Flavor of the Month

by Olivia Goldsmith

  “Sure, Dobe,” she said quietly. “Me and Dean would love to be partners with you. I’ll ask Lenny for a check tomorrow.”

  “You sure?” he asked.

  “Sure I’m sure,” she said, but she knew her voice lacked conviction. Well, like Lila said, Sharleen knew she wasn’t a very good actress.

  If Dobe noticed, he didn’t show it. He stuck his hand out, took her own, and pumped it. “You won’t regret it, partner,” he told her. “I really think I got us a hell of a deal lined up. Uh, excusin’ my French.”

  She nodded. “Great,” she said.

  “So, mind if I tell Dean?” he asked. “I didn’t want to bring it up in front of him in case you didn’t like the idea. But now that we’re…”

  “No, let’s not tell him until the deal’s all done,” she interrupted, looking out into the darkness for Dean and the dogs. “He gets so excited, and so tired of waitin’. Let’s just surprise him later.”

  “Anything you say, partner,” Dobe smiled.

  50

  April Irons’ visit had shaken up the crew, but it had shaken Jahne even more deeply. She knew there were problems with the film—maybe there was nothing but problems. Still, she only thought of April as Sam’s ex-lover. He had explained there was no longer anything between them, but Jahne was not so sure.

  And when, on the night of April’s visit, for the first time in weeks, Sam didn’t come to her room, she’d been hurt and suspicious. He told her it was only business, but she could tell from the looks of the crew that word was out. Mai would have told her the truth. No one else would. Had Sam spent the night with April?

  Has it started again? she asked herself. I’ve gotten difficult and emotional. Is he going to cheat on me, lie to me, the way he lied to Mary Jane? I’m dependent on him, she thought. Exactly what Mai told me not to be. Is he with April? Does he care for her? Is he touching her?

  That night, she’d driven herself nearly crazy, and the fiasco on the beach the next day only made things worse. Sam took her aside and told her he’d worked all night. She chose to believe him, and after the crew dug a ditch in the sand, she walked through it and the scene as best she could.

  That night, Sam had been even more passionate, and had promised her again and again that there was nothing between him and April.

  “Jesus,” he finally moaned. “I wish this shoot were wrapped. I want to go home.”

  But Jahne, though she desperately wanted the movie to end, had no home to go to.

  Jahne had always heard that wrap parties were wild, outrageous farewell bashes, but the party at the end of the Birth of a Star shoot wasn’t even cheerful with relief that the pain was over. Michael’s misbehavior, Mai’s death, and April’s wrath had combined to make this a hell trip for everyone. Jahne had, as she knew she was expected to, bought gifts for all the crew: carryall’s with Birth of a Star and “Love and Thanks from Jahne” embroidered on them. Sam made a little speech, but Michael showed up only for a few moments, and April Irons, Seymore LeVine, and the suits didn’t show up at all. That was a relief, but still, the party was an ordeal that was best when it was over and she and Sam were free to leave the nasty little world of gossip and tension that the set had become.

  Before editing and looping began, Sam had decided to take a few days off and drive down the coast. Jahne wasn’t expected back on the set of Three for the Road until the end of the next week, so they’d holiday a little. She’d never needed a rest so badly in her life. As he tossed her bags into the trunk of the 300ZX, she felt her spirits lift for the first time since Mai’s death. They got into the car, waving goodbye to Jerry and the others who were still left at the hotel, and then Sam gunned the motor.

  “Why,” he asked, “why did I ever think I wanted to be a director when I grew up?”

  “Oh, doesn’t everyone?” Jahne replied. The famous joke around the Industry was the one about Mother Teresa dying and being received in heaven by God and a host of singing angels. “You were so wonderful, so good, down on earth,” God says to her. “I want especially to reward you. Isn’t there anything you wanted to do that you never got a chance to?” She begs for no special treatment. But God is equally insistent. “Name one thing you’ve always wanted,” He insists. “Well,” Mother Teresa finally admits, “I always wanted to direct.”

  Now Jahne smiled at him. “You and Mother Teresa.”

  “Yeah. We have so much in common,” he laughed.

  “Well, you were both christened.”

  “How did you know that?” Jahne realized Sam had—back in New York—told her a long funny story about the ceremony. Something she, as Jahne, just couldn’t know.

  “Oh, I just assumed you were. Wasn’t everyone?”

  “Was your family religious?” he asked.

  “Not really.” Whenever questions about her earlier life came up, Jahne reverted to the shortest casual answers. She certainly didn’t want to seem secretive, but she was always afraid she’d be caught in a contradiction if she said much. As she had always done for her stage characters, she had imagined a past, complete with an army dad, a housewife mom, and a peripatetic youth. Not enough time at the various bases to put down roots or make lasting friends. And then there was the tragic car accident, so she didn’t have to contend with questions about living family members today. In fact, since she was representing herself as in her twenties, she didn’t have much of a past to account for. She smiled, remembering her New York friend Molly’s take on why men preferred younger women: they didn’t have as long a story.

  The only problem was that she wasn’t a stage character and this wasn’t supposed to be acting. This was her real life today, and she had everything she wanted. Except, of course, for the irony that she could never be herself. A day, an hour didn’t go by in which she wasn’t tempted to tell Sam everything, but now she was in too deep. She had told so many lies. Wouldn’t he hate her for lying? And wouldn’t he feel a fool to have believed them? And maybe a cad to have put her in the position to lie?

  So she did her best to ignore her feelings and keep up her charade. Beneath all that, though, wasn’t she still hoping, waiting, for him finally to look at her and see her, know her? The Bible referred to carnal possession as a man “knowing” a woman. Now that they were lovers, didn’t Sam know her?

  “Did your folks make a big deal about Christmas? Mine didn’t. I was always jealous of other kids for that.”

  “No. Baptists don’t, really.”

  “I thought you said they were Methodists.”

  She smiled, but her stomach tightened. “Well, Dad was. But Mom was Baptist.” She paused, a bit unnerved. They really hadn’t had long periods of time to talk, what with shootings all day and lovemaking all night. Suddenly the car felt confining, claustrophobic instead of cozy. “What was the best Christmas gift you ever got?” she asked.

  It was always surprisingly easy to turn the conversation back to Sam. He did love to talk. About himself, about movie-making, about the theater, about books, about the difference between Jung and Freud, about, well, about everything. And it was almost always interesting. But, Jahne had to admit this time around, it was also narcissistic. Sometimes she had the feeling he appreciated her intelligence, her self, more as an audience, a vessel to understand him and be filled by him than as a discrete entity.

  In fact, sometimes she saw him as a sculptor, a creator, always trying to mold. He had created plays, he now created movies. She had to admit, when she was Mary Jane he had done a lot to mold her taste, her opinions and views.

  Jahne turned to enjoy the view from the coast road. It was, really, a breathtaking drive, and the day was a good one for it: sunny and mild, and because they’d gotten an early start they’d get to see the sunset before they found a place to stay that evening. Tomorrow they might get as far as San Simeon, Hearst’s castle.

  The weather was cool enough for her to wear one of the big Donna Karan sweaters she liked, a huge creamy-white turtleneck, and she had the matching cardigan
thrown over her shoulders. It was too warm in L.A. to get to wear them much.

  “Pretty sweater,” Sam said. “It suits you.”

  It pleased her that he noticed, but she no longer allowed men to affect her taste in clothes. Mai had taught her that. Poor Mai. Well, poor me. Jahne sighed.

  “What is it?” Sam asked.

  “Oh, I was thinking about L.A. I’ve gotten a new place there. A more secure one. La Brecque helped me pick it out. It may be safe, but I don’t like it nearly as well as my old rental. It seems so grown-up. I was hoping that Mai would move in there with me.” She stopped, her lips trembling. No, no more tears today, she told herself. Mai would want me finally to have some fun. “It’s too big for one person. It’s impersonal. It’s cold.”

  “I’ll help you warm it up,” Sam offered, a wolfish grin on his face.

  “You’ll be my first guest,” Jahne told him.

  He took his eyes off the road, surveying her warmly, then reached across the gearshift and took her hand. “I’m honored,” he said, and there was no humor in his voice, only passion. He moved her hand to his cheek. She felt the thrill move down her arm, across her chest, and down to her center.

  Mai was gone, Neil was gone, Molly was gone, her mother was so long gone. There was only Sam to love, to be loved by. And at that moment, she loved him so much it hurt.

  51

  I might as well be into fucking astrology, April thought bitterly to herself as the limo pulled up to the nondescript brick building in West L.A. where forty million dollars was, at that very moment, about to be lost. She could predict the future. Not a horoscope: a horrorscope. April and the stars. That was her life. Reading the stars and trying to predict the future. This project hadn’t been hard to pitch to the suits. Remakes they understood. Top stars they understood. It was forty-million-dollar failures they had trouble understanding. And it didn’t matter how many winners she’d brought in. One fucking failure and the pricks would start in again with how she didn’t understand the realities of the marketplace, or how as a woman she was only good on small pictures, soft pictures. Well, fuck them! If the picture worked, every one of them would be claiming credit, but if it failed, they’d all point to her and say, “I told you so.”

  April got out of the car and stared up, not to the stars but to the second floor, where carnage was already taking place.

  Up there it was like a confrontation between the Crips and the Bloods—two of L.A.’s most vicious teenage gangs. Testosterone amok. None of the stupid bastards knew what to do, and all of them so scared that the only position was a defensive one. April sighed.

  When she opened the door to the conference room, it was much as she had expected: the half-empty paper coffee cups, the smoke, the yelling. Michael McLain held the floor.

  “Well, what the fuck are you going to do—send it out for a week to Billy Joe’s Pitcher Show in West Des Moines, then slap ‘Recent Theatrical Release’ on the videos and sell them in Asia?” Michael turned to her as she entered, and under the rage she clearly saw the fear. She sighed. She would have to find a way to turn his desperation into part of her solution.

  “Hello, gentlemen,” she said dryly, and took a seat. Seymore LeVine looked at her, his eyes almost weepy. Afraid his daddy was going to yell at him. Michael sighed but nodded hello. But Sam could hardly bring himself to look at her. She felt his shame, but from long experience she knew it wasn’t shame over the ridiculous bungle of this film. It was sexual shame—that “Oops, you caught me” crap that some men do. What a shmuck! As if a couple of orgasms one way or the other mattered, compared to this forty-million-dollar mountain of shit. Jesus Christ, she’d sleep with Jahne Moore if it would fix the picture.

  “What’s going on?” was all she said.

  “The end of our lives as we know them,” Seymore moaned. Everyone ignored him.

  “We are discussing how the genius director wasted a multi hundred thousand feet of film to take home movies of his girlfriend,” Michael spat out. “A girlfriend, I might add, who can put out anywhere except on the screen.”

  “She never put out for me,” Seymore mourned.

  “Michael has been impossible to direct.” Sam spoke for the first time, ignoring the other two. “That, and a certain—well—woodenness in the way Jahne sometimes comes across, has…”

  “Okay, never mind the ‘who shot Jahne,’” April said harshly. “The point now isn’t that it’s shit, or why it’s shit, or even whose fault it is that it’s shit. The point now is how to save it.” April was calm. She was always at her calmest after everything was lost and her back was to the wall. It was the time before all was lost that was agonizing to her. Now she could take over.

  “We have to save it,” she repeated.

  “Impossible,” said Michael, and April could see Sam wince.

  April sighed. Sam was like a spooked horse: his eyes were wide, showing too much white; he’d take off in any direction, just to get away. Michael was impossible. He was also scared, but angry, too. And even at his calmest, Michael was not what one could call a problem solver. And Seymore…Well, he was just Seymore. Laslo, the cinematographer, and Bob, the editor, were along for the ride.

  But there was a great deal that could be done in editing. The right music, some new dialogue looped in, a voice-over…and, if worse came to worst, a few new scenes could be shot. It would be expensive, but perhaps…

  “We can turn this around,” April told them.

  “Impossible!” Seymore repeated.

  “Look, have a sense of proportion. Eliminating infant mortality in Calcutta is impossible. This is only fixing a movie.” She stood up, smoothing her leather slacks. Nineteen hundred dollars at North Beach Leather, and the sons-of-bitches rode up into her crotch.

  “We’d have a better shot at infant mortality,” moaned Seymore. At the studio they called him “Seymore Problems.”

  “Thanks for the backup,” she told him, then paced to the window and drew back the curtain. There was no view. “Okay, there’s no point to a remake of a great movie unless it adds something. I mean, look at His Girl Friday and Front Page. When Hildy became a woman, it added something to the remake.”

  “Yeah. Sex. And Cary Grant. We got nothin’,” Seymore sighed.

  “You’ve got me,” Michael said.

  “I repeat: we got nothin’,” Seymore groaned.

  “Well, Cary Grant is dead!” April reminded them.

  Seymore rolled his eyes. “Even Cary Grant couldn’t save this one,” he said.

  “Jesus Christ, Seymore, would you shut up!” Michael yelled. He looked over at Sam. “Well, you’re the genius writer-director. What next?”

  “Tighter cutting will help,” Sam began. “It’s too slow. And if we refocus on the love story…”

  “Piss on the love story.” Adrenaline was pumping through April’s body. She’d been in this spot before, but each time it felt new. Each time it felt as if this time, this time, she wouldn’t be able to pull it out and she’d lose it all. Lose the money, lose the job, lose power, lose face. But, just as she had each time before, she felt the solution dangling only slightly out of reach. She only had to be smart enough not to blind herself to it, and to be brave enough, once she saw it, to try for it, and strong enough to make it happen. Goldwyn could do it. Selznick had done it again and again. Capra, despite that motherfucker Harry Cohn, had triumphed. Please, she prayed, more to that pantheon of those dead heroes than to some Yahweh Hebrew-school God, please, let me see the way.

  “I want to see the dailies. Every one. Every take. I want to see the out-takes. I want to see every fucking millimeter of film you’ve shot, and I want to see it forwards and backwards. Everything.”

  52

  Jahne returned home—well, back to her empty house—alone after the long day of work. This season, 3/4 was not going to be a picnic. Jahne was overworked and lonely, and Sam was as busy as she was, wrapped up in postproduction. Apart all day, seeing him only at night, both of them ex
hausted—this was real life, but it felt more like a nightmare. Sam had told her to trust him—trust him about the script, about her performance, about his loyalty and love—but she seemed less and less able to do so. It felt as if each night was a trial, and each day she’d shift through the evidence and her suspicions.

  Sam had promised tonight that he’d join her later. She set the table, and put out some of the dinner that her housekeeper had left.

  She ate some salad and half a cup of cottage cheese, then showered and got into bed. She’d have the rest of her dinner later, when Sam got back. The cat curled up in her armpit, purring. “You didn’t have a good day, either?” she asked it, as it began to knead her arm, preparing to sleep. Jahne fell asleep to its soothing mechanical hum.

  It was later, much later, when she awoke. She didn’t have a watch on, and there wasn’t a single clock in the new house, except for the one on the oven timer. Jahne pushed the cat aside, rose, and paced the empty, darkened living room, afraid to find out just how late Sam was. It was like the night on location when April had shown up and Sam had never come to her. This must be how it begins, she thought. The lateness, followed by the lies, followed by the arguments, followed by the accusations and the denials. She was stupid and childish to think that this time it could be different, that this time he would not only love her but be faithful. She had let this happen to herself. She had promised herself that she wouldn’t trust him, that she wouldn’t love him. She had promised Mai the same thing. Oh, if only she could talk to Mai!

  But what good would that do? Mai had told her what kind of man Sam was and what kind of danger she was in. But she hadn’t listened. She had chosen this foolish movie despite her agent’s warnings. She had alienated Marty DiGennaro, as well as Monica Flanders and Sy Ortis. She had probably messed up her career.