Flavor of the Month (70 page)

Sy looked over at Dean. “Dean, can Sharleen here sing?”

“Sing? I guess so. Sometimes she sings.”

“See, Sharleen? Even Dean thinks you can sing.”

“Oh, but she don’t sound too good,” Dean said.

“See? Even Dean don’t think I’m any good. Doesn’t that prove anything?”

“It proves you have another way of making money, Sharleen,” Sy answered. “And you keep saying that’s what you’re looking for.”

“Right. Okay, I’m ready,” she said, and ran her fingers through her hair.

When she and Dean got home that night, Sharleen was well and truly exhausted. She had tried all day to sing a few tunes and knew how awful she sounded. She was embarrassed and ashamed, and wished she’d never have to go back there again.

Then, just as she was about to collapse onto the sofa, the phone rang. She groaned. There was no one—not even Jahne—that she wanted to hear from now. She was just too tuckered out.

“Sharleen, can you get that? I need to take the dogs out,” Dean shouted.

“Okay. But I just hope it’s not a crank call.” She reached for the receiver. “Hello,” she said.

“Hello yourself, young lady. How’s my girl?”

“Dobe?” Sharleen almost looked at the receiver for confirmation.

“The one and only, young lady. Dobe Samuels, alive and well. So how are you and Dean?” he asked, his voice sounding friendly and cheerful.

“Dobe! Dobe, I can hardly believe it.” She struggled to sit up. “Where are you? How did you know how to find me?” Sharleen was beside herself with joy. “We moved since I sent you our last address. And this is an unlisted number.”

“I got my ways, you should know that by now, young lady.”

“Can you come on by?”

She heard his warm laugh. “Not right now. I’m in Oregon.”

“What are you doing there?” she asked. She wanted to ask him to come to L. A. Lord, it felt so good to hear his voice!

“I’m working on a deal, honey-chile, and I can’t get away. But, Sharleen, I need to ask you for a favor.”

Sharleen paused. As fast as it had come, that good feeling ebbed away. She should have known. That was the way it had been going since she started doing the TV shows. Everyone wanted her to do something for them. But very few thought about what
she
might need. She shrugged off her disappointment. Well, if there was anyone she
owed
a favor to, she and Dean sure owed one to Dobe Samuels. She’d be happy to do Dobe a favor, she told herself, but, before she could say so, Dobe said, “Now, honey, if you’re too busy, why, old Dobe would understand. I don’t want you taking on too much.”

“Oh, no, Dobe. It wouldn’t be too much. I’d be happy to do you a good turn.”

“That’s my girl,” Dobe said, his voice friendly as usual again. “Now, this is what I need you to do. There’s a United States Customs auction in three weeks, at the Federal Building in downtown L.A. I need you to go to the auction and place a bid on something for me. I need you to bid on—now, write this down—I need you to bid on Lot Number 604. Can you do that, Sharleen? It starts at nine in the morning, and it will take a while for Lot 604 to come up, but it’s
real
important to me. Of course, I’ll pay you whatever you spend, but the most you’ll have to bid is fifty dollars. Tops, seventy-five.”

Sharleen was busily writing on a scrap of paper. Why did Dobe want this? Was it some kind of scam? “Now, wait a minute. What is it I’m bidding on, Dobe? Exactly. Is it them red pills? It’s not drugs or anything like that, is it?”

“Sharleen, this is one-hundred-percent certified legal. It’s doing business with the federal government, and I don’t mess with them G-men in their mirror sunglasses.”

“Okay. So, in three weeks, I go to the auction and bid on this lot number. Then what?”

Dobe outlined the registering and payment methods for buying from a U.S. Customs auction. Then he gave her a number to call him at when she got finished with the auction, so he could arrange for pickup. “Got all that, kid?”

“Sure, Dobe. You can count on me,” she sighed. “Are we gonna see you again?”

“I’ll be in town to see you next month, Sharleen. And we’re going to go out for a nice sit-down, you and Dean and me, and you’re going to tell me all about how it feels to be a rich Hollywood star.”

“Dobe,” she said, in a whisper, “it don’t feel that good. In fact, it feels real lonely.” To her horror, she began to cry.

“Ah, there, there. Poor little girl. I told you, Sharleen. It ain’t easy being a beautiful woman, especially a rich beautiful woman. But, now, honey, you hold on to them tears for a little while. Dobe’ll be there next month to take care of both of you.”

“Dobe, I miss you,” she whispered, and wasn’t sure if he’d heard her say it before he’d hung up the phone.

Pity the poor exposé writer. That’s me, Laura Richie. Because you’re only as good as your last scandalous book. And there aren’t that many scandals to go around. Well, that may not be true: there are plenty of medium-grade, medium-weight, middle-class scandals, but
they
are not enough to make a best seller. So we are left with the scandals of the legends or the legends of the scandals, and everyone has done those. Between me and Kitty Litter (oh, Reader, you know who I mean), we have covered the waterfront. After her books about Ol’ Blue Eyes and Nancy and that poor English dysfunctional family, and mine about Christina Onassis and the Cher book, there wasn’t much left on the grand opera scale. So I was casting about me at this time for a new subject
.

Because, let’s face it: in gossip, people want the best. Sodomy and embezzlement barely raise an eyebrow unless the organs and amounts are the largest ever. And even then, the scandal palls quickly unless it’s someone famous or who is attached to them. A story about a secret transvestite is only kind of sordid and pathetic, unless the guy is dressing up in famous underpants. And with all the stuff going on out there, there isn’t much left that’s shocking anymore. Look at poor Madonna. She has to stoop to photographing herself having sex with a dog to keep in the public eye
.

My publisher was pressuring me. I was deciding between a Woody/Mia tell-all and a Michael McLain unauthorized but I was afraid that Woody was too New York Jewish for a broad appeal. And Michael
had
been around since the year of the flood. Plus, women were the ones who bought gossip books and they preferred gossip about women. My secretary was pushing for a triple biography of the
3/4
girls. But despite the absolutely massive wave of publicity they’d received, I felt they didn’t have enough history to make more than a quick paperback out of. And I did only quality
hardback
gossip
.

If only I’d known
.

After Jahne heard Sharleen’s revelation about Michael, and thought about the painful talk with Sharleen that had led up to it, Jahne rehearsed the ways in which she’d tell him off. At best he was a sexaholic who was out of control as well as a liar. At worst, well, it didn’t bear thinking about. Jahne rehearsed in her mind what she would say to him when he called her. The accusations and names came easily. But each time she got rolling she remembered not only how kind he had been to her about her scars, but also how much he now knew. Was it safe to make him an enemy? she wondered
.

It was a question she did not have to answer. Michael McLain never called her again
.

It took more than a week for Jahne to realize Michael McLain had dropped her. It reminded her a bit of that old punch line: You can’t fire me—I quit! But even if she didn’t call him, she felt she had to do
something
to exorcise his memory. One afternoon, driving down Wilshire Boulevard, she passed Rancho La Brea and pulled over to the side of the road. One of the stranger juxtapositions of Hollywood was the La Brea Tar Pits, filled with prehistoric slime, sitting there next to the movie and television studios, business towers, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. There was symbolism there you didn’t have to reach hard for. Jahne got out of her Miata and walked over to the cyclone fence that surrounded the pits. An appropriate resting place for Michael’s gift, she thought, and took the diamond necklace on the thin gold chain out of her pocket. It was the first piece of jewelry a man had ever given her. She shook her head, and wondered if Michael got a quantity discount.

But, despite her joke, she was hurt. Not that she had loved Michael, or that they had been committed to one another. She had simply liked him, and she had believed that he had liked her, that he had understood her. Well, she’d been wrong. Now she looked down at the three stars in her palm. She hated the necklace, and, with all the force she could, she threw it into the air. The sun glinted on the diamond for a moment before it hit the viscous black of the pit. She only wished it was Michael, that old dinosaur himself, that she was flinging away. The necklace sank without a trace. Let the archaeologists of the future figure that one out, she thought, and turned back to her car. Then she drove home to prepare for her screen test.

If Jahne thought that TV had prepared her for movies, that the small screen was like the big one, she found out she was wrong. Makeup, for example, was a whole other reality. Bill Wougle the makeup artist seemed to paint another face over her own for the test. And the lights took more than an hour to adjust. Jahne nervously fondled the few sheets of script she’d been given. They didn’t read like much. It was a fight scene between her and the male lead.

She was ushered onto the sound stage and was surprised—no, shocked—to see nothing but a fully made-up bed there, under the spotlight. She scanned the space, looking for Sam, and cleared her throat nervously. Was she expected to do this scene in bed? Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw him. Dressed in black, as usual, and striding toward her from behind the cyclorama. He tossed his head, swinging the pony tail from off his shoulder, a movement she remembered as habitual. “Jahne!” he called, in what seemed a cheery voice. She felt anything but. He approached her. She felt his presence moving toward her almost as if a wall of energy were coming at her. She tingled.

“What’s this?” she asked, nodding at the bed, trying to keep the question casual.

He smiled. “Jahne, would you mind if I pulled the rug out from under you? You have every right to say no. But I’m not happy with the script I sent you. Not yet, anyway. Instead of lumbering you with it, I thought it might be better if we worked with something that wouldn’t distract me. Something I’m familiar with.” He handed her a script.

She looked down at the cover.
Jack and Jill and Compromise
, it read. Despite the incredible brightness of the lights, Jahne felt her vision darken for a moment. “I’m not prepared,” she said, and she felt that it might be the understatement of the nineties.

“I know. It’s a lot to ask. Will you be a trouper?”

Quickly, she ran through her options. She could turn him down, but then he would believe her to be afraid of cold readings. And he might just ask her to prepare this for later, or he might decide not to work with her at all. If she said yes, she certainly would know this material better than anyone else. She could probably blow him away with it. But wouldn’t he recognize her, and could she stand to tear her heart out in front of him this way? Could she bear being filmed in the role she’d lost forever? “Give me a minute,” she told him.

“Of course,” he agreed, and walked her over to a chair in the corner. “Take your time,” he said. “I’ve marked the monologue I would like you to try.”

She waited until he left, joining the cameraman and boom operator. But she already knew. Of course. It was the “I’ve never been loved” aria. She’d recited it every night and twice on Wednesdays and Sundays for 426 performances. Back then she had thought that she was loved. She had thought that she was loved, at last, by Sam. She had had the strength to deliver it as a wounded bird, but what would she do now? She opened the script. She felt sweat trickle down her scalp and run to the back of her neck. The scars on her breasts began to itch. Her armpits were clammy; Bill’s makeup must be running down her face; what could she do? What would she do?

Her eyes swept the script, and then the inspiration came. Not pathetic. Angry. Not sad and vulnerable because she’d never been loved, but enraged over it. She scanned the text. It would work. It would work
better
. She went through it, the whole thing, in her mind. She stood up and strode over to Sam. “I can do this,” she said.

Jahne pulled the Miata onto the freeway, and released a long, noisy breath. I got it, she thought! I took my first screen test and I blew him away.

Of course, she couldn’t be sure of anything. But she had taken his monologue,
her
monologue, and put a whole new spin on it. Instead of the pathetic cry “I’ve never been loved,” it became one of rage. She delivered the whole thing with the passion of anger, of rage at the waste, the unfairness. And when she cried over the last words, they’d been tears of rage.

The crew had applauded. Jahne knew enough to know how rare
that
was, and if Jahne still knew Sam at all, she knew when he was interested in working with someone. And Sam was
definitely
interested in working with
her
.

Jahne wanted to be out of the car, physically moving, walking. The waiting for the callback was going to be tough. In the old days, she would have bought herself a good meal, or, better yet, a really sinful cake and some Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. But now she couldn’t afford to gain an ounce. Well, when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping, she thought, and groaned to herself at the silly expression.

Still, it would make a good release, a nice reward. She pulled her car into the underground parking at the huge shopping center on the west side of Century City. Riding up the escalator to the main floor in the mall, she became aware of the looks and the whispers of people as they were going down. Damn, she thought, I forgot my sunglasses. Well, she’d just have to keep her eyes down. But as she scanned the displays in a store window, a teenage girl and her mother rushed up to her. “Aren’t you Jahne Moore?” the girl asked. “May I have your autograph?” She thrust a crumpled Kleenex and pen out at Jahne, who signed it quickly while eyeing the entrance to the store. She’d better move into it. But, faster than she could get away, another woman came up behind the first two, and said, “Mine, too, Miss Moore?” It took a moment for Jahne to realize, but suddenly a crowd had formed around her. And then, almost in an instant, the crowd grew. “Me next,” someone yelled, and two women began pushing. “Jahne Moore!” someone yelled. “Cara!” yelled another. The crowd pushed. She was being pushed. The space around her disappeared. Then someone actually screamed.