Flavor of the Month

by Olivia Goldsmith

  Minos Paige couldn’t exactly say he was surprised at receiving another call from Lila Kyle. Very little surprised Minos, certainly not the insatiable need of the denizens of this town to one-up each other. But he was surprised at Lila’s carefully worded instructions. It was a good thing he hadn’t been taken by surprise, because, if he had, he never would have worked out the fee that he did, the fee which was exactly quadruple that which he had originally gotten from Lila. But, then, this piece of work was at least four times as valuable to Lila as his original work had been. That he was sure of.

  Minos didn’t have to stop for a minute to think about how he was going to follow Lila’s instructions. Minos had his priorities straight, knew just who to call and in what order. As he dialed the phone, he smiled to himself. The last job Lila had given him was for peanuts, took him all over and more than two months to finish. This assignment, for the most part, would take minutes, and would be done mostly by phone. Ah, fate.

  When I answered the phone in my office, it was to hear a monotone I knew too well. “Guess who this is with some very good news,” he said playfully to me, Laura Richie, a woman who very few men played with.

  “Kevin Costner, and you’re having my baby.”

  “Laura, it’s better than that. And I swear, you are the first person I’m telling. I’m not doing this strictly for money, Laura. I’m doing this because you’ve been good to me in the past. So, get out a bunch of sharp pencils, and a long pad. All you gotta do is listen and write.”

  The totally one-sided conversation with Minos took less than fifteen minutes. I have a tape of the whole thing. Every now and then, during his narrative, you can hear an uncharacteristic gasp come through the line from me, and once I say “Holy shit!,” but, other than that, he did all the talking. I do repeat “Her brother?,” parroting his words, but that’s it. I asked only one question when he was finished. “You got any paper on this, Minos?”

  “It’ll be coming over your fax machine in exactly five minutes.”

  “Pictures of the surgery?”

  He laughed. “For that, you have to pay,” he said.

  “How much for an exclusive?” I asked.

  “More than you and Kitty Kelley combined could afford. No exclusives. I’m calling the Enquirer, the Observer, Entertainment Weekly, People, and Time in the next twenty minutes. But you are the first one to hear. Make hay while the sun shines.”

  Before he hung up, he did have to get in a commercial. “Now, remember, Laura, you owe me. And you can’t use my name in publication.”

  “If you got the paper, I don’t even want to know your name. But if I ain’t paying for this, who is?”

  “John Beresford Tipton,” Minos laughed, and hung up.

  6

  SHARLEEN SMITH IN INCEST NEST

  The shocking story of the star who sleeps with her brother. Inside this issue of the National Observer

  THE SEXIEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD? WHO IS THE REAL JAHNE MOORE?

  PLASTIC TO THE MAX. THE FULL STORY OF JAHNE MOORE AND HER TOTAL FACIAL AND BODY SURGERY. A complete report by Laura Richie. IN THIS ISSUE OF ENTERTAINMENT WORLD. AVAILABLE AT NEWSSTANDS NOW.

  The phone hadn’t stopped ringing. Sam felt as if he’d kill himself if he heard one more “b-b-b-r-r-i-i-i-n-g.” Every yellow journalist in the country wanted to interview Sam, wanted to know what it felt like to sleep with Jahne Moore. Yesterday, after lunch at Le Dôme, they shouted questions at him in the parking lot. “Did she feel the same as she had before the surgery?” “Did you do this as a publicity stunt?” “How do you think this will affect Birth of a Star box office?”

  His secretary was going crazy. Sam had disconnected his home phone. He’d been reamed already by Bob LeVine, who couldn’t believe Sam had unknowingly cast a female Frankenstein in their sex film, and had threatened to sue. LeVine was ready to throw Sam off the lot. He’d heard from his agent, who couldn’t believe he hadn’t known all along, and who insisted Sam hire a PR firm for damage control. And now there was the inevitable phone call from April. He’d ducked two of them, but he knew he couldn’t put it off indefinitely. Oh, Jesus! What would she say? What would April try to do to him? He lifted up the receiver.

  “Hello, April.” He tried to keep his voice calm, his tone matter-of-fact, but he himself could hear the quaver. “Sixteen million,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Sixteen million! We did sixteen million in box office this weekend. I just got the word. They had to run midnight shows of Birth to accommodate the crowds. Sixteen fucking million! It was a freak show.”

  Sam, speechless, could only nod in agreement.

  O’CONNOR ANNOUNCES TEN-CITY TOUR TO HEAL THE NATION; CALLS FOR FAMILY RESPONSE

  New York, NY. Yesterday, in his Sunday sermon at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Cardinal O’Connor, the Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, announced to his parishioners and the media reporters brought out by his press release that he denounced television and particularly Three for the Road as an example of what the worship of the golden calf of Hollywood had done to the country. After denouncing Murphy Brown, Cheers, and a host of other shows he went on to proclaim that his Christian Family Tour would heal the hurt caused the people of America by the charges of Sharleen Smith’s incest and the sexually explicit new film starring Jahne Moore that has rocked the nation. He asked the parish to join in his prayers for the costars of the popular program, then added that all three were guilty of “provoking lustful thoughts.” The Cardinal invoked St. Joseph, the Patron Saint of the Family, to intercede in the country beset by confusion over lack of family values. “What happened to Disney World?” the Cardinal asked in his heated oration. “To Mary Poppins? Instead, today we have Hollywood, and Jahne Moore and Sharleen Smith. Something is very wrong in a nation that ignores all that is holy and beautiful in the example of the Blessed Virgin and turns instead to idols with feet of clay (CONT. ON PG. 6)

  Jahne felt as if she was under siege. This is what it must have been like behind the walls of a medieval city during war. She had taken the phone off the hook, Gerry La Brecque had sent in three more security guards, and now the Beverly Hills police had stationed a cop car outside to try and control the traffic. She couldn’t go out, she couldn’t be seen, she couldn’t go anywhere, and staying home was unbearable.

  It was spooky. After only a couple of weeks of the media blitz following Birth’s release, this new exposure had come about, and the snowball had gathered enough momentum to become an avalanche. She felt flattened under the load. Who had leaked her medical history? Had Sam betrayed her in an even deeper way?

  The irony that the nation’s newest sex goddess was man-made wasn’t lost on her or on the media. She didn’t have the courage to read most of the trash that was being published, but she did tune in to Entertainment Tonight, only to see John Tesh interview Miss Hennessey, Dr. Moore’s nurse. They had an old “before” photo of her, a Polaroid that had been shot in Dr. Moore’s office. She looked horrible.

  “Oh, my God,” she moaned.

  Then they began the exposé on Sharleen. It was awful. A sneering, smirking Jukes-and-Kallikaks-oh-those-hillbillies-can’t-be-trusted number. Jahne felt sick. She remembered the slip that Dean had made: something about how he could have two sisters. Well, what if it was true? Who was she, Jahne, to judge? She picked up the phone, plugged it in, and dialed Sharleen’s private number. Of course, she only got a busy signal. Well, she’d have to go over there. If Sharleen needed her, she owed it to Sharleen; and, anyway, she wanted to help. She’s my friend, Jahne thought. They both are.

  MEMORANDUM

  TO: All Employees of Sy Ortis and Associates

  FROM: Sy Ortis

  SUBJECT: Press Leaks

  * * *

  Anyone discovered to have leaked any item about Sharleen Smith or Jahne Moore, or any item about Three for the Road, will be terminated immediately, and prosecuted for breaching client confidentiality.

  If any part of
this memo is unclear, please contact Miss Hancock in Public Relations for illumination.

  S. O.

  Jahne had managed to get through the barrage of press and over to Sharleen’s. They sat now almost barricaded into the living room. Sharleen looked even paler than usual, but otherwise seemed to be holding up. Jahne sat beside her on the sofa, her hand in Sharleen’s. Two of the PR staff from Sy’s office were buzzing around in the kitchen on the phones, and an attorney was screaming at his paralegal, both of who seemed permanently camped out in the dining room.

  “Jahne, are you mad at me?” Sharleen asked.

  “Why would I be mad?”

  “Because you told me about your secret, but I didn’t say nothin’ about mine.”

  “Hey, Sharleen, it wasn’t a trade. Friends don’t work like that.”

  “We’re still friends?” Sharleen asked, a tear escaping from under a long eyelash and running down her pale cheek.

  “Of course we are,” Jahne said, and squeezed Sharleen’s hand.

  “Well, it’s a real hard feeling, knowing that everyone despises you.”

  “It surely is,” Jahne said, and tried to smile. Her lip trembled, but she didn’t cry. So what if everyone hated her. This was the risk you took. After all, she told herself, you didn’t just want this, you paid for it. And it looks as if I’m going to keep on paying for it, she thought wryly. She also thought of Brewster Moore. In the maelstrom of all that had happened to her in the last months, she had come to realize that aside from Mai and Sharleen it was only Brewster’s quiet talks at the hospital in the dead of night, only Brewster’s letters, that seemed to have any substance. But she hadn’t heard a word from him since her last letter. Surely he had not betrayed her. Was he being accosted by journalists even now? Would he despise her for the publicity and bother she had caused him? She shrank down onto the sofa. Somehow, the thought of being despised by Brewster was more than she could bear.

  Sharleen Smith’s Father Talks About His Years in Prison

  By Clint Roper

  Special to the Dallas Independent

  Dean Smith, Sr., father of Three for the Road costar Sharleen Smith and her half brother, Dean Jr., met with this reporter and talked freely of Boyd Jamison, the boy the senior Smith has been found guilty of murdering outside the Smith trailer in Lamson, Texas, more than three years ago. He also confirmed reports of the incest between his son and daughter.

  In the three-part series which begins this Monday, the Independent probes into Mr. Smith’s allegations that Sharleen could have saved him if she had appeared at his trial, that he only killed the boy in self-defense while protecting his daughter from Boyd’s sexual attack, and that he loves Sharleen despite her sins and begs her to contact him.

  He hasn’t heard from wife, son, or daughter since the time of the murder, and says he misses and loves them all. He claims that his drinking provoked him, but that he’s cured of his habit, through the intervention of Christ. He has been sober since admission to prison. It is a tale that only a certain kind of Texan could love, a tale fit for a J. R. Ewing. In the annals of family dysfunction, the Smiths of Lamson, Texas, are one for the books…

  “I still can’t believe Daddy is alive,” Sharleen murmured. She felt drained of all energy, as if she would never move off the Herculon-covered sofa again.

  “We don’t have to see him, though, do we?” Dean asked. His eyes were big, the way they got when he was scared. Funny how nothin’ scared Dean exceptin’ their daddy. Maybe his fright got all used up when we were kids, Sharleen thought.

  “No. I guess we don’t. But he’s sayin’ we’re bad kids. And so’s everyone else.”

  “I don’t understand,” Dean said, standing beside the sofa she was lying on. He held up one of the newspapers from the pile in front of him. “I don’t understand.”

  “I know you don’t, Dean, honey. I know.”

  “But why are they so mad? I only hit him ’cause he was hittin’ on you. And I’m glad he ain’t dead, but I’d kill him again if he hit you.”

  “That ain’t why they’re mad.”

  “Why, then?”

  “Because of what we do at night. Because of how we sleep together.”

  “But we always sleep together,” Dean said. “Why are they mad now?”

  “Well, I guess they didn’t know till now.”

  “Does that mean you won’t get the prize?”

  For a moment, she didn’t know what he was talking about. Then she remembered the Emmy. “I guess it does, honey.” Dean hunkered down next to her. He dropped the paper and stared at her.

  “Does that make you sad?”

  Sharleen nodded. “But I ain’t so sad as I’m ashamed.” Though she tried to stop it, a tear escaped and slid down her cheek.

  “Oh, Sharleen! Please. Don’t be. It’s like the time that Opie met the man who worked on the power lines. And he told everyone about it, but Andy thought he was makin’ it all up. So he made Opie apologize for bein’ wrong and lyin’, even when he wasn’t. But then Andy met the power-line man. So he came to see it Opie’s way. We didn’t do nothin’ wrong, Sharleen. They’ll come to see that.”

  Sharleen took his hand and shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that was Mayberry. This is Hollywood.”

  First Photos: Jahne Moore Before and After

  In this week’s issue of the National Questioner are the exclusive photos of Jahne Moore’s miracle surgery. See how surgery can take a woman from being a thirty-four-year-old, overweight, mousy woman to a twenty-four-year-old beauty with the body of a goddess. EXCLUSIVE!

  “Jesus Christ!” Marty could hardly believe it! First there had been the rescheduling problems with Jahne Moore over Birth. Then the problems with Lila and Theresa. Then Jahne calls in sick for a week. Now both Sharleen and Jahne were in the epicenter of the biggest scandals since Fatty Arbuckle and the Coke bottle. Didn’t they all understand he had a show to shoot?

  He had suspended shooting for a week. Les Merchant was going nuts. It cost the Network almost the same amount not to shoot an episode as to shoot one. Meanwhile, Sy was constantly on the phone with new reports from the press, new outrage from the sponsors, and general fear and loathing.

  Marty listened to the sound of phones going crazy and unanswered outside his office door. He lifted his hand to rub the bridge of his nose. He had a Headache from Hell, and he was afraid it wasn’t going away anytime soon.

  Sharleen Smith’s Mother Busted for Prostitution

  THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

  NEW ORLEANS, LA. Flora Lee Deluce, the mother of Sharleen Smith, costar of Three for the Road, was arrested last night for prostitution in a motel on Route 101, also known by the locals as “Mattress Mile” because of the profusion of motels that rent rooms by the hour.

  At first the police weren’t aware that Mrs. Deluce was Ms. Smith’s mother, and the booking was regarded as routine, the result of a regular stake-out by the police of the Sun Star Motel.

  Mrs. Deluce, while declining to comment on her relationship with her daughter, did say the arrest “was a frame-up. I didn’t even have my teeth out when the cops crashed in the door.”

  Sharleen Smith’s meteoric career and the accusation of an incestuous relationship with her brother have cast the spotlight on all aspects of her life. Neither Miss Smith nor her spokesperson had any comment to make.

  Arraignment is scheduled for 2:00 P.M. today in St. Charles Parish Courthouse. Fifty dollars bail was paid by an associate of Mrs. Deluce, who declined to be named or interviewed.

  “What a family!” Sy Ortis screamed into his car phone. He could barely manage to get enough air into his lungs to do it. “Is there one member of the Smith family who hasn’t been jailed or broken a commandment today?”

  TOP TEN REASONS WHY WOMEN NO LONGER WATCH THREE FOR THE ROAD

  —FROM Late Night with David Letterman

  10. Their boyfriends don’t make them anymore />
  9. Their brothers don’t make them anymore

  8. So they don’t have to hate themselves in the morning

  7. They’re not into motorcycles

  6. Their mothers won’t let them

  5. Their fathers won’t let them

  4. Their priests won’t let them

  3. They prefer NFL highlight

  2. They can’t afford the surgical bills

  1. They prefer Bride of Frankenstein

  BIRTH TOPS IN BOX

  Jahne Moore’s Birth of a Star once again topped all other releases in box-office performance, bringing in $83 million in the less than a month since its release…

  —Hollywood Reporter

  Sharleen was sitting in the living room, hunched over, a blanket covering her shoulders. She heard his voice before she saw him, and turned around. “Dobe!” she yelled, and jumped from the recliner, dropping the afghan. “Dobe Samuels, what are you doing here? Why, you look better than a warm stove on a cold night.”

  “And you look like something the cat dragged in,” Dobe told her. “What in the name of the living God got you tucked away in this dark hole?”

  “I told him you been sick, Sharleen,” Dean said. “I told him you were cryin’ and all.”

  “Well, what the hell have you got to cry about, I’d like to know?”

  “Oh, Dobe. It’s really been terrible. The newspapers and television people won’t leave us alone, and then the news about Daddy in prison. Dean and me both been sick about it. Plus Flora Lee’s been…”

  “People make their bed, Sharleen. Only can do so much for them. You, on the other hand, you never done nothing bad to no one that I know about. So why are you holed up here like some kind of outlaw on the lam?”

  She only shrugged her shoulders. Dobe shook his head. “Sit down, you two,” he told them. Sharleen sank back down onto the recliner. Dean took a seat on the floor with the dogs. “Now, listen up. Ain’t no incest going on here. Never was, never will be. Flora Lee ain’t your mother…”