Flavor of the Month (115 page)

“What about
Lila?
What’s going to happen to
her?
”

“Nothing’s going to happen. She still has Kerry’s trust fund. And she’s got the millions she’ll made out of this series. And the Emmy. I hope they don’t fuck up the Emmy for her. Isn’t all that enough?”

The phone rang in the bottom drawer. Theresa looked at Robbie, for him to answer it. He just shook his head. Theresa wobbled to her feet and lurched across the room.

“Yes? Certainly. I’ll be waiting.” She turned to Robbie. “That was Ms. McElroy. She just wanted to let me know the doctors are coming to give me a report, that I should let them in.”

The double rap was soft on the door. Theresa finished what was in her glass, then stood in the center of the room. Robbie opened the door, and two doctors in surgical greens walked in.

“Miss O’Donnell,” the older doctor began. He took a step toward Theresa and reached for her hand. “I’m afraid we have very bad news. I’m so sorry. We lost her.”

Theresa stood there silently for a moment. “What do you mean, ‘lost’?”

“Lila Kyle is dead, Miss O’Donnell. He died during surgery.”

Robbie made a choking noise, but started walking toward the door as if to leave. Theresa screamed, “Robbie, don’t leave me. I need you.” But Robbie didn’t even slow his steps.

Jahne heard the shot, saw Lila crumple like a puppet with its strings cut, but it was the silence, that moment of eerie, terrible silence, that let her know something was horribly wrong. Then the screaming started.

Afterward, Jahne wondered what she would have done without Brewster. He got her up and out of her seat; then, somehow, in all the screaming, pushing, hysterical crowd, he united her with Sharleen, Dean, and Dobe. “Keep them here,” he told Dobe. “I’m a doctor. I have to see if I can help.”

He made it up to the stage by walking on the seat backs. Dobe kept the three of them together, sheltered by a column. Jahne watched as celebrities tore at one another to get out the exit doors. Then Brewster was back, breathless but calm.

“He’s been apprehended. It’s all right. Some nut with a grudge, apparently. They’ve taken his gun. It’s all right. We’re all safe, as long as some actor doesn’t kill us as he stampedes over us out the door.”

“Is Lila okay?” Sharleen asked.

“I don’t think so. A chest wound. Serious, but maybe not fatal.”

“Oh, God! It could have been either of us!” Jahne shuddered. Sharleen began to cry.

Then, at last, Gerald La Brecque’s staff reached them. There was a lot of talk then about security exits and conspiracies and snipers, but Jahne stopped listening. She had started to shake again, the way she had in the morning, except this time she couldn’t stop. She wasn’t afraid, not exactly, not of some sniper. She suddenly felt afraid of
everything
, the theater, the stage, the security guards, the crowds, the lights, the noise. Her shaking got worse. She tried to say something, but found that she couldn’t speak.

“Jahne’s sick!” Dean said, and she felt a wash of gratitude that he had noticed. Then Brewster had his coat off, around her shoulders, and his arms made a safe circle for her. She closed her eyes, and he murmured something, and she kept her head down on his shoulder, and somehow they got out of the theater and into a car and there was the noise of sirens, and lights flashing from the police cars, or cameras, she couldn’t tell which, and then there was darkness.

Brewster stayed with her round the clock for the next two days. They were at the Beverly Wilshire, and in a corner suite. The house had been thought too dangerous, until the truth about the assassin became clear. Brewster talked to her and read to her, but mostly she napped. He kept the TV off and allowed her no calls or newspapers, but on the second day he told her all about Lila. Jahne listened, in shock and amazement, and cried.

“A man? She was transsexual?”

“No, not medically. She was still intact. Probably impotent. Asexual.”

She began to cry again. “It’s all so sad.” He held her hand until she fell asleep. Jahne felt she could sleep for a month.

Brewster didn’t let her up out of bed except for trips to the bathroom. He called Room Service, let her speak to Sharleen, but he kept everyone else at bay. It was a relief.

Finally, she pushed herself up in bed and managed a smile. “You’re a wonderful doctor,” she said.

He shook his head. “No, I’m a wonderful nurse. So are you, for that matter.”

Jahne thought back to how long ago it was since she’d been a nurse. It felt like decades.

“Are you feeling better?”

“Much better. I still can’t believe it, but I’m okay. Really.”

“Well, there’s someone who wants to see you. He’s been camped outside in the hallway for two days. I didn’t feel comfortable about sending him away.”

“Sam?” she asked, and felt herself blush. Brewster nodded.

“Do you want to see him, or should I send him away?”

Jahne sighed. “I already sent him away once. I better see him. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s your life, Jahne. You don’t have to apologize. You don’t owe me anything.” He turned and went to the door.

I must look like shit, Jahne thought, and then got angry at herself. Oh, God, who cared about looks? Sam? Well, he didn’t matter to her anymore.

She looked up. Sam had silently entered the bedroom.

“You’re all right? I couldn’t believe it. I had to see you. You’re all right?” She nodded. Sam approached the side of the bed. “God, when I saw the murder on TV, I realized that it would kill me if anything happened to you. Mary Jane, I…I don’t know what you need to hear to come back to me, I don’t know what you want me to say, but I know that there is no one, absolutely no one on earth that I want to marry except you.”

“Marry?” She was speechless. “Marry you? I never want to
see
you again.”

“Oh, I know you felt that way before
Birth
hit as big as it did. But surely now you see that it was necessary to…”

“Are you crazy?” she asked him. “Have you gone completely crazy?”

“Listen, we’ve both done things we aren’t proud of. But it’s not too late…”

“That’s where you are two hundred and ten percent wrong. It’s
years
too late,” she told him.

“Jahne, everything you said, every word, was true. I’ve been doing some thinking. Some real thinking. And I know what I want now. I want you. No one but you. Let’s forget everything else.” He took her hand. “Life’s too short to waste.”

She looked at him. What had she loved about him? His looks? His selfishness? His easy, shallow style? His facile wit? How shallow had she been to care about this man?

“You’re right,” she said at last. “Life
is
too short to waste. That’s why I won’t spend another minute with you.”

It wasn’t until the third day that Brewster let Jahne watch the news herself. There was a special segment of
Entertainment Tonight
that focused on the shooting. Jahne watched clips of herself and Lila and Sharleen arriving for the Emmy awards, then she saw the close-ups of them in the audience. It was macabre. Who would want to watch this awfulness play out? Why was the audience tuned in? To watch the death of an idol? A false idol? Poor, poor Lila. It made Jahne sick. Literally sick to her stomach. “Well, as a doctor, I’ll give you the remedy that my mother always suggested,” Brewster smiled. Then he called Room Service.

She was drinking from a glass of plain old ginger ale when she saw, for the first time, the apprehension of the gunman. And there, on the screen, was a close-up of Neil Morelli.

Jahne said goodbye to Brewster at her front door. The idea of an airport farewell reminded her too much of her last one, with Neil, back in New York. She shivered.

“Are you cold?” Brewster asked, and she smiled at his concern. It should be winter, after the killing frost that had descended upon them all, but Hollywood was heartless, and the air was balmy.

“No. I’m fine. I will be fine.” She stopped. She wasn’t too certain of that, so why lie? “Listen, Brewster, I don’t know how I’m ever going to thank you…”

“Well, I think you just did.” He was looking down at his feet.

“No. You deserve something more than just words.”

“I
do
need these shoes resoled,” he said, then shrugged at his attempt at a joke. “Hey, this is what friends are for,” he said. And he raised himself on his toes and kissed her, just once, and very gently, on the lips. Then he was gone.

Jahne went back into the house, her lips tingling. She hadn’t kissed anyone since Sam, and it felt good. A tiny bit of the grimness lifted. But then she remembered Lila. Her lips were cold by now. Jahne picked up her cat, settled herself on the sofa, and began to write a list. She had a lot to do.

When the phone rang, she couldn’t decide whether to answer or not. But La Brecque’s security guy did it for her. He stood at the door to the living room and called out to her, “It’s some guy called Sam. You want to take the call?”

Jahne sat, frozen. What in the world did he want now? She shook her head—not at the guard, but at herself. “I’ll take it,” she told him, and reached for the extension beside her.

“Mary Jane? Jahne? Is it you?”

“Yes. It’s me.”

Sam was silent for a moment. “Listen, this is business. I know how you feel about me, but I think we have a lot to talk about. Among other things, I’m just signing a three-picture deal with Paramount. And I want you for the lead in my first film for them.”

Now it was Jahne’s turn to be silent. Hollywood! She almost snorted. It was the town where the devil disguised himself as a producer and offered a three-picture deal. Who
was
this guy at the other end of the line? Who had she thought he was, and who did he think she was? “Sorry. Homey don’t do that no more,” was all she said.

His voice deepened. She heard the actor bring in the strings. Was he acting, was he crazy, or was he just the most insensitive man in America? “It can be the way it was. I’m working on the script, and it’s good, Jahne. Really good. It’s about a race-car driver who nearly loses the woman he loves because he can’t give up racing.” He paused. She didn’t say a word. “Look, I know it sounds juvenile, but it doesn’t play that way.” He stopped to take a breath. And, for the first time in this amazing conversation, Jahne thought she heard his true voice.

“We could be good together, Jahne,” he said.

Gently, she hung up the phone.

They wouldn’t stop playing the goddamn song. Sy Ortis swerved, almost hitting a lamppost as he fumbled for the Blaupunkt radio dial, but it didn’t matter what station he listened to. Since the shooting, they were
all
playing the Kinks’ tribute to female impersonators. Next that stupid cocksucker Al Yankovic would do a parody actually called “Lila.” But, really, there wasn’t much that could be added to the original.

Not surprisingly, the Early Artists management offices were going batshit. Sponsors, the press, the studio—all of Hollywood, it seemed, wanted to cash in or cash out on
Three for the Road
. And that old
puta
Laura Bitchy had actually had the nerve to call him at home, at night, on his private number, to ask if he had ever seen either Jahne Moore or Lila in the nude.

When Sy Ortis reached Reception, the little fool at the desk had a copy of the
Informer
lying there, an obvious pastiche photo on the cover with a screaming red headline that said, “The Scandal to End the Road Show.”

“What are you planning to do after you work here?” Sy asked the girl.

“I don’t know,” she said, blinking.

“Too bad, because you don’t work here anymore,” he told her. He grabbed the paper off her desk, then crumpled it and tore it to shreds before he threw it to the ground and walked over it. He slammed through the swinging glass doors on down the hall. His secretary stood waiting. “Any word from Mr. DiGennaro?”

“No. He’s still under sedation. But there was a call from the hospital. There’s been a change in Miss…I mean, Mr. Kyle’s condition.” She paused. “I mean, the fact is, he’s dead.”

“What the heil do I care?” barked Sy Ortis. “The bitch—I mean the son of a bitch—was as good as dead anyway.” Christ, he couldn’t breathe! Sy got into his office and began to scrabble through his desk drawers, looking for another aspirator. His chest felt as if it would burst. If he wasn’t careful, he’d wind up in the morgue at Cedars, next to that freak. He tried to count, just to get his breath. As he did, he saw the pile of pink message slips lying beside his multibutton phone. He rifled through them. All clients, soon to be ex-clients, he guessed. Of course, every one of the
niños de las putas
was calling in to “discuss management issues.” Of course. There was no loyalty, no sense of history, with these children of pigs. They’d be calling Mike Ovitz, CMI and CAA and all the other agents so fast that phone lines would be melting.

Everything was falling apart! Marty was having some kind of breakdown, the Okie blonde was a pervert, Jahne Moore was a surgical trick, and fuckin’ Lila Kyle was a man! Over at the Network, they were going crazy. Les Merchant was threatening to cancel the show. Hyram Flanders was homicidal, and all the other sponsors were bailing out. Christ, he’d be lucky if the merchandisers didn’t sue his ass. Well, they probably would. This would cost him millions!

But it was worse than that! Hollywood was a town built on hype, but it was a town that believed its own. When you were hot you were hot, and when you were not you were
frío
to the max. Christ! Sy winced. What would those gringo cocksuckers at Morton’s be saying about him this Monday night? He almost writhed in his chair as he thought about it. Their little grins as he walked by their tables, the concealed laughs. Jokes about wetbacks and chicano-ry! Oh, he could hear it all now.

Damage control was necessary. Lots of it, and fast. But wasn’t it too late for the spin doctors? Well, he could salvage Jahne Moore.
Birth of a Star
was still a hit, a big one. She could eke out another major part. The curiosity factor was high on her. That TV script he’d read last month about the prostitute who adopts the two kids. It could work. Meanwhile, they’d sue the
Informer
, and that bitch Laura Richie. No, suits took too long and cost too much. He wrinkled his brow and took a prophylactic suck on the aspirator.