That’s all, he said, but he looked more afraid than she was. It was the man, that fan of hers who sat across the street from the studio every night so he could wave to her when her car drove out. And today he’d managed to get all the way onto the lot, and the sound stage, and the set, and Hal, who now pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped the sweat from his own face, kept repeating the words “That’s all.”
Chilled with dread, Jan sat on the bed on the ICU set and tried to calm herself. Soap-opera fans were notorious for believing the characters on the show they watched were real, so every day there were weird letters and phone calls and threats to the producer’s offices from fans who obsessed about their favorite character’s fate. AUBREY FLYNN IS A DEAD MAN IF HE DOESN’T GIVE HIS SON THAT MONEY HE ASKED FOR. WHO DOES THAT BITCH MAGGIE THINK SHE IS? FLIRTING WITH EVERY MAN THAT GOES BY, IF I EVER GET MY HANDS ON HER…
“Jan, you okay down there?” she heard the director ask from the booth as she and Hal made their way back onto the office set. Hal was so shaky she felt as if she was holding him up.
“I’m fine,” she said, even trying to force a smile, but her face was twitching. “What did they do with the man?” she asked, hoping someone would assure her that they’d taken him to jail.
“Nothing much they can do. They threw him off the lot,” came the voice.
“That’s all?” Jan asked. Bert was touching up the concealer under her eyes. A few pats with the sponge, his Royal Lyme engulfing her. “Look up, sweetheart. That’s it. Look up.”
“He didn’t do anything,” the disembodied voice from the booth told her dismissively.
Jan tried to make her breathing normal as Bert left the set, and she looked around at all the people who were uncomfortably looking anywhere but into her eyes. They were afraid for her, and probably for themselves. Last year, at Universal Studios, some nut stood outside the executive office building and let go with an automatic rifle. And everyone knew about the fan who tracked down and murdered that poor young actress Rebecca Schaeffer.
She sat down at the desk in Maggie’s office and tried to regain her composure. “Is he going to have to kill me before they arrest him?” she said to nobody in particular. No one answered. Tom Patterson patted her hand as if to tell her he understood. But he didn’t understand. She was panicked. What if that man waited outside the lot and then followed her home? What if he hurt Joey? She wanted to stand up and scream, “Somebody help me,” but she knew none of them could or would.
“Can we go on?” the director’s voice asked, as if he’d been inconvenienced by Jan’s popularity. There were three directors who alternated shooting the episodes of this show, and there was always competition among them about coming in on time and under budget. If someone had called the police, their intrusion on the set would have slowed things up significantly. This little incident could have thrown off the whole day. They had to keep moving.
“Let’s make this one, people,” Hal called out, his voice still quivering. “Places, please. Here we go in five, four, three, two…”
“You can imagine how worried I’ve been,” Tom Patterson said as Aubrey to Maggie. “I mean, there’s no mistaking the look in Phillip’s eyes when you walk into a room. I thought perhaps you felt…”
It was Jan’s cue. “Darling, don’t be silly.” She managed to say Maggie’s words, but inside she was trembling, worrying about driving home alone and wondering if that fan had any idea where she lived.
“All those late meetings you two were having. It made me worry.”
Jan turned away, as Maggie had been directed. It was all by rote. Years of technique taking over. Thank heaven she could rely on the automatic system she’d developed after playing this part for so long, because her heart and her brain were not there, and her insides were rumbling with fear. “Darling, don’t be absurd,” she said, afraid she might lose it any second. Nobody had spotted that man today, and he’d made it all the way onto the set. Only a few yards away from her. No one mentioned whether or not he was carrying a gun.
“You aren’t in love with Phillip Jenkins, are you, Maggie?”
“Oh, Aubrey. Don’t be absurd,” she said, as the camera moved in for her close-up. Later everyone commented when they watched that episode that Maggie really looked as if she was afraid Aubrey had finally caught her cheating on him. And how ironic it all was, in light of what happened later.
Today was a block-and-tape day, which meant that the actors taped each scene immediately after they blocked it, so after the scene in Maggie’s office, and one more in the reception area of Flynn Laboratories, Jan’s shooting day was over. She spent a quiet time in her dressing room, removing her makeup, changing into leggings and a long sweater. When she opened the big, heavy studio door, she squinted, surprised to see the sun. It was the first time in weeks she’d actually left work while it was still daylight.
As she drove off the lot in her silent black Lexus, she looked both ways to see if she could spot anyone suspicious pulling away after her car, but in the early afternoon the streets were quiet and surprisingly traffic free. She put her hand on her car phone and considered calling The Prince of Power. Just to tell him what happened and hear him say, “Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry.”
Sometimes she could get through the first and second assistants to his executive secretary, who had worked for him at that studio and the one before it, long enough to remember the way in the old days he had a phone on his desk with a private number just for her calls. Sometimes Isobel would still hustle her call through so she could hear his husky voice say, “My angel face… how awful you must feel. I’ve got Barry Diller holding. I’ll ring you back.”
No, she wouldn’t call him. It didn’t matter. In a few minutes she’d be hugging Joey, and that would make the insanity of the day disappear. It amused her that hurrying home to be with her son excited her more than anything she’d ever felt when she was on her way to a tryst with The Prince. This little boy was magical for her. And every day she thanked heaven for the day she’d finally had the guts to adopt him, finally admitted to herself after too many difficult romances that waiting for some man to someday make a family with her was a vain hope.
Everyone thought she was crazy to start raising a child at this stage in her life. The other actors on her show, her sister, and of course The Prince all advised her to forget it. But Marly, Rosie, and Ellen urged her to go for it. Ellen had recommended the adoption lawyer, who found Jan a birth mother willing to turn over a baby to a single working woman. Marly found Jan a therapist who specialized in adoptions to prepare her for the experience. Rose found a good obstetrician for the birth mother.
All three of them managed to have careers and children, but to a woman they reported that nothing in their work lives, no matter how big a part, how hot a deal, “not even my Oscar nomination,” Rose said, could compete with the love of their children. Jan had envied them for so long, watched their joy while she played Aunt Jan to all of their kids.
Joey’s adoption ceremony was an emotional event from start to finish. Jan dressed him in a sailor suit, and no one could get over the way he laughed and smiled through the entire ceremony. And none of them would ever forget the tender moment when Marly, Ellen, and Rose all stood in a circle, and as they passed the infant boy to one another’s arms, each made an eloquent and loving promise to him, like the fairies did in Sleeping Beauty, to guard him with their lives.
Today as Jan drove up the long, winding driveway and pulled into the carport of her house, she congratulated herself again for buying it. It wasn’t grand, just a little two-story, built-on-stilts Laurel Canyon house. Stucco with the fifties’ sliding-glass-door style. But what had sold her on it, the minute the broker walked her in, was the panoramic view from every room. On days when the air wasn’t too thick with smog, she could see the mountains that were miles away.
And at night, the lights below twinkled and made the view look just the way she remembered it in the opening of a TV show s
he used to watch as a kid, where the searchlights spanned the night sky and the announcer’s voice said, “Lux… presents Hollywood.”
“Mommmeeee,” Joey shrieked happily, running to Jan. She crouched so her arms would receive her four-year-old, whose wispy blond hair and blue eyes ironically made him look just like the baby pictures she had of herself.
“Hello, my lovely boy,” she said, inhaling the dear little-boy scent of him. It was unusual for her to be home in time to be the one who made Joey dinner instead of arriving just in time to tuck him in. Hurrying in to give him a few pre-sleep kisses and then watching him drift off. It was an incredible luxury to have hours of daylight left to play with him. Jan nursed a glass of wine while they sat on the floor and put together a jigsaw puzzle. Then they each colored a page in the “Beauty and the Beast” coloring book, Jan carefully shading a blue dress on Belle, and Joey scrawling with bright red all over the Beast.
“Some children are natural nurturers,” a child psychologist told her. “From the start they feel that they’re here to take care of you.” Ellen told Jan that her son, Roger, had always been a caretaker. Joey was like that, too, with Jan. When her mind wandered to the man breaking in onto the set today, he climbed into her lap and gently patted her face.
“It’s okay, Mommy,” he said. “It’s okay.”
The day was getting just a little gray, and the sky over the valley was orange and magenta when she stood at the stove, tasting the DynoMac pasta to see if it was ready for the sauce. She promised herself that one of these days she’d stop giving Joey such junk food, but she kept breaking the promise because he seemed to love it so much. She was getting the milk out of the refrigerator when the phone rang.
“They’re fucking you, babe.” It was her lawyer.
“Ooh, Bernie, I hope so,” she kidded, while she mixed the cheese and the milk into the pasta. “I also hope like hell they’re using protection.” Bernie had his serious voice on. He was bringing what he thought was grim news from Ed Powell and the other producers of “My Brightest Day.”
The scene between Maggie and Lydia for Friday was leading to a shooting followed by a prolonged hospitalization for Maggie, as a warning to Jan that she was dispensable. To make sure that she’d accept the meager raise they were offering for a new three-year contract. An offer Bernie was telling her was “a real up-yours.”
“But, Bern,” she said, “I’m happy they want me back. I was starting to think Maggie Flynn was going to have soap opera reincarnation as a younger actress. Thank God at least I can get some more time out of this deal. I have a child to feed, sweetie.”
“If I were you, I’d threaten to walk,” Bernie said. “Otherwise they’ll shit all over you. That new girl? The twenty-two-year-old with the headlights out to Kishnev. She started on the show with a higher salary than they’re offering you after fifteen years. So I don’t want you to be a schmuck. I mean, you can be a schmuck if you want, but I wouldn’t cave at this point. I’d say no to the offer and let them come back to us.”
“Yeah? And what if they say, ‘Okay. Thanks for the fifteen years, and ciao, baby?’ ” she asked, spooning the minidinosaurs smothered in the gooey orange cheese sauce onto a “Ninja Turtle” plate.
“Well, that’s the chance we have to take, isn’t it?” Bernie said.
“Bernie, I’ve watched them get rid of other actors on this show with great ease. I did a guest shot on a high-rated prime-time show because my old college chum gave me a handout. The producer of the show probably resented it so much that he’ll never use me again. No one is exactly beating my door down to beg me to do anything else. I’m a forty-nine-year-old actress, and a long-running soap is asking me back. I appreciate you wanting to get me some fancy raise, but I am unable to authorize you to tell them I’m walking if they don’t give me what I want. If I don’t send my sister a monthly check, she’ll be moving into her car. Close the deal,” she said.
“Janny, let’s take a day or two or three to get back to them,” Bernie said. “Maybe you’ll change your mind and give me some leeway.”
“We can take a few days, Bern,” she said. “But I’m not going to turn my back on a real live job.”
“Call me next week when you’re a little more rested,” Bernie said.
“Fine,” Jan said, and she caught the telephone receiver just before it fell from under her ear into the DynoMacs.
She put the dish in front of Joey at the table, and Marie poured some apple juice into a plastic glass for Joey and put that on the table, too. “I tell my husband I stay here Friday night so you can be with Misses Marly and Ellen and Rose,” Marie said. “I stay the night to watch Joey, and you go have fun with your friends.”
“Thank you, Marie,” Jan said. “I can’t wait!”
* * *
3
Over the last ten years, she’d moved from one piece-of-shit apartment to another so often that by the time some of her mail actually found her, it had two or three forwarding stickers slapped one on top of the other. -Most of the junk shoved in her mailbox wasn’t worth the tree they had to kill to get the paper. A few catalogues, with a lot of fancy items in them that she couldn’t afford. A bill there was no way she could pay, so with a flick of her wrist she tossed that one right in the wastebasket.
Let them come and get me, she thought. As it was, she could barely make the rent for this rathole apartment, in a neighborhood so bad she had to keep a gun in the kitchen drawer just in case one of those spics who lived across the way got any ideas.
Wasn’t it great, she thought, that the one slick, good-looking upscale magazine that found its way to her every time was the alumni news? She didn’t have to pay for it, and she always made sure to supply that office with her new address so they’d know where to send it. Of course when she wrote to them, she never told them any info about what she was really doing, like they asked. Oh please. With all the big-time players they listed in there from her class alone?
Every few months when the magazine was there in her mailbox at the end of a long day’s work, she’d drop everything to sit and read it. Not the articles about homecoming and the new student computer center. She skipped over those, right to the part where they listed the goings-on about the people from her department and her year.
DRAMA—Class of ‘66
Albertson, Sherry. Sherry writes in, “I am still teaching acting technique at the La Jolla Playhouse and loving it.”
Teaching. Big deal. She knew the frustration of teaching when what you really wanted to do was act. She’d done it herself for a while. Taught speech to a bunch of airheads at an acting school. Forget that shit! Skip Sherry Albertson. Who else?
Bradford, Freeman. Freeman is scene designer for the Seattle Repertory Company.
Nice going, Freeman, she thought, remembering he had been a nerd.
Bass, Ellen. Ellen Bass was Ellen Feinberg and is now the vice president in charge of feature films at Hemisphere Studios in Hollywood. Recent films under her aegis starred Jodie Foster, Julia Roberts, Richard Gere, and Michelle Pfeiffer.
That one made her close the magazine for a minute and sit staring around her dingy dive of an apartment. She had written her first letter to Ellen Bass when she read that she was in some production job at 20th Century-Fox a few years ago, but she never got an answer. Then she actually got up the nerve to call her when she saw that she got that big job at Hemisphere Studios, and some male secretary with an attitude problem asked, “Will she know what this is regarding?” It was so condescending, she hung up. Then last year she sent her the tape, the brilliant tape, and Ellen fucking Bass never so much as sent a thank-you note. Why was it so hard to just scribble a few lines saying, “Thank you. I got the tape” But not one word.
Feldman, Sanford. Composer Sandy Feld has scored five Broadway musicals. He lives with his wife and children in Connecticut, and this year he generously gave his time to come and speak to the music majors about how to break into the theater.
Her stomach
acid surged up into her esophagus. That little musical genius Sandy Feldman had gotten her stoned one night at a party during their senior year and tried to score her. Cut me a break, she thought. Five Broadway musicals? She hadn’t even seen five Broadway musicals. Only one. That glorious time a bunch of them piled into a car and drove from Pittsburgh to New York City.
It was before seat belts, and there were too many of them for Sandy Feldman’s little Chevy, so most of the way she sat on Jack Solomon’s lap. Best time he ever had in his whole life, he kept joking. And then they got to New York. What a city. It was all lit up and it was snowing, and they all stood in line together waiting to buy twofers for How to Succeed, singing Christmas carols and laughing.
The musical made her feet leave the ground. Robert Morse, Michelle Lee, and Charles Nelson Reilly, and every song was a gem. Afterward they all walked, with their arms around one another, all over the theater district, Shubert Alley, and Sardi’s, singing that song, “Brotherhood of Man,” and swearing that someday they’d all be working there. Together. All of them were so sure then that working in the theater was their destiny.
She was one of them then. Young and pretty, with her carrot-colored hair down to her waist. The best actress in the class. Jack Solomon called her that for the first time after freshman year, during a rehearsal of The Cherry Orchard. He told her it was her great, deep, sexy bedroom voice that filled the theater and made her impossible to ignore on stage. And he wasn’t even looking to get laid when he said it. No, Jack was always hot for Jan O’Malley. Besides, he was such a little jerko in those days, no one would have dreamt of him as a boyfriend. And now he was big-time Jack Solomon, who wasn’t even on this list, probably because he was too famous now to take the time to write in and tell the alumni magazine what he was doing.
Show Business Kills Page 3