Free Hollywood Buzz by Margit Liesche

she’s frightened, but still desperate. Next day, wary, she stands by while he fixes the engine, then sets her boyfriend’s leg. When he gets them puttering toward shore—thanks to a small compass he has with him—she lets her guard down a little. She’s grateful. They become friendly, discussing this and that. He speaks broken English—” Brody tossed his voice my way.
    Still pacing nonstop, but at an accelerated rate now, he went on. “The boyfriend thinks they’re flirting. He starts smoldering. Later, when he spots the Nazi consulting a secret map, he figures out they’re being navigated in a direction where the Nazi intends meeting up with an enemy ship.”
    Brody paused, derailed by something on his desk. An oversized white envelope. He studied the writing on the outside then, using a letter opener, unsealed the flap. A 5x7 photograph wrapped in a pink satin ribbon slipped out, pinched between his fingertips. A quick concerned glance our way—directed more at Miss Wallace than anyone—and his focus returned to the photo and an accompanying letter, leaving the rest of us to stare wide-eyed at one another around the table. Sam moved to take up the slack.
    “Uh, while the boyfriend is putting two and two together, the Nazi makes a move on the girl. He kisses her and she tries to push him away. But then, the girl begins responding…” Sam’s voice caught and he gave in to a sudden coughing jag.
    The girl responds to the Nazi’s kiss?
No wonder Sam was hacking uncontrollably. What a flight of fancy. No red-blooded American woman would do that! Nor, should any American movie portray that. Whose idea had it been? I glanced over at Brody.
    Sam began again. “Eh-hem. The boyfriend makes his move. Adrenaline pounding, he separates the two and overpowers the Nazi. He shoves him overboard to the sharks.”
    With a compound fracture? No wonder they called this place Dreamland!
    A smile flickered on Sam’s lips, suggesting he saw the absurdity of the situation, too. But he finished up gamely. “The girl embraces her hero while denying she’d felt anything but revulsion for the Nazi. An Allied vessel appears on the horizon. Fade out.”
    Brody, who’d rejoined us, began tapping the table with the letter opener he’d brought from his desk. He looked worried. He transferred the look to Wallace. Wallace was eying her pearl bracelet. She’d been fingering the lustrous beads and spinning the adornment around her wrist the entire time Sam had been talking. She glanced up. Brody glanced away.
    “What’s eating you about the script, Miss Wallace?”
    The question was admirably succinct, but stripped of any diplomacy. If Brody wanted to provoke her, as Sam had suggested earlier, he was off to a good start. My gaze swung her way.
    Wallace patted the dog-eared script sitting on the table before her. “You’ve got a problem.” Her precise voice matched her prudish looks. “Several problems.”
    Let him have it, Wilma!
    “People living along the Atlantic seaboard are deeply concerned about the German subs operating in their coastal waters. And it’s not only the men and merchant ships we’re losing out there that has them worried. They’ve heard rumors that U-boats are casting out raft-loads of spies and saboteurs to infiltrate their communities.” Wilma gave her glasses a prim push. “The FBI has been disseminating information to eliminate their fears. This movie will stir up panic the government has been working to alleviate.”
    Brody had been picking at his fingernails with the letter opener. Without looking up, he said, “Story is fact-based. The entire country knows that Nazis are landing incognito along the coast. They also know they’re being captured. Reports have been plastered across the front pages of newspapers, for Christ’s sake! So far, no
War of the Worlds
mass hysteria has broken out. Give our citizens credit for being reasonable and intelligent, why don’t you? It’s the Germans who follow