The Starcrossed

Now he stood at the costumer’s, being cleverly made over into his Party Personality. While the two makeup men were building up his new plastic face, the viewscreen in front of Sheldon’s chair played a long series of film clips showing his Personality in action. It was an old film star named Gary Cooper and it seemed to Sheldon that all he had to do was to say “Yep” and “Nope” at the appropriate times. He concentrated on remembering those lines while the makeup men altered his face.

As the sun sank into the sea—sank into the smog bank hovering over the line of drilling platforms out there, actually—Sheldon drove toward the harbor, where the party was already in progress.

Bernard Finger almost always gave his parties on shipboard. It wasn’t that he could cruise outside the limits of U.S. and/or California law enforcement. After all, the nation claimed territorial rights out to the limits of the continental shelf and there were a few California legislators who claimed the whole ocean out as far as Hawaii.

It’s just that a cruise ship relaxes people, Sheldon realized as he drove up to the pier. You forget your landbound inhibitions once you pull away from the shore. And you can’t walk home.

He parked his bubble-topped two seater in the lot on the pier and sprinted the fifty meters through smog to the air curtain that protected the main hatch of the ship. Out here, on the docks, the smog was neither perfumed nor tinted. It looked and smelled dirty.

The ship was called the Adventurer, a name that Bernard Finger apparently thought apt. Titanic had bought it as a mammoth set for an ocean liner series they made a few years back. They had gotten it cheaply after the old Cunard Line had collapsed in economic ruin. For a while, Finger wanted to rename the ship Titanic, but a team of PR people had finally dissuaded him.

Now Sheldon stepped through the curtain of blowing air that kept the shoreside smog out of the ship. He stood for a moment just inside the hatch, while the robot photographer—a stainless steel cylinder with optical lenses studding its knobby top—squeaked “Smile!” and clicked his picture.

Sheldon smiled at the camera. Gary Cooper smiled back at him, from the elaborate mirrors behind the photographer. Dressed in buckskins, with a pearl-handled sixgun on his hip, lean, tanned, full of woodsy lore, Sheldon actually felt that he could conquer the West single handedly.

John Wayne bumped into him from behind. “Well, move it, fella,” he snarled. “This here wagon train’s gotta get through!”

Feeling a little sheepish and more than a little awkward in his platform boots, Sheldon made room for John Wayne. The cowboy was taller than Sheldon. “Wait ’til I get my hands on the costumers,” he muttered to himself. They had promised him that nobody would be taller than Gary Cooper.

Maneuvering carefully up the stairway in his boots, Sheldon made his way up to the Main Lounge, It was decorated in authentic midcentury desperation: gummy-looking velvet couches and genuine formica cocktail tables. The windowless walls glittered with metal and imitation crystal.

The party was already well underway. As he took the usual set of greenies from one live waiter and a tall drink from another to wash them down, Sheldon saw a sea of old movie stars: Welches, Hepbums, Gables, Monroes, Redfords, a pair of Siamese twins that looked like Newman and Woodward, Marx Brothers scuttling through the crowd, a few showoff Weismullers, one stunning Loren and the usual gaggle of Bogarts.

No other Coopers. Good.

Up on the stage, surrounded by Harlows and Wests, stood Bernard Finger. He was instantly recognizable because he wore practically no makeup at all. He looked like Cary Grant all the time and now he merely looked slightly more so. Sheldon didn’t have to look around to know that there were no other Cary Grants at the party.

He drank and let the greenies put a pleasant buzz in his head. After a dance with a petite Debbie Reynolds, the ship’s whistle sounded and everybody rushed up to the main deck to watch them cast off.

As the oil-slicked dock slid away and the ship throbbed with the power of its engines, everyone started back to the various bars sprinkled around the lower decks. Or to the staterooms.

Sheldon turned from the glassed-in rail to go back to the Main Lounge, but a tall smoldering Lauren Bacall was slouching insolently in his path.

She held a cigaret up in front of her face and asked casually, “Got a match?” Her voice was sultry enough to start a forest fire.

Trying to keep his hands from trembling, Sheldon said, “Yep.” He rummaged through his buckskin outfit’s pockets and finally found a lighter. Bacall watched him bemusedly. He finally got it out and touched the spot that started the lighter glowing.

“Good,” said Bacall. She slowly drew on the cigaret, then puffed smoke in Sheldon’s face. “Now stick it up your nose. And Canada too!”

“Brenda?” Sheldon gasped. “Is that you?”

She angled a hip, Bacall-like, and retorted, “It’s not Peter Lorre, Sheldon.”

“How’d you know who I was? I mean.…”

“Never mind,” she said; her voice became less sultry, more like Brenda Impanema’s normal throatiness. “What I want to know is what gives you the right to decide ‘The Starcrossed’ is going to Canada. And me with it.”

“Oh,” Sheldon said. There didn’t seem to be any Cooper lines to cover this situation. “Les told you about it.”

“No he didn’t,” Brenda-Bacall said. “Les is as big a snake as you are. Bigger. He kept his mouth shut.”

Sheldon glanced around for a possible escape route. None. He and Brenda were alone on the sealed-in weather deck. The rest of the crowd had gone inside. Brenda stood between him and the nearest hatch leading to the party. If he tried to run for another hatch in these damned platform boots, he’d either fall flat on his face or she would catch him in a few long-legged strides. Either way it would be too humiliating to bear. So he stood there and tried to look brave and unshaken.

“If you must know how I found out,” Brenda went on, “I asked Murray what you were up to.”

“Murray told you?” Sheldon heard his voice go up an octave with shock. Uncle Murray was a fink!

“Murray’s everybody’s friend. Knows all and tells all.”

“But he’s not supposed to tell about private conversations! Only business matters!”

“That’s all he told me,” Brenda said. “Your business conversation with Ron Gabriel.”

Sheldon felt a wave of relief wash over him. Or maybe it was a swaying of the ship. At any rate, Murray could be trusted. At least one central fixture in the universe stayed in place.

Lauren Bacall grinned at him and Brenda’s voice answered, “I called Lees secretary for a lunch appointment and she told me he’d already gone to lunch with you. When he got back, he was kinda smashed. As usual. I dropped into his office before his sober-up pills could grab hold of him. He leered at me and asked how I like cold winters. Which means he approves of your plans.”

Sheldon shook his head in reluctant admiration. “You ought to be a detective.”

“I ought to be a lot of things,” she said, “but I’m not a call girl. I’m not going to Canada.”

“But I thought you liked Gabriel. “

“Whatever’s between Ron and me is between Ron and me. I’m not going to become part of his harem just to suit you.”

“It’s not me,” Sheldon protested. “It’s for Titanic.”

“Nope,” Brenda stole Cooper’s line.

“It’s for B.F.”

She shook her head, but Sheldon thought he noticed the barest little hesitation in her action.

“B.F. wants you to do it,” Sheldon pressed the slight opening.

“B.F. doesn’t know anything about it yet,” Brenda said, “and when he does find out…”

The roar of a powerful motor drowned out her words. Looking around, Sheldon saw that a small boat was racing alongside the ship, not more than twenty meters from the Adventurer. The cruise ship had cleared the line of off shore oil rigs and was out of the smog area. The sky above was clear and awash with moonlight. A few very bright stars twinkled here and there.

“That damned fool’s going to get himself killed,” Sheldon said.

The motorboat was edging closer to the Adventurer, churning up a white wake as