“That’s from The Music Man,” she said, but she didn’t smile. “I can’t go any farther by myself. I need somebody to teach me the heel-and-toe work Eleanor Powell does. And I need a partner.”
Just for a moment, no, not even a moment, the flicker of a frame, I thought about what might have been if I hadn’t spent those long splatted semesters dismantling highballs, if I had spent them out in Burbank instead, practicing kick-turns.
“After what you said the other night, I thought I might be able to use a positioning armature and a data harness for the lifts, and I tried it. It worked, I guess. I mean, it—”
Her voice cut off awkwardly like she’d intended to say something more, and I wondered what it was, and what it was I’d said to her. That Fred might be coming out of litigation?
“But the balance isn’t the same as a real person,” she said. “And I need experience learning routines, not just copying them off the screen.”
So she was going someplace where they were still doing liveactions. “Where?” I said. “Buenos Aires?”
“No,” she said. “China.”
China.
“They’re doing ten liveactions a year,” she said.
And twenty purges. Not to mention provincial uprisings. And antiforeigner riots.
“Their liveactions aren’t very good. They’re terrible, actually. Most of them are propaganda films and martial-arts things, but a couple of them last year were musicals.” She smiled ruefully. “They like Gene Kelly.”
Gene Kelly. But it would be real routines. And a man’s arm around her waist instead of a data harness, a man’s hands lifting her. The real thing.
“I leave tomorrow morning,” she said. “I was packing, and I found the disk and thought maybe you wanted it back.”
“No,” I said, and then, so I wouldn’t have to tell her good-bye, “Where are you flying out of?”
“San Francisco,” she said. “I’m taking the skids up tonight. And I’m still not packed.” She looked at me, waiting for me to say my line.
And I had plenty to choose from. If there’s anything the movies are good at, it’s good-byes. From “Be careful, darling!” to “Don’t let’s ask for the moon when we have the stars,” to “Come back, Shane!” Even, “Hasta la vista, baby.”
But I didn’t say them. I stood there and looked at her, with her beautiful, backlit hair and her unforgettable face. At what I wanted and couldn’t have, not even for a few minutes.
And what if I said “Stay"? What if I promised to find her a teacher, get her a part, put on a show? Right. With a Cray that had maybe ten minutes of memory, a Cray I wouldn’t have as soon as Mayer found out what I’d been doing?
Behind me on the screen, Bogart was saying, “There’s no place for you here,” and looking at Ingrid, trying to make the moment last forever. In the background, the plane’s propellers were starting to turn, and in a minute the Nazis would show up.
They stood there, looking at each other, and tears welled up in Ingrid’s eyes, and Vincent could mess with his tears program forever and never get it right. Or maybe he would. They had made Casablanca out of dry ice and cardboard. And it was the real thing. “I have to go,” Alis said.
“I know,” I said, and smiled at her. “We’ll always have Paris.” And according to the script, she was supposed to give me one last longing look and get on the plane with Paul Henreid, and why is it I still haven’t learned that Heada is always right?
“Good-bye,” Alis said, and then she was in my arms, and I was kissing her, kissing her, and she was unbuttoning the lab coat, taking down her hair, unbuttoning the pink gingham dress, and some part of me was thinking, “This is important,” but she had the dress off, and the pantaloons, and I had her on the bed, and she didn’t fade, she didn’t morph into Heada, I was on her and in her, and we were moving together, easily, effortlessly, our outstretched hands almost but not quite touching on the tangled sheets.
I kept my gaze on her hands, flexing and stretching in passion, knowing if I looked at her face it would be freeze-framed on my brain forever, klieg or no klieg, afraid if I did she might be looking at me kindly, or, worse, not be looking at me at all. Looking through me, past me, at two dancers on a starry floor.
“Tom!” she said, coming, and I looked down at her. Her hair was spread out on the pillow, backlit and beautiful, and her face was intent, the way it had been that night at the party, watching Fred and Ginge on the freescreen, rapt and beautiful and sad. And focused, finally, on me.
MOVIE CLICHE #1: The Happy Ending. Self-explanatory.
SEE: An Officer and a Gentleman, An Affair to Remember, Sleepless in Seattle, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, Shall We Dance, Great Expectations.
It’s been three years, during which time China has gone through four provincial uprisings and six student riots, and Mayer has gone through three takeovers and eight bosses, the next to last of whom moved him up to Executive Vice-President.
Mayer didn’t tumble to my putting the AS’s back in for nearly three months, by which time I’d finished the whole Thin Man series, The Maltese Falcon, and all the Westerns, and Arthurton was on his way out.
Heada, still costarring as Joan Blondell, talked Mayer out of killing me and into making a stirring speech about Censorship and Deep Love for the Movies and getting himself spectacularly fired just in time for the new boss to hire him back as “the only moral person in this whole pop-pated town.”
Heada got promoted to set director and then (that next-to-last boss) to Assistant Producer in Charge of New Projects, and promptly hired me to direct a remake. Happy endings all around.
In the meantime, I programmed happy endings for Happily Ever After and graduated and looked for Alis. I found her in Pennies from Heaven, and in Into the Woods, the last musical ever made, and in Small Town Girl. I thought I’d found them all. Until tonight.
I watched the scene in the Indy again, looking at the silver tap shoes and the platinum wig and thinking about musicals. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom isn’t one. “Anything Goes” is the only number in it, and it’s only there because one of the scenes takes place in a nightclub, and they’re the floor show.
And maybe that’s the way to go. The remake I’m working on isn’t a musical either — it’s a weeper about a couple of star-crossed lovers — but I could change the hotel dining room scene into a nightclub. And then, the boss after next, do a remake with a nightclub setting, and put Fred (who’s bound to be out of litigation by then) in it, just in one featured number. That was all he was in Flying Down to Rio, a featured number, thirtyish, slightly balding, who could dance a little. And look what happened.
And before you know it, Mayer will be telling everybody the musical’s coming back, and I’ll get assigned the remake of 42nd Street and find out where Alis is and book the skids and we’ll put on a show. Anything’s possible.
Even time travel.
I accessed Vincent the other day to borrow his edit program, and he told me time travel’s a bust. “We were this close,” he said, his thumb and forefinger almost touching. “Theoretically, the Casimir effect should work for time as well as space, but they’ve sent image after image into a negative-matter region, and nothing. No overlap at all. I guess maybe there are some things that just aren’t possible.”
He’s wrong. The night Alis left, she said, “After what you said the other night, I thought maybe I could use a data harness for the lifts,” and I had wondered what it was I’d said, and when I showed her the opdisk, she’d said, “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers? Are you sure?”