B00C4I7LJE EBOK (6 page)

The door opened and Karen walked in. “Perry called,” she told Phyllis.

“Fine. I’ll call him later. I’m making spaghetti,” Phyllis said and tossed the chopped garlic—lots of it—into a small sauté pan and added a cube of butter.

“Hand me that spaghetti,” she said to Warde.

“Wouldn’t you rather have a drink?” he asked and attempted to hand her the gin on the rocks instead.

“Not before the show!”

I continued to study the newspaper.

“The spaghetti, Warde.”

Warde set down his drink, tore open the package and handed it to Phyllis. She dumped the entire contents into the boiling water. Warde picked up his drink and went back to wherever he’d come from.

When the pasta was done, Phyllis tossed everything together, added a bit of salt and pepper, and divided it among four plates.

“Warde, dinner,” Phyllis called. He appeared promptly,
sans
drink, and we sat down to the table. We were all quiet as we slurped up the garlic spaghetti. We didn’t leave a scrap.

The chopping of the garlic must’ve been therapeutic because by the time we got to the theater, Phyllis had returned to normal.

Nothing untoward happened for the rest of the run. Warde performed his act according to plan, the audiences continued to love Phyllis, and I spent afternoons at the apartment taking dictation.

Two days before Phyllis’s show closed at the Holiday House, Phyllis told me to put together a tip list. “You need to get the names and the correct spelling; that’s very important. I want to acknowledge everyone I worked with.”

Karen coached me on who should receive a tip from Phyllis and it was indeed everyone. I wrote down the names of the limo driver, the stage manager, the spotlight operator, the sound man, the doorman, and everyone else who’d done anything for Phyllis while we were there.

“Do you have the books?” she asked.

Ah! That’s why Maria had put two dozen copies of
Housekeeping Hints
in the office bag.

Phyllis autographed them individually and usually added a cute comment. Some people, like the stage manager, got cash. She told me who and how much, and I put it in an envelope along with the note from her.

When it came time to leave, I almost panicked over the preparations. I checked and double-checked on the limousines on both ends, and confirmed that a passenger service rep would be in Pittsburgh and L.A. At the airport the porter argued about how many bags we were allowed, but when he found out the luggage belonged to Phyllis Diller, he just smiled and wrote out the baggage tags. A large tip didn’t hurt, either. Phyllis’s policy was to tip double the going rate. Many other celebrities weren’t so generous. I appreciated her largess. It certainly made life easier for me. I just wished she had the same attitude toward her own staff.

By the time my dad picked me up at Phyllis’s house in Brentwood at 5:00, we’d worked more than a twelve-hour day. We drove Karen home and on the way filled my dad in on the details of the trip. He raised his eyebrows at Warde’s behavior and let me know that he wasn’t at all sure this was the best of all possible situations for his daughter.

“Are we coming to work tomorrow?” I asked Karen as we pulled up to her building.

“Sure, why not?”

“Well, you know, we did work both Saturday and Sunday, and I just thought that we’ve put in a couple of twelve-hour days so we might, you know, get a day off?” I didn’t know why I should feel hesitant about asking. It seemed as if we were always working, especially Karen, who continually maintained the costumes, mended torn gloves, glued a broken cigarette holder. And if she wasn’t doing that, she was grocery shopping or doing other errands for Phyllis and Warde. Sometimes Phyllis did some of her own shopping, but most often Karen did it in her so-called free time.

I’d spend my mornings typing the letters Phyllis had dictated the afternoon before. In addition to that, I took all of Phyllis’s phone calls. The only calls that went directly to her were family or friends. Promoters and people seeking interviews called for her at the theater. I returned the calls in the morning, setting up tentative appointments for her to approve. I also talked to fans, promising an autographed picture to be left at the desk or giving an address where they could send a letter.          

So, by the time we reached Karen’s on Thursday evening, it had been a long trip, and I thought maybe Phyllis would have said, “Don’t come in tomorrow,” or Karen would say, “We always take off a day when we get home from a trip.” But it was not to be. Friday was just another working day, although it was the twelfth in a row.

Overtime pay? No such thing.

9

A
utumn in New York! It sounded good—and it was. A convention had booked Phyllis to entertain for one night.
Really?
They were paying for four people to fly cross-country for an hour’s appearance and picking up the hotel tab for two nights.

 
Impressive!
Karen was thrilled. Going back to New York for her was like going back to London for me. When Phyllis had played the female lead in the Broadway production of
Hello
,
Dolly!
, they’d been there for weeks. Karen made plans to get together with friends and show me around.

We arrived late in the afternoon with just half a dozen suitcases this time. Phyllis and Warde had dinner with friends, so Karen and I were free to “go out and play” as Phyllis put it. Karen called her friend Marlene and we went for Chinese food. The lights of New York were everything I expected, as was the frantic pace that everyone embraced. We ate at a cozy Chinese restaurant, obviously one that Karen had patronized many times. Her friends, who owned the restaurant, were happy to see her; she introduced me. We bowed and smiled, and they spoke a language I didn’t understand. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was eating, but everything tasted so good, I didn’t want to ask. By the time we finished, I was full and tired, and happy that Karen suggested we cab it back to the Plaza.

In the morning I simply had to explore the shops. I suppose New York had a lot of historic sights worth seeing, but I couldn’t resist the allure of Fifth Avenue. Karen and I gazed into the windows of the big department stores, and in one of the smaller shops I spotted a pair of boots and fell in love.

“There’s no price on them,” Karen pointed out. “That’s a bad sign.”

“Let’s just go ask.”

Karen trailed me into the posh shop. As I sank into the springy, dark-green carpet, I knew I was way out of my league. The salesman approached with an air of disdain.

“May I help you?” he inquired in a voice that clearly indicated he had little desire to do so. I considered just turning around and leaving, but the place was as empty as a Shea Stadium at Christmas, so I decided I couldn’t be infringing too drastically on his time.

“I wanted the price of the boots in the window,” I managed in my snootiest voice.

He didn’t need to ask which ones; they were the only pair of boots in the window. He smiled glacially and quoted me a price close to the round-trip airfare from L.A. I did not give him the pleasure of seeing me react. I swallowed a gasp, then managed to inquire in my best lady-of-the-manor voice, “And is that each, or for that do I get a pair?”

Before he could reply, Karen and I slid out the door and nearly collapsed laughing on the sidewalk. As I struggled to catch my breath, I sputtered, “I can’t believe people would pay so much for something they put on their feet to walk around in the mud.”

“So, how about lunch?” she said.

“Isn’t there an Automat around here?”

Karen favored me with a look of pure exasperation. We stopped in a little coffee shop and ate sandwiches, then headed back to the hotel and called up to Phyllis’s room.

“Warde’s gone to visit friends, so it’s just us,” she said. “You order the car and I’ll be right down.”

Although she called it a rehearsal, it was really reconnaissance. We needed to find the stage entrance and get the geography of the place.

“Small dressing room,” Karen said as she opened the door.

“It’s not as close to the stage as I’d like. Check the lights,” Phyllis said.

Karen flipped all the switches and lit up the room.

“This is okay. It’s hard to put on false eyelashes in the gloom,” Phyllis commented as she looked in the mirror.

I figured she’d done it so many times she could probably do it in the dark.

“No lock on the door,” Karen said. “I’m not leaving the costume bag here.”

I suggested she leave it in the care of the stage manager, but Karen vetoed that. “We’ll have to bring it back with us tonight.”

The orchestra was rehearsing for the opening-act singer, so I gave them the music for Phyllis’s introduction and play-off, both of which were brief. Professional musicians could play it at a glance. The entire outing took less than twenty minutes.

“Back to the hotel,” Phyllis told the limo driver; then to us she said, “We’ll order from room service.”

Neither Karen nor I was hungry, since we’d just had lunch, but Phyllis ordered some soup. We ate it anyway.

Warde had not returned, so Phyllis and I worked on her seemingly never-shrinking stack of correspondence until it was time to leave.

That night I realized another reason Phyllis liked me was that I towered over her. She had a not irrational fear of being hemmed in, and after the night’s performance I could see why.

The venue was not a regular theater but a convention facility, so security was minimal. At the end of her performance and before she could get to the dressing room, several people made their way backstage. As soon as they spotted Phyllis, they made a mad dash to say hello. I’m sure they had no intention other than to be friendly, and perhaps they were a little overcome with the thrill of seeing a celebrity, but a dozen excited people bearing down on one can be frightening, especially for a petite woman. People thrust programs at her seeking autographs as other hands reached out to touch her.

“Is this your real hair?” someone shouted as an arm stretched toward her head.

“What a gorgeous costume!” someone else exclaimed as a hand clutched the glittering beads.

“Let me give you a hug!” a large lady screeched as she grabbed Phyllis.

They had backed Phyllis against a wall, and I could sense panic starting as she found herself trapped. I waded into the middle of the group and put a protective arm around her, although ordinarily she didn’t like to be touched.

“I’m sorry, we have to leave now,” I announced. Putting my other arm out in front of me and stepping on only a few toes, I managed to extract Phyllis and guide her into the dressing room. Karen slammed the door. We all sat quietly for about five minutes, and Phyllis tried to pretend she wasn’t rattled. Then came a knock on the door. We froze. When Phyllis nodded, I went to the door and opened it slowly. It was the orchestra leader with our music. I hoped I wasn’t too abrupt as I grabbed it out of his hand and slammed the door again.

Once Phyllis had changed out of her costume, I cracked open the door and peeked out. “All clear!” I said and the three of us raced to the waiting limo, Karen dragging the large suitcase and me holding the wig box and the music.

It was well past midnight when we got back to the hotel. We escorted Phyllis to her suite, and Karen got together with her friend Marlene again. I packed and fell into bed.

Warde liked to get to the airport just in the nick of time. His idea of the perfect arrival was to get out of the limousine, be driven in the cart to the gate and step aboard just as the flight attendants readied doors for closing. “I don’t like wasting my time sitting around airports,” he’d say. We often told Warde a departure time of half an hour sooner than it actually was. The obvious problem with that, of course, was that someday he would catch on. He never did.

That day our flight left at noon and I instructed the limo to pick us up at 10:30. Warde believed the flight took off at 11:30, so he had his bag packed and jacket over his arm at 10:45. He just couldn’t ever seem to be on time. I didn’t know if he was one of those people who are chronically late or if he wanted to prove that he didn’t take orders from anyone.

We got to the airport and walked onto the plane as the flight attendant was preparing to close the door—just the way Warde liked it. Had we followed his schedule and left at 11:00, we would have missed the flight.

10

W
hen we got back to L.A., Warde’s older son, Shane, met Phyllis and Warde at the airport with the Rolls Royce. Warde made a big production of getting Phyllis settled in the car. Several heads turned to look.

Karen turned her back and stalked to the baggage area. By that time everything was off the carousel and someone had stacked our collection in a corner. I counted and gave the okay to the skycap. They were all there. As usual, I tipped a generous amount, as Phyllis had instructed. Not only was she generous with skycaps and porters, but she reminded us always to leave tips for the hotel maids.

Because the flight had stopped in St. Louis, it was nearly five o’clock by the time we got back to Phyllis’s, and Karen seemed to have recovered from her two nights on the town. “Leave the bags here,” she told me as we stacked them inside the front door. “If they know we’re here, they’ll think of something for us to do.” We were gone before anyone realized we’d even been there.

The next morning Maria was all atwitter. “You’ll never believe!” she started when I got into the office.

“What won’t I believe?” I’d worked there less than two months and not a single day went by that something didn’t surprise me.

“Well,” Maria continued with a trace of Castilian accent, “Phyllis’s agent, Mr. Moch, called yesterday.” Her eyes sparkled. “And guess what?”

“What?”

“You’re going to London!”

“London!” For a minute I couldn’t catch my breath. “Are you sure?”              

“To do the Tom Jones show!” she said, her voice rising.