“Does that kick look high enough to you?” I said, pointing at the screen. “Frame 99-108 and freeze.” I fiddled with the image, raising Fred’s leg till it touched his nose. “Too high?” I eased it back down a little, smoothed out the shadows. “Forward at twenty-four.”

Fred kicked, his leg sailing into the air. And lift. And lift. And lift. And lift.

“All right,” Alis said. “I get the point.”

“Bored already? You’re right. This should be a production number.” I hit multiply. “Eleven, side by side,” I said, and a dozen Fred Astaires kicked in perfect synch, lift, and lift, and lift, and lift. “Multiply rows,” I said, and the screen filled with Fred, lifting, kicking, tipping his top hat.

I turned around to look at Alis. “Why would they want you when they can have Fred Astaire? A hundred Fred Astaires? A thousand? And none of them have trouble learning a step, none of them get blisters on their feet or throw temper tantrums or have to be paid or get old or—”

“Get drunk,” she said.

“You want Fred drunk?” I said. “I can do that, too. Frame 97-412 and freeze.” Fred Astaire stopped in midturn, smiling. “Frame 97—” I said, and the screen went silver and then to legalese. “The character of Fred Astaire is currently unavailable for fibe-op transmission. Copyright ownership suit ILMGM v. RKO-Warner…”

“Oops. Fred’s in litigation. Too bad. You should have taken that paste-up while you had the chance.”

She wasn’t looking at the screen. She was looking at me, her gaze alert, focused, the way it had been on the Piccolino. “If you’re so sure what I want is impossible, why are you trying so hard to talk me out of it?”

Because I don’t want to see you down on Hollywood Boulevard in a torn-net leotard. I don’t want to have to stick your face in a River Phoenix movie so Mayer’s boss can pop you.

“You’re right,” I said. “Why the hell am I?” I turned to the comp and said, “Print accesses, all files.” I ripped the hardcopy out of the printer. “Here. Take my fibe-op accesses and make all the disks you want. Practice till your little feet bleed.” I thrust it at her.

She didn’t take it.

“Go on,” I said, and pressed it into her unresponsive hand. “Who am I to stand in your way? In the immortal words of Leo the Lion, anything’s possible. Who cares if the studios have got all the copyrights and the fibe-op sources and the digitizers and the accesses? We’ll sew our own costumes. We’ll build our own sets. And then, right before we open, Bebe Daniels’ll break her leg and you’ll have to go on for her!”

She crumpled up the hardcopy, looking like she’d like to throw it at me. “How would you know what’s possible and impossible? You don’t even try. Fred Astaire—”

“Is tied up in court, but don’t let that stop you. There’s still Ann Miller. And Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. And Gene Kelly. Oh, wait, I forgot, you’re too good for Gene Kelly. Tommy Tune. And don’t forget Ruby Keeler.”

She threw it.

I picked the hardcopy up and uncrumpled it. ” Temper, temper, Scarlett,’ ” I drawled, smoothing it out. I tucked it in the pocket of her pinafore and patted it. “Now get out there on that stage. It’s show time! The whole cast’s counting on you. Remember you’re going out there a youngster, but you’ve got to come back a star.”

Her hand clenched, but she didn’t throw the hardcopy again. She wheeled, skirt flaring like Eleanor’s white one. I had to close my eyes against the sudden image of Fred and Eleanor dancing on the polished floor, the phony stars shimmering in endless ripples, and missed Alis’s exit.

She slammed the door behind her, and the image receded. I opened it and leaned out. “Be so good you’ll make me hate you,” I called after her, but she was already gone.

SCENE: Busby Berkeley production number. Giant revolving fountain with chorus girls in gold lame on each level, filling champagne glasses in the flowing fountain. Move in to close-up of champagne glass, then to close-up of bubbles, inside each bubble a chorus girl in gold-sequined tap pants and halter top, tap-dancing.

Alis didn’t come back again after that. Heada went out of her way to keep me posted — she hadn’t found a dancing teacher, the Viamount takeover was a done deal, Columbia Tri-Star was doing a remake of Somewhere in Time.

“There was this Columbia exec at the party,” Heada told me, perched on my bed. “He said they’ve been doing experiments with images projected into negative matter regions, and there’s a measurable lag. He says they’re this close” — she did the thumb-and-forefinger bit — “to inventing time travel.”

“Great,” I said. “Alis can go back to the thirties and take dancing lessons from Busby Berkeley himself.”

Only she didn’t like Busby Berkeley, and after taking all the AS’s out of Footlight Parade and Gold Diggers of 1933, neither did I.

She was right about there not being any dancing in his movies. There was a glimpse of tapping feet in 42nd Street, a rehearsal going on in the background of a plot exposition scene, a few bars in “Pettin’ in the Park” for Ruby, who danced about as well as Judy Garland. Otherwise it was all neon violins and revolving wedding cakes and fountains and posed platinum-haired chorus girls, every one of whom had probably been a studio exec’s popsy. Overhead kaleidoscope shots and pans and low-angle shots from underneath chorus girls’ spread-apart legs that would have given the Hays Office fits. But no dancing.

Lots of drinking, though — speakeasies and backstage parties and silver flasks stuck in chorus girls’ garters. Even a production number in a bar, with Ruby Keeler as Shanghai Lil, a popsy who’d done a lot of hooch and a lot of sailors. A hymn to alcohol’s finer qualities.

Of which there were many. It was cheap, it didn’t do as much damage as redline, and if it didn’t give you the blessed forgetfulness of chooch, it stopped the flashing and put a nice soft-focus on things in general. Which made it easier to work on Mayer’s list.

It also came in assorted flavors — martinis for Topper, elderberry wine for Arsenic and Old Lace, a nice Chianti for Silence of the Lambs. In between I drank champagne, which had apparently been in every movie ever made, and cursed Mayer, and deleted beakers and laboratory flasks from the cantina scene in Star Wars.

I went to the next party, and the one after that, but Alis wasn’t there. Vincent was, demonstrating another program, and the studio exec, still pitching time travel to the Marilyns, and Heada.

“That stuff wasn’t klieg after all,” she told me. “It was some designer chooch from Brazil.”

“Which explains why I keep hearing the Beguine,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” I said, looking around the room. Vincent’s program must be a weeper simulator. Jackie Cooper was up on the screen, in a battered top hat and a polka-dot tie, blubbering over his dead dog.

“She’s not here,” Heada said.

“I was looking for Mayer,” I said. “He’s going to have to pay me double for The Philadelphia Story. The thing’s full of alcohol. Sherry before lunch, martinis out by the pool, champagne, cocktails, hangovers, ice packs. Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart. The whole cast’s stinking.”

I took a swig from the crème de menthe I had left over from Days of Wine and Roses. “The visuals will take at least three weeks, and that doesn’t include the lines. ‘I have the hiccups. I wonder if I might borrow a drink.’ ”

“She was here earlier,” Heada said. “One of the execs was hitting on her.”

“No, no, I say, ‘I wonder if I might borrow a drink,’ and you say, ‘Certainly. Coals to Newcastle.’ ” I took another drink.

“Should you be doing so much alcohol?” Heada, the chooch queen, said.