Flavor of the Month

by Olivia Goldsmith

  Because working on the TV program was a little like what the army must be like—all “hurry up and wait.” It was exhausting always to be on call, always to have to be ready, waiting to go, and then at last actually to begin shooting, only to be told that a light needed adjustment, or a boom was down, or continuity had forgotten a prop, or a shadow had changed. A minute of screen time could take an hour to film, sometimes more. It was backbreaking, serious work.

  In fact, on the set, the only laughing was done at Sharleen.

  Jahne and Sharleen were poised on their bikes before one of the cycloramas used on the soundstage for 3/4. As usual, there had been a lighting problem, and now that it had been fixed, as usual, Lila was making them wait. Jahne felt her makeup running, her forehead beginning to shine. At last, Lila sashayed out, without an apology.

  “Lights up,” Dino shouted, and the spots they had been setting were switched on.

  “Hey, guys,” Lila called out to the crew. “Do you know how a blonde turns on the light after sex?” There was an attentive silence from the fellows behind the lights and camera. “She opens the car door,” Lila said, and smiled only slightly at the laughter that gusted out from the dark.

  Sharleen blushed to her hairline. Jahne felt sorry for her. “Are you about ready now?” Jahne snapped at Lila. “Or do we have more stand-up to listen to?”

  “I won’t blow my lines eight times,” Lila said, another dig at Sharleen. It was true. Sharleen got flustered and blew her lines fairly often. Jahne knew the girl must feel in over her head. Lila’s hostility didn’t help.

  “Come on, now. Settle down,” Marty told them as he replaced Dino on the set. Lila looked him over coolly, then threw an incredibly long leg over her Triumph. Once Lila had learned that the other two characters had Harleys, she had insisted her character would have the only Triumph.

  Marty DiGennaro was no dummy, and even though he wasn’t asking for much in the way of performances, Jahne could see that he had something simply in the juxtaposition of the three of them, so similar and yet so different from one another. It was the undeniable sexy and visually interesting combo of the motorcycles and the women, the hardness of steel and chrome, the softness of the three girls. After working with him for a couple of months now, she didn’t actually like or trust Marty, or even knew what he was doing, but she respected his talent and shrewdness.

  Talking of shrewdness, Lila Kyle was one cute cookie. Jahne had seen the type over and over in New York, the steal-the-scene-at-any-price ambitious starlet, but California seemed to raise these traits to the tenth power. Maybe it was the fault line, or the plethora of crystals, or just what Californians still seemed to call “vibes,” but it was clear that Lila, totally beautiful, was also a total narcissist; no one else existed on the set, unless he or she was there to do something for her. Yet the crew loved her. And Lila had certainly seemed to win most-favored-nation status from Marty. Even when she wasn’t being filmed, Marty’s eyes followed her wherever she went. Jahne wondered if the two of them were playing hide-the-salami together.

  Sharleen was the opposite. If Lila acted as if everyone was there to do as she wished, Jahne noticed that Sharleen would do what virtually anyone told her to. Even the grips and gofers bossed her. She called them all “Mister” and seemed absurdly grateful for the smallest thing—Jahne heard her thank the makeup man three times when he powdered her just before shooting started. Jahne still hadn’t decided: was Sharleen for real, or was it the most complete hokum Jahne had yet seen? And what was it with that Bible? Sharleen sat there, in between takes, with it in her lap. Was she a born-again starlet?

  Jahne felt she herself was fitting in nicely. Her character, Cara, was the smart one, the most cerebral of the trio, and the rest of the cast seemed to accept that about her, Jahne, because she played Cara. The crew seemed to like and respect her already, and she had established an easy, bantering relationship with Marty. She noticed, though, that he became irritated if she asked too many questions about what was going on. Discussions about motivation, or even the point of a script, were not welcome. Marty was a control freak. He had pictures in his head that he wanted to get on film. Her job was to do as he said. It was a far cry from her days with Sam and Jack and Jill. Marty said “Jump,” they all asked “Where?” and then jumped. Except Lila, who sometimes felt the need to make a scene. Jahne found it all exhausting. She, after all, wasn’t really twenty-four, despite her unlined face and what it said on her bio.

  But, to be honest with herself, she was starting to feel disappointed. She had hoped that, with Marty at the helm, they would have an exciting ensemble, and a new kind of television. Certainly on the first score she was disappointed: Marty was the Boss, and only interested in moving them across the sets and locations in response to some internal vision that he never shared. But perhaps it was art they were making—art that would also be a commercial success.

  In the few episodes they’d already taped there wasn’t much acting, Jahne thought ruefully. Just as well, because neither Lila Kyle nor Sharleen Smith appeared to be an actress. They did each have something, though, Jahne readily admitted that. The camera loved them, and both had a naturalness that played. Jahne was afraid she, a more traditional actress, actually might not play as well, and that she didn’t have the stamina to keep it up.

  More than the demands of the script, the camera, and Marty, Jahne was afraid of Wardrobe. For the first fitting, she had been terrified of entering the room. How much would she have to expose? How much of her body scarring would show? She wore her usual Gap outfit—slim jeans and a white shirt, cowboy boots, and under her clothes a thin Lycra jumpsuit. It masked everything, a bit. But if they looked for them, the scars would show. Would they ask her to strip? Hesitantly, Jahne had walked in. She’d already met Bob Burton, head of wardrobe, and his assistant, an older woman whose name she’d forgotten. He did ask her to take off the clothes. She kicked off her boots, slipped out of her jeans, and shrugged the soft shirt from her shoulders. She stood, exposed like a silvery eel, wearing the smooth body stocking. She held her breath. Would she have to go further? What then?

  “I’ve got the stuff laid out. Why don’t you and Mai start on this?” Bob asked, lifting up a pair of bell bottoms, and left the room.

  Mai, the old woman who was wardrobe mistress, turned away from the cluttered table that also served as her desk and came toward Jahne, measuring tape in hand.

  “Some numbers for designer,” she said, in a heavy accent that reminded Jahne of the cartoon character Natasha from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle shows. If she hadn’t been so nervous, Jahne might have been tempted to giggle.

  “First here,” Mai said, rolling the “r,” and encircled Jahne under her arms with the tape. The old woman then had to hold the tape at arm’s length, her finger marking the spot. She nodded, made a mark on her pad, and next circled Jahne around the bust line. Then she stopped, looked at Jahne. “You are sveating,” she said, bluntly.

  Jahne was, like a horse, from nervousness. She shrugged. “The lights,” she said.

  “Bad for costumes,” Mai said, then only shrugged again. She continued her measuring, while Jahne continued to perspire. “Vat you vould like?” Mai asked. “A towel, or I should put up air conditioner?”

  “Please, yes, put up the air conditioner.” Jahne knew that it wasn’t the heat of the room that was causing her to perspire. But maybe the air conditioning would help. The old woman continued measuring and making notes. So far, she hadn’t asked Jahne to strip, and perhaps she wouldn’t. Jahne finally broke the silence, to take her mind off the process. “What are the costumes like? Have you seen any of the sketches?”

  “Humph,” Mai snorted. “Costumes? Cheans! Cheans and T-shirts, that’s the costume. For this they need a designer?” She shook her head.

  Cheans? Jeans! Jahne laughed. “But I bet they’re beautiful jeans. Marty DiGennaro wants everything perfect.”

  “Oh, yah, they are beautiful. And the shirts. Silk. And you
r color vill be blue. Best color for television camera. Vhite no good—drains face,” Mai confided, then stood back from Jahne and asked, “That’s good, no? You are definitely blue.”

  Jahne thought about it for a moment. Mary Jane had never worn blue. It somehow looked wrong on her. But now, with her hair highlights and her colored contact lenses, Jahne Moore’s best color was blue, she suddenly realized. She smiled down at Mai. “Yes, blue is my color.”

  Mai smiled. “You are perfect veight. Not fat. But camera makes ten pounds fat, so ve must compensate. But don’t be too thin. Like the redhead. Unnatural. The blonde will go soon to fat. But you vork hard to keep so, Mai can tell.”

  Mai couldn’t tell how hard, Jahne thought. And so far, Mai wasn’t able to tell what else Jahne had done to get this body. She thought back to New York, not only the operations, but the starvation diet she had placed herself on. The one she was still on. To those long, lonely afternoons in New York, going to cheap movies, trying to keep her mind off food. Eating nothing, or almost nothing, walking, walking, walking in the cold, in the rain even, afraid to go home, afraid to eat, afraid to rest. Her only interests were in losing the weight and watching old movies. Here, in sunny California, where everyone was thin and tan and happy, it was hard to connect with that other world, that other life. But even here she was afraid to eat. Coffee and fruit for breakfast, cottage cheese and salad for lunch, a small piece of chicken and a steamed vegetable for dinner. Or, if she had a beer, no dinner at all.

  Jahne didn’t like to think of those New York days, but something about the woman now kneeling at her feet nagged at her and brought New York back. Something about the movies. What was it? Certainly there were a lot of lonely old immigrant women in the movie theaters she had frequented, though this one, Jahne could see, had once been beautiful. Despite the wrinkles, despite the sunken cheeks, the bones of her face were still there. And the nose, the cheekbones, were still…

  Jahne looked more closely.

  Here, in the Wardrobe Department, looking down at the old woman’s face, Jahne made the association. She remembered not the old women in the art-theater audience, but the young woman on the screen, the painfully beautiful star, the one who had starred in those prewar von Sternbergs, the only woman of the time who could compete with Dietrich, the woman who was, in Jahne’s opinion, more beautiful than Dietrich.

  “My God! You are Mai Von Trilling!” Jahne cried.

  The woman shook her head and smiled, a small, polite smile. “No, no,” she corrected. “I vas Mai Von Trilling.”

  20

  April waited for her latest secretary to usher in the moronic journalist from the L.A. Times who was doing some puff piece on her. She had no time for this bullshit, but after she was featured on the cover of West Coast as the winner of the world’s-worst-employer contest, scoring lower even than the South African diamond mines. Public Relations had suggested this as a counter. So she’d waste a valuable forty minutes with a jerk from the press.

  April Irons was her own greatest invention, and, like any great invention, she worked well. In fact, some people said that work was all she did, but she didn’t give a rat’s ass what people said. You didn’t get to run a major movie studio by caring about what a bunch of hard-ons said.

  Running production at International Studios made her the capo de tutti capi. She got to green-light all the other producers’ projects, as well as produce a few of her own. She had power: power over them, and power to do what she wanted, as long as the bottom line looked good to Bob LeVine and the International stockholders.

  At forty-four (though all the publicity put her three, years younger), April Irons could, at last, do what she wanted and be what she wanted. After all those rocky years, hustling for a few dollars to produce some book or play that she’d managed to option for a buck three-eighty, she’d finally gotten a few credits under her belt. Not that any of the sons-of-bitches in the Industry had helped her. She’d spent four years working at Warner’s, doing coverages of every piece of shit that came in the mail sacks, trying desperately to get the ear of someone, anyone that mattered. She’d begged for a job with Ray Stark, with John Huston. And she got them: carrying bags. Nona: A Life had been the low-budget hit that was her breakthrough, and she’d done it without anyone’s goddamn help. She’d used all her savings, the sixty thousand dollars her grandfather had left her and the money from a second mortgage that her mom took out on her house in Brookline, Massachusetts. When April finally got distribution from an independent, she was down to paying for prints with her MasterCard advances. But the critics ate it up, and it had legs: first the young and the hip, then the suburban intelligentsia. Finally, Orion picked it up, and even the mall rats got to see it. Then she’d followed it up with Request. She’d gotten Angela Blake to do her first nude scene. April had been able to get good distribution for it. It had done eight million its first weekend, and the fucker only cost four.

  And that, my dear, was the trick. She’d gotten out of independent producing and into a studio, working with other people’s money—money she didn’t have to raise. And she had the formula. Be very smart, be brave, work your balls off, and never let the motherfuckers tell you no.

  Now she looked at the journalist sitting across the coffee table from her. They came in three varieties: overly ambitious ass-kissers who wanted a job as a quid pro quo for good press; normally ambitious ass-kissers who simply wanted access and to get to do another story again someday; and, lastly, the bitter ass-kissers, who would grill you and misquote you just to get a byline, a few bucks, and some mindless spleen vented.

  All Hollywood called her the Iron Maiden. The real joke was that half of them also called her a nympho, while the other half called her a dyke. Which doubled her chances of getting laid, but that was never a problem. Certainly not now that she had so much power.

  The reporter, a rumpled-looking kid in his late twenties, shambled in and nervously took his seat. She made an attempt at a smile, asked the girl to bring them some coffee, and looked at him attentively. They began with the usual half-assed questions: was it hard to be a woman in this business, what accomplishment was she proudest of, what trends did she see? She answered, her mind going over her afternoon. She wanted to freshen up before lunch, when she was meeting Sam Shields. It looked like Jack and Jill would work, and she was considering signing him up for another movie.

  She was also considering him for a more personal job: her consort. She was sick of the pathetic men she’d been seeing: the ones outside the Industry bored her, the ones inside took advantage. But Sam Shields had amused her. He had a detachment that attracted her, a stupid East Coast snobbery that she found naïve and old-fashioned. Plus, he was a man who actually liked women, and there were few enough heterosexual men who loved females around.

  Maybe Sam did not love them exactly—what man ever really loves a woman?—but he liked those things about women that women like about themselves. Softness, gentleness, complimentary colors. Femininity. Femaleness. April had enjoyed their brief affair. Of course, then Sam had gone after Crystal Plenum, like…like every man had gone after Crystal. And, as usual, Crystal had reciprocated. April expected it, knew Crystal had fucked every director she’d ever worked with. And April didn’t really give a shit. Hey, whatever was good for the project.

  But now the picture was over, and, as she knew so well, so was the love affair. Crystal would be reconciling with her husband/manager and then moving on to her next affair. And Sam would be ready for something new. April decided that something would be her. He looked right, he might be the new, hot auteur, and they would make a good team. Maybe even a marriage. Because, at forty-four, it was time.

  April decided to give the kid with the pencil another three minutes. Then it was off to lunch with Sam at The Grill. “Any more questions?” she asked him brightly, pulling out her dark-red lipstick to freshen her immaculate makeup.

  “Well, actually, I read recently that, before you fired your last secretary, you
spent a month calling her ‘Bitch’ instead of her name. Is that true?”

  April stopped, her hand with the lipstick frozen in midair. Hadn’t anyone briefed the little putz that there would be no questions of this nature?

  She turned her gray eyes on him coldly. “Get this straight,” she told him. “I never called that cunt a bitch.” She stood up. “You can go now,” she said.

  The drive to The Grill was taken up with a call to Public Relations to deal with the L.A. Times, so she had only a moment or two to prepare herself for Sam. He sat, waiting at the bar, his long body curved into a sulking question mark. Well, Sam was definitely the dark type. It was why she liked him. She was sick of California sunshine and businessmen.

  “Postpartum blues?” she asked Sam as she approached the bar. One of the independent producers who had recently pitched her was sitting on the stool next to Sam, and he immediately vacated it for April. She took it without acknowledgment, and waited for Sam’s answer.

  “Isn’t that what women get after giving birth to a baby?”

  “Yeah, but directors get it, too, after they’ve given birth to their baby.” Sam didn’t answer, just stared sullenly ahead. “If I have to get my own drink, then what the fuck am I sitting here with you for?” she asked sweetly.

  Sam tried to shake himself out of his blue mood. “I’m sorry, April. What would you like?”

  “To drink?”

  Sam looked at her. “Yes. Or whatever.”

  “Get me a Stoli iced. Then get yourself a real drink instead of beer, for chrissakes, and let’s sit over there, at my table.” April walked away from the bar and Sam followed with the drinks, his now a vodka also.

  “So, are you taking me to the premiere?” she asked. She tried to sound casual.

  “If I have to go, there’s no one I’d rather go with than you.”