Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (145 page)

'We forgot an entire bagful of decorations,' Sissi added.

Tamara looked around the apartment and frowned. The
living and dining rooms had been festively decorated the night
before with balloons, crepe-paper streamers, and confetti; it
looked rather like a goyische New Year's celebration was
about to take place. A string arced between the widest walls,
hung with bright cut-out letters:
welcome home, daliah.

'I see,' she said dryly. She did, too. It was merely a ruse for
Ari and Sissi to take advantage of having the empty apartment
to themselves for an hour or so. She'd suspected that they'd
been sleeping together, and now she was certain. Wisely, she
didn't pursue the subject.

Then, just as she, Schmarya, and Dani were going out the door, a call from the Defence Ministry deducted Schmarya
from the group as well.

'Just my luck,' the old man muttered grumpily. 'The day my
granddaughter returns, I'm called to Jerusalem for an emer
gency meeting.'

'It isn't anything serious, is it?' Tamara had asked.

Even after decades of living through late-night calls and
early-morning summonses for Dani or Schmarya, she had still
never gotten quite used to sudden emergencies. After all the
wars and skirmishes and attacks, every time the phone rang
she was certain it was a portent of tragedy.

'No, no,' Schmarya assured her with a cantankerous wave
of his hand. 'Some gonif at the ministry's probably gotten a
bug up his tuchkas, that's all.' He smiled to reassure her. 'I
have called the airport and checked. The plane is on time.' He
smiled. 'Give Daliah a kiss for me. Tell her I will be back this
afternoon.'

She nodded absently and turned a cheek for him to kiss;
then he clapped Dani on the back and strode out.

So Tamara and Dani drove off to the airport by themselves.
Nine minutes later, it became apparent that they wouldn't get
there on time. They were driving down a narrow one-way street when the accident happened. Dani let out a shout of
warning and slammed on the brakes so suddenly that if
Tamara hadn't been wearing her seat belt, her head would
have gone crashing against the windshield. As it was, the
Cadillac fishtailed, but the brakes did the folks at General
Motors proud. The big car skidded safely to a stop with several
feet to spare. But directly in front of them, at the intersection,
a van collided with a tractor-trailer. The big rig jackknifed
and, in seeming slow motion, overturned and went crashing
over on its side.

Dani turned to Tamara. He was white-faced and obviously
shaken. 'Are you all right?'

'Yes, I think so.' She nodded. 'And you?'

'Idiots!' He shook his head. 'Did you see what happened?
The van had the right of way, and the tractor-trailer kept right
on going!'

'I
...
I didn't see anything.' Her voice was low; she was
trying to get her thumping heart out of her throat and back to
her chest, where it belonged. 'It all seemed to happen so fast.'

Dani had his seat belt off in an instant. He jumped out of
the Cadillac. 'I better go and see if anyone got hurt,' he said grimly. 'Stay here. I don't want you to have to see anything
ugly.' He ran off, squeezed around the sprawled trailer, and
Tamara sat there and waited uneasily. A minute later he was
back. She looked at him worriedly.

'No one seems to have suffered any injuries, but since I'm
a witness, the driver of the van wants us to wait around for the
police. They shouldn't be too long. The driver of the tractor-trailer went to phone them.' He turned around. Already,
impatient commuters behind them were leaning on their
horns, creating a raucous symphony.

Well, let them honk all they want, he thought angrily.
Couldn't they see that he couldn't go forward, since the
tractor-trailer barred the way, and that he couldn't go back
ward either, with them wedging him in from behind? His car
was trapped.

He slid back into the driver's seat. 'Damn,' he cursed.
'Today, of all days!' He hit the steering wheel with the open
palm of his hand. 'Double damn!'

Tamara reached over and touched his hand. 'You know that
getting upset isn't going to help anything,' she said calmly.
'It's not your fault that that accident occurred. You should
thank God no one got hurt.'

He lifted his arm and glanced at his watch. 'By the time the
police come, and we give our account of what happened, and
that truck gets towed away, the plane will have long since landed.' He slumped glumly back in the seat. 'Daliah's going
to think we've forgotten.'

'No, she won't,' Tamara told him. 'If she doesn't see us,
she'll wait for us in the VIP lounge.'

He turned to her. 'I suppose you're right. I'm probably just
overreacting.'

'No, you're not. You're making noises like a father.'

He smiled suddenly, then leaned toward her and brushed
her soft cheek with his lips. 'And you, little mother, are grow
ing more beautiful with every passing day,' he declared.

'Dani!' She laughed and pushed him away. Playfully.
'What's got into you?'

'Nothing. But it's true.'

And to him, she
was
as beautiful as ever. At sixty-five, she
could still make heads turn; he'd seen it happen, and there
wasn't a younger woman he'd ever laid eyes on who could
hold a candle to her. The years had been very kind. She didn't
look a day over fifty, and her body was as perfect as it had
ever been, thanks to her active life. Nor did she carry as much as a superfluous ounce of flesh on it. She had metamorphosed
into a mature, natural beauty. Well, not totally natural, he
amended. He knew that by looking at her vanity table, at the
bottles of creams and lotions, and in the medicine cabinet, at
the boxes of hair dye. The candy-floss white angel's hair, her
cinematic trademark, was no more, but was instead dyed the
exact shade of honey blonde she had been born with. He
thought it suited her far better. Her skin was smooth and
unblemished, but not the pale alabaster people admired in her
old movies; it had become richly tanned from the relentless
Israeli sun. Her teeth, capped on Oscar Skolnik's orders back
in 1930, were as perfect as they had ever been. And her eyes—
those beguiling emerald eyes, which, with her extraordinarily
high Slavic cheekbones, had made her the most fabulous face
of them all—were, despite the lack of false lashes and with only a hint of mascara and shadow, still as theatrically expressive as
they had ever been.

Now, her famous gaze fixed unblinkingly on the tractor-
trailer lying on its side, Tamara sat, still as a statue, her mind
on Daliah.

She was smiling to herself with satisfaction, commending
herself on a job well done. She had raised Daliah right, she
thought. Her daughter was a credit to both the Boralevis and
the ben Yaacovs. Daliah had never sacrificed herself as just another pretty slab of Hollywood meat. Far from it. She was
as famous for her off-screen campaigns, for sticking up for her
rights and the rights of others, as she was for the roles she
played so superbly. She championed causes, no matter how
unpopular they might be, if she believed in them whole-
heartedly, and always resolutely stood her ground and stuck by her commitments. And for that Tamara was immensely proud. From an early age, she had tried to imbue in Daliah a sense of what was important in life, and what was not, and
Daliah had learned her lessons well.

Tamara could sense Dani still staring at her, and then she
felt his hand covering one of her hands. She closed her fingers
around it and clasped it.

She and Dani had been married for nearly forty years now,
and their love for each other had only grown stronger with each passing day. He was two years older than she was, but
how incredibly handsome he still looked with his craggy face,
thick grey hair, and authoritative manner! With him she had
created the three most momentous and poignant gifts of their lives—poor Asa, and Ari, who was about to be married, and
Daliah—and her role as mother had been the most fulfilling
part she had ever played.

'A shekel?' he teased her softly.

'For my thoughts? They're not that cheap!' She laughed,
that tinkling silver-chime laugh he so adored. Then her
expression sobered and grew pensive. 'I was thinking of
Daliah, that's all. How much she's done, and how fast.'

'You miss it, don't you?' Dani asked suddenly.

'Miss it?' She blinked.

'You know, the excitement. The glamour. Being where she
is now.'

Being a star,
he meant.

She shrugged. It was a simple, yet entirely eloquent move
ment, the kind the camera had always picked up so well.
'Sometimes . . . well, sometimes I still miss it a little, I sup
pose. I would be lying if I said otherwise. But it has been forty
years, Dani! Retiring was
my
decision. And it was the
right
decision.' She smiled and her gaze held his. 'I'm not sorry I
did it. I've never been sorry, not for a moment.'

He gave her hand an affectionate squeeze. 'I just want you
to be happy. You know that.'

'I
am
happy! You, better than anyone, should know that! I've been happy for close to forty years, and that's a lot more happiness than most people in Hollywood can boast, believe
me.'

'You could always go back,' he said. 'You know, come out
of retirement and do a picture or two.'

'Dani,' she said. Her look was one he knew so well—one
part theatrical chiding, one part humorous warmth. 'Not only
don't I want to, but even if I did, too much time has passed.
Acting styles have changed. I'm afraid I'd only make a fool of
myself.'