Remake

At least the job would pay enough for my tuition and my own AS’s, instead of having to have Heada mooch for me, instead of taking klieg by mistake and having to worry about flashing on Mayer and carrying an indelible image of him around in my head forever. And they’re all pimping jobs, in or out. Or official.

“Why not?” I said, and Heada came up. She took my hand and slipped a lude into it.

“Great,” Mayer said. “I’ll give you a list. You can do them in any order. A minimum of twelve a week.”

I nodded. “I’ll get right on it,” I said, and started for the stairs, popping the lude as I went.

Heada pursued me to the foot of the stairs. “Did you get the job?”

“Yeah.”

“Was it a remake?”

I didn’t have time to listen to what she’d say when she found out it was a slash-and-burn. “Yeah,” I said, and sprinted back up the stairs.

There really wasn’t any hurry. The lude would give me half an hour at least and Alis was already on the bed. If she was still there. If she hadn’t gotten her fill of Fred and Ginge and left.

The door was half-open the way I’d left it, which was either a good or a bad sign. I looked in. I could see the near bank. The array was blank. Thanks, Mayer. She’s gone, and all I’ve got to show for it is a Hays Office list. If I’m lucky I’ll get to flash on Walter Brennan taking a swig of rotgut whiskey.

I started to push the door open, and stopped. She was there, after all. I could see her reflection in the silvered screens. She was sitting on the bed, leaning forward, watching something. I pushed the door farther open so I could see what. The door scraped a little against the carpet, but she didn’t move. She was watching the center screen. It was the only one on. She must not have been able to figure out the other screens from my hurried instructions, or maybe one screen was all she was used to back in Bedford Falls.

She was watching with that focused look she had had downstairs, but it wasn’t the Continental. It wasn’t even Ginger dancing side by side with Fred. It was Eleanor Powell. She and Fred were tap-dancing on a dark polished floor. There were lights in the background, meant to look like stars, and the floor reflected them in long, shimmering trails of light.

Fred and Eleanor were in white — him in a suit, no tails, no top hat this time, her in a white dress with a knee-length skirt that swirled out when she swung into the turns. Her light brown hair was the same length as Alis’s and was pulled back with a white headband that glittered, catching the light from the reflections.

Fred and Eleanor were dancing side by side, casually, their arms only a little out to the sides for balance, their hands not even close to touching, matching each other step for step.

Alis had the sound off, but I didn’t need to hear the taps, or the music, to know what this was. Broadway Melody of 1940, the second half of the “Begin the Beguine” number. The first half was a tango, formal jacket and long white dress, the kind of stuff Fred did with all his partners, except that he didn’t have to cover for Eleanor Powell or maneuver fancy steps around her. She could dance as well as he did.

And the second half was this — no fancy dress, no fuss, the two of them dancing side by side, full-length shot and one long, unbroken take. He tapped a combination, she echoed it, snapping the steps out in precision time, he did another, she answered, neither of them looking at the other, each of them intent on the music.

Not intent. Wrong word. There was no concentration in them at all, no effort, they might have made up the whole routine just now as they stepped onto the polished floor, improvising as they went.

I stood there in the door, watching Alis watch them as she sat there on the edge of the bed, looking like sex was the farthest thing from her mind. Heada was right — this had been a bad idea. I should go back down to the party and find some face who wasn’t locked at the knees, whose big ambition was to work as a warmbody for Columbia Tri-Star. The lude I’d just taken would hold off any flash long enough for me to talk one of the Marilyns into coming on cue.

And Ruby Keeler’d never miss me — she was oblivious to everything but Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell, doing a series of rapid-fire tap breaks. She probably wouldn’t even notice if I brought the Marilyn back up to the bed to pop. Which is what I should do, while I still had time. But I didn’t. I leaned against the door, watching Fred and Eleanor and Alis, watching Alis’s reflection in the blank screens of the right-hand array. Fred and Eleanor were reflected in the screens, too, their images superimposed on Alis’s intent face on the silver screens.