five minutes for her to come back and tell me to be sure and piss, and then another five for the snakes and rabbits to show up, or worse, Fred and Eleanor, dressed in white and dancing side by side. And thinking about what Heada’d said. If it wasn’t a paste-up, what was it? And it couldn’t be a paste-up. Heada hadn’t heard Alis talking about wanting to dance in the movies. She hadn’t seen her, that night down on Hollywood Boulevard, when I offered her a chance at one. She could have been digitized that night, been Ginger Rogers, Ann Miller, anybody she wanted. Even Eleanor Powell. Why would she have suddenly changed her mind and decided she wanted to be a dancer nobody’d ever heard of? An actress who’d only appeared in a handful of movies. One of which starred Fred Astaire.
“We’re
this
close to having time travel,” the exec had said, his thumb and finger almost touching.
And what if Alis, who was willing to do anything to dance in the movies, who was willing to practice in a cramped classroom with a tiny monitor and work nights in a tourate trap, had talked one of the time-travel hackates into letting her be a guinea pig? What if Alis had talked him into sending her back to 1954, dressed in a green weskit and short gloves, and then, instead of coming back like she was supposed to, had changed her name to Virginia Gibson and gone over to MGM to audition for a part in
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers?
And then gone on to be in six other movies. One of which was
Funny Face
. With Fred Astaire.
I sat up, slowly, so I wouldn’t turn my headache into anything worse, and went over to the terminal and called up
Funny Face
.
Heada had said Fred Astaire was still in litigation, and he was. I put a watch-and-warn on both the movie and Fred in case the case got settled. If Heada was right—and when wasn’t she?—Warner would turn around and file immediately, but if there was a glitch or Warner’s lawyers were busy with Russ Tamblyn, there might be a window. I set the watch-and-warn to beep me and called up the list of Virginia Gibson’s musicals again.
Starlift
was a World War II b-and-w, which wouldn’t give me as clear an image as color, and
She’s Back on Broadway
was in litigation, too, for someone I’d never heard of. That left
Athena, Fainting the Clouds with Sunshine
, and
Tea for Two
, none of which I could remember ever seeing.
When I called up
Athena
, I could see why. It was a cross between
One Touch of Venus
and
You Can’t Take it with You
, with lots of floating chiffon and health-food eccentrics and almost no dancing. Virginia Gibson, in green chiffon, was supposed to be Niobe, the goddess of jazz and tap or something. Whatever she was, it wasn’t Alis. It looked like her, especially with her hair pulled back in a Greek ponytail. “And with a fifth of bourbon in you,” Heada would have said. And a double dose of ridigaine. Even then, it didn’tlook as much like her as the dancer in the barnraising scene. I called up
Seven Brides
, and the screen stayed silver for a long moment and then started scrolling legalese. “This movie currently in litigation and unavailable for viewing.”
Well, that settled that. By the time the courts had decided to let Russ Tamblyn be sliced and diced, I’d be chooch free and able to see it was just somebody who looked like her, or not even that. A trick of lights and makeup.
And there was no point in slogging through any more musicals to drive the point home. Any resemblance was purely alcoholic, and I should do what Doc Heada said, lie down and wait for it to pass. And then go back to slicing and dicing myself. I should call up
Notorious
and get it over with.
“Tea for Two,”
I said.
Tea
was a Doris Day pic, and I wondered if she was on Alis’s bad-dancer list. She deserved to be. She smirked her way toothily through a tap routine with Gene Nelson, set in a rehearsal hall Alis would have killed for, all floor space and mirrors and no stacks of
“We’re
this
close to having time travel,” the exec had said, his thumb and finger almost touching.
And what if Alis, who was willing to do anything to dance in the movies, who was willing to practice in a cramped classroom with a tiny monitor and work nights in a tourate trap, had talked one of the time-travel hackates into letting her be a guinea pig? What if Alis had talked him into sending her back to 1954, dressed in a green weskit and short gloves, and then, instead of coming back like she was supposed to, had changed her name to Virginia Gibson and gone over to MGM to audition for a part in
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers?
And then gone on to be in six other movies. One of which was
Funny Face
. With Fred Astaire.
I sat up, slowly, so I wouldn’t turn my headache into anything worse, and went over to the terminal and called up
Funny Face
.
Heada had said Fred Astaire was still in litigation, and he was. I put a watch-and-warn on both the movie and Fred in case the case got settled. If Heada was right—and when wasn’t she?—Warner would turn around and file immediately, but if there was a glitch or Warner’s lawyers were busy with Russ Tamblyn, there might be a window. I set the watch-and-warn to beep me and called up the list of Virginia Gibson’s musicals again.
Starlift
was a World War II b-and-w, which wouldn’t give me as clear an image as color, and
She’s Back on Broadway
was in litigation, too, for someone I’d never heard of. That left
Athena, Fainting the Clouds with Sunshine
, and
Tea for Two
, none of which I could remember ever seeing.
When I called up
Athena
, I could see why. It was a cross between
One Touch of Venus
and
You Can’t Take it with You
, with lots of floating chiffon and health-food eccentrics and almost no dancing. Virginia Gibson, in green chiffon, was supposed to be Niobe, the goddess of jazz and tap or something. Whatever she was, it wasn’t Alis. It looked like her, especially with her hair pulled back in a Greek ponytail. “And with a fifth of bourbon in you,” Heada would have said. And a double dose of ridigaine. Even then, it didn’tlook as much like her as the dancer in the barnraising scene. I called up
Seven Brides
, and the screen stayed silver for a long moment and then started scrolling legalese. “This movie currently in litigation and unavailable for viewing.”
Well, that settled that. By the time the courts had decided to let Russ Tamblyn be sliced and diced, I’d be chooch free and able to see it was just somebody who looked like her, or not even that. A trick of lights and makeup.
And there was no point in slogging through any more musicals to drive the point home. Any resemblance was purely alcoholic, and I should do what Doc Heada said, lie down and wait for it to pass. And then go back to slicing and dicing myself. I should call up
Notorious
and get it over with.
“Tea for Two,”
I said.
Tea
was a Doris Day pic, and I wondered if she was on Alis’s bad-dancer list. She deserved to be. She smirked her way toothily through a tap routine with Gene Nelson, set in a rehearsal hall Alis would have killed for, all floor space and mirrors and no stacks of
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