Flavor of the Month

by Olivia Goldsmith

  When she arrived at the theater, Sharleen had looked up to the monitor, only to see her own face turning from the camera. She had quickly looked away, back to Dean. On the other side of her sat Dobe—Sy had managed the extra ticket. “I never been on live television before. Don’t it make you nervous?” she asked him in a whisper, her throat dry.

  “Sure do. Afraid some people we sold gas pills to might be tuned in.”

  For a moment, she turned to him with frightened eyes. Then she saw he was jokin’ with her.

  “They never bother no one, Sharleen. They’re too embarrassed by their own greed and stupidity. Now, hold your head up high, girl. You’re on TV, and you got nothin’ to be ashamed of.”

  “I’m ashamed that I ever doubted you,” she admitted. “I thought I’d never see you again after I gave you that money.”

  “But you gave it to me anyway, didn’t you? How come?”

  “I couldn’t say no to a friend, Dobe.”

  “And I noticed you haven’t asked me about our spread.”

  “It’s okay if you lost the money, Dobe. I just didn’t want to lose you.”

  “Lost the money? Well, hell, do you think I’m a dang fool? I didn’t lose the money. But I didn’t buy us any land in Montana.”

  Oh, good. He was going to confess. Sharleen felt relieved. It was the one thing that had stood between them. “That’s all right, Dobe. It’s water under the bridge.” He was welcome to the money. She just didn’t want him to lie to her about it.

  “Great. I’m glad you aren’t disappointed. Montana was full of yuppies and Hollywood jerks. Turned the whole damned state into a fern bar.” She nodded. It was all right. She loved Dobe and she always would. As if he knew what she was thinking, he smiled back. “Yep, Montana’s been ruined. So I bought us the nicest piece a land in Wyoming that you ever laid eyes on!”

  Her mouth opened in surprise. “Did you really, Dobe?” She turned to him, her face shining. Happiness flooded her.

  “Of course I did! You never doubted me, did you?” He grinned at her slyly. “Got all the papers back at the house. Nine hundred acres. Not too shabby. Halfway between Daniel and Halfway.”

  “Halfway?”

  “No, not in Halfway. That’s the town to the south. Daniel’s to the north. We’re halfway. Kinda like the who’s-on-first joke. Anyway, I’ll show you on the map tonight. Now, wave to the people at home, and then settle down and pay attention to the man onstage. They’re announcing the Best Actress award. No matter what happens, I want you to keep that look on your face when the winner is announced.”

  The master of ceremonies had gone through all the oddball categories, the ones only family and friends of the nominated sat at the edge of their seats for. He presented the penultimate award, for Best Actor in a Dramatic Series, then said, “And now the one we’ve all been waiting for: Best Actress in a Dramatic Series. And to present it, someone who might have a preference. Ladies and gentlemen, Theresa O’Donnell!”

  “The Loveliest Girl in the World” theme song began and Theresa tottered out. Was she drunk? She read the nominees’ names from the cue screen, then the inevitable, “The envelope, please.”

  Lila felt paralyzed. The PMS here! To present the Emmy. No. No. She was totally prepared to win. But not for this. Oh God, not this!

  And what if she lost? All at once, the possibility swept over her. She reached her hand out to Marty’s beside her and almost crushed his in her clawlike grasp.

  “Jesus, your hands are cold!” he said, and then the master of ceremonies, Johnny Burton, handed the envelope to her mother.

  “And the winner is…Lila Kyle!”

  10

  The theater audience gasped as if it were one person, then burst into applause. Hey, no one bought drama the way actors do. The camera picked up Lila’s face as it broke into well-rehearsed surprise, then the broadest smile she had ever done, on- or offscreen. She kissed Marty sitting next to her, jumped up, and, holding up her long dress to ensure she wouldn’t trip, ran up the aisle and to the podium. She felt the hammering of her heart, and the heat of the lights. She seemed to be moving as if through water, as if in a dream, all in slow motion: each step up to the platform, across the stage.

  She faced her mother, who clutched the Emmy in her own claws. Lila reached for the statuette. Theresa stared at her glassily. Lila pulled at the award. But Theresa didn’t let go. Lila tugged. Theresa hung on. But Lila would have it. It was hers. Everything would be hers from now on. And at last her mother gave in. Lila held the award to her chest. The crowd went wild.

  She had never stood before a crowd like this. Well, after all, she wasn’t a stage actress. Now, standing in front of this audience, the crème de la crème of her world, she felt the applause, and she felt the love they had for her. Oh, it was indescribable, it was what she had dreamed of, night after night. Love. Pure love. Love that didn’t sully, love that didn’t touch her, but that surrounded her like a warm bath, like a mother’s breast. She could feel the applause, she could feel it across her erect nipples, against her stomach, and lower, somewhere lower.

  “Oh,” she gasped into the microphone. “Oh. Thank you!” she managed to say, her prepared speech disappearing somewhere out of her head. “Thank you all.” The audience, tired of the usual long-winded speeches and faked sincerity, responded to her pure feeling. The applause began again, building and swelling until it beat against her. And Lila felt something build and swell within. The applause seemed to carry her, the approval to build and to release her.

  And, for the first and last time in her life, Lila felt the exquisite tingling that became a wave, a deep, powerful wave that made her shudder and brought her, right there on the stage at the podium, to orgasm.

  It took a few minutes for the applause to die down, and, in those few minutes, Lila wept. From relief, from joy, but most of all because this was the first time since that party, so many years ago, that she had won applause from an audience. My mother hit me then. She was jealous then. Is she watching and jealous now? Lila shivered in her triumph. Since then, before this magical night, Lila had only performed in front of a camera, cut off from reaction, from response, without the benefit of applause. Tonight she realized what she had been missing. And wanted more.

  She gathered herself, though she still trembled. Then, carefully, ignoring Theresa, she stepped from around the podium to take one more bow, to still the audience, yet at the same time to milk every glorious moment of it. Lila bowed and stood in place, the Emmy in her hands in front of her.

  It was the happiest moment of her life. And the last.

  11

  The crack came from the back of the auditorium, and Lila pitched forward, the Emmy dropping from her hands and rolling several feet forward until it came to a stop, teetering just at the edge of the stage. It took the camera crew almost four seconds to realize something extraordinary had happened. Lila Kyle had dropped completely out of the frame. Mitch Goldman, the Emmy-show producer, who was back in the control booth, barked an order to Camera 1. “Give me a long shot,” he yelled.

  Lila was revealed, lying prone across the front of the stage. “Is the bitch drunk like her mother?” Mitch asked. “Did she trip? Get me a close-up, Bobby.” A dazed murmur had gone up from the crowd. Was this a gag? An accident?

  Johnny Burton was the first one to Lila. He touched her, then looked at the red stain that had already begun to spread across the back of her dress to his hand.

  “She’s been shot,” he shouted. “Get a doctor up here!”

  “Fuck this live TV,” Mitch Goldman groaned.

  Everyone surrounding Ara in his living room gasped as Lila fell. They all stood, paralyzed, as still as statues. No one even blinked, all eyes fixed to the screen. What was going on? Lila had just been named winner…was taking her bows…and suddenly keeled over. On the screen, Johnny Burton was leaning over her. His voice took over the room once again, breaking the silence. “She’s been shot.”

  Ara’s first
thought was that it was shtick. Then, after the briefest silence, someone screamed.

  “Oh, my God!” Michael McLain cried out. Several women screamed. “Is she dead?” someone yelled. Everyone was up, pushing closer to one of the screens. Véronique Peck was sobbing. “Hush! Quiet so we can hear!” Michael Douglas told the crowd. In the pandemonium, only Ara, unnoticed, continued to sit in his chair.

  Sam had only just managed to come back from the men’s room. He’d regained his composure after the incident with Crystal when he heard the commotion and looked up at the screen. He heard the announcement about Lila and gasped.

  My God! Sam thought. What about Jahne? Is she safe? If she had won, would she have been shot?

  And all at once a longing—the strongest feeling of his life—washed over him. My God, what if she were dead? What if I could never see her, never hold her, never love her again?

  In that moment, he realized he would never love anyone but her.

  Robbie couldn’t think, couldn’t put two words together, so he didn’t try. He reacted instead, gathering up the collapsed form of Theresa and moving quickly out of the green room and to the auditorium exit. Lila! Was she really hurt? No, it’s only television. It can’t be real. Theresa’s having an attack. Got to get her out of here. Jesus, where’s the car? He screamed for the driver as he made it through the door. The driver was nowhere to be found. But somehow Robbie would get to the hospital, where both his girls needed help.

  Sy Ortis stood in the middle of the room, the spot he had maneuvered himself into, right next to Ara, so he could be where he belonged, in the center of everything, ready to receive the congratulations. Now he didn’t move, couldn’t move. Lila’s been shot? He put his hand on his chest for a moment, then dropped it to his pocket and his inhaler. But his breathing was fine. He looked at the screen. Lila’s been shot. Jesus Christ! An Emmy, and national TV coverage of her shooting. Sy would never cease to be amazed by that woman. She must have set it up. He remembered what the bus crash had done for Gloria Estefan. If Lila survived this—and Sy didn’t for a minute think she wouldn’t somehow—she was going to be the hottest actress around for years to come. A definite cover next week on People. She’d own this fuckin’ town.

  The room was swirling now. There was no way Ara could stop it, even when he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he saw everything through a rose light, like the jelly lights on a stage. Red. He knew it. He had felt it coming. The stab of pain, then the pain receding, giving him a moment to breathe. He tried to stand, to call out, but couldn’t. Then the searing red-hot pain again, in his head, down the side of his body. Ara tried to open his mouth to call out for help, but all that came out was a long stream of drool. He fell back into the chair, grateful for the relief of the semiconsciousness that was falling over him.

  Ara remained seated, with the crowd swirling around him, around and around like a merry-go-round. His head hurt. No, it was worse than “hurt.” It felt as if his brain would split. He decided to sit there until everything stopped. And then, for him, it did.

  “Oh, no, that poor girl.” The blonde starlet next to Paul Grasso was in tears, her head lowered to rest on Paul’s shoulder. Paul shrugged it off.

  Marty, he thought. What about Marty DiGennaro? They hadn’t said anything about him. It seemed, as much as Paul could make out, that Lila was the only one hurt. The scene on the screen had already shifted to a newsroom set, and the newsman was speaking in a strained but clear voice. “Word has just reached us that this was a terrorist act of the International Anti-Nepotism League. Police are still trying to identify the shooter. The FBI has been called in.”

  Paul turned back to the blonde starlet, who now was only sniffling. “I discovered Lila Kyle,” he told her.

  “Wait a minute,” Michael McLain called out to the crowd. “Shut up. Let’s hear what they’re saying,” he warned everyone, pointing to the TV monitor. Adrienne was by his side, as she had been all evening, only now she was clinging with both hands, bunches of his formal jacket in each of her fists. “It’s okay, honey,” he told her, charmed by her dependence. “That’s miles away. You’re safe here.” Her belly was already protruding, making a pleasant mound that she now pushed against him. He patted it, then brought his attention back to the screen. It was Lila Kyle, he thought. Shot. Yes. It’s been confirmed. What was this league? Christ, now the assassinations of movie stars would begin. He thought of the psychopath in prison who kept writing to him. The army of loners carrying copies of Catcher in the Rye. For him old threats would probably be joined with the threats of women fans once he announced his engagement to Adrienne. He turned to Adrienne to lead her out of the room. There was no sense staying here. Not with his fiancée in her delicate condition. As he led a grasping Adrienne to the door, he thought that it could have been worse. Lila could have been shot before the award. Then that bitch Jahne Moore might have won it by default.

  Someone said, “Who’s Auntie Nepo…You know. That woman they said.”

  “Nepotism,” came the answer, “is when you get your job through family ties.”

  “Holy shit,” Seymore LeVine yelled out. “They’re going to kill us all.”

  12

  Neil Morelli calmly turned away from the stage, not even waiting a moment to get a reaction. After all, Roger had told him what to do, and Roger had told him he wouldn’t miss. When they hadn’t called Neil up to replace Johnny as master of ceremonies, Roger had calmed his rage, Roger had explained the change in plans. Neil let the gun hang loosely from his arm. He began calmly walking down the left aisle, toward the stage, toward the lights, toward Johnny, who was now holding the crumpled body of Lila Kyle in a sort of gender-reversed pietà. Calm. Neil felt perfectly calm, because now the worst was over.

  The screams seemed distant. It wasn’t that he didn’t hear them. Half the auditorium was screaming, and the other half was either ducking under the seats or running for the exits. But the pandemonium seemed distant, unrelated to him.

  He had gotten within fifteen feet of the stage before they tackled him. He felt the blow from behind, crumpled to his knees, and hit the floor, but there was no pain. Roger had told him there would be none. The gun was wrested from his hand, but Neil didn’t need it anymore, anyway. What he needed was some air. His lungs felt curiously empty, with the pile of squirming bodies on top of him. It wasn’t pain, exactly—Roger had promised no pain—but it was a lot of pressure. Then it lifted, and he felt the wrench as his arms were tugged together, behind him, but he was too busy trying to fill his lungs to mind the bite of the handcuffs on his thin wrists.

  When he was jerked to his feet, the lights and cameras were there, as Roger had assured him they would be. Neil smiled. He wasn’t a loser. Far from it. Now he’d be a star. The Deliverer. He would set everyone free from the wretched system. No more handing on from mother to daughter, father to son. And Roger had predicted all of this. Roger had chosen him. Neil had had his fears and doubts, but he had triumphed. He’d completed his mission, except for the speech.

  People were shouting questions at him, at the five men who surrounded him. Neil just smiled. “I represent the International Anti-Nepotism League,” he shouted. “Death to those who defy us.” And then he launched into his comedy monologue.

  13

  The scoop of a lifetime comes only once to each of us, and then only if we’re lucky. Did Woodward and Bernstein know what they had discovered as they checked out that break-in? I don’t think so. I do know that the news of Lila’s shooting was enough to make me bribe a rented-limo driver with $210 in cash and my Rolex to abandon his client at the Emmy awards and drive me to the hospital.

  The streets around the hospital were mobbed, swarming with police black-and-whites. Their red bubble-gum lights spun eerily, bouncing off the strained faces of onlookers. The ambulance was losing precious moments, waiting for the police to clear a path. The police finally got the screaming ambulance through, and it pulled into the bay giving onto the emergency r
oom. The back doors were pulled open, and medical personnel pulled the stretcher onto the walkway and ran it through the doors of the ER. I could just see Marty DiGennaro walking beside the gurney holding an IV bag aloft, the tubes a tangle.

  The entrance to the emergency room at Cedars-Sinai was a madhouse. Another ambulance was pulling up. I didn’t know it at the time, but in it rode the earthly remains of Ara Sagarian. From the midst of the growing throng, I could now see not only Marty DiGennaro but also Theresa O’Donnell at the head of the crush, pushing their way through the crowd of reporters and gawkers, trying to get in the doors of the hospital.

  Theresa O’Donnell was behind the stretcher. I don’t know where she’d come from. She stepped haltingly, her eyes scanning the watching faces. “It’s okay, Miss O’Donnell. Just police and hospital workers.” A police officer gallantly offered his hand, and she followed the stretcher through the doors, Robbie Lymon holding her by one arm. A woman in a business suit and an identification tag showing her to be a hospital employee, said to Theresa, “Follow me, Miss O’Donnell.”

  Another gurney came trundling down the pike. “What you got?” one of the ER specialists called out.

  “Stroke. DOA,” the paramedic yelled.

  “Park ’im. We got a live one!” And that is how Ara Sagarian was left: parked, dead, in the hallway of the ER for the next five hours, while the drama of the living played itself out around him.

  The group surrounding Lila continued on, through a gauntlet of police holding back the throngs of people who, like maggots, came to feed on the flesh of the fallen. Camcorders whirled from behind the wall of police, and reporters screamed out questions. The last question Theresa heard through the noise and confusion, just before they turned down a corridor, was, “Is she dead or alive, Miss O’Donnell?”