Show Business Kills

by Iris Rainer Dart

  “Maybe that’s not what it was,” Rose said. “Maybe he just thought it was a hot part that would get her some attention.”

  “No,” Marly said. “It was the last show of the season, and somebody Jan knew went to the wrap party, where they sometimes do a gag reel, you know, of out-takes, of goofs people make, and things that go wrong. And the person told her that the last shot on the gag reel was a close-up of her breasts, and then over it they supered the words SPECIAL THANKS TO JACK SOLOMON. Apparently it got a big laugh. She called to tell me that, and after she did, she cried so hard she had to hang up.”

  * * *

  15

  Ellen shook her head in angry disbelief. “So thirty years later, Jack Solomon gets to see the tits he missed out on in college. The lowlife. This is a man who could get on the phone and call any casting director and within ten minutes have a hundred young, beautiful women parade naked through his office. But he did that? The lousy bastard.” She picked up her loafer with her toe and dangled it there, watching it and shaking her head in disgust.

  “Well, not that I’d ever want to defend him,” Rose said, “but Jan could have refused to go in once she saw those pages in the script.”

  “Yes, if she’d been thinking clearly,” Marly said. “But her clash with Jack Solomon was an interaction of their neuroses. The healthy behavior for Jan would have been for her to call him on the phone, or better yet, to go in his office and say, ‘I need this, Jack. Please do it for me if you can.’ And the healthy behavior for Jack would have been to call her when he got her note, not to have his people call her people.

  “But they were both inextricably linked in the myth of who they were in college, still carrying the baggage of thirty years ago, so neither one of them could confront the other. She was the girl he couldn’t get, and he was the boy she feels guilty and stupid about rejecting every time she sees his name in the paper, because now he has more power than anybody in the television business. By being afraid of him, she was in league with him on this.”

  “You’re exactly right,” Ellen said.

  “I know. Isn’t it remarkable how sane and lucid I can be about other people’s lives, and a blithering idiot about my own?” Marly said through a laugh.

  “Pretty shitty,” Ellen said, and she stood and stretched.

  “But you can understand why she was afraid. We have that groove in our brains now, because it gets proven to us again and again that the people in those positions are rude and greedy and unfeeling,” Marly said pointedly.

  “Watch it,” Ellen said.

  “If the Ferragamo fits, honey…” Marly said.

  “I’m not going to get into that same fight with you again,” Ellen said, collapsing back on the chair. “I’m sorry to be the one who has to always remind you that when Ethel Merman sang the song, the lyrics were ‘There’s no business like show business,’ not show creativity, or show warm and friendly.”

  “I know, I get it, it’s all about money,” Marly said. “But remember the days when we all used to believe that ‘talent will out’? And we slaved away, studying and working because we thought our technique would get us the jobs, not the fact that we knew the guy who produced the show?”

  “Yeah, and we also thought Rock Hudson was macho, and Werner Erhard had the secret to life, and what about sexual harassment?” Ellen said. “We should have only known it was called that.”

  “True,” Rose said. “I was so naive I thought Long Dong Silver was the name of the flatware pattern I registered for when I got engaged.”

  That made the others laugh a loud peal of laughter that made the man and woman across the large waiting area look over uncomfortably. The boy with the Walkman was sound asleep with his head back.

  “Now, that’s naive,” Marly laughed just as she noticed the two men who turned the corner on their way to the elevators. Marly recognized one of them as Ed Powell, the producer of Jan’s show. Every time she’d seen him before, at a party or when she went to visit Jan on the set, he was nattily dressed in some expensive-looking suit. Tonight he was dressed in a rumpled sweatshirt and sweatpants, and his hair was askew as if he’d jumped out of bed and hurried over to the hospital. He was with another man in his fifties who wore a tweed blazer and dark glasses.

  “Hello, Ed,” Marly said, standing. Ed Powell looked over at her, his eyes narrowing, probably as he tried to remember her name, and then gave her a nod of semirecognition. “Oh, yeah, hi there. I’m real sorry about Janny. I know she’s your close friend, and I’m real sorry,” he said uncomfortably. “I just talked to one of the docs, and he told me she’s out of surgery and they’re going to be moving her into recovery any time now. But she’s in a coma.”

  Then his eyes looked faraway; and he thought out loud. “I think that’s what we’ll tell the papers. In a coma, don’t you think?” He asked turning to the other man. “I’ve got the press downstairs crawling up my ass for some buzz about her,” he said to Marly, then turned back to the man. “I think for now, just your basic coma ought to do it. Get them to print that it looks really bad and that she’s probably dying. Then if…”

  “I’m Hank Brand,” the man with the sunglasses said as he extended his hand to Marly in a tone that implied, “We both know Ed Powell’s a boor not to have introduced us.”

  “Oh, Christ, I’m sorry,” Ed Powell said. “Hank Brand is the publicist for my show and this is… uh, Billy Mann’s wife.”

  “I’m Marly Bennet,” Marly said coolly, and she shook the publicist’s hand.

  Ed Powell’s body English said he didn’t want Marly in the conversation any more. He turned his back to her, edging the publicist away to talk privately, but Marly wanted to hear what they were saying, so she followed closely behind them.

  “Then if we make it sound as bad as possible,” Ed Powell said, furrowing his brow, “and she pulls though, it’s a full-out miracle, and we really go through the roof the day she comes back. We bring her on during sweeps week, in a wheelchair, and we do a whole big…”

  Marly couldn’t stop herself. She put her hand on Ed Powell’s arm. “Excuse me, Ed. Are you saying you’re going to exploit this disaster to promote your television show?” Both men looked at her with the same kind of light annoyance they would have if she’d been a waitress at the Beverly Hills Hotel who just spilled water on their table. “That’s a mistake. It’s irresponsible for you to put harmful ions out there which could have an adverse effect on Jan’s recovery.”

  Ed Powell looked long at Marly, then smiled at his colleague. “Harmful ions? That’s a classic. I’ll have to remember that for one of the characters on my show.” Then he looked back at Marly with a patronizing smile and added, “One of the crazy ones.” Then he gestured with his head down the hall toward the elevator, said, “Let’s hit it, Hank,” and moved off.

  Marly’s first instinct was to run after him and pummel him. To tell him he was killing Jan, to tell him if Jan died it would be on his conscience forever, but she knew he didn’t have a conscience, so she took a chance that maybe she could get to the press agent instead.

  “Hank, wait. I know we’ve just met, but I need you to hear me. This is very important to Jan. Life-or-death important. Because we all know ideas are what kill people. Surely you’ve read Deepak Chopra or Louise Hay? You understand that the way we perceive the world is the way we make it, don’t you? That’s why you have to tell the press that Jan is doing well. Those messages are transformed into molecules that reach her cells.”

  She heard the begging in her voice, but worse than that, she knew how ridiculous she must seem, trying to explain those ideas to this particular man. Knew that in a year she and the girls would laugh about this, but at this moment she was certain it was the most urgent cause in the world.

  Ellen and Rose walked over to where she and the press agent were standing. Hank Brand didn’t acknowledge them. He had an expression on his face that looked as if he were trying hard to hold in a laugh. Probably he couldn’t wait to reg
ale the other vultures he worked with by telling them his story about this dippy woman.

  “Mrs. Mann,” he said, “the company I work for represents ‘My Brightest Day,’ and that means Ed Powell is my employer. If he says Jan O’Malley’s dying… what can I say? As far as I’m concerned… she’s dying.” Then he smiled a tight smile and he moved off down the hall.

  “I’d like to kill him,” Marly said.

  “I’d like to hire him,” Ellen said. “Anyone who’s that blindly loyal…”

  Marly leaned against the wall. “When I think of all those times I defended the press, and the First Amendment, and the right to print stories that drove other people mad,” she said. “And now I’d like to take the assault weapon I’ve fought so hard to have banned, and mow them all down.”

  “Mar,” Rose said, “remember what Lenny Bruce said. The word isn’t the thing. Let people say what they want. When the time comes, we’ll all go in and be with Jan and tell her she’s okay. And she will be.”

  “Who knows better than we do that they print lies every day?” Ellen said. “I’ve seen articles about myself in the trade papers saying I was getting jobs I never even heard about, buying projects that never cross my desk, dating men I’ve never even met. But I laugh it off because I know the lies don’t affect reality.” Marly wasn’t looking at her. “I know you know that, too,” Ellen said.

  Marly slowly turned to look at Ellen with painful eyes. “Are you trying to tell me you’ve seen this week’s Enquirer?”

  “I am,” Ellen said, “this morning at the newsstand at the commissary.”

  “I saw it too,” Rose said.

  “And?”

  “And I think Billy was probably talking to some young fan, and an overzealous photographer thought he’d make something out of it. Period. Billy’s a loon, but he’s not a child molester,” Ellen said.

  “We don’t believe it for a second. And nobody else will, either. Ignore it,” Rose said. “Those papers are garbage. One of my friends was in the market with her six-year-old daughter a few weeks ago waiting at the check-out line, and the child tugged at her and asked, ‘Mommy, what does Oprah mean?’ ”

  Marly laughed. “You’re right,” she said. “But it’s awful. For me, and for the twins. And Billy. He’s already under a lot of pressure. There’s been such a buildup about the new show and how great it’s supposed to be, and he’s competing with all of those other late-night shows and he’s panicked about that. I looked out the upstairs window at the top of his head and noticed a little bald spot, and I’m sure he’s worried about that, too.”

  That made them laugh. “Do you think he worries about aging?” Rose asked. “With men in show business it’s probably called ‘The Dick Clark syndrome.’ ”

  “Only without the ‘Clark,’ ” Ellen said, and the three friends laughed.

  “All men in this business are crazy. Do you think maybe there’s something in the ink in Variety that goes directly to their brains?” Marly asked as they moved back to the chairs.

  “No. I think it’s men in general. In Molly’s class, the girls have a poem they’ve been saying since kindergarten: ‘Girls go to Mars to get more candy bars/Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider,’ ” Rose said and they laughed.

  “How do those little girls already know the battle lines are drawn?” Ellen asked.

  “Andy seems so sane. I want a man like that,” Marly said. “But I guess our relationships mirror us, and that’s why I’ve spent so much time clinging to the idea of Billy. Because something in me required the drama that’s a part of his package. And that was why the two of us got stuck at some impenetrable contact boundary that I couldn’t transcend.”

  “What in the hell does that mean?” Ellen said.

  “To put it in that psychological jargon of which she’s so fond,” Rose said, “it means Billy’s a schmuck.”

  Marly laughed, but her body remembered the thrill of Billy inside her that morning. She wanted everything he’d said to her to be true, for there to be some explanation about the tabloid picture.

  “Jan used to tell me if she could give up smoking, I could give up Billy. She used to tell me I just had to detox my system of him and I’d be fine.”

  Rose didn’t mention that she knew Jan went back to smoking after quitting for three months, or that Jan was still seeing a man she’d been hooked on for more than ten years. Or that Marly just talked about her in the past tense, as if she were already dead.

  “I even went to one of those Coda meetings. It’s a twelve-step group where you work on letting go of co-dependent relationships.”

  “What was that like?” Rose asked. “Is there a movie in it?”

  “Only if you’re co-dependent on Julia Roberts,” Ellen said, and Marly snickered.

  “I sat there listening to everyone’s story and thought, I don’t want to learn how not to be co-dependent. I like being co-dependent. I just need to find the right man to do it with. Someone who wants to be co-dependent with me as we co-depend into the sunset together.”

  “God, if what you said is true and our relationships mirror us, then I’m a vampire,” Ellen said. “I haven’t had one in so long I don’t even know how to talk to anyone who doesn’t reply ‘Meow.’ Of course I did have a few beauties in my life, which may have scared me off forever. And I’m sure you both recall them.”

  “We do,” Marly said.

  “You even had one in the lockup ward,” Rose said.

  “Thanks for remembering,” Ellen said, “not to mention a few who should have been.”

  “She did? You did? I don’t remember that,” Marly said.

  “Yes you do,” Rose reminded her. “That weird Norman Braverman. The tall one with all the wavy black hair she was with for a while.”

  “Oh yes,” Marly said “… but the lockup ward? I didn’t know he was put away. Tell me.”

  Ellen, remembering with a smile, told them the story of Norman Braverman.

  * * *

  16

  The Snake Pit

  Six weeks after Norman Braverman dumped me because he couldn’t make a commitment, he was committed to a nuthouse in New England. I liked to tell myself that the little putz’s incarceration was a direct result of realizing he’d walked out on the greatest woman he’d ever known. That one morning he woke up screaming my name, knew he’d lost me forever, and in torment and despair turned in all his sharp instruments, checked out of Hollywood and into a bin.

  But the truth was, nutsy Normie’s trip to the farm of funniness had nothing to do with me. This was a man who was certifiable long before we met. Unfortunately, in my own needy state of mind I neglected to notice the clues. And there were a lot of them. Number one, he was the only man I ever knew who faked orgasms. He’d put himself inside me, and within seconds I’d feel him get soft.

  I tried not to take it personally while I watched him writhe around on top of me making moaning noises so I would think he’d lost his tumescence due to an explosion of passion. But anyone who’s been around, even a little bit, knows for certain that after passionate explosions there has to be evidence of the same. After a Norman Braverman explosion, despite the sound effects, there wasn’t so much as a drop.

  Number two, crazy fucking Norman couldn’t decide if he had a life wish or a death wish. For example, he ate bran by the box and exercised seven days a week for at least two hours a day no matter what the weather or his condition. But he also smoked more than a pack of cigarettes a day, then drank himself to sleep every night.

  Number three. The guy was neat, no, not neat, a better word would be compulsive. As in when he left the bathroom, he folded the end of the toilet paper into an origami triangle, the way maids do in hotels to let you know they’ve been there to clean up. In fact, Norman’s mother, who frequently came out to dinner with us, liked to tell a story about just how neat Norman was when he was growing up.

  “He ate all of his food symmetrically,” she bragged to me one night. “Normsie wouldn’t
take a bite out of one side of a potato chip unless he could take a bite of equal size out of the other side.” Now I happen to have a son myself, and I knew the behavior she was describing was so nuts that if my kid had it, I’d take him by ambulance to the nearest shrink. But this was a woman who thought everything her forty-year-old bachelor son did was genius. And she called him on the phone several times a day to tell him so.

  Which leads us headlong into symptom number four. A few of those calls happened to come in on a Saturday night when I had a baby-sitter at my house taking care of Roger, and Norman and I were at his house, in bed. Trying to make love. But when he heard his mother’s voice on the answering machine saying, “Hi, darling…,” he pulled himself away from me, shushed me as if he was about to take an urgent business call, and left me lying there while he chatted and dished with her.

  You’re probably asking yourself why I stayed with him. Maybe because I was a single mother desperately trying to find a father for my son. Maybe because I’m shallow and he was very good-looking. Tall and lean with thick black wavy hair and turquoise eyes. Or more probably, I was hooked into him, because there’s something about people who walk the thin line between sanity and bananas that’s charismatic.

  But even more to the point, there was something in my own bottomless need that understood Norman’s. Both of us were in a trough period in our careers that year. Norman had lost three big clients, and a fourth was threatening to walk out on him. I had just been fired from Fox and didn’t have a prospect in sight. One month I’d been mentioned in Los Angeles Magazine in a column about female studio execs who were called “Movers and Shakers in The Biz,” and the next month I was counting the cans in my pantry to see if there was enough Chunky vegetable soup to last until I got another job.

  Actually, the embarrassing true reason I allowed Norman Braverman’s nutsy behavior to roll off me with about as much interest as he did, and continued to have this so-called romance with him, was that I was on the rebound from another relationship when I met him and desperately needed someone, anyone, to cling to. So I went on pretending he was the man for me, closing my eyes to the fact that he wasn’t the man for anyone, particularly himself.