Show Business Kills

by Iris Rainer Dart

  “Are you kidding? I fucked up all the time. Colossal fuck-ups. I made mistakes with that kid that we still laugh about. Life lessons were botched left and right. In fact there was one story that still gives me a guilty stomachache. I mean, now it’s funny because we survived, at least it’s funny to Roger. He brings it up and laughs. But talk about doing things you’re ashamed of. This has got to be my entry.”

  Marly was back on the floor in her lotus position, and Rose put away the steno pad so Ellen could tell them what happened.

  * * *

  28

  Little Caesar

  During most of the seventies, my life was a complete disaster. After I gave the podiatrist the toe, he managed to make it out of the marriage and California without giving me anything for our son. Not only that, but he took everything that was worth anything in our cute little house with him, so in one week I went from being très Pierre Deux to very Pier One. And all I wanted was to be the best mother and the best provider in the world to make up for the fact that I knew Herb Bass would never be there for Roger.

  I was desperate to make a good life for Rogie and me, so I took any and every job I could get to support us. And some of the situations were pretty scrungy. I started out on “The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour,” where Glen may have been having a good time, but I was not. I was the coffee girl, the receptionist, and the runner.

  I got picked on by the writers and the producers, hit on by the guests, and Glen called me Arlene for the whole two years. “Paper Moon” was a better experience, in fact it was where I first got to know Jodie Foster, because she played the Tatum O’Neal role in the series. Another was the second go-round of “Sonny and Cher,” which I should have known wasn’t going to last when she was on TV with her ex-husband and pregnant with Greg Allman’s baby. That great big demographic known as Middle America just didn’t cotton to it.

  So when the ex-Bonos went off the air, and I couldn’t find another job, somebody told me there was an opening working for Ziggy Marsh. I laughed when they first said it, because if anybody represented the scourge of show business, that little reptile was it.

  Remember Ziggy? He’s still around. I see him at the studio now and then, and he hasn’t changed one bit since those days. He’s still a caricature of what an agent’s supposed to be. Short enough to buy his clothes in the boys’ department. Once, years ago, I bumped into him at the May Company when I was shopping for Roger, and Ziggy was trying on kid-size jeans. He also has the yapping temper of a dog who was bred down to teacup size and whose nerves got all out of whack in the process.

  The part that always amazed me about him was that he somehow managed to get his own name in the paper more than the stars he represented. Usually it was for cocaine arrests or being rushed to a hospital because he was one breath short of OD’ing, or because he’d just beat the shit out of his wife. But somehow he managed to weasel his way into the careers of a lot of top stars, who I guess figured maybe it was good that he was a snake in the grass, since he was their snake in their grass, so that made it okay.

  I mean, I understand the theory, because I always tell people who ask my advice about agents, “Don’t ever be represented by one you want to sit with at a dinner table. You want someone who’s an obnoxious killer.” Well, Ziggy qualified in spades for that.

  Anyway, I guess the little lizard liked my résumé, or more likely he’d probably gotten laid that morning, but he was in a rare good mood the day I came in for my interview, and he hired me on the spot as a kind of assistant and sub agent. Roger was nine years old, and I was in dire need of money, so I jumped in with both feet, figuring if I paid a lot of attention to how the agent business worked, maybe I’d grow up to be Sue Mengers, a lady agent who I always thought was cute in her aggressive way.

  Well, the way things worked in the Ziggy Marsh office was that anything was okay, as long as it got you where you wanted to go. You know Ziggy’s wife is Andrea Caldwell, right? Andrea Caldwell, who’s about as gifted an actress as my ugly Aunt Sadie, only my ugly Aunt Sadie is prettier. So if somebody wanted one of Ziggy’s big clients for a project, they knew that the price was that they had to put Andrea in a small part in the same film. That was a given.

  And he was always on the take. People were shmearing him all the time with free trips and cars and drugs, trying to get him to push his clients to take their deals or show up at their charity events, and if they didn’t give him a little something sweet on the side, he ignored them. He was the lowest.

  When people asked me where I was working, I was so embarrassed, I’d say the Ziggy Marsh Agency so fast and so slurred, that I know a lot of people thought I was saying the William Morris Agency. Not that that would be something to brag about either, but at least it wasn’t scumbag city.

  I stayed because the pay helped me put my kid, who was very smart, in a private school, and barely make the tuition. Also, I was getting the residue of the shmears. I sold the motor bike someone gave Ziggy and he gave me, and I used the money to take my son to Florida to see my mother one winter. And I still have the treadmill someone gave Ziggy, who already had one.

  Anyway, there was one client Ziggy always wanted but couldn’t get near, and the client was John Travolta. It was right around the time of Saturday Night Fever, and Travolta was blazing hot. Guys at Pips were wearing white suits and pointing their finger to the sky when they danced, and everyone was whistling “Bein’ Alive.” Ziggy tried getting Travolta on the phone, going to Santa Barbara to see him, having Andrea invite him to a party, but Travolta wasn’t interested.

  Meanwhile I’m packing lunches, driving car pool, rushing in to the office, working all day, and paying a sitter to pick Roger up at school. And by the end of the day I’m always exhausted, so when I get home from work and I’m cooking dinner and Roger asks me, “Hey, Mah, want to buy some raffles so I can have lunch with the guy from Saturday Night Fever?” I don’t even think about it. I say “Sure,” and give him ten dollars, and he gives me two raffles, and I fill them out and then I do the dishes.

  In the morning, on the way to school I have four nine-year-olds in the back of my wagon, Roger and his friends Bobby and Tommy and Richie, and I half listen to their conversation because I’m worried about whether or not I reminded Ziggy that he’s having lunch that day with Tony Orlando and Dawn. But when I tune in, I realize that the kids are saying that Ed Milstein, Richie’s father, is John Travolta’s business manager or something like that, and John Travolta has agreed to have lunch with the kid at our school who sells the most raffles.

  I couldn’t get over how sweet it was of a big star to da something like that. When I got out of my station wagon to take Roger’s Indian Village out of the back, because I wanted to help him carry it into the classroom, since it took us three weeks to make it and I would die if it fell apart, I saw Esther Milstein. Apparently she was the one who balls-out called up Travolta and asked him to do a favor for the school, and she was really strutting.

  It was, without a doubt, a coup. I congratulated her, and she told me that we were printing three thousand raffles, a thousand more than last year, and that her daughter Debbie was already in the lead in sales, even though Debbie had already met Travolta a few times in her Dad’s office.

  The race to sell the raffle tickets was always hot and heavy, but this year it was the biggest. The phone in the tiny school office rang off the hook and Olga, the seventy-year-old receptionist, joked that she was now answering the phone by saying, “John Travolta Elementary.”

  A week or so later, I was at Ziggy’s office in the middle of ten different things, and Roger called me from school to say he was sick, and the sitter wasn’t due to pick him up for three hours, and I couldn’t get ahold of her to get her to go pick him up early, so I had to run up to the school.

  I remember what he had. It was one of those kid things, where it wasn’t contagious, but he felt too lousy to stay in class, which meant I obviously couldn’t leave him there. But I had to go finish my wor
k, so I took him to the office with me, and I made sure he had crayons and paper, and that he was quiet while I got my stuff finished.

  I was on the phone, and then in the Xerox room, and lost in thought, when all of a sudden I was passing Ziggy’s office and I heard Ziggy saying to somebody, “So, uh, let me get this straight. It’s the guy with the white suit from Saturday Night Fever who comin’ to the school?” And then I heard my son’s voice say, “Yep, he’s coming.”

  “To have lunch with the kid who sells the most raffle tickets?”

  “Yep.”

  “So, like what if that child wants to bring someone along to the lunch?” I heard Ziggy ask Roger, who must have somehow wandered into his office, while I was making copies of a contract. “Is that part of the deal?”

  “You mean a friend?”

  “I mean his uncle. Me. I mean if you win, can I come, too?”

  “Oh, I’m not gonna win. There are some kids who already sold fifty tickets. I only sold two to my mother.”

  My stomach was sinking because I knew what was coming. I knew Ziggy Marsh could and would write a check for all three thousand five-dollar tickets if he felt like it, call it a business write-off, and it would still be less than he and Andrea paid for the hors d’oeuvres they served every year at their fancy Christmas party.

  “Yeah, well, hows about I make you a deal?” I heard this asshole say to a nine-year-old boy.

  “Okay,” my baby answered.

  “I’ll buy a thousand tickets from you, this minute, and that’ll probably guarantee that you’ll be the winner.”

  “Aaarigght!” Roger said.

  “If,” Ziggy that little schmuck, says to him, “you take me to that lunch with the guy from the movie.”

  “Sure!” I hear Roger saying as I walk into the office.

  “I’m doin’ business here,” Ziggy says to me with a cutesy smile on his face and his little size-seven feet on the desk.

  “Yeah, Mom. Business,” Roger says. “I’m gonna win the prize.”

  I felt sick. I don’t know why. I mean, the truth was, the five thousand dollars was going to go to the school. It would finance scholarships to kids who were in need. Why did I care that it came from this vulture, who was using a kid’s contest to try to feather his nest?

  “I mean, this is okay with your mom. Isn’t it, Mom?” Ziggy asked me, grinning, because he knew I knew exactly what he was doing, and that I, his toady, was in a vulnerable place.

  “I guess,” I said. “Why not?”

  “Then it’s a done deal. You get the tickets and give them to your mom, she can fill them out for me, and I’ll write a check to your nice school for five grand.”

  “Five hundred dollars?” my innocent little Roger says, his eyes wide with shock.

  “Five thousand dollars,” Ziggy says, his face flushed with pride that he’s just suckered in some nine-year-old.

  In those days I couldn’t afford to write a check to the building fund at my kid’s school, so what I gave to them instead was my time, as limited as it was. I would go in on a Saturday and tag things for the garage sale, or help build scenery for the school play. And that particular month, all of the mothers were coming in on the weekends, and while the kids played on the field, we made skirts for the booths for the fair.

  At one of those sessions, one of the women suggested that with the success of the John Travolta idea, we were doing so well with the tickets, that maybe we shouldn’t limit ourselves to the three thousand tickets, that maybe we ought to print up more and sell five thousand tickets. Someone also suggested, as a joke, that maybe we should sell kisses from John Travolta right at the fair and that she’d personally ante up her life savings for that.

  Esther Milstein thought it was a good idea to print more tickets, and so did everyone else, and I made a mental note to find out if it was possible that anyone was even close to Roger in ticket sales, though I couldn’t imagine that any other child would sell a thousand tickets.

  What I hadn’t counted on was the aggressive marketing techniques of Joanne Lee, a sixth-grader who was in the school on a scholarship. Joanne’s mother was a manicurist in a beauty shop in Beverly Hills, and the little girl went to the shop every day after school and sold tickets to all of her mother’s customers, and everyone else who came to the shop.

  About three days before the fair I heard from Esther, and maybe she said it to give me a goose so I’d get Roger to work even harder, that Joanne Lee had sold fifteen hundred tickets. She was ahead of Roger, or should I say ahead of Ziggy, who had gone on a rare vacation to Fiji with his abused wife, Andrea.

  I clutched. I knew I’d better track Ziggy down and tell him his lunch with Travolta was in jeopardy. I also knew that Andrea Caldwell had taken him to this resort called Turtle Island, away from all phones, as a test of his love, because their marriage was on the rocks, and she insisted he go to a place that remote so he could prove to her that she was more important to him than show business.

  Maybe I should leave it alone, I thought, let things take their course, let the deserving Joanne Lee win the lunch with Travolta, and show that little dog Ziggy Marsh that money wasn’t everything. But then I got a grip and realized that doing that could put me back out on the street with no job, and I’d just found out that Roger’s teeth were coming in crooked and he needed braces.

  Maybe I should buy the additional raffle tickets myself, and hope that I was doing the right thing and that Ziggy would reimburse me when he got home and found I had covered for him, to make sure he’d have lunch with John Travolta. But then I added it up and realized that to buy five hundred tickets, which would only put Roger even with Joanne Lee, would cost twenty five hundred dollars. I had five hundred dollars in the bank.

  I had to call Turtle Island. If Ziggy took my call, breaking the deal with Andrea Caldwell, she might leave him. If he didn’t take my call, and the raffle deal fell apart, he would kill me. It was her marriage or my life, so naturally I picked me.

  There was one phone at Turtle Island, and the line was always busy. By the time I got through, it was eleven at night in Fiji, and the person who answered was not happy to take my message for Mr. Marsh. Two days went by and I never heard back. I had called him from his office, so even if he didn’t get my message, at least he’d be able to see on the phone bill that I did try to reach him.

  On the morning of the fair I called Turtle Island one more time, and the line was busy again. I was worried, but I told myself I had done my best and that was all I could do, and I went off to the fair. The school grounds looked beautiful. The parents’ committee had done a fabulous job with balloons and crepe paper.

  I worked in the cold-drink booth, and Esther Milstein worked in the throw-the-Ping-Pong-ball-in-the-goldfish-bowl-and-win-a-fish booth right next to it. Esther was supposed to be the one who was going to pull the winning raffle ticket from the basket, and she’d been waiting for the headmaster to come and get her, but for some reason, the little brass band, led by the music teacher, was suddenly playing a fanfare, on the far side of the field.

  The music was what made me look over and see that a lot of people had gathered around the bandstand, where the headmaster himself was standing with the basket of raffle tickets. I didn’t hear what he was saying to the assembled families, but he was getting a few laughs from them, because he could, when he turned it on, be very charming. “Esther,” I said, “come on,” but Esther was busy transferring a goldfish from its bowl into a plastic bag full of water for one of the kids who’d just won it, and she didn’t hear me.

  By the time she was ready to walk over there with me, the headmaster had already announced the names of two of the raffle winners, and as we made our way over to that side of the field, he was announcing the third.

  Esther looked at me as if to say, “What in the hell is he doing?” But by the time we got near the front of the group we knew, because that was when he said, “And finally… the winner of the lunch with John Travolta, star of Saturday
Night Fever…” I looked around trying to spot Joanne Lee, hoping to see the joy on her face when she won. And the headmaster said, “… is the student who sold the most raffle tickets, Roger Bass.”

  Rogie shrieked with joy and jumped in the air and ran to the stage to have his hand shaken by the headmaster. I was dumbstruck. I knew it wasn’t true, but people were now circling me, congratulating me and telling me they were envious, and asking me what I was going to wear to the lunch, and I looked around and this time I located little Joanne Lee, whose face was frozen. And next to her, with the same stoic mouth-set, was her mother. But their empty eyes, devoid of disappointment, told me they’d been prepared for that announcement.

  I watched the headmaster with a stiff smile walk back to his office, and as soon as Joan Casey replaced me in the cold-drink booth, I walked into his office, too, without knocking. I knew by his expression, which was a combination of embarrassment and resolve, that he’d been waiting for me.

  “Mister Jenson,” I said, closing the door to the office behind me, “I know my son didn’t sell the most raffle tickets, and I need you to tell me why he won. Because I think he knows he didn’t sell the most tickets, too, so tonight when the excitement wears off, I’m going to have to explain this to him.”

  “Mrs. Bass,” he said, gesturing for me to sit in a chair opposite his desk, “I admire your principles for coming in here and questioning this. To use a well-worn cliché, children learn what they live, and I’m sure you’re a fine example to your son. Now let me tell you the principle I used in handling this situation. Joanne Lee has a scholarship to the school this year worth ten thousand dollars. She needs another one next year. Thanks to the generosity of Mr. Marsh, your employer, not only will she have it, but so will four other students who might not have had the opportunity to come to this school. Do I make myself clear?”

  The laughter and shouting from the children at the fair came drifting through the open window of the headmaster’s office. I knew that a tax-deductible fifty thousand dollars to Ziggy Marsh was small change for a chance to have lunch with John Travolta. Could I ruin it for him? Could I make him take his dirty money back? Take away his generous scholarships to the school?