A Touch of Stardust (19 page)

She heard Andy’s sharp intake of breath.

“This is my way of going to church,” he said. “Does that shock you?”

“No, not shock me.” She thought about it. “But why?”

“Faith and religion, they’re timeless, right? So is a baseball game. It’s the only major sport with no time limit. No clock running out. I love that. I love the timelessness of it.”

“Because it makes anything possible?” she asked.

“Yeah, I guess that’s right.” He looked at her with sharpened interest. “You get that?”

“It’s new to me, but, yes, I think I get it.” What mattered most was this precious glimpse of Andy unweighted by irony. It did occur to her that, if it took a baseball field to give her a peek inside this man, wasn’t that itself ironic?

They were in the ballpark now, stepping carefully down the narrow steps to one of the front rows. Andy was whistling for the vendors even as they threaded their way through the crowd to their seats behind home plate—“Two beers,” he yelled; then, “Two hot dogs!” as they settled in. “Look how close we are,” he said happily. “This is going to be a great ballpark.” He sat down, pushing back unruly hair. “See anybody familiar down on the field?”

She peered and saw a man dancing around the field, pretending to hit an invisible ball with an oversized bat. “Who is he?” she asked.

“Oh, just some actor mugging for the crowd. He’s doing warm-up, Hollywood style—it’s a tradition,” Andy said, reaching into his pocket for money to pay the vendor. “Look around you, toots—this is going to be Hollywood’s favorite off-duty playground.”

Even as he said it, Julie realized that a frowning, slightly built man swearing and fiddling with a home movie camera in front of them was the singer Rudy Vallee. And two seats over, shouting encouragement, was Bing Crosby. Who was that next to him? She wasn’t positive, squinting into the sunlight, but she thought it was Jack Benny.

“Crosby needs a shave, wouldn’t you say?” Andy asked.

She nodded and smiled as she tried to balance a cold beer in one hand and her hot dog in the other. Except for the actors around
them, they could almost be in Fort Wayne. “Why so many movie people?” she asked.

“Because a lot of the big guys own a small piece of the Stars. Bob Cobb—he owns the Brown Derby—bought the team and figured he could get it going by selling stock to DeMille, Crosby, and a lot of others. Team isn’t too good yet, but everybody wants a bite.”

“Do you own a piece?”

He shook his head, pausing for a brief second. “It’s not my crowd,” he said with a certain deliberateness. His eyes brightened. “By the way, want to know who gave us these great tickets today?”

“Sure.”

“Lombard slipped them to me, and there’s the reason why.” He pointed to a tall woman with a set smile sitting a few rows ahead of them. “That, my dear Julie, is Rhea Gable. She got an extra set of tickets in the divorce settlement. Your happy couple will stay happier away from her.” He let out a whoop. “Okay, here we go! Let’s play ball!”

The home team players—dressed in white knickers and socks—were jogging out on the field to the cheers of the crowd. To Julie, they looked oddly pristine for men about to play a running, sliding game like baseball.

“Why are they wearing white?” she asked.

“Home team always wears white,” Andy replied. He gave her an exuberant kiss on the cheek, almost upsetting her beer. “Glad you came, kid.”

She glowed at that. It was proving to be a delicious day, even though the Stars started their decline in the first inning. But in the stands? No posturing, no acting, just half of Hollywood looking as if it belonged more in Fort Wayne than in the movie capital of the world.

The sun was dipping toward the west. It was the top of the ninth, and the Stars were losing, but no one seemed too unhappy, even after the Stars’ hapless pitcher walked a man with the bases full, bringing in a run for the other team.

“Yep, no mirrors, no cameras, except for Vallee’s sixteen-millimeter contraption. What are those guys behind us arguing about?” Andy turned and groaned. “Oh God, politics.”

Two men, a skinny one with a nervous tic that kept his narrow mustache twitching, and a burly type whose bleary eyes reflected the consumption of too much beer on a hot day, were arguing at the top of their lungs over whether President Roosevelt was trying to get the United States into a European war.

“He’ll sneak us into it, you just wait,” said the skinny one.

“He hasn’t got the balls,” scoffed the other. “We’re not going over there.”

“Are you kidding?” The man with the twitching mustache was turning red. “He’s gonna get pushed to it by the goddamn Jews! Why should we go to war for those kikes?”

“Yeah, and what about the kikes over here?” said the one with bleary eyes. He tipped up a can of beer, draining the last of it. “They should go back where they came from.”

Their voices had muted the chatter in the seats nearby. A few people glanced quickly around and then turned away, to stare at the field.

Julie felt Andy’s body tense. “No,” she whispered. “Ignore them. It’s not important.”

But Andy was already on his feet. He turned slowly, took one step up over the seat to the next row, and grabbed the skinny man by the collar. When he twisted his fist, the man’s face turned an even darker red.

“Like to repeat what you just said?” Andy asked.

“Leave me alone.” The man twisted to break free of Andy’s hold.

“Oh, maybe you want to apologize?”

“Get your hands off of me,” the man hissed. “Jew.”

For just a few seconds, the world seemed to stop. Andy’s face
was darker and colder than Julie had ever dreamed it could be. He looked capable of anything.

“Andy, no—” she heard herself say.

Suddenly two stadium policemen were on the scene, firmly pulling the man from Andy’s grasp, each taking him by one arm.

“Cool down, mister,” one of them said quietly to Andy. “We’ve had our eye on these two, we’ll handle it.”

“Hey, why don’t you guys carry this on out in the parking lot?” the other policeman said loudly to the two drunks. “Maybe we can get a telegram off to Roosevelt, telling him what you’ve decided.”

Someone laughed. A nervous, jocular titter. The stillness that followed settled around Julie like a heavy, smothering coat.

Nobody looked at Andy as the stumbling pair were escorted out of the stands and disappeared into the shadowed tunnel.

Andy stared after them, his jaw working.

“Okay, let’s wrap up the game. We’ll be back to fight another day,” yelled a man two rows behind their seats. Then he lowered his voice, muttering to his companion, “The Jewish guy works for Selznick; I’ve seen him around.”

Julie wasn’t sure if Andy had heard. She turned and found him staring at her—still, oddly, with the face of a boy. But a boy hit by something; hit hard.

“
Ignore
them?” he said. “Did you say
ignore them
?”

All the way back on the streetcar, Julie tried to find reasonable words to resolve this. The man had been a fool, but challenging him only underscored the ignorance of his words; surely Andy could see that. Besides, he could have been hurt.

Yet, each time she glanced at Andy’s still face, she felt shut out. Oh, they talked. He told her more about the game of baseball, chatted about Fleming’s irritation with Selznick’s interference. He told her about the rapidly growing number of rushes he was viewing every day. “I’ll be going over more of them tonight,” he said easily,
looking out the window. “Guess I won’t see you tonight. I’ll get the car and take you to your place.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway, you can use the time to work on your script, right?”

He was trying. Her eyes felt wet.

“Andy, I’m sorry. It was a terrible insult. I wasn’t trying to diminish that, but, yes, I was trying to hold you back.”

He gave her a bleak smile. “It’s not your fault, kid,” he said. “You’ve probably never even heard the word ‘kike.’ I’m the one with the problem.”

She would not tell him, she could not tell him, that she did indeed know the word—had heard it in various settings, usually as a joke, accompanied by laughter. Even at Smith. Giggles, there; whispers, quickly evaporated. It was a hidden word, used only in certain company, never discussed. The man bellowing in back of them at Gilmore Field had roared it out with its full complement of hate, and if she ever heard it again, she would not smile faintly and walk out of the room, nor would she just declare it rude or stupid; she would—she hoped—toss it back, exposed for what it was.

How could she say all this to Andy?

“No, I am,” she said.

He touched her hand then, stroking her fingers. But he said nothing.

Andy’s car pulled up to the curb in front of the boarding house with a silky purr. As he reached to turn off the ignition, she noted for the first time a touch of gray at his temples. A few hours ago, she would have teased him about that and he would have laughed. Instead, she silently tucked her carefully folded program into her purse, wondering if indeed she wanted to save it after all.

“I’m fine; don’t get out,” she said.

“I always walk you to your door,” he said gently. “Or at least I try to.”

She smiled faintly. “No,” she said, “it’s okay.”

“I’ll call you.”

She leaned close and kissed his cheek. There it was, in his eyes, just a flash of the boy she had seen at the baseball field. He turned his head—surely to kiss her—but then he quickly turned away.

And she was out of the car, and he was gone. Julie paused on the sidewalk, watching him go, and turned to survey the bleached stucco exterior of the place that was her nominal home. It wasn’t anything special, just a tidy four-story building with the usual red clay tile roof. It had a comforting aura of respectability, promising a haven of sorts. Like a blanket pulled up to one’s nose, giving protection.

Somewhere between the sidewalk and the front door, it struck her that the voices of the girls here didn’t yet have that recognizable
crackle of hardness she heard all the time in Hollywood. Maybe most of them would get stuck on the mimeograph machine or settle for jobs as waitresses, and maybe that would happen to her. Maybe there were, as Andy liked to put it, only a few trajectories for starstruck girls, most of them downward. They argued about that in his kitchen, at times, over home-cooked spaghetti washed down with red wine. He didn’t understand how this boarding house told both sides of the story. It was, indifferent food and all, their comfort—their security blanket. Pull up that blanket, pull it up high, high; reassure yourself you are not really one of the girls who fail. But always a cold draft worked its way through. What
did
come after this? Serving hamburgers at Bob’s Big Boy? Marrying the first available man? Or maybe—just maybe—for her—selling a script and being launched as a writer?