Now Mr. Kohler, I never saw that. Two years I’ve been working here. Since they got the house. So you live and learn.” She closed the drawer and looked up at him. “He seemed the same to me. Like always. Well.” She moved to the door. “You want to help, people have to eat. She hasn’t touched a thing in days. Melon. What’s melon? Water is all. Get her to eat something.”

When she’d gone, Ben looked at the other pictures, more wrong notes, as jarring as the pool. Danny and Liesl on a picnic blanket. With another couple around a nightclub table covered with glasses. Hans Ostermann, unintentionally comic in his somber European suit, surrounded by Danny and a few other young men in tennis whites. A croquet game. A pool party. Danny smiling in all of them. A happy life. But everybody smiled for the camera.

He went over to the desk, intending to start on the drawers, but Liesl came in, carrying flowers. “Oh good, you found one,” she said, nodding to the bathing suit. “I’ll be right down. As soon as I deal with these. I have to put them where she’ll see them. She’ll ask otherwise. Now what?” she said, as the phone rang. “Why does everybody want to talk?” But she picked it up anyway, not waiting for Iris, and immediately switched into German. She had the rich, fluid German he remembered from before the war, before all the coarse shouting, and her voice sounded relaxed, at home in it.

“Salka wants to drop off a cake,” she said wryly, hanging up. “But she wants to know if Alma’s here. They’re not speaking to each other.”

“Alma who sent the flowers to Danny?”

Liesl nodded. “Mahler. Well, Werfel now, but if you leave out the Mahler she puts it back in.”