Remake Read Online Free PDF Page B

combination, she echoed it, snapping the steps out in precision time, he did another, she answered, neither of them looking at the other, each of them intent on the music.
    Not intent. Wrong word. There was no concentration in them at all, no effort, they might have made up the whole routine just now as they stepped onto the polished floor, improvising as they went.
    I stood there in the door, watching Alis watch them as she sat there on the edge of the bed, looking like sex was the farthest thing from her mind. Heada was right—this had been a bad idea. I should go back down to the party and find some face who wasn’t locked at the knees, whose big ambition was to work as a warmbody for Columbia Tri-Star. The lude I’d just taken would hold off any flash long enough for me to talk one of the Marilyns into coming on cue.
    And Ruby Keeler’d never miss me—she was oblivious to everything but Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell, doing a series of rapid-fire tap breaks. She probably wouldn’t even notice if I brought the Marilyn back up to the bed to pop. Which is what I should do, while I still had time.
    But I didn’t. I leaned against the door, watching Fred and Eleanor and Alis, watching Alis’s reflection in the blank screens of the right-hand array. Fred and Eleanor were refleetedin the screens, too, their images superimposed on Alis’s intent face on the silver screens.
    And intent wasn’t the right word for her either. She had lost that alert, focused look she’d had watching the Continental, counting the steps, trying to memorize the combinations. She had gone beyond that, watching Fred and Eleanor dance side by side, their hands not touching, and they weren’t counting either, they were lost in the effortless steps, in the easy turns, lost in the dancing, and so was Alis. Her face was absolutely still watching them, like a freeze frame, and Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell were somehow still, too, even as they danced.
    They tapped, turning, and Eleanor danced Fred back across the floor, facing him now but still not looking at him, her steps reflections of his, and then they were side by side again, swinging into a tap cadenza, their feet and the swirling skirt and the fake stars reflected in the polished floor, in the screens, in Alis’s still face.
    Eleanor swung into a turn, not looking at Fred, not having to, the turn perfectly matched to his, and they were side by side again, tapping in counterpoint, their hands almost touching, Eleanor’s face as still as Alis’s, intent, oblivious. Fred tapped out a ripple, and Eleanor repeated it, and glanced sideways over her shoulder and smiled at him, a smile of awareness and complicity and utter joy.
    I flashed.
    The klieg usually gives you at least a few seconds warning, enough time to do something to hold it off or at least close your eyes, but not this time. No warning, no telltale soft-focus, nothing.
    One minute I was leaning against the door, watching Alis watch Fred and Eleanor tippity-tapping away, and the next: freeze frame, Cut! Print and Send, like a flashbulb going off in your face, only the afterimage is as clear as the picture, and it doesn’t fade, it doesn’t go away.
    I put my hand up in front of my eyes, like somebody trying to shield themselves from a nuclear blast, but it was too late. The image was already burned into my neocortex.
    I must’ve staggered back against the door, too, and maybe even cried out, because when I opened my eyes, she was looking at me, alarmed, concerned.
    “Is something wrong?” she said, scrambling off the bed and taking my arm. “Are you okay?”
    “I’m fine,” I said. Fine. She was holding the remote. I took it away from her and clicked the comp off. The screen went silver, blank except for the reflection of the two of us standing there in the door. And superimposed on the reflection another reflection—Alis’s face, rapt, absorbed, watching Fred and Eleanor in white, dancing on the starry floor.
    “Come