Flavor of the Month

by Olivia Goldsmith

  It all got her hormones running. How long had it been since she’d been with Sam? Since any man had touched her?

  But even though she was horny and she looked twenty-four, she was thirty-six, and the lines that men threw at her almost made her laugh out loud. They were “producers” or “good friends of producers” or “working for an independent production company” at some undisclosed job. No one was in insurance or data processing or banking. Everyone was “in the Industry.” She talked and laughed and flirted. She considered it good rehearsal time, but she made no friends and she didn’t give out her number. She could tell that none were for real. And it was too much of a strain to act the part of a beauty by day and also in the evening. At night, she needed to recuperate.

  Pete Warren, her neighbor at the Star Drop, continued to stop by. He was twenty-four, from Encino, and working as an assistant cameraman. His dad was a projectionist at one of the studios and gotten him his union card. He was sweet—very Californian and very, very young. He came over most evenings, and they drank a beer or two and watched some TV. He was only at the Star Drop until the sublet he had arranged while he was off on location ended.

  It was easy to be with him, but it was odd. Pete presumed she was his age, and she did not tell him otherwise. But she had forgotten the differences between twenty-four and thirty-six, between New York and California mentality. He struck her as a child, although a sexy one.

  It was Pete who told her about the Melrose Playhouse—a hip theater group in West Hollywood. His sister was a lighting designer there and could get Jahne an audition, if she wanted one. She did.

  So she spent her days making the rounds, dropping off her head shot, begging to be seen. She actually got an appointment for an audition at the Melrose Playhouse, and a callback from one cattle call she’d shown up for. She wound up as background in some beer ad they shot on Venice Beach, but it was something. It encouraged her.

  So did Pete. He became her friend. At the end of the day, she looked forward to telling him her adventures. He was optimistic and supportive. He was sure she’d get a part eventually. And he didn’t hustle her or crowd her like all the other men who hit on her daily.

  Finally, Pete tried to kiss her, and she pushed him away. He didn’t come back the next night, and she was sorry. His absence made her realize that she was lonely, and that his strong arms and big hands curled around the beer bottle had been a pleasure to look at. All of him was a pleasure to look at. When he knocked on her door two nights later, she gave him her best smile.

  “How ya doin’?” Pete asked.

  “Fine,” she told him.

  And he walked in, handing her the obligatory bottle of Coors. He sat on the edge of her spare bed. “Jahne, can I ask you something?”

  She nodded.

  “Don’t you want to sleep with me?” he asked.

  She smiled. “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “You’re not goin’ out with anyone else. Don’t you like me?”

  “Sure I do, Pete. But not enough to sleep with you.”

  “How much more would you have to like me?” he asked. He wasn’t belligerent. He didn’t sound angry. Just confused.

  She laughed. “I’m not sure.”

  “Jahne, I really like you. I thought maybe you’d like to move into my place when I go back there.”

  “Oh, Pete, I hardly know you. And you don’t know me.”

  “Well, it would be a good way to get to know each other.” He stood up and gently put his long arm around her shoulder. He bent down and kissed her. She felt a pulse of excitement. His arm felt so good, so warm, across her back. It had been so long. He kissed her again, and even though she knew she shouldn’t, she kissed him back. It was irresistible. His flesh under his T-shirt felt warm and smelled young. For a moment, but only for a moment, she thought of Sam. Then she let Pete push her back gently onto the other twin bed.

  3

  After more than a week of sulking and licking her wounds in silence, Lila was speaking to Robbie again. Well, arguing and screaming more than speaking, but at least they were communicating.

  “I’ve never been so humiliated in my whole life!” Lila was yelling.

  “Oh, sure you have,” Robbie said. “You just don’t want to remember when.”

  Lila narrowed her gorgeous eyes. “I could kill you! You act so important, so sure. As if you know people. As if you can open doors. Yeah! George Getz! Or the exit door at Ara Sagarian’s! That’s all you can do for me.”

  “Lila, calm down!” Robbie snapped. “How was I supposed to know that Ara was going to call Theresa? I didn’t tell you to lie. That was what screwed it up. He might have taken you on if you hadn’t lied to him. My advice was good.”

  “Don’t you blame me for this! It was your plan, and a really stupid one. My mother is still Ara’s pet. You’re a fat, faggot has-been. No. A never-was. You just hang on to anyone who was famous. Like my mother.” A terrible thought occurred to her. “I know you still see her.” Lila stopped yelling for a moment. Perhaps Robbie was scheming with the Puppet Mistress! Maybe they both set her up. For a moment Lila felt sick and dizzy. She clutched the edge of the mirrored coffee table in front of her.

  “Lila, I see your mother because she is my friend, and she needs me. You need me, too.”

  “I don’t need anyone,” Lila spat.

  Ken walked into the living room, a pained expression on his face. “I wish you’d stop it, the two of you.”

  “Look, I have a new idea,” Robbie said, ignoring Ken. “We forget agents for a minute. We focus on getting you a part. The right part. Then you’ll have your pick of agents. Even Ara Sagarian.”

  “I’d ice-pick Ara,” Lila said. “But someday I’ll see him crawl.”

  “Hey, maybe by next week. He can hardly walk now,” Ken joked.

  Robbie shrugged, as if Ken were a bothersome insect. “I want Lila to start her acting career in television. I’m sure we can find her a little something.” Robbie turned to his lover. “Tell her to listen to me, Ken. That’s where she’ll get the most exposure, but she says stars don’t do TV. Like she’s a star!”

  Lila gave Robbie a murderous look. To defuse the bomb, Ken broke in. “Why not, Lila? If Marty DiGennaro would consider doing television, so should you.” Lila and Robbie looked at Ken in silence.

  “Marty DiGennaro doesn’t do television,” Lila said.

  “He does now,” Ken said smugly.

  “Marty DiGennaro would do television?” Robbie asked.

  Ken nodded.

  “How do you know?” Lila demanded.

  “Don’t you keep up on the business end of the business?” Ken asked. “In an interview in Variety last month, he said he sees television as a whole new medium. The way he envisions it, television since the cable revolution is more exciting than film, with more creative possibilities.”

  “Why would one of the top movie directors consider doing TV?” Lila asked.

  “Search me. But he is. I know it for a fact. He’s talking to a network, and Marty DiGennaro has his fingers on the pulse of the Industry.”

  “God, what I wouldn’t give to work with him,” Lila breathed.

  “Does he actually have a show lined up? Scripts? Actors?” Robbie asked.

  “Must have. They are lining up technicians. He asked me.”

  “Marty DiGennaro asked you to work on his TV show?”

  “Well, not him. Dino, his AD, asked me.”

  “I’m impressed.” Robbie whistled. He looked at Lila, made an I-told-you-so moue, then lay back down on the sofa, pulling the broad brim of his hat down over his eyes. “I rest my case,” he said. “For a fat faggot has-been without connections, I guess I have a few tricks left.” He lay there in silence. Then he had pity on her. “Maybe we could get you in front of him. Through Paulie Grasso. Or maybe through Dino or another of those Italians of his. And I know a typist over at Zeller, Mossbacher. They handle DiGennaro’s legal affairs. Maybe we could check out his contr
act. And I once had a fling with a guy over at Ortis’ office. He’s Marty’s agent. Maybe I could confirm this with him.”

  Lila didn’t say anything for a moment. What the fuck. And maybe television might work. It all depended on how she was positioned on it, but maybe.

  “Christ, what I wouldn’t give to work with him,” Lila repeated.

  “What’s the show?” Robbie asked.

  “Oh, it’s all top secret. Something about three girls traveling across the States together.”

  “Three girls?” Lila asked, and for no reason at all she thought of Skinny and Candy.

  Paul Grasso wearily looked up from the restaurant table, across at the still-talking director. Yahta, yahta, yahta. Christ, he wished it was back in the days of silent movies, just so he didn’t have to listen to this whiny little Jewboy. Well, he guessed, even then the people in the Industry talked. It was only that the audience didn’t have to hear them. Sure. He’d be willing to pay not to hear this strunz. Paul sighed. No such luck. He was paid to listen to A. Joel Grossman. Well, he might be paid.

  “We need someone absolutely fresh. Totally exciting. But not in the expected way. There’s a look—a vision, almost—that I’m trying to capture, an innocence that’s so knowing, a purity that understands defilement…”

  Paul tuned him out again. Yahta, yahta, yahta. Like everyone else, this A. Joel Grossman wanted fresh, beautiful cooze to sell his product. Why didn’t he just say so? And why was his name A. Joel? And why did the guy talk in italics, for chrissake? With all that emphasis he sounded like a fuckin’ faggot. All these fuckin’ stupid commercial directors were the same: couldn’t just do the fuckin’ job, had to act as if it was art, as if the shit that sold Buicks and shave cream and, in this case, denim jeans was actually important. Christ, didn’t they know that no one gave a rat’s ass? The biggest acting jobs in Hollywood were those performed by directors like this one. Paul couldn’t believe he was reduced to buying the little fuck an overstuffed sandwich here at Geller’s deli.

  Christ, the whole Industry was overrun with annoying little Jews. Spielberg, Ovitz, Zeller, Ortman. April Irons, and Paul’s own ex-partner, Milton Glick. You couldn’t buy a property, draw up a contract, cast a movie, or sell the distribution without a Jew involved.

  Okay, he was bitter. He’d admit it. But just because he was bitter didn’t mean that he wasn’t also right. There had been a time, back when he was working with Milton, when he had been an insider. When they were riding high, and when casting the next big picture seemed to matter. But that was long ago. Milt and his prissy Jewboy ways. Nervous in the service about the gambling, as if I’d ever welshed on a bet. Paul Grasso’s marker was still good all over town. But he pushed me out. Christ, then Milton and all of them just closed ranks and hung together. Clannish.

  Well, Milt was a pussy, and this little director was a pussy. They were all pussies. He didn’t know a single Jew who could take a punch, except maybe Jimmy Caan, and he was so weird, maybe he didn’t count. Paul looked across at the kid director, who was still talking. Yahta, yahta, yahta.

  “…and the campaign is based on that. The essential female. We need to cast this with great sensitivity. There must be a sense of responsibility here. The image, if you will, is more than an image. It bespeaks…”

  Holy shit. Did the guy actually say “bespeaks”? What the fuck was with him? Thinks he’s the fuckin’ Sir Ralph Richardson of commercials, or what? No, probably wants to be the next Spielberg. Wake up and smell the coffee, jerkoff. There was room for one skinny, nerdy Jewish director of TV commercials to become a giant, but the job’s been filled. Go back to Jamaica Estates or wherever the fuck back east you came from. In Grasso’s opinion, these guys were always bragging about their contribution to the arts and sciences. Hype and bullshit. Aside from agents and lawyers, the twin scourges of the earth, he felt their biggest hit was pastrami. He bit into his deli sandwich appreciatively.

  “…subliminally. Because this is really more than just a commercial. We’re saying a lot not only about the product, but about ourselves.”

  Paul stuffed the last bit of his pastrami sandwich into his mouth and nodded. Let the jerkoff ramble. But the jerkoff had stopped. He was looking at Paul. Now, now, when his mouth was crammed with pastrami and rye, the miserable little Hebe motherfucker wanted a response. Paul gulped. Christ, the hard edge of the rye crust was going to choke him. His eyes watered.

  The guy reached out and patted his hand. Paul managed to swallow down the mouthful. Jesus, was this kid an actual faggot or something? Paul needed the work, but not that badly.

  “Thank you for sharing my vision,” the kid said. “I can really appreciate an honest reaction like that. And it means a lot that you can still cry over something that to others may seem jejune.”

  What the fuck was the little bastard talking about? Holy shit! Did he think I, Paul Grasso, was crying over his conception of a designer-jeans commercial? Paul looked around the restaurant. Who else was going to witness his humiliation? It was too much. Paul took a deep breath and stood up. If he hadn’t blown every available dime he had on his last junket, he would tell this A. Joel to fuck himself. That was absolutely his last visit to Vegas. Absolutely.

  He tried to smile at the kid director. “I think I know what you’re looking for. Let’s go look at the girl,” he managed to choke.

  Paul Grasso looked over the pink message slips scattered across his desk. Mostly creditors, and an ominous message from Benny Eggs, a “creditor” who broke legs. Nothing else, except for this one from Robbie Lymon. Paul wondered what that old queen wanted. A favor, no doubt. A. Joel cleared his throat, restive. Paul turned to the overweight woman in toeless high-heeled sandals who stood at the door of the Grasso and Associates conference room, tapping her foot nervously. “She’s in the can,” she explained to Paul, gestured toward the bathroom, and then shrugged. Paul looked down and noticed the chipped magenta nail polish on her big toe peeking out of the shoe, and the horny, yellowish toenail, complete with a visible sliver of dirt. He shuddered. What a pig. But he’d seen the girl, and she was a honey. Maybe the solution to young Eisenstein’s problems. He looked back at A. Joel, kid director.

  “I think you’ll like her. She’s got something undefinable.” Yeah, the best ass and the flattest stomach in Los Angeles. Plus a perky pair of ta-tas. Face was okay. Only so-so, really. Pretty enough to get her voted prom queen, but less than average out here. Still, for a jeans commercial with no closeups, it was ass that sold. And for this soft-core crap that was passing as an ad, she’d be perfect. Too bad the little bitch was only fifteen. Or maybe less. The mother had the girl’s birth certificate, but Paul had been through that shit before. When they were underage, it made all kinds of problems with the L.A. County Bureau of Child Welfare. Try to arrange a tutor for a two-day shoot! Still, for this ad it was probably worth it. Anything to get the kid director, this A. Joel Whatever, off his back. Also get Benny Eggs off his back. And put a few bucks in the bank.

  The girl walked in. She hung her head, but despite the lousy posture Paul couldn’t help but again notice the ass, the long legs, the nice pair of jugs. She had to have an eighteen-inch waist—nineteen tops. And this kid wasn’t fifteen yet. He prayed she was already fourteen. He shot a look at his client. At last, the little cocksucker was silent, staring. Grasso smiled to himself. Well, this would make a nice little fee. Yeah, he hadn’t lost his touch yet.

  “Could I have a right profile?” he asked, and the girl slowly turned. Her hair, a medium brown, obscured her face, but the angle revealed the soft curve of her buttocks, emphasized by the taut stomach.

  “So, Adrienne, could you look this way?” The girl said nothing, but she raised her head.

  “Mrs. Godowski, I’m going to have to ask Adrienne to take off her shirt and slacks.” He’d informed the mother from the get-go.

  “She’ll do anything you need her to, Mr. Grasso,” the woman told him in liquid tones, then turned to the girl. “You h
eard the man, Adrienne.”

  Very nice, very maternal, Mrs. Godowski, Grasso thought, while Adrienne began unbuttoning her blouse. It was a cheap blue thing with a line of limp ruffles down the front. She shrugged out of it, letting it fall to the ground in a heap. She was wearing a red lace bra, an underwired job that served her tits up like grapefruits on a platter. Grasso eyed his client. So far, so good.

  The girl kicked off her shoes with a practiced movement and put her hands up to the zipper of her tight white jeans. She pulled, and the only sound in the room was the metal noise of her fly opening. She began, ungracefully, to struggle out of them, but the zipper must have caught her underpants, for they slid off as well. From the waist down she was bare. There in the conference room, leaning with one hand against a file cabinet, she seemed unfazed, uncaring, revealed: her perfect flesh rose up in a white fountain from the jeans crumpled at her feet. There wasn’t a mar or a ripple to spoil the perfection of her ass, her thighs, her belly.

  This was what size fourteens in Tenafly, New Jersey, dreamed of looking like. This is what sold jeans. The girl looked blankly at the two men. Paul Grasso turned expectantly to his client, the kid director.

  “She’s too old,” A. Joel Grossman said.

  4

  Sharleen juggled the plates along one arm down to her palm and grabbed the coffeepot with the other hand. She rushed from behind the counter toward the three police officers in the corner booth, her heart pounding.

  “Okay, boys,” she said with forced cheerfulness, “pot roast and mashed for you, chili and onions here, and chicken-fried steak for the good-lookin’ one in the corner.” She placed the dishes all around and poured coffee, trying not to make eye contact. The men began to rearrange their mismatched orders without correcting her. Sharleen hoped that Jake didn’t notice she got the orders wrong again. North, south, east, west. Well, she’d never been good with maps. “Sorry, fellas,” she said quietly. Police just frightened her. She was as rattled as a china cup in a buckboard.