said, snapping his fingers. Ben opened another button on Lasner’s shirt.
Fay glanced up at one of the studio people. “Did anybody call Rosen? Dr. Rosen. Bunny knows the number.” She turned to Ben. “You knew about the pills. What, on the train?”
He nodded. “It’s worse this time. We have to get him to the hospital.” He felt Lasner’s wrist. “It’s weak.”
“I’m not dead,” Lasner said, then winced.
The ambulance was there in a few minutes. As the crew lifted Lasner onto a stretcher, more flashbulbs went off. Fay grabbed Ben’s hand, drawing him along with her. Lasner opened his eyes, aware of the movement.
“They’re here,” Fay said. “Just hold on.”
Lasner struggled to say something, but managed only an indistinct sound.
“Don’t try to talk,” Fay said. “You’ve said enough.”
Lasner glanced at her and started to smile.
In the ambulance, Fay and Ben in the back with him, Lasner began breathing more regularly, his color better.
“That’s twice you’re there,” he said to Ben, his voice scratchy but intelligible.
“Shh. Don’t excite yourself,” Fay said.
“You see his face?” Lasner said.
“Quite a finish,” Ben said.
“I told you. He didn’t know how to play it. He’s done.”
“Don’t talk crazy,” Fay said.
“He should fucking go out and shoot himself. Like Claude Rains.”
Ben laughed. Fay shot him a look, but Lasner, pleased, smiled and closed his eyes again.
“What did you give him?” the doctor said as they brought the gurney into the emergency room.
Ben handed him the pills. “Two, three.”
The doctor nodded then said something to a nurse, ordering an IV, and after that nothing made sense, medicine its own foreign language. Ben and Fay were shunted aside into a waiting room, the air stale with smoke. Ben opened a window. Fay sat down, covering her eyes with her hand.
“Thank you,” she said, and then neither of them spoke, trying to slow things down, all the urgency of the last half hour finally wheeled away somewhere else.
Ben glanced around the room: a pastel seascape on the wall and a stack of Reader’s Digest s on a coffee table. No wonder people paced.
“How bad was it on the train?” Fay said finally.
Ben shrugged. “Not great. But he got through it.”
“How many times can you do that?” She started to cry quietly and Ben looked away, giving her room. “What am I supposed to do? A house that size?”
After they moved Lasner to a room, Ben and Fay were allowed to sit with him, a vigil, until Dr. Rosen arrived and put them in the hall while he conferred with the hospital doctors.
“Is he going to be all right?” Fay said, when he came back out to them.
“That depends what you mean by all right.”
“He’s going to live?”
“Not like now.” He looked at her. “No studio.”
“He won’t.”
“He’ll have to. This time it went off,” he said, pointing to Lasner’s chest. “It goes again, he’s gone. I’m sorry, Fay. I don’t mean to-”
She waved this away. “And that would buy him what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Odds?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“He’ll ask. A few months sitting around? Is that all he’s going to get anyway?”
“A month is a lot, if it’s your last. A year-? What’s numbers? Don’t go soft on me, Fay,” he said, seeing her face begin to tremble. “You’re the only one can talk to him.”
She flicked the corner of her eye, drying it. “Wonderful.”
Bunny arrived when they were sitting with Lasner, awake now but not talking much, preoccupied.
“Now he gets here,” Lasner said, but patted his hand, affectionate.
“Sol, I-” He didn’t finish, turning instead to Fay, putting a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m going to be out a few days,” Lasner said.
Bunny nodded, playing along, but his eyes were examining Lasner, appraising without the pyramid fingers, and Ben watched him grow paler, shaken, and knew that Lasner was dying, the doctor’s assessment just something to comfort Fay.
“He didn’t call Rosemary like we thought,” Lasner said, talking business.
“He might.”
“Let’s release the picture anyway. Fuck him.”
“Let’s talk about it when-”
“We’re talking about it now.”
“No, you’re not,” Fay said, playing nurse. “Doctor’s orders. Look at you. It’s not enough for one day?”
“What do the doctors say?” Bunny said, but Fay didn’t answer, instead rolling her eyes toward the door.
“What do they always say?” Lasner said. “Listen to them, everybody should go live in Laguna.”
“Watch I don’t take you there,” Fay said. “You look tired. Close your eyes for a while.”
“Don’t leave,” he said, a child’s voice.
She put her hand on his forehead. “Never,” she said softly.
Ben stared at Lasner, hearing his words again, an echo effect. But not the way Danny had said them, meaning something else.
“I’ll come out with you,” Fay said, dismissing them, and for a second Ben saw a twitch in Bunny’s face, annoyed at their being lumped together.
Lasner managed a half wave from the bed. “Don’t be scarce,” he said.
In the hall, Bunny huddled for a minute with Fay, presumably getting a medical report, then joined Ben at the elevators. “I turn my back for two hours,” he said.
“There was nothing anybody could do. Even you. He knew what he was doing.”
“Mm. Putting himself in here. And Minot’s back tomorrow.”
“I don’t think so.”
“With a grudge. A little tantrum from Mr. L and you think he’s all taken care of.”
“He will be.”
Bunny looked up sharply. “What do you mean?”
“Read the papers tomorrow.”
Polly had suggested the Formosa, and when Ben got there she was already settled in a red leather booth, nursing a Gibson.
“I went ahead,” she said after he ordered. “Talk about a day for it. Gives you a turn, seeing that. I’ve known Sol a lot of years.” She looked up, narrowing her eyes. Her hat, the mesh veil thrown back for drinking, was tilted slightly. “You were at the hospital. How is he?”
Ben shrugged, noncommittal.
“They said stable. Stable could be dead. I should probably be there, in case. But they just stick you in the waiting room. Anyway,” she said, switching, “I have this meeting. Where you’re going to give me a story and I’m going to do you a favor. Surprise me. Tell me you’re not trying to get into somebody’s pants.” She finished off the drink and raised her finger for another. “So what do you want?”
“Want to hear the story first?”
“No. First tell me what it’s going to cost.”
“Minot fed you some material on Rosemary. I want you to kill it. For good.”
“Christ,” Polly said, picking up her fresh drink. “Her pants. That’s not even a surprise.”
