“You?!” I said. “What happened? Vincent’s decay morph get to you?”

“No,” she said defensively. “The other night, when I was on the klieg, I was listening to Alis talk about wanting to be a dancer, and I suddenly realized there was nothing I wanted, except chooch and getting popped.”

“So you decided to go straight, and now you and Alis are going to tap-dance your way to stardom. I can see it now, your names up in lights — Ruby Keeler and Una Merkel in Gold Diggers of 2018!”

“No,” she said, “but I decided I’d like to be like her, that I’d like to want something.”

“Even if that something is impossible?”

I couldn’t make out her expression. “Yeah.”

“Well, giving up chooch isn’t the way to do it. If you want to figure out what it is you want, the way to do it is to watch a lot of movies.”

She looked defensive again.

“How do you think Alis came up with this dancing thing? From the movies. She doesn’t just want to dance in the movies, she wants to be Ruby Keeler in 42nd Street — the plucky little chorus girl with a heart of gold. The odds are stacked against her, and all she’s got is determination and a pair of tap shoes, but don’t worry. All she has to do is keep hoofing and hoping, and she’ll not only make it big, she’ll save the show and get Dick Powell. It’s all right there in the script. You didn’t think Alis came up with it on her own, did you?”

“Came up with what?”

“Her part,” I said. “That’s what the movies do. They don’t entertain us, they don’t send the message: ‘We care.’ They give us lines to say, they assign us parts: John Wayne, Theda Bara, Shirley Temple, take your pick.”

I waved at the screen, where the Nazi commandant was ordering a bottle of Veuve Cliquot ’26 he wasn’t going to get to drink. “How about Claude Rains sucking up to the Nazis? No, sorry, Mayer’s already playing that part. But don’t worry, there are enough parts to go around, and everybody’s got a featured role, whether they know it or not, even the faces. They think they’re playing Marilyn, but they’re not. They’re doing Greta Garbo as Sadie Thompson. Why do you think the execs keep doing all these remakes? Why do they keep hiring Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis? It’s because all the good parts have already been cast, and all we’re doing is auditioning for the remake.”

She looked at me so intently I wondered if she’d lied about giving up AS’s and was doing klieg. “Alis was right,” she said. “You do love the movies.”

“What?”

“I never noticed, the whole time I’ve known you, but she’s right. You know all the lines and all the actors, and you’re always quoting from them. Alis says you act like you don’t care, but underneath you really love them, or you wouldn’t know them all by heart.”

I said, in my best Claude Rains, “ ‘Ricky, I think that underneath that cynical shell you are quite the sentimentalist.’ Ruby Keeler does Ingrid Bergman in Spellbound. Did Dr. Bergman have any other psychiatric observations?”

“She said that’s why you do so many AS’s, because you love movies and you can’t stand seeing them being butchered.”

“Wrong,” I said. “You don’t know everything, Heada. It’s because I pushed Gregory Peck onto a spiked fence when we were kids.”

“See?” she said wonderingly. “Even when you’re denying it, you do it.”

“Well, this has been fun, but I have to get back to work butchering,” I said, “and you have to get back to deciding whether you want to play Sadie Thompson or Una Merkel.” I turned back to the screen. Peter Lorre was clutching Humphrey Bogart’s lapels, begging him to save him.

“You said everybody’s playing a part, whether they know it or not,” Heada said. “What part am I playing?”

“Right now? Thelma Ritter in Rear Window. The meddling friend who doesn’t know when to keep her nose out of other people’s business,” I said. “Shut the door when you leave.”

She did, and then opened it again and stood there watching me. “Tom?”

“Yeah?” I said.

“If I’m Thelma Ritter and Alis is Ruby Keeler, what part are you playing?”

“King Kong.”

Heada left, and I sat there for a while, watching Humphrey Bogart stand by and let Peter Lorre get arrested, and then got up to see if there were any AS’s on the premises. There was klieg in the medicine cabinet, just what I needed, and a bottle of champagne from one time when Mayer brought a face up to watch me paste her into East of Eden. I took a swig. It was flat, but better than nothing. I poured some in a glass and ff’d to the “Play it again, Sam” scene.

Bogart slugged down a drink, the screen went to soft-focus, and he was pouring Ingrid Bergman champagne in front of a matte that was supposed to be Paris.

The door opened.

“Forget to give me some gossip, Heada?” I said, taking another swallow.

It was Alis. She was wearing a pinafore and puffed sleeves. Her hair was darker, and had a big bow in it, but it had that same backlit look to it, framing her face with radiance.

Fred Astaire tapped a ripple on the polished floor, and Eleanor Powell repeated it and turned to smile at him—

I downed the rest of the champagne in one gulp, and poured some more. “Well, if it isn’t Ruby Keeler,” I said. “What do you want?”

She stayed in the doorway. “The musicals you showed me the other night, Heada said you might be willing to loan me the opdisks.”

I took a drink of champagne. “They aren’t on disk. It’s a direct fibe-op feed,” I said, and sat down at the comp.

“Is that what you do?” she said from behind me. She was standing looking over my shoulder at the screen. “You ruin movies?”

“That’s what I do,” I said. “I protect the movie-going public from the evils of demon rum and chooch. Mostly demon rum. There aren’t all that many movies with drugs in them. Valley of the Dolls, Postcards from the Edge, a couple of Cheech and Chongs, The Thief of Bagdad. I also remove nicotine if the Anti-Smoking League didn’t get there first.” I deleted the champagne glass Ingrid Bergman was raising to her lips. “What do you think? Cocoa or tea?”

She didn’t say anything.

“It’s a big job. Maybe you could do the musicals. Want me to access Mayer and see if he’ll hire you?”

She looked stubborn. “Heada said you could make opdisks for me off the feed,” she said stiffly. “I just need them to practice with. Till I can find a dancing teacher.”

I turned around in the chair to look at her. “And then what?”

“If you don’t want to lend them to me, I could watch them here and copy down the steps. When you’re not using the comp.”

“And then what?” I said. “You copy down the steps and practice the routines and then what? Gene Kelly pulls you out of the chorus — no, wait, I forgot, you don’t like Gene Kelly — Gene Nelson pulls you out of the chorus and gives you the lead? Mickey Rooney decides to put on a show? What?”

“I don’t know. When I find a dancing teacher—”

“There aren’t any dancing teachers. They all went home to Meadowville fifteen years ago, when the studios switched to computer animation. There aren’t any soundstages or rehearsal halls or studio orchestras. There aren’t any studios, for God’s sake! All there is is a bunch of geekates hacking away on Crays and a bunch of corporation execs telling ’em what to do. Let me show you something.” I twisted back around in the chair. “Menu,” I said. “Top Hat. Frame 97-265.”

Fred and Ginge came up on the screen, spinning around in the Piccolino. “You want to bring musicals back. We’ll do it right here. Forward at five.” The screen slowed to a sequence of frames. Kick and. Turn and. Lift.

“How long did you say Fred had to practice his routines?”

“Six weeks,” she said tonelessly.

“Too long. Think of all that rehearsal-hall rent. And all those tap shoes. Frame 97-288 to 97-631, repeat four times, then 99-006 to 99-115, and continuous loop. At twenty-four.” The screen slid into realtime, and Fred lifted Ginge, lifted her again, and again, effortlessly, lightly. Lift, and lift, and kick and turn.