Flavor of the Month

by Olivia Goldsmith

  Pay-back time. “Keep punching them keys, Dana.” Neil smiled. “Remember, it’s your bread and butter.” He closed the door and walked down the hall to the elevators, whistling.

  Neil let himself back into his apartment, dropped his bag and the mail on the kitchen table, and took a beer from the refrigerator. He didn’t normally drink, but today he was celebrating. Recalling Dana’s face as he closed the door, he raised the bottle of beer in a toast, took a gulp, then made an imaginary checkmark in the air with a moistened index finger. He pushed one of the packing boxes off a kitchen chair and sat down, flipping through his mail. Bills, more bills, and a funny postcard from his sister, Brenda—the lesbian. The wall phone rang beside him, and he reached up and grabbed the receiver while continuing to sift through the envelopes.

  “Hello.”

  “Hey, Neil, I finally got you. Where’ve you been?” the cheery voice asked.

  “Who’s this?” Neil asked, his tone sweet.

  “Nate.”

  “Nate? Nate who?” Neil asked in the same syrupy voice.

  “Nate. Nathan Fishman, for chrissakes. Your agent.” Nate’s voice had lost a little of its friendly tone.

  “Nate Fishman. Well, holy shit,” Neil said, now pretending excitement. “I didn’t recognize your voice. It’s been so long. You must have gotten my—what, twenty, thirty messages, right?”

  “Listen, Neil, I’ve been busy. But I heard the good news. I hear you got the pilot. See, kid? I said stick with me. We did it.”

  Neil’s voice dropped. “‘We,’ you scumbag? ‘We’? Where was the ‘we’ when I heard about the gig? Where was the ‘we’ when I wanted to get in touch with the producers? Where was the ‘we’ when I begged you to lend me the plane fare to fly out to L.A. to test? No ‘we,’ Nate, unless you’re talking ‘we we.’ Because you pissed on me, Nate. And now you’re fired.”

  There was dead silence at the other end of the line for a minute, then a forced laugh. “What do you mean, fired? This is a gag, right, kid? After all I did…”

  “You didn’t do shit for me, Nate. We had lunch a couple of times in the past year—both of which I paid for, by the way—I signed something three years ago, and you’ve been collecting ten percent of everything I earned since, including my fucking word-processing job and the two-fifty out of the twenty-five dollars for my first gig. I booked the jobs, not you. You never got me a job, and most of the time you didn’t return my phone calls. But you cashed my checks, right on time, every month.”

  “So you get a break and then walk away from me?” Nate’s voice rose with indignation.

  “You’re a loser and a slime bucket, Nate. Think about it.”

  “I’m a loser? You’re the fucking loser. You’re going to L.A. to make a pilot? Big fuckin’ deal. They make five hundred pilots a season, asshole. What makes you think yours is going to go network, or even get syndicated? You’ll be back here in a month, pounding on my door.”

  “I just picked up my messages from my answering service,” Neil yelled, holding up two pink slips as if Nate could see them. “And guess who they’re from? Sy Ortis. ‘I’d like to talk to you about representation at your earliest possible convenience.’ Sy Ortis, Nate. Early Artists. That’s why they call the firm that. They get the talent Early, when we’re just about to take off. Two messages, Nate. And I think they deserve a call back! So fuck off, small time.” Neil banged the receiver back on the hook, took a deep breath, then made another invisible checkmark in the air.

  He sat in silence for a moment, trying to regain his composure. Now the bastards were coming out of the woodwork to take credit for having discovered him. Well, fuck them. I did it myself. I’m the one that knocked on doors and took the abuse. I’m the one that got stiffed for pay by the worms that run the clubs.

  He thought of Sal Condotti at Horizon’s Star the other night. After Neil had finished his act, Sal had come up to him and offered Neil his hand.

  “I always knew you could do it, Neil. That’s why I gave you weekends so soon after you started. I could tell quality.” Sal pumped his hand. “So, whenever you want to break in your new routine, just let me know. I’ll give you a Saturday night—and top billing.”

  “Gee, thanks, Sal. I sure appreciate that. And could I get a raise, too? Could you let me have maybe fifty-five dollars instead of fifty?” Neil had kept a smile on his face.

  “A raise? You should be paying me, for chrissakes,” Sal had said automatically. Talk money and he always went into his “what-I-done-for-you” routine. “I gave you your break, and now you want to soak me for more money?” Sal smiled but shook his head sadly.

  “Not more money, Sal,” Neil said. “Some money. You haven’t paid me for the last three weeks. I mean, it’s just as easy not to pay me fifty-five dollars as it is not to pay me fifty, right?”

  Sal laughed and slapped Neil on his back. “You’re a riot, Neil. Okay, let’s say fifty-five dollars. Would that make you happy, kid?”

  Neil stared at the ceiling for a moment, as if considering Sal’s offer. “Nah,” he said, and stepped away from Sal. “But I tell you what would make me happy. I’d be happy with a hundred dollars at Catch a Rising Star.” Neil began to walk to the door. “And that’s what I’m getting Saturday night there, Sal. Fuck yourself, Sal, you cheap wop. Drop in and see my new routine, if they forget to lock the cage.”

  Sal’s smile disappeared, and his voice went very low. “Hey, gumba—don’t burn all your bridges. You might need them when you cross the Styx into Hades.”

  “I’ll never be playing the sticks again, paisano. And that includes this toilet,” Neil had said, and walked out onto Second Avenue.

  Remembering it now, Neil made another checkmark in the air of his kitchen, and smiled to himself. They were adding up, he thought, and then remembered to add Sam Shields to his list. Neil felt bad leaving Mary Jane and the troupe, but it was a pleasure to toss his success at Sam in front of the rest of them. The self-important bastard acted as if the group was his personal property. Humiliating Mary Jane in front of them all. And cheating on her left and right, not that Mary Jane would let herself see it. Neil sighed.

  Why does someone like Sam wind up with someone like Mary Jane? he thought, for the seven or eight millionth time. She isn’t beautiful, but she’s a good friend and an enormously talented actress. She’s a woman with a soul, who loves a man without one. Neil could never get over the fact that Sam’s arrogant artiste shit worked so well on women. The black clothes, the fakola creative moods. When the guy is six-foot-two and good-looking, why did he bother to use a shtick to get laid?

  Neil had seen a dozen guys just like Sam Shields. Guys who’d gone to an Ivy school but pretended to be from the streets. Guys who wrote plays about blue-collar characters, but who wrote dialogue with words like “plethora” and “facetious” and “cosmology.” Neil was a street guy—his dad had been a minor capo in one of the New York families—and he hated the suckfaces from places like Exeter who liked to talk “dese,” “dems,” and “dose.” Neil watched Sam pull his tough-guy act out of his ass, and watched the women fall over and spread their thighs. It made you lose respect for them.

  For a short, skinny, homely guy, Neil had managed to joke his share of women into bed, but he could never treat them cruelly enough to make them love him. And because he loved Mary Jane, he could never treat her cruelly at all.

  Hey, he told himself. None of that self-pity, now. Neil stood up abruptly, went into the tiny bedroom, and began to toss the contents of bureau drawers into an empty packing box. Mary Jane was the one bridge he was not going to burn, he thought, and went to the phone to leave a funny message on her machine. Maybe this last humiliation in front of the troupe would be enough. Maybe Mary Jane would finally wake up and smell the Sanka.

  7

  Sharleen was happy, happier than she ever had been. Going out—well, “sneaking out” would be closer to it—with Boyd was real nice, and they’d been dating for almost a month now. Just l
ike a normal girl. Just like they showed on TV. And he was nice. Real nice. Just sitting beside him here in his red Trans Am convertible felt good. Then the car crunched along the stony dirt road and, when the lights picked out the outline of the trailer ahead, Sharleen felt the feeling fade. She reached across Boyd and turned off the lights, then put her finger to her lips. He stopped the engine, and the silence of the Texas night fell around them. Sharleen laid her head back on the seat and looked directly up at the star-filled sky, stretching like a blanket from horizon to horizon. What was it she had felt? Different? Special. She felt special.

  Since Sharleen had begun dating Boyd, she’d started to see just how special she was to him. She saw it in his eyes, which reflected her own face back at her.

  They sat in comfortable silence for a moment. Sharleen was grateful that Boyd didn’t start pawing her the moment he turned off the engine. That was one of the things that made him different from the other boys at school. He was such a gentleman at the party tonight. The other boys seemed so childish in comparison to Boyd.

  “Did you have a good time, Sharleen?” he asked.

  She turned her head so she could see his profile in the dim light. “Oh, yes, Boyd, I sure did. I had a wonderful time. Thank you.”

  And she had. She held in her arms the stuffed animal he had won for her in the dunking-for-apples game. When he handed it to her, a fuzzy poodle-dog, she knew what it was about him that made him special, too. He said, “I remember you said you once had a puppy that died.” Boyd listened to what she said.

  “Sharleen, you’re the prettiest girl in the school, you know that?” he asked now. Sharleen blushed with pleasure, then became uncomfortable at what might be coming next.

  “And you write the prettiest poetry. That poem in the school paper was good. It really was.” He turned sideways to face her. Sharleen tensed at the movement. “You’re not like other girls. You’re…” He paused.

  “Sharleen,” he said softly, “would you be my steady?” She turned her head to face him and studied him closely. Boyd was the richest boy at Regional, the only boy who had a new car, not a secondhand. He was a senior, but had a very boyish face, kinda like Dean’s. But he made her feel two years older instead of two years younger. Sex with him was something different. Scary but good, in a way. She reached out her fingers and touched the outline of his square jaw. She could manage one night out with him each week, but more and Daddy would surely find out. Plus, Dean would be alone so much. But how could she explain any of it to Boyd?

  “Boyd, I don’t want to go steady with nobody. It’s not that I don’t like you, Boyd. I really do. But I can’t go steady with anyone right now.” She felt his hurt and disappointment and rushed to relieve it. “Couldn’t we just be friends for a while, Boyd? You know, just do things together? I mean, like go for rides and talk? Once in a while. Without all the fuss? I surely do like you.”

  If she went steady with him, she’d have to wear his ring. Word would get out. And her daddy might make trouble. Dean would feel left out, or maybe even jealous. She leaned forward and kissed Boyd on the lips, barely brushing them. She lingered there, her lips against Boyd’s, not moving, not touching anyplace else. Then, gently, she pulled away.

  “Sharleen, I love you. I’ll do whatever you want. I just want to be with you,” Boyd said, and he seemed relieved at last to be saying these words to her.

  She heard the whoosh of the falling wood first, then the thud of the bat on the back of Boyd’s head. She saw him then, stumbling around to her side of the car, the baseball bat still grasped in his hand. Boyd slumped forward, his head bumping against the wheel. There was blood, a lot of blood. In a moment, the seat was covered with it.

  “You filthy bitch,” her father snarled. “Giving it away to strangers. Get out of the car, you whore.”

  Sharleen’s wide-eyed gaze fell first on the bloody head of Boyd lying against the steering wheel, then back to her father as he grabbed crazily at the door of the car, not able to open it in his frenzy. She threw herself back, trying to clear the car by scampering over the seat, then over the far side, but he jumped across the back fender and his hand fell on her ankle, pulling her with such force that she lost her breath. The scream died in her throat; her breath gasped from her. Instinctively, she knew that he had gone over the edge: she was going to die.

  Her daddy’s grip left her ankle while he tried to get ahold of her arm. She used her last moment of freedom to kick out with both legs, succeeding in knocking him off balance. She got down off the car trunk and ran toward the trailer.

  “Dean! Dean!” she screamed. “Help me, Dean, help.” Then her father was on her in a leap, forcing her to the ground.

  “You little cunt! Jest like your mother. Slut! I’ll show you. Fuck every boy that comes walking by.” He wrenched her over, straddling her at her waist, then slapped her hard across the face, stunning her. She knew he would kill her now, or worse.

  “Deannnnnn! Help meeeee!” she screamed as loud as she could, and, with that gigantic effort, slackened her body. He used the moment, and quickly had her skirt up and blouse ripped open, his body pressing the breath out of her lungs.

  “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” she began to pray. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.” It was going to happen, like she always knew it would. Like she’d always been afraid of. She closed her eyes and felt his rank breath against her face. She heard the sound of his fly being unzipped. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,” she whispered.

  She didn’t see the bat, or Dean holding it, or the arc it made before it connected with her father’s skull. But she heard the sickening crunch, felt him tumble off her, and heard her father’s last fluid gurgle. Not until she opened her eyes, managed to scramble up from the dirt, and saw him lying there, his blood spreading over the ground, did she realize he was lifeless. And she was glad.

  She pulled down her skirt, looked at Dean, who now seemed paralyzed, then ran to Boyd. She didn’t have to touch him to know that the blow from the baseball bat had killed him. His face was calm and serene, in spite of the mass of red-and-white pulp strewn on the seat of the car. He never knew what hit him.

  She turned back to Dean and put her arms around him. “Dean, thank you. You saved my life. He would have killed me.”

  Dean was still staring at the body of their father. Dean didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t even seem to hear her.

  His stillness frightened Sharleen, forcing her to take command. “Dean, listen to me. He killed Boyd. Look, Dean.” She forced him to the driver’s side of the car. “He bashed in Boyd’s head with the baseball bat, Dean. He was going to kill me, too.” She stood very close to him, circling him with the warmth of her arms, reviving him, a frightened animal, with her closeness and the familiarity of her smell.

  “You saved my life, Dean. Now, listen to me, and I’ll take care of both of us.”

  He nodded, then looked at her. “He killed our puppy, Sharleen. He hit Momma. He was hurting you, Sharleen. He was hurting you.”

  “I know. But I’m okay now. You have to be okay, too.”

  He dropped his head on her shoulder and began to cry. “I’m okay, Sharleen. I’m okay. I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t. But I’ll never let anyone hurt you. Not ever.”

  8

  Mary Jane sat swirling her coffee cup in circles on the Formica table in the kitchen. Through the small, grimy window facing the airshaft, she was able to see that the sun was out only when she craned her neck with her cheek on the pane. She took a spoonful of plain yogurt, wishing it had strawberry preserves in it, then pushed the container away.

  Holding the mug in both hands and blowing across the top, she sipped mindlessly, and stiffened as she heard Sam in the next room: he often mumbled in his sleep, and now he cried out, then sighed deeply. She listened as he coughed once, then heard the bed creak as he turned over.

  Mary Jane relaxed in relief. I can’t talk
to him yet, she thought. I’ve got to figure out last night first. What to say. How to say it. Where to draw the line, the line she would have to draw to preserve her self-respect. He really hurt me, she thought. And he did it in front of Molly and Neil and Chuck. In front of all of them.

  As always, she found herself backing off from the confrontation, beginning to formulate excuses. Well, they had been going through a hard time lately. Guilt, shame, and anger—now, there was a nice pot of emotions to stew in. And though they’d talked about it—endlessly, it seemed—there was really nothing that could be changed. Sam had to take this shot and do the movie, she’d feel lost out there, and neither of them could force Hollywood to change. She just couldn’t stand the thought of being without him.

  But she couldn’t stand the thought of going with him as nothing more than his unemployed girlfriend, either.

  She knew he was angry at her for that—for not wanting to go. For abandoning him when he was so nervous about his first film. Maybe that was why he’d staged that humiliation last night. To “get her back” for not coming with him to L.A. Mary Jane shook her head. Whatever the reason, he was way out of line.

  But perhaps it was more. Wasn’t it Freud who’d said there were no jokes? Maybe the gag last night was Sam’s way of transforming her. Maybe he wanted someone who looked like Bethanie Lake. Or maybe he wanted Bethanie herself; she certainly wanted him.

  Mary Jane got up, walked across the tiny kitchen, stood in the doorway to the narrow bedroom. Sam lay, his hair spread out on the pillow, his long arm over the side of the bed. Just looking at the long, lean arm, the bulge of the muscle above the elbow, the downy hair on the forearm, made her weak, gave her pleasure. With his dark, shoulder-length hair and tomahawk nose, he reminded her of a sleeping brave.