B00C4I7LJE EBOK (25 page)

I’d been back three days when Maria came to me, her eyes wide with apprehension. “Phyllis’s attorney wants to talk to you.”

Mr. B. The fact that he handled all the dirty work for Phyllis gave Maria the impression that whenever he called for any one of us personally, it had to be bad news. I stopped my search for the script Phyllis had asked me to find when she’d called the day before. I was in the billiards room at the time, one of the few rooms in the house without a phone.

“Tell him to hold on,” I said and trotted back up the stairs and down the long hallway to the office. Mr. B’s secretary was on the line.

“Hold, please,” she whined in her nasal, New York accent that set my teeth on edge. I waited for about three minutes—approximately the same amount of time it had taken me to get back to the office. Tit for tat, I thought.

“Robin . . .” Mr. B’s voice sounded hollow on the long-distance connection. “Phyllis asked me to call you about the raise we discussed.” (I’d managed to bring up the matter when we were in St. Thomas.) “Miss Diller agrees that you deserve a raise. It’ll be reflected in your next paycheck.”

“How much are we talking about?” I asked.

He named a sum that certainly was not munificent, but at least it was a step in the right direction. I decided not to argue but to bring up the matter in another three months.

“There’s something else,” he continued. “You know, Phyllis is really unhappy that you deserted her in Chicago. She thinks you should have stuck with the job and stayed until she was ready to come home.”

Deserted her?
I was stunned. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said in a strangled voice.
Deserted her?
I hadn’t deserted her—if anything, she had deserted me, leaving me stranded at the Inn day after day. What the hell was the woman thinking? She had hired me to work for her; she hadn’t bought herself a slave.

“I’m sure it won’t happen again,” Mr. B said in the patronizing tone of a grade-school principal reprimanding an errant child.

I don’t even remember saying good-bye. I just hung up. I sat for a few minutes looking out the window, gathering my thoughts.

Maria walked into the office after having stopped downstairs for a chat with Mary. “Are you all right?” she asked. “You’re white as a sheet.”

“I’m not sure.” I told her what Mr. B had said.

Maria, as always, waxed philosophical. “By the time they get back from Chicago, Phyllis will have forgotten all about it.”

I knew that wasn’t true. Phyllis never forgot anything.

“Is Ingrid here?” I asked.

“No, she had an audition this afternoon. She’s not coming in.”

Ingrid was an aspiring actress and often went to casting calls. I was anxious to talk to her—she’d worked for Phyllis long enough to know all the previous secretaries. I hoped she might be able to give me some insight. When I got back to the apartment, Ingrid was home. I told her about the phone call. I paced back and forth as I spilled out the whole story.

“It’s not as though I could have done anything for her,” I said for probably the tenth time. “I mean, she has Warde with her, she does the play every night, and she’s staying in a nice house. It’s not as though we got together and worked every day. I just sat in my room day after day with nothing to do. It couldn’t have made any difference to Phyllis whether I was there or not. And as for the work, it’s all here in L.A.”

Ingrid shrugged. “You know how she is.”

“Yeah, that’s the trouble. I probably haven’t heard the end of this.” We were silent for a few minutes while Ingrid fidgeted and I fumed.

“I just don’t know what she expects,” I said. “I did everything I could. I mean, I hadn’t had a day off for weeks. I was going crazy!”

Ingrid started to say something, then stopped, then opened her mouth again and closed it.

“What?” I demanded.

“I shouldn’t tell you this.” She looked away and fiddled with her honey-blond hair.

“What?” I coaxed more gently.

“Well, you remember Corrine?”

“Corrine? Of course I remember Corrine!” I had never met Corrine, but I had heard about her from almost the first day I went to work for Phyllis. Corrine the Efficient. Corrine the Clever. Corrine the Perfect. She had been Phyllis’s first secretary and had been with her about five years before moving on to Walt Disney Studios, where she held some kind of lofty position in keeping with her Incredible Brilliance and Unending Resourcefulness. I had never laid eyes on the woman, but I had seen pictures, and not only did she possess all the attributes of a saint (or so I understood from Phyllis and Val and even Ingrid, who still kept in touch with her), but she was beautiful. Ingrid, my own roomie, thought Corrine was the perfect secretary who could do no wrong under any circumstance. I hated the very idea of Corrine.

“What about Corrine?” I demanded in a voice that I struggled to keep calm. Even the mention of that woman’s name drove my blood pressure up.

“I wasn’t supposed to tell you.”

“You weren’t supposed to tell me what?” I asked in a deadly calm voice.

Ingrid squirmed. “The only reason I know is because Val had to call me for Corrine’s number. She swore me to secrecy.” Ingrid was making a list-ditch effort to avoid spilling the beans.

“Tell me.”

She took a deep breath and plunged in. “Phyllis called Corrine and asked her to come back to work for her.”

“She
what
?” I knew my voice carried out into the courtyard and probably to several surrounding apartments.

“It was after you left Chicago,” Ingrid said quickly. “Phyllis called Val at home on Saturday and asked for Corrine’s number. Val had to call me to get it. It wasn’t until Monday that she told me what Phyllis wanted it for.”

I was no longer even slightly remorseful for having “deserted” Phyllis in Chicago. I was boiling mad.

“I suppose she offered Corrine just a little more money than I’m making?” I asked.

“Oh, heavens yes!” Ingrid laughed as though I’d said something terribly clever.

It had always bothered me that Corrine had made nearly three times what I was getting, even after the raise. Not only that, but she always flew first class and never was shuffled off to a cheap hotel.

“Corrine is making twice as much as she ever made with Phyllis,” Ingrid said. “And besides that, of course, Disney pays all her medical and dental insurance, and she has retirement and profit sharing, and . . .” Ingrid’s voice trailed off as she looked at me. “But I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

I slammed into the kitchen to see if we had any wine. We didn’t.

“I’m going to the store,” I snarled as I grabbed my purse. I decided to walk—it would give me time to cool off. By the time I reached the market, tears were pouring down my cheeks. I’d worked so damned hard, put up with all of Warde’s shenanigans, always been prompt, never letting my own considerations come before the job—I’d even missed my grandmother’s funeral because we had a trip to St. Louis that week. I never quibbled about the low salary, and I’d even
thanked
Mr. B for the paltry raise he’d grudgingly squeezed out of “Miss Diller.”

Well, loyalty is a two-way street and this is where I get off.

I splurged on an expensive bottle of pinot noir and trudged back up the hill to the apartment. When I got back, I found a note from Ingrid. “Having dinner with Dennis. Bruce called and wants you to call him back.”

I didn’t want to talk to Bruce or anyone else. I just wanted to be alone to stare out the window at the rain. Unfortunately, it wasn’t raining. It wasn’t even cloudy.
Hell!
I thought as I ripped the cork from the bottle. The phone rang and I let it ring. I wasn’t going to talk to anyone right then. Instead, I filled my wineglass, put my sweater back on, and went out to sit by the pool. The April evening was almost balmy. Far from the cold, biting wind of Pheasant Run and a good foil for my dark thoughts.

I finally came to the only logical conclusion. I would have to quit. I didn’t make enough money to begin with, and certainly not to put up with this. I didn’t know what I’d do, but I knew there were plenty of good jobs out there and I would get one. The idea of a regular office job made me cringe, but I was fed up with “stars.”

By the time I had emptied the glass, I began to feel better. I’d give Phyllis two weeks’ notice as soon as she got home, then I’d take a few weeks off to just sit around before I’d start looking.

31

I
was eager to talk to Phyllis when they returned and was fortunate to catch her in the kitchen when no one else was around. I wasted no time in telling her that I was leaving. She showed no surprise, although she offered the appropriate regret at the news. Perhaps she realized that it was inevitable. After all, I’d been with her longer than anyone since Corrine—over a year-and-a-half—and that was a pretty good run as a personal secretary to a star.

“There is something I’d like to know,” she asked. “Why? Is it the travel? Is it Warde?”

Standing face-to-face with her, I didn’t have the guts to tell her how I really felt. “A little bit of both. I got tired of being on the road all the time. I can’t plan my social life, and while I’m forever making friends all over the country, it’s frustrating to know that I’ll probably never see them again.”

Phyllis didn’t press me further and I didn’t elaborate. I didn’t think it was necessary to tell her that I knew about the phone call to Corrine. What good would it do? Besides, I think she knew. She was not a stupid woman.

“Do you know anyone that might like the job?” Phyllis asked after a moment. I flirted with telling her I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but since I’d made the decision to leave, I’d cooled off.

“I can’t think of anyone offhand,” I said. “But if I hear of anyone, I’ll let you know.”

“When do you plan to leave?”

“Well, I’d like to give two weeks’ notice, but if you want, I’ll wait until you get someone else.”

“Will you stay and train your replacement?”

“Well, sure, I guess so. But I hope you’ll find someone pretty soon. I’ve already made vacation plans for July.” It wasn’t strictly the truth, but I figured I had better give a definite time limit.

So it was done, and with a light heart I went upstairs to the office to tell Maria.

32

I
t took nearly a month for Phyllis to find a new secretary, and in that time we had several brief trips. We went to Saginaw, Michigan. A horrible experience. A group of Shriners were out in the hall partying and calling back and forth. Finally, at midnight, I called down to the front desk.

“Can you please ask these people to quiet down?” I begged. We’d traveled all day and the limo driver who picked us up at the airport regaled us with the history of Saginaw all the way to the hotel. Then he almost drove off with Phyllis’s all-important wig box. It was black and blended with the trunk’s interior. Had I not been watching, it would’ve been gone. We checked into the hotel about 8:00 P.M. and learned that there were no restaurants open nearby and the hotel didn’t have room service. Warde actually made himself useful by going out to a KFC and bringing back something for us to eat.

“I’m sorry about the noise, ma’am. I’ll send someone up,” the desk clerk told me.

I don’t know who came up or what he said, but almost immediately the noise increased and someone began marching up and down the hall banging on a bass drum. My mother never liked Shriners. She thought they were arrogant and self-centered do-gooders, and that night confirmed it.

Sleep-deprived and bleary-eyed, Phyllis and I went to the venue the next afternoon. Talk about a small-town event—the opening act was a high-school girl wearing a red, white, and blue sequined costume while twirling a baton to
God Bless America
.

Phyllis looked at me with an expression as close to defeat as I’d ever seen. “How am I supposed to follow that?” she muttered as she prepared to dash onstage and tell them her dress was really a lampshade from a whorehouse.

From there we went to Bloomington, Minnesota, then on to Elwood, Indiana, for the Glass Festival. I was certainly seeing small-town America, and I loved it. Everywhere we went, people were kind and thoughtful. Phyllis was her usual gracious self, and I’m sure her appearance was the highlight of the year for many.

We flew on to Seattle, where she performed with the Seattle Symphony, and returned to L.A. the next day. I was really getting sick of airplanes. Finally, Phyllis told me the good news: Alexandra, the new secretary, would be joining us in Reno.

Phyllis had a two-week engagement at Harrah’s, which wasn’t as elegant as Harrah’s in Lake Tahoe, but at least I would be staying in the hotel. I rejoiced over the basket of fruit in my room, and someone had thoughtfully given me a room at the other end of the hallway from Phyllis and Warde. It gave me a modicum of privacy.

Phyllis’s opening act was John Rowles, a personable young singer. One night between shows, he told us he’d written his hit song,
Cheryl Mauna Marie
, for his sister.

“Your sister,” I echoed. “But it’s such a romantic song.”

“It is,” he agreed, “but it’s also a very romantic name.”

While at Harrah’s, Phyllis urged me to order dinner in the dressing room so I could sign her name to the check and not have to pay for it. It made the $10 per diem a little more livable.

In a way, it was the best possible introduction to road travel for Alexandra. Phyllis had two shows every night, and she didn’t have to do interviews, so it was a very laid-back gig. Besides, Reno is a beautiful little city in the mountains. Alexandra flew to Reno at the beginning of our second week. I met her in the Harrah’s chocolate-brown Rolls Royce, which the chauffeur had driven right onto the tarmac. Her reaction was understandable.

“Wow!”

“Don’t get used to it,” I told her. “It’ll probably never happen again.” Then I introduced myself.

“Please call me Sandy,” she said as we settled into the car. “Alexandra’s my real name, but everyone calls me Sandy.”