My eyes met Jenson’s. A school administrator in tinsel town. A man who was responsible for the quality of the education of our children, and his salary at best wasn’t a whole lot more than fifty grand. He had to hate a guy like Ziggy Marsh, and the only fly in his personal ointment might be if I spilled the beans to the board of directors about the way Joanne Lee had been screwed out of the lunch. I knew he cared about the school and thought the Hollywood people were the necessary evil he had to put up with to run it. So I got up and walked out of there and went back to the cold-drink booth.
A week later, on the following Saturday, Roger, Ziggy, and I had lunch with John Travolta in Santa Barbara. Travolta was so adorable I could have cheerfully jumped on him right there. He was charming to Roger, talking about flying airplanes and all the things kids love. Ziggy was on his best behavior and kept bringing up the business, but Travolta, not sure how this man he’d been avoiding for so long was in on this, was polite but essentially ignored him.
That night when I was tucking Roger in, he asked me what had happened. He had heard the buzz around school all week that Joanne Lee was cheated out of being the winner, so he knew something odd had happened. I sat on the bed and silently prayed for the strength to be honest and true without giving him details that would break his heart.
“Roger,” I said, “I did a bad thing. I let my boss buy all of those raffle tickets from you because he wanted to meet John Travolta, and it wasn’t fair and square because he influenced the way the raffle went, and Joanne Lee worked so hard selling the raffles at her mom’s shop and she probably would have won. I’m so sick about it, I think I’m going to have to quit this job, and find another one, because I can’t stay there anymore, and I want to apologize to you, because I let him do that for all the wrong reasons. I’m sorry, honey, I’m really sorry,” I said and looked into his eyes, wondering if he understood.
Roger was sweet-faced, and his big hazel eyes blinked at me so innocently and even now when I think about it, I want to cry because he’s always been such a great kid, and he said, “Yeah, well, Mom, you know what they say, don’t you?”
And I said, “No, honey, I don’t know what they say.” And Roger shrugged and told me, “That’s show biz.”
Marly’s laugh was tired. Rose didn’t comment. When they both looked over at her, her head was thrown back against the back of the chair and she was sound asleep.
* * *
29
She sat on the bed in the Tropi-Cal Motel in the Valley and counted the money she had left, laying it all out on the orange bedspread. She was still shaking from the move out of the Sheraton. In the middle of the night last night it had hit her that every breath she took was costing her extra. Like that little minibar. She’d been so excited when she saw all the stuff in it, figuring it was part of the cost of the room, and she wouldn’t even have to order room service or go out to eat.
She could live on the free cheeses and the candy bars and cookies. Wouldn’t have to go out and get food, or order from the hotsy totsy room service menu. So she ate practically everything in there. Then last night she discovered the little form on the top of the bar. The one you fill out to tell them what you ate so they can put it on your bill, the sheet where it tells you that the peanuts alone are six bucks a jar.
That’s when she knew she’d better get the hell out of there. So this morning, holding her pile of cash like a kid who broke open her piggy bank, she checked out with her heart pounding while they added up the amount she had to pay, wondering if she’d have enough. And then she had to pay a deposit at this new place. The Tropi-Cal Motel. A true dive. And she only had eighty-three dollars left.
Eighty-three dollars was probably what Jack Solomon used to blow his nose instead of Kleenex. That tux he was wearing at the hospital probably cost thousands. Once they were on the same path, heading in the same direction, but she had veered off, planning to catch up with them later. And now all of them were in the bucks, and she was counting and recounting her last few dollars, hoping maybe she’d made a mistake and it would be eighty-four dollars or eighty-five.
What a dumb idiot she’d been wasting all that money on the Sheraton for appearances. Thinking when she got to Jan’s, after their chummy chat, Jan would say, “I’ll come and pick you up later and we’ll have dinner,” and if that was the case, she’d be able to tell her she was staying somewhere good. But Jan didn’t say that. Jan didn’t want to have dinner with her, she wanted her to get her lowlife ass out of her house.
And then that thing happened, that dumb accident. But at least there was real big news about that. Late last night on TV they were saying the police caught the guy who did it. The guy who did it! Maybe her luck was changing. Now maybe it was safe for her to go see the others. Go to their houses. She’d tell them she just got into town and heard the news on TV, and she felt so awful. And then she’d ask if she could do anything for Jan’s little boy. She’d cruise by their houses.
She looked in her purse for the list of addresses, but for some reason it wasn’t in there. Maybe she’d left it in the car. Never mind. She’d copied all of them down in her address book, so it didn’t matter, and she could find them with the Thomas Guide.
It was a sunny, hot, smoggy day, and her car was like an oven when she got in. She opened all the windows and sat for a while looking at the street map, and decided she’d try Rose’s house first since it was the closest. At a light she stopped next to a black Porsche with a young girl driver about the age of her daughter Polly. The girl’s hand on the wheel had a gold watch and a few bangle bracelets, and rings on three of her fingers. I want that for Polly, she thought. And I’m going to goddamn get it.
People in the city were so rude. Especially on the road, where they just cut in front of you or they leaned on their horns if you took longer than one second to move after the traffic light changed. And then when they tore past you, they gave you the finger. She remembered reading a few years back how some really pissed-off people on the freeway were shooting at one another. She ought to pull out her gun and just hold it out the window at anyone who honked at her. That would shut the fuckers up. Hah!
The gun. She patted the big striped plastic purse to make sure she still had the gun. She had to do something about the goddamn broken strap on the purse. She couldn’t afford to get a new purse until one of them gave her a job. Once she got a job somewhere and was settled in to some nice apartment, she’d go shopping and get herself some new things.
At Rose’s street she made a left, then looked at the numbers until she found the house. Not bad. Not great, but not bad. She sat in her car looking up the driveway, wondering if she could really pull off a straight face when she saw Rose and had to say to her, “I felt so awful about Jan.” Hey, she reminded herself you’re an actress.
She was startled when the door to Rose’s house opened and a little girl came out with a basketball. She was tiny, but determined to shoot baskets into a hoop above the garage, which she was trying to do and not having much success. She would go down there and help her, tell her she was a friend of her mother’s. Find out if Rose was home, just act as casually as if she were on a leisurely trip.
She already knew what she’d say if one of them looked cross-eyed at her clunker car. “Oh, I had to bring my daughter’s jalopy. My car’s in the shop.” She got out of the car and started up the driveway, holding the big striped purse close to her, feeling the gun bump against her side. “Hi,” she said, and the little girl looked at her.
“Hi,” she said. She was smiling. She was only a few feet away from the kid, but then there was a loud noise which turned out to be a garage door opening, and a big black Mercedes backed out of the garage, and the little girl climbed in.
She could see the driver, a guy with a beard who must be Rose’s husband, and as he got to the end of the driveway, he spotted her and stopped, and rolled down the automatic window. She could feel the escaping air-conditioning blow cold at her from inside the car. She could se
e the pretty little girl’s face as the man asked, “Are you lost?”
“No, thanks, I’m not,” she said.
“May I help you in some way?” he asked. The little girl was the age Polly was when Lou moved out. But Polly had never had the confident look in her face this kid had. It was a look only rich kids had, like they didn’t have a problem in the world. Not the beaten look that means my dad’s an asshole, and every night my mom cries herself to sleep.
“Uh… no. Thanks,” she said.
She could tell that Rose’s husband was waiting for her to walk away from their property, so she strolled past and up the street as if she was just visiting one of their neighbors and taking a walk. When he was gone, she walked back up the driveway and all around the house, looking into the windows.
Nice kitchen, she thought, pretty bedrooms, a little too froufrou for her taste, and in the cute little office with papers all over the floor, she saw Rose’s computer where she did her writing, and all around it a bulletin board with photographs on it. Pictures of that little girl, a few pictures of the bearded husband, and then a lot of pictures of Rose with friends. What had to be recent ones, and some old ones with her daughter when the daughter was a baby, and then that old one that she couldn’t believe she recognized.
She had taken it. She was the outsider who walked by that day. In front of the dorm, Morewood Gardens, that the boys used to call “The Cherry Orchard.” They were all standing outside together, giggling about some shit or other, maybe it was parents’ weekend or something because they didn’t look like dramats, not wearing the usual jeans and black sweaters. They were all dolled up as if they were going out to lunch with their folks, and she walked by, and Rose said, “Let’s ask Betty.”
They were so tight, such a cozy little group, they had to have their picture taken all together. Rose and Marly and Ellen and Jan, to commemorate their friendship. Even now, thirty years later, she hated them for being so close and so happy then. There were French doors on Rose’s office, and she tried turning the knob on one of them but it was locked tight. She wanted to go in there. Just for a minute, to see what else Rose had in there from the past. She tried another door and it was locked, too.
She would have gone back to her car then, but a truck drove up, one of those little minicamper deals and a little Jap got out and pulled a leaf blower out of the back, and some other equipment, and not six feet away from her, a door from the house opened and a little fat Mexican lady came out and started talking to the guy about what to do and what not to do.
She watched them yakking away as the maid pointed to some ground cover, and while they talked she led the gardener around the side of the house, leaving the door ajar, so she slipped right in. Oh it smelled good in there. That maid must be cooking something, because it smelled like garlic and butter and it made her hungry.
She could see through the window that the maid and the gardener, rough life there, Rose, were in the backyard deeply into some conversation in some language, so she got all the way to the office. Inside Rose Schiffman’s office. Jesus, she thought. This is where the magic happens. An Oscar-nominated movie was written in this very room. She felt excited, like Shirley MacLaine in Sweet Charity when she sings that song “If They Could See Me Now.” She ran her hand over the keyboard of Rose’s computer and then looked up again at the cork board with those pictures.
There was the one she had taken of the four of them. Now she took it down and held it at arm’s length, so she could really see it, and the memory of it still stabbed her. Look at them, she thought, I hate them so much, I always did, and I still do, because they never even said, “Let’s take another one with Betty in it.” I remember feeling so shitful because of them. She was squeezing the push pin so hard it stuck in her hand while she looked at their faces in the picture. But now she heard the voice of the maid getting louder, and she knew she had to get the hell out of there.
She started to put the picture back up on the wall, and then she looked at it one more time and felt so bummed at them, so pissed, that she ripped it in half and then again, and then she threw all the pieces into Rose’s wastebasket and managed to get out the door before the maid and the gardener got back.
In her car she looked at the Thomas Guide for Ellen Bass’s street. It was a little one in Beverly Hills, south of Wilshire Boulevard. She’d go there next and check it out. Maybe the hotshot herself would be home, and she could ask her why she never took one minute out of her schedule to even dictate a thanks for the tape.
Once she got a job working at the studio, she’d make a lot of contacts, the business was about contacts, and pretty soon someone would say, “With that voice you ought to be acting,” and then she’d have to tell Ellen she was moving on. Ellen would get it. She’d moved up in the world herself. She knew certain jobs were just stepping-stones to others.
When she found the street and the house, she thought she’d made a wrong turn. Ellen Bass could no way live in that little house. It was a nothing of a house. At least Jan’s little house had a view. This looked like a brick box in a section that might be called Beverly Hills, but it sure didn’t look it. The house was dark, so maybe she’d just park the car across the street and ring the bell.
It was early in the morning on a Saturday, so unless Ellen Bass was shacking up with some boyfriend, she’d probably be there. It was hard to believe this was Beverly Hills. This was a street where some of the places were houses and some looked like apartment buildings. She walked up to the little porch and picked up the newspaper that was lying there.
She knocked and then rang the bell. She could hear it ringing inside, but no one came to the door. After a few minutes she walked around to the side of the house through the alley, past some big green trash cans, and then to the back gate. She had to laugh when she saw the little swimming pool that took up practically the entire yard. There was a table and chairs and two lounge chairs next to it.
This must be where the big-time lady executive sits to read scripts over the weekend, she thought, and she opened the gate. It was a clear, sunny, hot day, and the big tall palm trees that lined the street were barely stirring. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a chance to sit around a swimming pool and feel the sun on her and just relax.
The grass around the pool scrunched under her espadrilles as she walked over to the the pretty outdoor furniture. Prettier than in any ad, very white and tropical-looking. She put her big purse down on the grass and then she sat down in one of Ellen Bass’s lounge chairs and put her feet up, and after a minute her whole body relaxed, warmed by the day. The turquoise, glimmering pool was almost hypnotic.
She was still holding the L.A. Times, so she opened it to the Calendar section to read about what was going on in the business, and she even kicked off her shoes. This was what life was supposed to feel like. This was how big people lived. She was reading an article about violence in the media, nearly falling asleep over it, when a loud clang startled her.
She could hear blaring rock music, and then a young, skinny guy with a flat-top haircut turned the corner. He was carrying a pole with a net at the end of it, some big plastic bottles, and a boom box that was blasting some bad rock station.
“Mornin’,” he said to her as he dropped the stuff, walked back to a little shed that must be where the pool equipment was, then came back out and picked up the long pole and eased it into the water. The music from his radio was too loud.
“Mrs. Bass awake?” he asked her over the sound.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“She was having trouble with her filter, but I’m not going to be able to look at it today, so if you tell her I’ll be back Monday morning to look at it, I’d appreciate it. I mean, I might be able to get a part on my lunch break, and if I can, then I’ll be back around three today, but I doubt if it can happen today, so will you tell her?”
“Yeah,” she said, not sure what he’d just said.
He stirred the water around and poured
some liquid from the bottles into the water and stirred again, and when he left, he said, “Have a great day.”
After she’d finished reading the paper, she went to the front door of the house again. She rang the bell a few times, but there was no answer. To hell with it, she thought, and decided to move on to Marly Bennett’s house in Brentwood.
* * *
30
They dozed and woke alternately. Sometimes Marly lay spread out on the floor using her jacket as a pillow, and Ellen and Rose slept sitting up in the chairs. Nurses who moved in and out of the cubicle to check on Jan tiptoed around them, moving so silently that the three friends continued to sleep.
They were startled awake at six A.M., when a young, starchily dressed morning-shift nurse, who seemed inconvenienced by their presence, woke them by sliding the door open noisily and announcing that she had orders from the neurosurgeon to send Jan down to have another CAT scan.
“We need to see if the swelling has improved or become worse,” she said in an all-business tone that had them gathering up their purses, slipping into their shoes, and walking groggily out of the room.
In the corridor they waited and watched as the bed was trundled out of ICU, and Jan’s inert body jiggled as the orderlies bumped the cumbersome bed over the sill and into the hall. “Give ‘em hell down there, Janny,” Marly said softly.
Rose tugged at her sleeve, and they headed down the hall to the ladies’ room. It smelled of a recent mopping with disinfectant, and Rose wrinkled her nose at the acrid odor and walked to the bank of sinks where the other two stood rinsing their faces.
Show Business Kills Page 27