Show Business Kills

by Iris Rainer Dart

  And hearing myself say that brought me back. Made me burst into laughter, giggling at the insanity of what I was doing and what I just said, and looking into her bugged-out eyes and realizing that the reason I was now looking into her eyes instead of over her head was that I’d actually lifted her from her chair by the collar and was nearly choking her to death, to the point where she was wheezing out what she wanted to say next. And it was such a cliché that when she did say it, I just kept laughing into her frightened little face.

  “You’ll never work in this town again…”

  “Oh come on, Delia. That’s such shitty dialogue from such a bad, dumb movie that it’s funny,” I said, and that was when I dropped her, and while she was adjusting her clothes, I said, “You don’t control who works here and who doesn’t. You’re just another little casting grunt. You don’t have that power, and you can’t frighten me the way you do every other poor soul in this mean and vicious business in this awful city that’s so morally bereft that God is trying to warn us by shaking us the way a parent shakes an errant teenager. I’ll work whenever I damn well please,” I said, brushing my hands together in a gesture of extreme distaste, as if to get any trace of her off them. And then I stormed out of her office.

  “You’ll pay for this, you over-the-hill piece of shit…” I could hear her screaming after me. But I kept walking, and when I got outside the rain had stopped, and the sun was shining down on me, and I was glad I’d gone back in there and said what I did.

  “And was there any aftermath?” Rose asked, as the fluorescent lights in the hospital cafeteria buzzed, making it sound as if there were a fly trapped inside one of the long white bulbs.

  “Oh, not to speak of…” Marly said wistfully. “Except that I haven’t had a job since then.”

  * * *

  19

  It’s bad news,” Rose said as she saw Andy come into the hospital cafeteria. His stethoscope was hanging around his neck and bumping against his body as he moved. “I can see it in his eyes.”

  “They’re having trouble stabilizing Jan’s blood pressure,” he told them when he got to the table. “Her condition is looking pretty serious. I think one of you should call her sister and get her to come out here.” He looked almost apologetic, as if he knew they’d been counting on him to use some medical magic to fix Jan. Telling them it was time to call Julie was a portent of doom, and Marly closed her eyes as if to shut it out. “I mean, I’ll call her if you like,” Andy said. “But I think it’ll probably be better coming from one of you.”

  “And tell her what?” Ellen asked.

  “I think she ought to have a chance to get here,” he said. “Sometimes family members like to say good-bye even if the patient is comatose.”

  “I’ll make the call,” Rose said, and was immediately sorry she volunteered. What could she say to Jan’s poor younger sister, who would certainly fall apart when she heard? She’d probably get hysterical, and Rose would have to calm her. Jan and Julie were more like mother and daughter than siblings. Jan always talked about her sister the way a doting mother talked about her favorite child.

  “Julie’s the jock, not me,” she’d say after a tennis game. “Nobody can hit the ball the way she does.” Or she’d leaf through a magazine and spot some great-looking dress, and instead of wanting it for herself, she’d say, “I’m going to call and see if they have it in Julie’s size.” Rose was sure Julie would want to get on the next plane to L.A.

  “There’s not a whole lot more I can do here right now,” Andy said, “and Molly’s baby-sitter needs to leave, so I think I’ll go home and pay her and send her off. Call me if there are any questions, of if there’s anything I can take care of,” he said, giving his wife a kiss on the cheek. “I told the nurses in ICU to let you in when they think it’s okay. They usually only allow family in, and only one at a time, but I think they’ll probably let you all in tonight.”

  “Because you insisted?” Marly asked.

  “Must be because he told them it was Girls’ Night,” Ellen joked.

  But Rose knew exactly why the nurses were willing to break the rules. “Because it’s probably her last night?” Rose asked her husband, and Andy nodded sadly.

  “No, it isn’t,” Marly insisted, but without her usual conviction.

  Andy waved a helpless little wave to them all and left.

  “Let’s go up, and I’ll call Julie,” Rose said, moving her glasses to her nose so she could peer over them and look at her watch. It was nine o’clock. Midnight in Pennsylvania. Maybe if she got through, Julie could call the airlines tonight and book an early morning flight west. As the three friends moved together through the oily smell of the cafeteria and back to the elevator, their arms looped around one another’s waists, Rose wished she could go home with Andy.

  Get into her own cozy kitchen and make a piece of toast and jelly and a cup of tea, then crawl into bed under her comforter and sleep. Not spend the night on a hard chair in a hospital. Not go upstairs to call a woman she barely knew and give her the worst news of her life. She promised herself as the elevator rose to the seventh floor that after she accomplished the hard task of calling Jan’s sister, she’d go back down to the cafeteria and reward herself with the brownie she’d been eyeing earlier.

  “Remember to tell her Joey’s surrounded by people who love him, because I know he’ll be her first concern,” Marly said.

  “Tell her I can have a studio driver pick her up tomorrow if she needs a ride,” Ellen called after her as Rose moved down the hall toward the phones, glancing down as she passed the big windows at the dark street below, to see that the legion of Maggie Flynn fans, their ranks somewhat thinned, were still out there.

  She remembered Jan’s anxiety when the company her sister worked for went under, and Julie found herself unemployed. “Don’t worry, honey-lamb,” Rose heard Jan say affectionately into the phone one night. She had arrived at Jan’s to take her out for a birthday dinner, and Jan had gestured for her to wait while she finished talking on the phone with Julie. After a few minutes she gave Rose a look of distress. “I’ll send you a check every month until you get back on your feet,” Rose heard her say reassuringly. When she hung up that night, Jan shrugged helplessly at Rose and said, “I’m all she’s got.”

  At the bank of pay phones, Rose stood for a while, cleaning her glasses with the hem of her black blazer, trying to formulate what words she’d use to break the bad news. When Julie said she didn’t have any money to pay for an airline ticket, Rose would tell her that wasn’t a problem. Then she’d call Western Union and wire her enough to cover her travel expenses, or charge the ticket to her own credit card, to be sure Julie could get here to say what might be her last good-bye to her sister.

  Finally she steeled herself, then dialed zero and the area code, and then the number she had for Julie in her Filofax. There was a bong after she punched in her credit card number, and a computerized voice saying “Thank you for using AT and T.” The phone in Beaver Falls rang twice before a man answered it, with that odd Pennsylvania dialect Rose remembered the four friends used to try to imitate when they were in school in Pittsburgh.

  “Hallow?”

  “May I speak with Julie O’Malley, please.”

  “Whozis?”

  “My name is Rose Schiffman, I’m a friend of her sister Jan’s.”

  “Oh yeah. Holdon. N’kay?”

  “Yes.” While she waited nervously, Rose wondered how many times bad news had been transmitted through this phone she was holding. How many people had stood just where she was standing, at the phones nearest surgical ICU, having to say, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but…”

  She was the one who had called Allan’s family in New York on his last day. To tell them it was only a matter of hours until he’d be gone. She was the one who managed to say the words, “You’d better come as soon as you can.” She was the one who had heard Allan’s mother wail, “My baby,” on the other end of the line, and his father
taking the phone to say, “Oh, no, oh dear God. We’ll be there tonight.”

  “Hallow?” Rose heard the fear in Julie O’Malley’s voice.

  “Julie, this is Rose Schiffman, do you remember me?”

  “Yeah, hi, Rose. Sure, I remember you. And I already know about Jan. It was on the local news here,” she said. “I called over to the hospital, but they put me through to some nurses’ station and nobody there would tell me anything. Is she…?”

  The local news. Of course, Jan was a big enough star to have this be all over the news. Rose felt stupid for not having called Julie immediately. “She’s still alive, but she’s not doing well,” Rose said. While she was filling Julie in on as many details as she could, trying to be gentle, she imagined Julie dissolved in shocked tears at the other end.

  This was the kind of news you should give to a bereaved family member in person, at a time when you could put your arms around them, be there to comfort them when they lost control. After she’d told Julie everything, she was silent, and there was no sound but the hush of the long-distance line, until finally Julie spoke.

  “Rose, you’re real nice to call me,” she said, “and all I can say is, I hope she lives through this. She’s a good person. But if she doesn’t make it, I can tell you one thing for damn sure. I’m not takin’ that adopted kid of hers. And even though we never discussed it, I’ll bet anything she left him to me.”

  A tremor ran through Rose, and she took in a deep breath and tried not to cry. She held the phone with her left hand and put her right hand over her mouth, as if to stop any angry words from rushing out.

  “I mean, not too long ago,” Julie went on, “Jan told me, and she was kidding around with me at the time, but she said, ‘You better hope I die young, girl, because in my will, I left everything including the bobby pins to you.’ Which, believe me, I’ll take. But I’m the one who tried to talk her out of taking in some kid whose real parents are God knows who. You know what I mean, Rose?”

  Rose felt as if she’d been kicked. “No, I don’t know what you mean,” she said, leaning against the wall next to the phone.

  “Well, here’s the deal. Last month I let my boyfriend move in here, and we have a great thing going, and he’s already raised a few kids of his own. So, believe me, the last thing he wants at this stage of his life is somebody else’s kids.”

  Rose wanted to hang up, but instead she calmed her anger with long, deep breaths and listened to Jan’s sister rattle on about her boyfriend and their great life together, and finally, when she couldn’t stand to hear another word, she said, “Julie… will you come out to California to be here, in case Jan doesn’t come out of this? I’ll take care of the cost of the airline ticket. I’ll pick you up at the airport, and you can stay at my house.”

  There was silence, then Julie said, “No. I’m not coming out. Thanks for the offer, Rose. But I don’t see what good it would do.”

  “Julie, Janny loves you as if you were her child. Maybe hearing you in the room could bring her back,” Rose said. “Maybe if she thought you needed her, she’d find her way up and out of this coma. I mean, my husband’s the doctor, not me, but what if the way these things work is that the unconscious person fights her way back to consciousness when she knows how needed and how loved she is? I’ll call the airline now if you…”

  “It’s a nice thought, Rose,” Julie interrupted, “but I don’t believe that’s the way it works. Anyway, call me back if you find out that Janny wants to be buried back here near my parents.”

  “I’ll do that,” Rose said, and hung up the receiver. She felt weak and sad and tired. Poor Joey. Jan’s little baby. Julie was probably right. Jan would have left his guardianship to her. She leaned against the wall and tried to collect herself. Finally she needed to sit down so badly, she just slid into a heap onto the floor, next to the bank of pay phones. She was staring straight ahead when Marly came around the corner.

  “Oh, hon, what is it?” Marly asked, hurrying over to sit next to her.

  “All Jan’s sister had to say was that she’ll take any money Jan leaves her, but she sure as hell doesn’t want him, meaning Joey, and she won’t even come out to say what might be good-bye to Jan.”

  “Maybe it won’t be an issue, maybe Jan’ll be okay,” Marly said, and she took Rose’s hand, but when Rose looked into her big green eyes, the fear that Jan probably wouldn’t survive was there. “I came looking for you because I think maybe we should walk down there and try to get into the ICU.” They both stood and walked back toward the waiting room.

  Ellen was pacing when they arrived. “Doesn’t it strike you as odd that there are no police around here?” she asked when she saw them. “I would have thought the hospital would be surrounded by them. I mean, there’s some man walking around out there who shot our friend, and he could come back and try to finish her off. I’d think there’d be a cop at every door of this hospital. Certainly on this floor. I’m going to go down to the lobby and find out what they’re doing about securing this place.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Rose said, thinking again about the brownie in the cafeteria. Maybe while Ellen threw her weight around with security, she’d go and get the brownie.

  They were standing by the row of elevators when the up arrow above one of the doors was illuminated, then there was a whoosh and the doors opened. A round-faced woman in her late thirties looked at the three of them. She had curly brown hair and was dressed in an inexpensive navy pants suit, with a white shirt underneath and a scarf tied clumsily around her neck.

  “Is this seven?” she asked them. “Surgical ICU?” She held the bucking elevator doors open with the same hand in which she held a battered brown briefcase.

  “Yes, it’s right around the corner,” Marly answered.

  “Are you ladies going up?” she asked them as if to offer them the elevator car she was vacating now that she’d determined she was in the right place.

  “No, down,” Ellen said.

  “Oh, okay,” the woman said and let the elevator door close with a hiss behind her. She smiled politely, then moved off down the hall as Ellen impatiently pressed the down button again, and they saw her turn around and look at Marly.

  “Aren’t you Marly Bennet?” the woman asked.

  “Get out the Jell-O,” Rose said under her breath as Marly nodded and the woman walked back to where they were standing. The woman pulled a badge out of the pocket of her jacket.

  “I’m Detective Rita Connelly from the West Hollywood police department. I’m investigating the Jan O’Malley shooting. I was just over at the house snooping around, and so I thought I’d come by here and see how she was doing. I recognized Marly Bennet because I used to love watching ‘Keeping Up with the Joneses.’ And I put you together with Jan O’Malley because of this,” she said.

  “This is Rose Schiffman and Ellen Bass,” Marly said. “We’re all close friends of Jan’s.”

  “Ahh,” the policewoman said. “College friends, right?”

  “How did you know?” Rose asked. Rita Connelly shuffled through her briefcase and pulled out a plastic bag through which they could see a sheet of glossy fax paper.

  As Marly leaned in to look at it, she could smell the musky odor of cigarettes on the policewoman’s clothes. The fax paper had a list of names of some of the West Coast drama alumni from Carnegie.

  “You can all look at it,” she said. “Just leave the Baggie on it. It was in the foyer of Jan’s house,” Rita Connelly said. “It looked as if it had fallen behind an umbrella stand.”

  “All of our names are on there,” Rose said.

  “Why don’t we go sit down?” the policewoman asked, and they all walked back into the waiting room. All of the other people who had been there were gone. Rita Connelly shuffled around in her briefcase. “Anybody care if I smoke?” she asked, pulling out a box of Marlboros.

  “The hospital might,” Ellen said, and Rose smiled inside, knowing that under ordinary circumstances anybody lighting a
cigarette in Marly’s presence was subject to a lecture about what their murderous secondhand smoke was doing to others. While Rita Connelly lit a cigarette, the three friends leaned in to look at the typed sheet in the Baggie. Each alum’s name was followed by a career update. But unlike the lists that were in the alumni magazine, this one had each graduate’s home address next to it. Jan’s name and address were circled. And so were all three of theirs. Next to each of their names someone had written a word or two that the handwriting made hard to decipher.

  “Anyone know why she’d have this?” Rita Connelly turned her head away from them to blow out the cigarette smoke.

  Rose looked carefully at the policewoman, taking her in. You know you’re aging when doctors and police all look like such babies to you, you worry about putting your life in their hands, she thought.

  “Maybe Jan was going to do some fund-raising for the school,” Marly said.

  “Jan? There’s no way she’d ever be able to hit anyone for money,” Ellen said. “She didn’t have the time, or the personality it takes to call and do that. Jan’s the person other people ask for money. She’s a soft touch, but she could never be a hustler.”

  “And besides, if this is a list of people she was going to call, why would she circle her own name?” Rose asked.

  “That’s not Jan’s handwriting on there, either,” Marly said. “Those words. What are they?”

  “Looks like ‘nanny,’ maybe ‘receptionist,’ and that might be ‘proofreader,’ the policewoman said. “The list was faxed to someplace in the 619 area code. That’s San Diego.” Then she took another drag of the cigarette, and as the smoke came out, she asked, “How’s she doing?”

  “Not great,” Ellen said.

  “Tell me about what was happening in her life. Anybody hate her? Envy her? Resent her? Want her out of the way for any reason?” There were no ashtrays anywhere because the hospital had a no-smoking policy, so with an ease that meant she’d done it before, Rita Connelly removed the cellophane from the Marlboro box, held it open in her hand and flicked the ashes into it.