Flavor of the Month (44 page)

“Whee, Mr. DiGennaro, please! Give me a minute to catch my breath. I don’t know what any of them jobs is, so, if it’s okay with y’all. I’ll just try to memorize your names for now. Heck,” she said with a laugh, “I don’t even know what my job is yet, but I’m here to learn. I’m Sharleen,” she said to the group, and took a seat at the conference table. “Howdy.” She wondered why Lila and Jahne weren’t here yet. She had met them already, of course, but she was a little afraid of seeing them again today.
They
were
really
beautiful. Lord, she asked herself, how have I been picked to stand beside
them?
Sharleen looked around at the sea of faces and smiled. She was very pleased to see them all smile back. They’re all so nice over here in Hollywood, Sharleen thought. Much nicer than in Bakersfield.

Jahne Moore didn’t have to be called to the opening meeting twice. She knew that today’s first impression was very important. It would set the tone with Marty, with the other two leads, and for how she would be treated by the crew for the duration of the show. Marty was already there, and, Jahne was sure, so were all the other departments, but the last people to arrive at these meetings were usually the stars. Costars, she corrected herself. Jahne wondered about Sharleen Smith and Lila Kyle. She hadn’t seen either of the girls since they had met at the publicity party that announced their signing. She had liked Sharleen, and knew instinctively that Sharleen was no threat. Lila, she was afraid, might be another story. But maybe I should wait and see, she told herself, before I form
any
opinions.

The meeting was held on Soundstage 14. Marty DiGennaro met her halfway across the floor of the huge hangarlike space, took her by the arm, and escorted her to the table. “Sharleen, you’ve met Jahne Moore, your costar?” Then he introduced her to the rest of the crew, and Jahne made it a point to shake each one’s hand. She knew how much any production was a team effort. And how much she’d depend on them. She might be a costar, but if
these
people didn’t do their jobs right,
no one
looked good. Pete was there, sitting behind Jim Bert, head cameraman. He smiled at her, but was discreet enough not to do more.

Jahne joined the group at the meeting. “Hi, Sharleen,” she said, sitting next to her. “How are you doing?”

“Jahne,” Sharleen leaned to her and whispered, “
how
I’m doin’ ain’t the question. The question is,
what
am I doin’? And
here?
Don’t tell anyone, but I think I’m asleep and dreaming this.”

Jahne laughed and touched Sharleen’s arm. Yes, she liked Sharleen.
If
she was sincere. Sincere or not, she was breathtakingly beautiful. She was to play Clover, the Texan, to Jahne’s Cara, a New Yorker. Jahne listened to Sharleen chattering comfortably away to a couple of the lighting guys, as if she’d known them all her life. I just hope she keeps that innocence, Jahne thought, then laughed to herself. Fat chance. This is Hollywood. The girl was going to need more than the little book she was clutching to protect herself. Especially with
that
body.

Jahne looked over at the only empty chair at the table and saw who it was everyone was waiting for. Lila Kyle. She still hadn’t come out of her dressing room. Jahne had heard Lila arrive on the set, but where
was
she? It’s not as if there were costumes and makeup today. It was just a preliminary meeting, to get to know everybody. She saw Marty lean toward his assistant and whisper something to her. Clare nodded her head, stood up, and walked in the direction of the dressing rooms. Give me a break, Jahne thought. Lila isn’t playing “star,” is she? Not this soon? And not with Marty DiGennaro?

More than anything, Jahne was a professional. In the past, someone might criticize her talent, her appearance, her interpretation of a role, but
never
her commitment to a project. She prided herself on always being on time, knowing her lines and her blocking, and believing that the director had the final word.

The murmuring died down slightly, and Jahne looked toward the approaching figure. Lila Kyle was walking slowly across the set, through the taped-down cables and lighting apparatus, every movement choreographed, Jahne could tell. Lila wore tight black leather pants, black high-heeled boots, and a black leather jacket with zippers and enormous shoulders. The boots and the shoulder pads didn’t seem excessive on Lila’s six-foot frame. On the contrary, in a strange way, Jahne felt that Lila’s height and bone structure demanded them. And she was certainly in character for her role: Crimson, the runaway rich girl from San Francisco.

Lila came to a stop at the end of the big table as Marty stood to greet her. Before he could make any introductions, she kissed him on the cheek and turned to the rest of the crowd. “Hello. I’m Lila Kyle,” she said, her voice resonant. She paused and took a beat. Jahne looked around. Every man had stood. Well, I’ll be damned, Jahne thought. Now, how did she get them to do that?

Lila sat down, her mother’s favorite famous movie line echoing in her ears: “Don’t fuck with me, boys.” Okay, they got
that
straight, she thought, watching the men take their seats. It was one of the tricks she had learned from Theresa, coming to the sets with her when Lila was a child: how to make an entrance. Be the last to arrive. And let them know you’re a lady. It makes them drop their guard. And their jaws.

Marty was introducing everyone at the table by name. Lila didn’t look around, just kept a small smile on her lips. She had met Sharleen and Jahne before, but hadn’t seen them in street clothes. Lila let her eyes fall on Jahne, who was sitting on one side of her, listening to Marty like he was God. She knew Jahne had real New York acting experience behind her, but, besides her looks, nothing else. And she was short—despite the boots she wasn’t more than five six or seven. The
blonde
didn’t even
have
acting experience. A waitress, for chrissakes, but definitely another beauty.

I don’t have anything to worry about, Lila assured herself. Because while Marty insisted they were three
costars
, Lila intended there to be only one
star
, no matter
what
Marty DiGennaro said.

Lila felt Sharleen’s hand on her arm, and turned, coolly, to look at her. “Those pants are beautiful. Where’d you get them?” Sharleen asked.

“I had them made. They’re from Florence,” Lila said. It didn’t hurt to be a
little
friendly.

“Maybe you’ll give me Florence’s phone number,” Sharleen said. “I’d like her to make me a pair, too.”

Lila blinked, then forced a smile. This one’s too good to be true, she thought. Her eyes fell to the Bible on the table in front of Sharleen. Puh-leeze.

“Florence,
Italy
,” she said, and Sharleen blushed. Lila looked around at the table. “What do you call three blondes sitting in a circle?” she asked. All the faces looked at hers expectantly. “A dope ring,” she told them, and was rewarded with a big laugh.

Only Jahne Moore didn’t join in. She turned to Sharleen. “Florence, Italy, is a city that’s famous for its leather,” she explained to the blushing girl. “But most people pronounce it the Italian way: Firenze.”

Well, fuck her, Lila thought.

Marty DiGennaro sat back and looked around the table. The meeting was going very well, very well indeed. He smiled to himself. Everyone he talked to in the business tried to give him advice. The biggest problem he was going to have, they said, was trying to direct three gorgeous women who had never worked television before. There was no way, they said, he was going to be able to maintain the right balance that would keep them all happy. Now he chuckled. He wondered if they had said the same thing back in the thirties to George Cukor when he was filming
The Women
. If Cukor could direct Joan Crawford, Paulette Goddard, Rosalind Russell,
and
Majorie Main in the same film, for chrissakes, he knew he could direct these three.

All of them were gorgeous, and all of them would look great on screen. But he also knew that one of them was born for the camera, not only because of her beauty, but also because of that certain way she looked back at it. Monroe had had it; she could look into a camera and into the eyes behind it, into the eyes staring back at her on the screen. She saw into the future and men’s souls at the same time. And didn’t seem aware of the gift.

Marty looked at Lila now.
She
had the gift, but, unlike Monroe, she knew it. Which made her dangerous, and probably difficult to control. But oh so exciting.

Cukor controlled his brood mares. Kept them in line, had them pulling as a team, but each stepping to her own beat at the same time. Like Clydesdales. And he had pulled off the coup of a lifetime. An all-female movie.

And Marty would prove he could do it, too. After all, he
was
Marty DiGennaro, and this
was
only television.

After work, Jahne went home exhausted. Most nights, Pete called and asked to come over. Jahne hoped it wasn’t just snobbery that kept her from revealing their relationship, but, to be honest, there wasn’t much of a relationship. He was kind and cooperative. He made love to her and he held her close, and she needed that, but they shared very little else. Pete’s idea of conversation was to comment on the television shows that he always switched on for background noise. He was as comfortable as a warm bath, and about as stimulating. So different from Sam.

She pulled her mind away from the subject. It was madness, an obsession with her. The fact was, she had slept with Pete for all the wrong reasons: out of boredom, loneliness, horniness, and need. She’d behaved the way men do, and now she had to make it right. Poor Pete would pay the price.

When the phone rang, Jahne sighed. She knew it would be Pete. She hated to put him off another night.

“Jahne?”

“Uh-huh.” She tried not to sigh into the receiver.

“Can I come over?”

“I’m awfully tired, Pete.”

“Me, too. Those tracking shots really take it outa ya. But I only want to see you for a minute. I think we have to talk.”

It was such an unusual request from him that she agreed, and in less than ten minutes he was at her door. She moved to the sofa but, instead of following her lead, he continued standing, though he leaned against the wall. “Jahne, I’m no Einstein, but I think I got the picture. You don’t want to talk to me on the set, and I understood that. I’m grateful for the job, too. But my dad explained how it is. You’re going to be a big success with
Three for the Road
and you don’t need a techie hanging around your neck. You can date whoever you want now, and I can tell you don’t want me.”

Jahne stood there, silent. He was goodhearted and sexy and kind to her. How could she tell him that it wasn’t his job but his age that made him inappropriate? And how, in good conscience, could she string him along for her own convenience?

For the first time it occurred to her that, in his inarticulate, young, California way, he loved her. It had been so long since anyone had that it was hard for her to consider it. But who, exactly, did he love? A reconstructed body? A beautifully designed face? Certainly he did not know who she was in any deeper way.

“Maybe you’re right,” she said, and she let him go.

Jahne had never thought much about money. Of course, she had never had much to think about, until after her grandmother’s death, and then all of that had been carefully earmarked for Dr. Moore, the hospital, and other expenses. She had worked in the theater, both for pay and for free, and had managed to eke out whatever else she required from nursing, when she had to.

Back in New York, she’d always kept her expenses low: a rent-stabilized walk-up, Con Ed, the phone and answering service. She’d had a virtually empty savings account, a MasterCard she’d gotten when she’d opened her first account at Chemical Bank, but she’d never had binges on credit. She’d lived frugally, even marginally, and imagined it was fine, a part of
la vie bohème
. After all, she’d never known anything else.

Now, for Jahne Moore, the money was rolling in in swells, each wave larger than the previous one. First the Flanders Cosmetics check had come. Jahne still felt uncomfortable about plugging a product, but she’d had to sign to get the part, though she’d only agreed to one year, not the three they wanted. And the money was glorious! She’d sent off what she owed to Dr. Moore, and, despite taxes, Sy’s agency and finder’s fees, and legal expenses, she’d had over ninety thousand left!

Then, when Jahne got her first paycheck—almost fifty thousand dollars—and realized there would be another one in two weeks’ time, she was staggered. When she had signed the contract with Sy, she had seen that she was paid thirty-three thousand an episode, but somehow, in the excitement, she hadn’t had time really to focus on it. She’d just opened an account at California National and deposited it and the Flanders check. But as check after check came rolling in, she began to feel uneasy.

Now she stared at the bank balance on the latest monthly statement. Two hundred and seventeen thousand six hundred and sixty-three dollars and forty-seven cents! It was unbelievable. And, Jahne knew, it was only a start. Even though the series hadn’t yet begun running on the Network, Sy Ortis had already forwarded her several new scripts for future consideration: they were lousy made-for-television quickies, but not one of them paid less than $250,000. A quarter of a million dollars for five weeks of work! She shook her head. With all of her New York scrambling, Mary Jane had never made more than thirty-five thousand in any year of her life.

Ortis also wanted to talk to her about authorizing a line of leather goods, jeans, and wallpaper, of all things, along with
Three for the Road
dolls—sort of biker Barbies, as she understood the deal. All of it, tawdry and ridiculous as it was, meant a lot more money. And though she had no intention of doing
any
of this proposed crap, she understood that she had fallen—or climbed—into a money stream that wouldn’t stop flowing for some time. Look at Jaclyn Smith or Kate Jackson—since their first TV hit, they’d always had at least a TV-movie-of-the-week or a sitcom gig. Even Suzanne Somers and Farrah Fawcett at least had exercise-equipment ads to fall back on. What had Mary Jane ever had to fall back on but bedpans? And both nursing and New York acting had been hard work. This stuff was insultingly easy. And lucrative.