“No fun with the boss around?”
Bunny shook his head. “Ever work on a picture?” he said, smiling a little, his voice distant. “For six weeks, eight weeks, whatever the shoot is-the minute this door closes everything else goes away. Everything. There’s just the crew, what you’re doing that day, getting the take right. That’s all. Like family. Closer. Then it’s over.” He nodded to the set where Rosemary was being lifted onto the bar next to the piano. “And you pretend you’re relieved, but-now what? You don’t want outsiders, not at the end. Well,” he said, catching himself, “listen to me.”
“You must miss it.”
“Well, of course you miss it. It’s the whole point. All the rest of it-” He waved his hand. “Remember Castaway? My first picture. A hundred years ago. We opened at the Pantages. My first time. I’d never seen anything like it before-the flashbulbs, people yelling your name. I was on the radio. And I thought, well, this is all right, this is it. But it wasn’t. This was it,” he said, looking at the set. “You can get things right. Perfect, sometimes. A perfect take. You can never get things right out here.” He looked down at his watch. “Still, here we are. And I’m late, I’m late,” he said, doing the White Rabbit.
“No rushes tonight?”
“Not tonight,” he said, closing down, moving back into the life Ben knew nothing about, as secret as Danny’s. Ben looked over at him. The one Riordan had called.
“You’re all wet, by the way,” Bunny said, starting to move. “Better get dried off.”
“I got caught. I was having a drink at Lucey’s with a friend of yours.”
Bunny stopped.
“Dennis Riordan.”
Bunny turned, trying to read his face.
“What a busy little bee it is. Buzz, buzz,” he said slowly. “And what did he have to say?”
“Not much. He knew my brother.”
“Oh yes? His nickel or yours?”
“His. A condolence call.”
Bunny took a second, fiddling with the umbrella. “You want to have a care there. You know who he is?”
Ben nodded. “One of Minot’s field hands. Don’t worry, I told him you said the Pledge of Allegiance every morning.”
“That’s not funny. What did he ask you?”
“About you? You didn’t come up.”
“Then why did you say he was a friend of mine?”
Ben shrugged. “I figured you’d know everybody on Minot’s staff.”
“Not everybody.”
“We just talked about Danny.”
“Was this after your chat with Rosemary?” Not making a point, just letting him know. “Quite a day for old times.”
Ben hesitated. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why the big mystery? You knew what I was looking for-”
“Tell you what?” Bunny said, then looked away, switching gears. “It wasn’t mine to tell. Yours, either.”
“You said you didn’t know him.”
“I said I’d never met him. I knew who he was. Hard not to, considering.”
“So it must have been a relief.”
Bunny peered at him. “Are you trying to get me to say something unpleasant? Why? I’m sorry for your loss, all right? Let’s leave it at that.”
“All I wanted was to talk to her. I knew there’d been someone.”
“And do you feel better now? Any more skeletons in the closet or are we ready to move on?”
“I don’t know, are there?”
But Bunny didn’t rise to this. “Usually. People are disappointing once you get to know them. I find. You’d do better remembering the good times. I assume there were?”
“A few.”
“Well, hold on to those,” he said archly, patting Ben’s upper arm. He glanced through the door. “Now let’s let her have her party in peace. Anyway, I’m late.” He began to move away again.
“Why’d you make the call?”
Bunny was quiet for a second. “ Les freres Kohler, ” he said finally, rhyming. “One was trouble. Now two.”
“You didn’t answer.”
“All right. What call?”
“The one you made to the police.”
“Again? You’re like a record with a skip. Back and back.”
“The one Riordan asked you to make. Why you?”
“Did he? Tell you what, now that you’re chums, why don’t you ask him?” he said, an end move. He let out a breath with an audible weariness. “Look, we’re stuck with each other for a while. Mr. L insists. Let’s make the best of it.” He nodded toward the sound stage. “For a start, we’ll keep Rosemary to ourselves, shall we? What’s done is done. No need to upset anyone. There’s the grieving widow to consider.”
“Is that why the screen test? Something for the wronged party?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bunny said, genuinely put out. “Screen tests aren’t favors. Not mine. You think we’re all Sam Pilcer?” He looked up, feeling the drizzle begin again, cooling his mood. “I think she has something.”
“Besides an accent.”
“So did Bergman, when she started. You can work with an accent, if there’s something there.” He looked again at the sound stage. “Whatever it is. Some quality.”
“And you think she has that?”
“Haven’t the faintest. She moves well, that’s what I noticed. But you can’t know anything until you see film. It’s not what you see, it’s what the camera sees. What quality it brings out. You have to have that.”
“What was yours?” Ben said.
Bunny looked at him, then smiled, amused. “Innocence, I think.”
After Bunny left, Ben stood for a while watching the party, invisible in the dark outside. There was a cake, somebody’s birthday, with candles to blow, then whoops and applause. He wondered if Bunny had had a cake on his set, eleven candles, surrounded by beaming grips and the family closer than family. Years like that, closing the world out with a door, until he was outside, too.
He darted back to Admin B, then sat at his desk looking at the photos in the manila envelope. Riordan peering over someone’s shoulder, maybe already planning how to clean up. Not a stranger to it. You’d see things at the Bureau, maybe another informer, tired of it. Except Danny had stayed with Riordan, not yet tired, wanting to-what? Protect the country? From whom? What names had he actually given? It was possible, wasn’t it, that he’d just told them things they already knew, some nimble card shuffle to protect his own flanks and bank a favor or two. But there he was, lying facedown in the alley, evidently not harmless. The same boy who’d been in the bed across the room, talking late into the night. Ben looked at the pictures again, feeling a heaviness in his chest. An informer.
And what about the boy in the other bed? No longer all ears, the eager audience. Now he’d seen things himself, stacks of bodies, a shocked face watching blood gush out. Not a boy anymore, either. Someone who knew the camp guards might be anybody, might be us- and where did we go from there? Now that we were capable of anything? They’d both done things they’d never imagined they’d do. Who was he to blame Danny, making love now to his wife? Maybe he would have helped Riordan, too, done the same thing under the circumstances-which were what exactly?
He shoved the pictures back in the envelope and put them in the drawer. Who knows what Danny’s reasons had been, some twisted apostasy. The point was he’d ended up in the alley. Nothing he could have told Riordan deserved that. A career jeopardized, a reputation? Not a real war, with real casualties. You didn’t kill people yet for name-calling.
Hal had asked him to stop by the cutting room on his way out, a quick check-in, he assumed, but some of the enlarged clips had come back from the lab, so a few minutes became an hour, then two. By the time he headed out to his car, he was already late for the roast chicken, the sort of absentmindedness they wrote into the Blondie series, cut to a scolding or an exasperated sigh at the door. He opened the car door. What were they doing? It’s too soon, she’d said, but done it anyway, gasping. If he thought about it, things flooded in, all the awkward questions. But if you didn’t think about it, it was simple again-the feel of skin. He wanted her because he wanted her. And she clutched him when she came, him, not someone else. No need to go deeper than skin. You could feel alive in it.