Remake

“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.