Flavor of the Month

by Olivia Goldsmith

  In Bakersfield, Jake’s diner was closed on Sunday nights. It was the one night a week that he could spend alone, without Thelma, watching TV. First 911, then Rescue Squad, followed by reruns on cable. He stretched his feet out on the footrest and pushed the recliner until he was almost supine. As his hands scrambled in the seat beneath him, he yelled out, “Thelma.” After no response, he yelled it again. Ah, she’d left. He settled back, sighed, ready for a pleasant evening.

  Then, out of the blue, Thelma waltzed into the family room, kicked off her floppy rubber sandals, and dropped her large form down onto the plaid Herculon-covered sofa.

  “What’s the matter, Jake?” she asked, like she didn’t know, and she placed a bowl of microwaved popcorn between them on the table, along with two beers she snapped open. Then, most shocking of all, she picked up the remote control.

  “Hey!” he said. “911 is coming on.”

  Thelma reached into the pocket of her housedress, took out a Kleenex, wiped her nose, and then calmly looked at him. “Not tonight it ain’t,” she said, and clicked a button. The twenty-seven-inch RCA screen instantly burst into color.

  “What are you talking about, Thelma? You don’t watch television Sunday nights. I thought you go play bingo over to the Bakersfield Rotary?” He couldn’t keep the disappointment from his voice.

  “Bingo ain’t on Sundays no more. Don’t you remember? They changed it to Mondays now. ’Cause of the TV show.”

  What show? he thought. Not the one she tried to get him to watch last week. Jesus, now he thought of it, she’d come in then, too. He’d had to go back to the diner and watch his shows on the black-and-white he had in the kitchen. Oh, shit. “I thought that was only a made-for-TV movie, or something like that. You mean to tell me it’s on every Sunday night now?”

  “Where you been? This show’s the most-watched TV show in America,” she said. “Where’s your patriotism?” The television went silent during the opening credits. “Anyway, I got something I want to show you. A surprise I figured out.”

  Jake sat back, his arms folded across his chest. He was mad. Another woman’s piece of shit, some Designing Women garbage or something, with the actresses in frilly clothes and crazy hairstyles. He looked over at the screen: a desert in Utah or somewhere, with Eagle Rock or one of them tall buttes. As the camera got closer, he saw three motorcycles, a woman in full leather on each bike, jackets open revealing full breasts under tight T-shirts. Nice tits. Well, so what?

  “I’m going over to the diner.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re stayin’ right here. Look carefully. Look at them girls.”

  Thelma was letting him look at tits? This was a new one. On the screen, each of the girls pulled up in a sharp gravel-spattering stop for a close-up.

  “Remember I said last week that I’d seen that blonde somewhere before?” Thelma asked. “Well, I have. And so have you. Look at her close, now.”

  Jake squinted at the screen. Thelma was right—there was something about her that was familiar. “Maybe. What of it?”

  “Jake, I think we just got on the map.” Thelma held up a piece of cardboard with hand-lettering. “Jake’s Place. Home of Three for the Road’s Clover.”

  The camera moved closer, and Jake’s face lit up. There she was, big as life. Sharleen! “You mean that blonde waitress we had working for us? That’s her? Goddamn, Thelma. You’re right. Holy shit, we had us a real star at the diner! But you fired her.”

  “Good thing I did. Otherwise you’da made a fool a yourself and she wouldn’t be on TV!”

  In Manhattan’s East Village, what was left of the St. Malachy rep company’s Movable Feast had moved from Saturday night to Sunday night. The tiny living room of the tenement apartment had people sitting all over—on the secondhand sofa from the Salvation Army, the stacks of Woolworth’s cushions, even on the bare linoleum floor. The actors used to eat at makeshift tables, but that was before Three for the Road had become the focus of their weekly meals together. Now the meal was buffet-style, set up on the cover of the bathtub in the kitchen that doubled on these nights as a sideboard. Everybody watched Three for the Road.

  “Anyone need anything?” Molly called out from the kitchen. “I’m not getting up again after the show starts, so let me know now.”

  The television had been on for several minutes, but with the sound off. “Here it is,” Chuck, Sam’s replacement as director of the group, said, and turned up the volume. The teaser began. Molly wiped her hands on the dish towel. The dialogue had already started. “Clover! Wow, man! That’s psychedelic!” Then another voice spoke. “Groovy! I can’t take it.”

  Molly blinked. For a moment, the voice had sounded exactly like her old friend Mary Jane. Had Mary Jane gotten a bit part out on the coast? Molly rushed to the doorway. But it was only Jahne Moore, one of the three stars, speaking. Molly sighed. Since Mary Jane disappeared without a trace, Molly had “seen” her on subways, on buses, in museums, and once on the down escalator at Bloomingdale’s. But, like this time, she’d been wrong. Mary Jane had disappeared.

  A close-up of each of the three actresses flashed on the screen with the opening credits. “They are beautiful women,” Molly sighed, “really beautiful.” And young, she thought. Very, very young.

  “That’s all it takes out there,” another woman, Sharon Malone, said. “That’s why I’m sticking with the stage. You can get by on just talent here,” she said, the sarcasm heavy in her voice.

  “Now, let’s not be catty,” Molly called out in a singsong voice.

  “That’s right, sometimes they can act. Look at Jahne Moore. I read she was discovered in some Ibsen play at the Melrose Playhouse. Not too shabby,” Chuck reminded them.

  “Still reading those People magazines, eh, Chuck?” someone joshed.

  “See her, the tallest one, Lila Kyle?” Sharon asked. “Well, I read in TV Guide that it was hard for her to get taken seriously as an actress, since both her parents were so famous and all.”

  “Wait a minute; can you believe this shit? Remember what Neil Morelli used to say? Poor little rich girl? Come off it. Lila Kyle wasn’t discovered while working in some hash joint. She was ‘discovered’ by Marty DiGennaro himself—while they were having dinner, for chrissakes. When was the last time you had dinner with Marty?” Harvey Jewett asked sarcastically.

  “Sounds like I’m not the only one scarfing up People,” Chuck laughed. “Try not to sound too bitter, Harvey.”

  “Hey, I could do an hour of material on that, but Neil would do it better,” Harvey said. “Where’s Neil Morelli, now that we really need him?” Harvey shook his head, his eyes glued to the screen.

  “Where is Neil Morelli?” Molly asked, not for the first time. “Anyone hear from him?”

  “Speaking of the lost and deported, do you think Sam Shields has put the wood to any of those honeys?” Harvey asked. “Maybe he’s gotten real lucky. You know how he was in New York.”

  “Harvey,” Craig, another of the out-of-work actors, said, “even Sam would be out of his league. These girls are working with Marty DiGennaro; Sam doesn’t have a chance.”

  Then the program started again, and they were silent, drinking up the fast cuts, the dissolves, the weird, innovative camera angles, the quirky dialogue. And the youth and beauty of the three girls. Too soon, the show ended. Sighs went round the circle. They would all have to go back to their day jobs tomorrow.

  In Los Angeles, George Getz sat down in his easy chair and clicked on the TV he had recently bought. George, child of the sixties, hated television. He was a movie person. But then he found out, a little late, what all the students in his classes were talking about with such excitement. Three for the Road was on its way to becoming the phenomenon of the decade. It wasn’t until he heard the names of the costars that he reacted. Lila Kyle, his former pupil, was in a Marty DiGennaro series.

  That hadn’t hurt business, either, he thought. Now his classes were doubled in size and had waiting lists, for chrissakes
. And he was, at last, happy. It was the money, he told himself. No, it was the money and the recognition he had been robbed of for so long.

  He watched tonight’s show with intensity. It was, as they would have said in the sixties, psychedelic. And all style, no substance, if you asked his opinion. But on a medium that usually had neither, it was a major breakthrough. Tonight’s show gave Lila more close-ups and lines than the other weeks, he noticed. Leave it to Lila, he thought. She always knew how to draw attention to herself! As the closing credits rolled across the screen, George rolled himself another joint and lifted it in a silent toast to the screen.

  “Taught her everything she knows,” he said out loud to the empty room, and pulled the sweet smoke deep into his lungs.

  Theresa O’Donnell squinted at the screen in the sitting room adjoining her bedroom, trying to make the double images converge into one. She reached for the glass of lukewarm vodka, neat, that sat at her elbow on the low table next to her chaise longue. Kevin entered the room, looked at the clear liquid in the glass, and was about to say something. “Sit down and shut up,” Theresa growled before he could open his mouth. Since Kevin had been dumped by Lila, Theresa had inherited him. He lived there, kept her glass full and kept her company, much to the disgust of both Robbie and Estrella. Well, Theresa had no choice about keeping Kevin on. After all, he knew her secrets. Fuck Estrella. It didn’t matter even if Estrella left. She’d still have her two little girls.

  She turned to the wooden figure beside her on the sofa. “Do we have to do this?” Candy asked.

  “It’s so boring!” Skinny chimed in.

  “Oh, now, you sound jealous!” Theresa admonished, but she smiled. “After all, she is your sister.”

  “She’s a coldhearted bitch!” muttered Skinny.

  “Language, please! Unless you like the taste of soap.” Still, Theresa smiled, until the show began and Lila’s face appeared. Then the smile disappeared.

  Theresa stared at Lila’s image on the screen for the third week in a row. Lila, a star. This was not good news, not good news at all. It made her look old—it could make her look bad. Now what’s going to happen to me? she wondered. Doesn’t the little bitch think about anyone but herself? Who’s going to hire me now, when it has become so public that I have a daughter Lila’s age?

  Jesus, and on television. Television was over, finished. Everyone knew that, except maybe Marty DiGennaro. And Lila. It would never be the same again, not like it was in the days of Theresa’s show, and Lucy and The Honeymooners and Ed Sullivan. Theresa marked the death of the medium from the day she and Ed had left the tube. It was downhill from there—a vast wasteland of no-talent trash. Trash and PR.

  The build on this show had been ridiculous. In a place famous for hype, they had outdone themselves. Mother of God, there wasn’t a magazine or newspaper that wasn’t running some story or other. And not wholesome pieces, either. Not ones like she used to do.

  “She looks like a tramp,” Skinny said.

  “So do the other two,” Theresa agreed.

  “But they’re famous tramps,” Candy taunted.

  “If I hear another nasty word like that from you, I’m calling in Mr. Woodpecker!” Theresa threatened. But what Candy said was true. Lila was famous. So were the other tramps, who costarred. And when the fame became so big that every little detail of their lives would become public, what was Lila going to do then?

  “I told her to stay out of the business. I told her, but she didn’t listen.” Theresa looked over at Kevin, who returned her look, then shrugged, as if reading her mind. Theresa drained her glass and held it out to him. Wordlessly, Kevin stood up and took it, refilled it from the bottle on the dresser, and returned it to Theresa.

  “They’re calling her one of the three most beautiful women in the world,” he said to Theresa.

  “Sweet St. Joseph! She’ll be America’s sweetheart. They’ll be saying that next. The loveliest girl in the world.” Like mother, like daughter, Theresa thought, and laughed bitterly at her private joke, then almost choked on her drink. Perhaps she was being too harsh, too bitter. There must be a way she could use this to her advantage.

  Maybe that’s it, she thought. Ride her wave. Maybe a mother-daughter show. Perfect! This show can’t last. There’s nothing to it. No singing, no dancing. After she bombs in this, I’ll help pull her back up on top, rescue her with our show.

  “Don’t worry, girls,” she told Candy and Skinny. “This won’t last. And I have a plan.”

  They could begin rehearsing tomorrow, brush up a few old routines, maybe develop some new ones. She could get Robbie to choreograph a dance routine or two.

  “Forget about plans,” said Kevin bitterly. “She don’t need you no more.”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Theresa snapped. “She’ll come crawling when she realizes she can’t get through this without me.”

  “She will!” Candy shouted.

  “Kevin, get out of here,” Skinny added. “We want to watch this alone.” Kevin rose and, shaking his head, slowly left the room.

  Theresa settled back to observe the rest of the show. Maybe things would work out for the best after all.

  Dobe sat in the television lounge of the Wayfarer Hotel in Edmund, Minnesota, watching the screen in silence. Sitting next to him was a John Deere salesman from St. Paul. The front-desk clerk, leaning against the door jamb so he could hear the phones if they rang, was engrossed in the show unfolding on the TV.

  Dobe put his fingers to his lips, afraid that his delight would cause him to smile, and cause people to ask what he was grinning at. When you were on the grift, it was best not to call attention to yourself. But it was hard not to grin back at the pretty blonde on the screen. Sharleen was radiant, lighting up the room, making him feel young again. He was as happy as a father could be for his daughter. Good girl, he said to himself. You done it. I’m proud of you, kid.

  The salesman leaned toward Dobe and whispered, “Look at the tits on that blonde.”

  Dobe looked him straight in the face; his smile faded. “Watch out, mister. You’re talking about a lady,” he said. Then Dobe turned his eyes back to the screen.

  Brewster Moore sat across from the television, its screen flickering in front of him. The three women were incredibly beautiful, picked for their looks more than for their talent. But Dr. Moore knew that Mary Jane had always had talent. Now, thanks to him, she had beauty as well.

  He watched her image on the screen closely. Was it professional or personal? he wondered. Her letters to him seemed excited, but they also had an edge of sadness, telling not only of her success but also of her loneliness in her new life. And Brewster Moore, divorced now five years, knew something about the loneliness Mary Jane wrote about. Like her, he had his work, but, unlike her, he knew his work would never quite be enough.

  He had to force himself not to write too often to Mary Jane. That would not be right. He had created her looks; now it was up to her to create her new life. And he could not play a part in both. People wanted to forget his work once it was done. She didn’t owe him anything, and she wouldn’t want to be reminded of his services. Patients rarely did. But at least he had her letters.

  Now he couldn’t take his eyes off Mary Jane Moran—Jahne Moore, he corrected himself. My handiwork, he thought. My Galatea. I made her, not God. Of course, he could never say those words out loud to anyone. His triumph was a lonely pleasure. But delicious nonetheless.

  After all the reconstructions of burn victims, of the children with nature’s defects, of faces that, despite all his skill, would never even approximate the norm; after all the Park Avenue matrons insisting on premature face lifts, after the models with perfect noses who wanted them to be a bit more perfect—Jahne Moore was unique. An achievement of perfection, appropriate and complete. Beautiful. Rewarding. Brave.

  A woman he could love.

  Neil Morelli owned nothing except the clothes in the closet and the thirteen-inch color TV he had bought from a guy at t
he club who was selling hot Korean TVs for fifty bucks. Well, he hadn’t actually bought it yet, since he still owed the guy twenty dollars.

  He had no money, no car, no friends, and nowhere to go. He had a stinking job driving a cab. But he had his television, and while that was on, Neil could feel he was still connected to the world. It was Sunday night, but it could have been any night in the week. The calendar didn’t mean much to him anymore. All he needed to know was when Seinfeld, Evening at the Improv, and that show with Paul Provenza were on. So he could envy and hate them. But tonight he was making a special effort to watch the show all the assholes at the club had been carrying on about for weeks. He would never admit it to anyone tomorrow, but tonight he was going to watch Three for the Road for the first time. Just to see what the fuck everyone was going nuts over, the guys at the taxi garage especially.

  Not that it was a hard show to watch, Neil soon saw. Three gorgeous girls, all with great tits and legs, romping around right before his eyes. And all that sixties shit. Love beads. Bell bottoms. Moby Grape. He was lying on his open sofa-bed, and had the television on a chair next to him. For this show, he had pulled the set up real close to his face, so that he wouldn’t miss anything. Actually, this was the closest thing to a date that Neil had had in a long time. He felt his dick get hard as the show progressed, and he tried to fantasize which one he would fuck, if he gave them the chance.

  He still hadn’t decided by the end of the show, although he had begun to stroke himself, and was close to climaxing. Then the credits began to roll. Neil always was on the lookout for newcomers. Three kids had managed, against the odds, to break into the business big time. Well, good for them. He watched their names roll. Sharleen Smith, Jahne Moore, Lila Kyle.

  Wait a minute. Lila Kyle? Neil knew who she was; he had researched her for his routine. She was the double-dynasty kid, both parents stars. He felt his dick grow limp in his hand, his frustration now fueling his rage at another Nepotism Squad target. She must have got the job through connections. Her mother got it for her. She got a free ride; he, Neil Morelli, got nothing.