Stopping short in the hallway, he found her waiting at the coat check, the ticket poised between her gloved fingers.
He came toward her. “Happy New Year.”
As if his voice had roused her from a dream, she replied, “Happy New Year to you too,” in a beautiful French accent that hurtled him back to the pier, the day of Pearl Harbor, with her standing there, the sun descending into the ocean. It’s her, he thought, his heart in his throat, making it hard to speak.
She half smiled and flicked her hand in the direction of the hanging coats. “I’ve been waiting here forever. The girl said she was coming right back . . .” Her voice trailed off. There was something in her faraway expression, a restlessness that hovered around her like a fine mist, as though she wanted to be anywhere but here.
The crowd started counting down from sixty, and he felt a heated pressure, reminding him that Helen was waiting, he was being rude, when he wanted nothing more than to stay right here.
The woman sighed and rummaged through her clutch, fishing out a pack of cigarettes. Strong foreign ones.
He flipped open his lighter, the blue flame wavering between them.
She bent toward it, and he caught her scent of jasmine and something sharply citrus. Inhaling, she said, her mouth blooming with smoke, “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.” The words caught, making him sound nervous, adolescent.
Her eyes flashed conspiratorially when the gong went off, followed by applause and drunken laughter, the band rolling into the celebratory tune, “Accentuate the Positive.”
She lightly touched his shoulder. “You’re missing all the fun.”
“I don’t think so.” He stood so close he could have traced the slant of her eyebrow with his finger. Her black pupils engulfed almost all of the deep brown.
She kissed him on the cheek, tantalizingly near his mouth, whispering, “It’s bad luck not to kiss someone on New Year’s Eve.”
“It’d be even worse luck not to get your number,” he whispered back, catching her elbow.
She shook her head, as if such an idea were outlandish, ridiculous.
He looked around for a scrap of paper, rooting through his pockets for a pen. He would give her his number, in case she changed her mind, but a crowd of garrulous drinkers trundled down the hallway in the same moment that the hatcheck girl appeared with a long mink coat.
The drinkers were singing “Auld Lang Syne,” draped over one another, crowding the counter and shouting for the hatcheck girl to hurry up already.
Slipping on her fur, she mouthed “Good luck” before walking down the hallway and opening the padded leather door into a starless night. Her perfume lingered in the smoky air, and the way she half looked back, as though she regretted leaving the club as well as staying, as though she regretted everything, even herself, made him want to know her.
* * *
• • •
Primly alone, Helen waited, the table strewn with streamers. She sipped a glass of champagne while he explained that the line for the bathroom had been long, and before he knew it, the gong had gone off. His words hung unconvincingly in the air.
She tore at the edge of a paper doily. “Happy New Year to you too,” she said.
* * *
• • •
At home alone after a silent car ride in which Helen’s disappointment was palpable, Sasha spread out on the cool sheets, the open window inviting the fragrant night. The strong dry winds made everything tremble. The woman entered his thoughts again, her long angular frame trailing down the padded hall before she opened the door into the night, as though she existed outside of time. When he watched her walk away, a sense of loss streamed through him, as though something precious and rare was slipping from his grasp.
Chapter 25
VERA
January 1, 1945, Santa Monica, California
She watered the orange trees, the thin stream sputtering over the roots, her bare feet sinking into the grass. A hummingbird quivered in front of the magnolia tree, searching for succor in the blossoms before flitting away. The new year shimmered with a belated, vengeful heat, the wind fiercely dry. They called it the Santa Ana, and it tightened her skin, cracking it in places.
Wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, she felt Max watching her through the kitchen window, but that hard-edged stone of resentment lodged within her, which she had cultivated and polished over the past months, kept her from turning around and waving, as she might have done in the past.
Last night, she’d felt ugly and ungenerous sitting there among the others. Leon and Elsa told German jokes, and Max drank champagne as if it were water, his thigh pressed up against her thigh, his hand searching for hers under the table. As the night wore on, his desire grew treacly, and she wanted to get away from him. It reminded her of how in bed his clammy feet traveled over to her side, rubbing up against her calf suggestively while she feigned sleep.
As she sat there in that curved booth, watching the birds aggressively fan their jewel-colored feathers against the gilded cages, the turning of the old year into the new only made Lucie seem less real, adding another year to the distance between them. Vera could barely contain her alarm, smiling tightly at their comments while imagining her own face collapsing, her skin no longer adhering to bone, her bones disintegrating into dust.
* * *
• • •
Just before midnight, she’d lied and said she had a headache, getting up to go, ignoring Max’s beseeching look. She thought he would at least follow her out, but this time he didn’t.
Upset by her own selfishness and feeling as though she’d played the martyr, a role Max accused her of relishing, Vera repeatedly rang the bell for the coat check girl. No one came, and she stood there listening to the chorus counting down the seconds until the new year.
And then, that attractive American materialized, smiling as if they shared some private joke. The way he unselfconsciously approached her, his presence filling the hallway, and the conversation he started as though they already knew each other, implying that only time and distance had unfairly kept them apart, made her feel persuaded in his favor. Perhaps he reminded her of the young American GIs pictured in the newspaper, liberating town after town. They were celebratory, aware of their potential and the potential of the world, infusing hope into places where she saw none. Compelled to say something to him, she made some banal comment about the new year, and this light banter had made her feel young, pretending that she also had nothing to lose.
When he asked for her number, she felt bad for him because, of course, he had no idea. She kissed him, her lips skimming his strong jaw, his pulse racing when she whispered into his neck, “Good luck,” which she sincerely meant because luck wasn’t a joke. It was cruel and merciless. She recalled the exhilarating run down the foothills of the Pyrenees, gripping Elsa’s hand, believing they were lucky, and maybe they were, then.
* * *
• • •
Ever since the appointment with Dr. Bettelheim, Max’s insistence that they try for another child had intensified, lacing the air with want and expectation. Vera thought it was Max’s way of silently retaliating against her indecisiveness, but there was a startling aggressiveness to his insistence. When the lights went off, his weighty frame rolled on top of hers, and he caressed her face with the intent not just to seduce but to impregnate. Max began tracking her temperature, and the most likely hours of ovulation. He made charts on graph paper and urged her to see a specialist. He said they still had a window of opportunity, given that she was thirty-two, parroting the words from a manual that Vera had found between the pages of the phone book listing fertility doctors.
She tried, at first, to change her mind. Perhaps it wasn’t wrong of him to want this. Elsa agreed, explaining that he was only trying to mend things, to move forward, somehow.
She dropped the hose, watchi
ng the water seep into the dirt, darkening it, and went to turn off the spigot. She didn’t bother coiling up the hose, and instead left it stranded in the high grass. Through the kitchen window, she watched Max drying the porcelain teacups. She wondered if he would look up. She wanted him to notice that she had abandoned the hose haphazardly, willing him to comment on it so she could start a fight.
An empty flowerpot propped open the back door, and she wandered inside, sitting down at the kitchen table.
He dried a saucer, placing it inside the cabinet, and then turned toward her. His inquisitive, prodding look caused her insides to sharpen. “Elsa telephoned. She asked us over for bridge and oysters this afternoon.”
Vera pressed her palms against the sides of her turbaned head. “We just saw them last night.”
He thrust out his chin. “You don’t want to go, then?” His sleeves were rolled up from doing the washing, and he pushed them up even more, revealing the bulbous blue veins running down his tan arms, spreading out into the tops of his hands. He had vigorous, able hands from playing so many instruments and composing so many scores, hands that still wanted so much more out of her, even after that blotch of blood in her underwear last week.
It’s finished, she thought.
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Just tell me what you want. Oysters and bridge, or we could go to the pictures. I hear there’s something good playing at the Aero. A Western.”
“Let’s go to the pictures,” Vera said, her realization so loud and clear, she almost wondered if he could hear it too: I’m going to leave you.
Max nodded and turned back to the sink.
She swallowed hard, feeling as though she had already said it as she watched him dry the last teacup.
Chapter 26
SASHA
January 1945, Los Angeles, California
Driving home, he itched for a vodka to dampen the mixture of adrenaline and exhaustion coursing through him after the first week of shooting. Unbelievably, they were on schedule, making their days, even with Hedy’s wardrobe crisis and Bob, the male lead’s, initially wooden performance. Today, during the bar scene, Bob improvisationally grabbed Hedy’s hand across the bar, and then Hedy softened, allowing for the chemistry to come alive between them. After that take, Bob loosened up, and his next scene clipped along at a much faster tempo.
Despite the first week’s disappointments and unforeseen difficulties, Sasha’s anxiety that no one would take him seriously proved untrue. He worked fast and decisively, changing a line that hit the wrong note, or deviating from his boards if a scene felt off, and everyone followed his lead, which in turn bolstered his confidence. The best part was having control over the story—not just writing it, but also deciding how it was told. And now, from the first line he had typed on his Royal, to the final roll of the credits, everyone on this picture was working to create his singular vision.
Now forced to witness the war from the sidelines, he would never experience what it would feel like to push those bastards back into Germany and see it through. But here, he’d tell this story from start to finish, without the interference of some hack director trampling on it or life intervening in some unforeseen way. And only he would be responsible for its failure or success, a pressure that fueled him forward.
* * *
• • •
Cigar dangling from his mouth, Sasha sped through the city, the light falling, a transparent crescent moon taking shape. Soon, the ocean would come into view, and the intensity of the day, with all of its little emergencies, would fade a bit.
As he pulled up to his house, the ficus trees offered shaded respite from the sun that bleached other streets, the concrete shimmering, mirage-like. He relished the crunch of leaves beneath his tires as he parked and, killing the engine, he stared out his window, watching his neighbor’s son, Christopher, play handball against the rickety garage door of the apartment building across the street.
When Christopher waved, Sasha got out of his car, bringing over a brown bag of groceries. He did so every week, and every week the boy’s mother left a note in his mailbox, in flowery cursive script, thanking him for the canned beans and sardines, the tuna fish and Coca-Cola. He never saw her during the day because she slept then and worked nights as a maternity nurse. It was another piece of the story he’d learned from Christopher, who said “maternity” with care, rolling over each syllable after which he went on a jag about how angels hovered in heaven, waiting to be born, but someone had to die for one of these babies-in-waiting to replace them, so it all worked out in the end.
“Hey,” Sasha said, setting down the grocery bag on the concrete ledge that ran the length of the driveway.
Christopher kept playing handball, his cheeks molting pink from exertion. “Where ya been all day?”
“Shooting.”
He hit the ball harder against the garage. “Out on the range? Will you take me? I’m a good shot.”
Sasha laughed and said sure, but that wasn’t what he’d meant. From behind the kitchen curtain, he sensed movement.
Christopher said he had to go, hugging the brown paper bag to his chest.
Sasha walked back across the street, mulling over the call sheet for Monday, his thoughts flitting from notes that he had for the actors to his script for The In-Between Man, still in need of revision. And then he felt that sharp twinge again—every time he thought of her he felt it, similar to how he could be pointing and instructing the actors or bringing a cup of coffee to his lips when, instantaneously, he’d feel that tingling race down his arm or a dull aching pain spreading over his bad shoulder. Thinking of her was like that, catching him unaware, his mind tunneling back to how she wore grief as if it kept her alive, and when she wished him good luck, it was as if luck were an uncertain, untrustworthy thing, reserved for others. He wanted to know why her sadness seemed impenetrable, her self-deprecating manner hinting at something worse, something she was ashamed of, something she refused to forgive herself for . . . He wanted to know everything about her.
Chapter 27
SASHA
February 1945, Villa Aurora, Pacific Palisades, California
After they wrapped the second week, Hedy invited Sasha to Villa Aurora, which she described as a slice of old Europe. At first, Sasha declined—he had to prep for next week. They were behind schedule, and still had a few more days of shooting left, including some big scenes—but when her new boyfriend, Otto Beckmann, the German artist, picked Hedy up, he insisted that Sasha join them, and Sasha gave into his jovial persuasions.
Sasha drove with the windows down, the sinking blue sky falling over the hills and the highway. The ocean was restless, waves towering to a full foamy height before crashing against the shore. Up ahead, Otto’s bullet of a car veered over the yellow line and then back again, Hedy’s silk scarf flickering in the wind, an emerald flame. Sasha followed Otto now, unsure where this house was. The sharp turn onto Sunset was a surprise, and then another quick one folded him into the hills, shaded by brush, sage, and eucalyptus trees. Otto slowed on the dirt road that zigzagged upward, cutting into the mountain, before he turned onto a shaded side street.
From here, Sasha made out parts of a Spanish villa, but the curved whitewashed wall and hedges hid most of it. Beyond the house, the Santa Monica Bay flashed with the illuminated pier, its steel roller coasters set against the blurry horizon.
Otto and Hedy walked toward him, speculating about who would be here. It was someone’s birthday, a German writer Sasha didn’t know. He heard a piano thundering over the din of dinner-party talk.
They made their way down the terra-cotta steps into an open-air patio, which had a lily pond in its center. Otto called out, “Sorry we’re late, Elsa. But we brought a little treat for you. An American director, Sasha Rabinovitch.”
The woman, Elsa, smiled up at him from the patio, the silk folds of her peridot kimono hanging dow
n from her outstretched arm. “Please. Come inside.” Sasha sensed her sturdy womanliness, her leonine grace, and liked her immediately.
She slid her arm through his and led him into the house. Two tortoises traipsed ahead, leaving a wet trail along the terra-cotta stones.
In the entryway, the scent of roasted meat hit him and his mouth watered. “It’s delicious, my duck,” she said, as if reading his mind. In the same breath, she directed a housemaid to refill champagne glasses, gesturing toward the living room, where a swirl of men in cardigans and monocles conversed in a cacophony of German, French, English, and Russian. They reminded Sasha of Fritz Lang, whom he met a few months ago at a party. Lang had just finished directing The Woman in the Window, and he wondered if Lang might even be here.
Stepping back for a moment, he marveled at the beauty of the place: the whitewashed walls emanated a serene coolness, and views of the sea filled every window, while eucalyptus trees shaded the backyard, the leaves shimmering in the setting sun. Leather-bound novels lined the bookcases, and a gleaming black Steinway stood in the corner, where a man sat, studying some sheet music. An unbridled vibrancy pulsed through the room, as if the air were made of ideas—poetic, political, sharply satiric. Sasha caught bits and pieces of these conversations that rose up from the din: the incurable problem of music in films, if anyone would dare to return to Europe after the war, and was Germany forever ruined, its great cultural history swallowed up by the Nazi horror?
His mother had always wanted him to stand in such a room, and she had believed college was the way inside of it, and maybe it was, for some people. But he had done it his way. He recalled their recent phone conversation when he had told her he was finally directing his own picture, and yes, there was even a love story baked into it. She paused before congratulating him, but it was in her suspension of breath, the warm moment gathering around them, when he finally felt the rush of her approval.
Those Who Are Saved Page 20
