Flavor of the Month (62 page)

MEMORANDUM

TO:
Ara Sagarian

FROM:
Lila Kyle

SUBJECT:
See Attached

Ara, what the fuck is going on? I got this fan letter and, as you can see, Sharleen Smith and Jahne Moore fans are getting silk-screened T-shirts. All Sy Ortis’ work, apparently. I thought you had it all worked out with the Network? Are the people in Publicity on the same planet?

I don’t want to have to go directly to Selma Gold on this myself. So, Ara, get them shaped up! I’m busting my ass here day after day, and then I find out Publicity is playing favorites. I want this kid to get two dozen shirts, and four dozen signed pictures, color, eight-by-ten glossy…assorted poses. And pins, medals, membership kits—the whole works. Have Gold put this kid on the priority mailing list. She’s as important to me as the fucking assholes at
Time
magazine.

Do I have to think of everything? Stay on top of this, Ara. Sy Ortis is fucking you over—and me. What’s he got going with Gold? Get back to me.

L.K.

Jahne was standing on the express checkout line at Mrs. Gooches, where celebrities did their fancy grocery shopping. The place was fabulous: all the fruit and vegetables were displayed like jewels and cost almost as much. She had a wig pulled down low over her forehead, and a large straw hat sitting on top of it. She wore an old, thin trench coat, although it was hot out, and a pair of tattered Reeboks. She felt like an escapee from someplace, incognito, taking a chance on getting mobbed because it was better than hiding behind locked doors another minute. It would have made her smile, but she didn’t want to attract any unnecessary attention to herself. Going to the supermarket had suddenly become a daring treat.

She placed her basket on the edge of the counter, waiting her turn at the cashier. The magazines were screaming her name and her face at her. She picked up the first one at hand. “Three Beauty Secrets from Three Beauties,” read the blurb on the front cover. Jahne flipped through the pages until she came to the article. “Jahne Moore, the brunette star of ‘Three for the Road,’ uses only…” Yeah, she thought. She uses only the finest plastic surgeon. So much bullshit. She was replacing the magazine on the rack when the woman behind her spoke up.

“Can you believe those three?” she said, indicating the picture of the costars of
Three for the Road
on one of the magazine covers.

Jahne smiled and nodded.

“They really piss me off, you know? How are any of us supposed to get to look like them? I mean, what am I supposed to do? You think eating carrots and doing fifty thousand sit-ups will make a goddamn bit of difference? Look, I always say, if God didn’t give it to you, you can’t get it. So I make do.”

Jahne’s turn at the register came up just then. “I know what you mean,” she said, as she picked up the brown bag and walked out the door.

Marty DiGennaro’s secretary, Staci, opened the door and rolled her eyes. “Unbelievable!” she said. “If this shit keeps up, I quit!”

Marty looked up from his messy desk. “What? Come in. Sit down. I’ll get you some coffee. What is it?”

“What is it? They’re driving me nuts. Every asshole in Hollywood—no, in California—no, maybe in the whole
country
—is trying to bullshit me to get to you. The girls are going crazy. Just this morning, we had three calls from your ‘brothers,’ a call from your ‘doctor’ about the ‘test results,’ a hysterical call from ‘Joanie’ about your son…”

“Is anything wrong with Sacha?”

“Yeah, he’s got a madman for a daddy. They weren’t your brother, your doctor, or Joanie. They were assholes. And gifts—how about a diamond-and-gold Rolex that’s already engraved ‘To my friend Marty from his friend Larry’?”

“Who’s Larry?”

“Another asshole. Some producer out in East Bumfuck who wants to talk to you about a movie deal. He needs two of the three girls, but he writes, and I quote, ‘I don’t care which two, and if you prefer we can cut the lesbian scenes with the full frontal nudity.’ He enclosed the screenplay from hell.”

Marty laughed. “Come on, Staci. This isn’t the first hit you’ve been through with me. You sound like a kid out of Katie Gibbs. You’ve handled worse.”

“Yeah, but not for so long. I mean,
week
after
week
after
week
. A movie comes out, it hits, we react, then it’s over. This is relentless. Marty, you never heard me complain before, right? Well, I’m exhausted. I don’t know if I can keep up with you on this one.” Staci sat back, her fatigue showing in the dark shadows around her eyes.

“Okay, get yourself a secretary.”

“But
I’m
a secretary.”

“Not anymore. You are now my executive assistant. With a raise. So hire yourself a secretary—right away—give her a week’s training, then take a week off at the Hotel del Mar in San Diego. My treat.” Marty smiled at the surprise on Staci’s face. “Then get back here rested up and get back to work.”

“Marty, thanks. Hey, I didn’t mean it seriously. I just like to bitch. I don’t know…I wasn’t coming in here to hold you up…I just wanted to get this stuff off my…Thanks, Marty.” She leaned over the desk and kissed him on the forehead. “But what about you? You need a rest, too. To get away.”

“Get away? I’ve worked all my life to get
here
. And I’m staying for as long as I can.”

MEMORANDUM

TO:
Sharleen Smith and Jahne Moore

FROM:
Sy Ortis

SUBJECT:
Sports Illustrated
write-up, attached

Have you seen this?

Just received a call from Bill Gottlieb from
Sports Illustrated
. How about doing their annual Bathing Suit issue? Have already discussed this with Marty and he’s all for it.

Let’s talk.

S. O.

LILA KYLE

YOU ARE MERELY A PRODUCT OF HOLLYWOOD NEPOTISM. I WOULDN’T FUCK YOU WITH SOMEONE ELSE’S DICK.

JUGHEAD

President

National Anti-Nepotism League

What’s On … SUNDAY 8:00 p.m.— Star Search Famous Look-Alikes. Tonight, Shirley MacLaine. 9:00 p.m.— Three for the Road. Cara helps an old boyfriend avoid the draft. Crimson and Clover stage a diversion and he escapes to Canada. Ricky Dunn guest stars.

TOP TEN REASONS WHY WOMEN WATCH “THREE FOR THE ROAD” — FROM Late Night with David Letterman 10. So they can hate themselves in the morning 9. They’re into motorcycles 8. Their boyfriends make them 7. If they just lost a little weight and got the right pair of jeans, they’d look exactly like Clover 6. So they can call their girlfriends afterward and get down 5. Their husbands make them 4. They’ve worn out their tape of Thelma and Louise 3. They’re into self-hatred 2. Crimson, Cara, and Clover are a lot better-looking than Leona Helmsley, who steals billions; Tammy Bakker, who steals millions; and Bess Myerson, who steals from Woolworth’s 1. For a feeling of solidarity with their sisters

“Sickos,” “Beggars,” “Negative,” and “Real Fans.” The signs were lettered over the empty boxes, and Lila was explaining how she wanted her fan mail stacked each day to the secretary and clerk she had hired for the job. Lila knew from her mother that fan mail was an important indicator of how marketable one was. “The sick shit I want delivered to the head of studio security every day. Keep a record of names, addresses, and phone numbers that are on any of them, but usually they write anonymously. Staple the envelope they came in to the letter, in case there’s someone who’s scary enough to have to track down.” The secretary, Myra, an older black woman, nodded. She’d been through most of this bullshit before.

“Beggars are sent my picture, the standard sympathy bullshit letter, plus a list of charitable resources they can write to. I’m not the fucking Red Cross.” Lila twisted a lipstick up out of the tube and smoothed it over her pouty lips. The secretary noticed it was MAC, not the Flanders brand.

Lila continued. “Now, never show me the negative mail, but keep it in case I might want to go through it one day. The positive stuff—the stuff that seems to be coming from real fans—I want to see every one of them. Every one. Do you have that, now?” she asked the two women.

Myra nodded. Poor sick bitch didn’t have much of a home life if she cared about this.

Jahne was still surprised by how much she liked L.A. Back on the East Coast, Sam and her New York friends had always spoken about it with derision, contempt, and bitterness. But it
was
pretty. And it was easy. So much easier than New York. What had Bertolucci called it? “The big nipple.” Yes. In some ways, it was as easy as that.

Jahne loved the little house she’d rented in the Hollywood Hills; it was only two tiny bedrooms and a big living room, but it had a deck with a view and the small lap pool. It even came complete with a part-time house-boy, and oranges on the orange trees!

Of course, at first Jahne had had to adjust. Being alone in a house was so different from being stuck in a dark fourth-floor walk-up on Fifty-fourth Street. Not that she got to spend much time here: with work and the dozens of business appointments, her hairdressing, facials and manicures, costume fittings, and the Flanders Cosmetics photo sessions, she wasn’t home much. But when she was, the hours felt lonely. So Jahne got a cat—a sweet black Persian. In a typical burst of perversity, she named him Snowball, in honor of the cat she’d had as a girl in Scuderstown, and thought also of poor Midnight, her white cat left back in New York.

She thought of Midnight, and a lot more from her past. In fact, since she’d seen Sam at the Chasen’s look-see, she couldn’t seem to stop thinking of all her friends back home. She hoped that they, like Midnight, would get what they needed. What would they say if they could see her now? A TV star, with a great place to live, money in the bank, and an affair with Michael McLain.

It still amazed her that a star as big as he was interested in her. He had been so kind about the scars. He listened to her problems on the set, gave good advice, and even ran lines with her. If his performance in bed seemed a little bit—well—like a performance, she guessed it was a small price to pay. He was good company, and a wonderful listener.

But she still missed her old friends. She had never thought it was a mistake back then simply to drop out of their lives: not when she was so miserably a failure. Even now, she could easily conjure up Molly’s look of pity for her and feel almost physically sick. She’d gotten so tired of the role of fat, plain, goodhearted, and pitiable Mary Jane that she didn’t, couldn’t, have anything to do with those who’d known her and expected her to play that role.

And now, even if she wanted to, it would be more than a little awkward to call up Molly or Chuck or Neil or any of them and say, “Hi! Sorry I disappeared like that, but now I’m famous, beautiful, and rich. I got my own TV show. How
you
doing?”

With her cute house, her new face, her perfect body, her cute kitten, her new romance, and a career that was taking off, Jahne figured she had nothing to complain about. If it was a bit shallow, so be it. She had her weekly letters to Dr. Moore, working now in a plastic-surgery mobile camp in Honduras somewhere. It was ironic that her best friend, the only person who knew her, was in another world. But he had taken the time last week to write her a long letter.

Somehow, though, none of it was enough to banish thoughts of the past. Thoughts of Sam.

She knew that the answer was to make new friends. But it was harder than she’d expected. Perhaps she could build some sort of relationship with Sharleen. And she
was
becoming friends with Mai. The rest would just take time. Slowly, she knew, her world would expand, and as she met more people, tested their loyalty, she would build a new community. Transitions were hard, she reminded herself, and thought of nursing school, of her first auditions, of the New York cattle calls, her first summer-stock job. She’d been alone then, and it was only natural to be alone now.

But since she’d seen Sam, something had changed. The loneliness she’d tried to assuage first with Pete and now with Michael seemed to grow: it was palpable, a real feeling in her chest. During the day, the busy, frenzied workday, she was all right, but in the evenings she found herself reliving those moments with Sam at the party and the lunch at Chasen’s, trying to read their meaning.

He had seen her but not known her. In a way, it was a graduation: her transformation was complete. She was the consummate actress. If no one knew it, it should be enough that she did. And now she should forget him. But the feeling of his hand against hers, or their brief conversation on April’s terrace, came back to her again and again.

She was proud of her performances:
I
walked away from
him
, she told herself. I haven’t called them back about the audition. But she thought of his aftershave, and the warm scent of his breath. “That way madness lies,” she murmured, and tried not to remember how he had looked at her, the approval in his eyes as he had complimented her hair, her dress. Twice since then, she had slipped into it again and stared at herself in the mirror, looked at what he had looked at. He had flirted with her. He had been attracted to her, had singled her out. Could she work with him? What would she do if he ever called her about the film? What would she do if he asked her out?

Maybe I could see him, she thought. Maybe I could try to make him love me, and then leave him. The ultimate revenge. She almost smiled, then shook her head. She had schooled herself to play the
belle dame sans merci
, the
femme fatale
, but could she really do it? Could she be the victimizer, not the victim? What would it be like to make him want her, love her, and then reject him? Sam deserved it, but could she trust herself to stay uninvolved? Perhaps the worst part of all this was how guilty it made her feel about Michael. Here she was, thinking about Sam, and she had a date with Michael McLain tonight! He was kind to her, but she knew she was using him. I’m acting the way men do! she thought. They are the ones who sleep with a substitute when they can’t get the real thing. Oh, she was confused, but she had to admit it was a heady, exciting confusion.