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.”
They 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.”