Show Business Kills

by Iris Rainer Dart

  “Rose,” Marty said, and she was so exhausted and so sure this was going to be something she didn’t want to hear that she lay down on the floor and looked up at the ceiling of her office while he talked.

  “Listen to me, Rose. Faces was a long time ago. You need a current credit. When I pitch you for assignments, people are starting to ask me, ‘Is she still around?’ Let me sell that script to Howard Bergman, and you close your eyes and they’ll bring in someone else to do the rewrite. That way I can tell people you have a project that’s happening. Then maybe you can sell that story about the computer. Or that other thing about the women friends.”

  “No,” she said.

  “You’re nuts,” he told her. “But maybe you can afford to be nuts. You have a rich husband.”

  “My husband has nothing to do with this decision,” she said. “Why don’t you get me some more meetings on the computer idea?” she asked him.

  “I tried, Rose. Everyone says the same thing. It’s not castable. Nobody’s going to buy a story that stars a middle-aged actress. They don’t give a shit. And frankly, they’re not so hot for ideas from…”

  “A middle-aged writer?” she said.

  Marty didn’t answer. Instead she heard him say to somebody, “Tell him I’ll call him back,” then he got back on the line. “So I have one more suggestion for you.”

  “Which is…” she asked him, thinking she’d like to take a little nap right where she was, drifting, so tired, she just wanted to get Marty off the phone. Instead, to keep herself awake, she sat up and moved from the floor to the desk chair, picked up a pencil, and doodled while he talked, drawing cartoon eyes, which was what she always doodled when she was on the phone. Marly would probably attribute some dark meaning to the doodles.

  “I represent a young gal,” Marty said. Rose always hated that word. She made the eyes almond-shaped, and gave them long lashes. “And she is very, very hip. She took some courses at AFI, she’s kind of punk-looking, pierced nose, that kind of deal, but don’t be put off, because she’s very bright. In fact she graduated from Harvard a few years ago. So, I had lunch with her yesterday and she said, ‘Marty, people all over town want to meet with me, but at the moment I don’t have any ideas’.”

  Rose knew she should have put the phone down then, because she knew where Marty was going with this, but she stayed on the line with the same bizarre fascination people have when they stand and watch the paramedics pull bodies out of cars after an accident. Only this time it was her own body that was being pulled out of the car. He was telling her that she should go into a meeting with this young woman as if the idea had come from the two of them, and work with her and share the credit with her. It sounded horrifyingly familiar.

  “Marty,” Rose said, “let me make this real clear, okay? I’ve been a member of the Writers’ Guild since nineteen sixty-eight. That’s twenty-five years. More years than this girl has been alive. I have used more Blackwing 602 pencils down to their stubs than the number of days she has been on this earth, and I’ll be damned if I will make like she’s my writing partner so I can get into a meeting at a studio with some executive who will probably be the gal’s age and wonder why Granny is along for the ride.

  “May I also add that a writer is someone who does have ideas, so tell your client with the facial jewelry if she doesn’t have any ideas, she isn’t one.” As she hung up, she thought with an ache about Manny Birnbaum. Then she looked at some notes on her desk that she’d made a few weeks ago. The notes were for a movie idea that had once seemed terrific to her, only now the idea didn’t seem so hot anymore. She crumpled the paper up. Then she turned in her chair and aimed the crumpled paper at the wastebasket.

  She remembered how Allan used to do that and say, “And the crowds cheered as he scored…,” get the paper in the basket, and then say “two points!” She missed, so she went over to the wastebasket to pick the paper up and put it in. “Slam dunk,” she said dejectedly as she kneeled next to the basket and righted the missed shot.

  That was when she saw the pieces of a photograph in there and couldn’t imagine what photograph it could be. So she pulled a few of the pieces out, and when she saw which one it was, she wanted to cry. Why would anyone take that precious photo of the four friends and destroy it? Was Molly acting out because she’d spent the last many hours at Jan’s bedside? That wasn’t like her at all. Rose cried quietly as she sat on the floor trying to put the picture together piece by piece.

  * * *

  31

  She was in the motel room, eating a Big Mac for break-fast and feeling fat and crummy and disappointed. Before she left home, she’d figured that by this time she’d be calling to tell Polly, “Guess what, honey. I’m in Hollywood with a great job! And you can tell your dad, and that bitch Sharon, too!” Polly. She ought to call her. At least she ought to call her own answering machine to see if anyone was trying to get ahold of her.

  When she reached into her purse to pull out the remote she had to beep into the phone to retrieve her messages, she felt the gun, and suddenly she was filled with fear that maybe the police would figure out the way they always did on TV that they had the wrong person, and then they’d come looking for her.

  Nah, she told herself as she dialed her number at home. Police were only that smart on TV. After one ring she heard her machine pick up and her own voice answer and say in a way that Lou used to call “phony bullshit,” but which she knew was theatrical, “I’m sorry I’m not here to take your call right now, but I really want to talk to you, so please leave a message after the beep.”

  Yeah, great voice. Ellen would be thrilled to have that voice add class to her office. She pushed the remote button, then heard the garbled, squeaky sound of the tape rewinding, followed by her daughter’s voice. “Mom, I’ve been trying to find you for the past two days, and you haven’t called me back. I know your car is gone, and I’m in a complete panic. Now it’s Saturday. I’m calling to find out if you saw the news on TV, about your friend Jan? It’s so awful. Call me back.” Click.

  “Yeah, this is Harvey over at the Floor Store, and I’m callin’ to make sure you’re comin’ in. I don’t care if you get germs on the filing cabinet, I’ve got a month’s worth of bills I have to send out, and all kinds of other stuff, so you better be here.” Click

  “Mom. It’s me. It’s Saturday night. Where are you? I stopped by the Floor Store looking for you, and Harvey was really bummed because you didn’t show or call. I figure you must be really super depressed about Jan O’Malley. I know you two were close and all. But the good news is I heard on TV that they think they got the guy who did it. So that’s something, right? Talk t’ya later.” Click.

  “Mom, I have a confession to make. I was so shook about not being able to find you, I had this crazy idea that maybe you went to L.A. And then I was reading some article in the paper about that guy you know, Jack Solomon, and it talked all about the stuff he was doing at the network, so I took a chance and called information for the number of the network and asked for his office, and I got through to his secretary. I guess I sounded really upset because she put me through to him.

  “Mom, he is so nice! He said if I ever come to town I should call him, and if I find you I should have you call him. He took my call because I said I was your daughter and you had disappeared. So, Mom, he must really like you to have them put me through when he’s so busy. Anyway, please call me. Okay?”

  “Yeah, this is Harvey again. I’m calling to tell you, you’re fired. I had to do all the billing myself, and you didn’t even have the courtesy to call me. So don’t even come by on Monday for what I owe you. I’m keeping it and you can sue me.” Click.

  She went into the bathroom and put cold water on her face. She felt feverish and afraid. Now she didn’t even have a job at home. And she didn’t have any money. But there was actually good news in all of this. A pony in there somewhere, like that old joke about shoveling through the horse shit. And that was that Jack Solomon remembered
her. Hah! He should only know that she’d been standing ten feet away from him at the hospital the other night. Maybe she should go over to his office at the network and pop in on him. Where the hell were those network offices anyway? She picked up her street map because there were landmarks on it. Maybe she could find them there.

  Shit! Today was Sunday. Nobody would be in their office today. They’d be having barbecues with their families or brunches at the beach. Jack Solomon lived at the beach. She could drive out to his house in Malibu. Malibu, just the name brought pictures to her mind of pretty young girls in bathing suits, the way she was once, the way Jack Solomon remembered her. How could she go out there and let him see her like this?

  After a while she picked up the phone at the same time she pulled her address book out of her purse. Then she dialed nine for an outside line and the telephone number in Malibu. The least she could do was call him, apologize for Polly’s panicked call. And her voice was still sexy. While the phone rang, she folded the greasy McDonalds’ wrapper in half and in half again. She’d tell him she was in town to test for some film.

  “Hello.”

  “Jack?” she said into the phone. She felt afraid and queasy but proud of herself for getting up the nerve to do this.

  “No, this is Jason. Who’s this?”

  “Oh, is this Jack Solomon’s residence?”

  “Yet it is. I’m his son. Who’s this?”

  “Well, I’m an old college friend of his, and I was hoping to maybe say hello for a minute. I was in his class at Tech and I…”

  “Hold on a sec. I’ll see if he can talk. Dad! Telephone…”

  Her heart was pounding. Jack Solomon had a son who sounded like a man. Of course he was probably in his twenties. Maybe he’d like to meet Polly. Wouldn’t that be something. “Our children really should get to know one another,” she’d tell Jack once the conversation got rolling. There was a whooshing sound in her ear, something from the other end of the line. Probably she was actually hearing the surf outside the Solomons’ big, beautiful beach house.

  Jack Solomon was going to pick up the phone any minute, and he’d be so glad to hear from her. Here’s what she would say. “Hi, darling. Hasn’t it just been forever? I’ve been working in England. But I really have been planning a move back to the states. Helen Mirren and I were just talking about it. She’s doing that great detective series on PBS, and I’m here testing for a…”

  “Hello.”

  “Jack?” Her heart was banging as loud as it used to when she stood offstage waiting for her cue.

  “Um… my dad told me to tell you that he has to call you back later or maybe tomorrow. So can I get your name and number? He’s outside on the deck with some of the people from the network and… he asked me to get your name and number and he’ll call you some other time.”

  Some other time. She hadn’t even given her name yet, so it wasn’t personal. It was just that a man like that was always busy. But if she left a number for Jack to call her back, the switchboard operator would say Tropi-Cal Motel, and then…

  “This’ll just take a second,” she tried. “Maybe he could just excuse himself for a second and…”

  “No. He told me to take a number,” Jason said to her.

  “I’ll try another time,” she said and put down the phone.

  * * *

  32

  The hours they spent in the hospital on Saturday night and all day Sunday had a timelessness to them which was punctuated now and then by the need for one of them to leave for a few hours to attend to the practical business of her life. But nearly every issue in their own worlds was on hold or in the hands of others as they sat by the bed, continuing to talk to Jan or to one another.

  Sometimes while they sat, now bundled in sweaters to warm them in the chilled hospital room, Marly read in a tired voice from A Course in Miracles. But the doctor’s dour-faced visits and Andy’s helpless eyes when he came in to join them told them without words that there would be no miracles. When Marly went home on Monday morning, she called Julie to tell her the news and to discuss the will.

  “I mean, what are the chances she can make it?” It wasn’t just the miles that caused the distance in Julie’s voice. “I knew she had me in that will for taking her little boy. But I sure as hell don’t want to be the one who says ‘pull the plug’ on my own sister. I’d have nightmares about that for the rest of my life.” Marly’s mind was filled with a jumble of images as she stood in her own room that morning and told Julie everything the doctor said about Janny’s chances.

  She wore only a towel as she looked out into the backyard. At the iron-and-glass table under the gazebo Maria sat having breakfast, while Joey, who had left his cereal behind, happily chased a butterfly around the lush green lawn. And among her white lacy bedclothes, stretching lazily, after a night of sleeping there “to be available for the children” was Billy. Waiting for her to finish her phone call and slide in next to him.

  “I don’t want the responsibility,” Julie said, “and I already told Rose that I don’t want the boy. But maybe we can come to some kind of terms about him.” Marly wondered if terms meant money. Of course she was talking about money. Julie was willing to sell her right to Billy’s guardianship. Marly was too tired to scream, too pained to fight. When Billy tugged gently at her towel, she decided she had better things to do than continue this conversation now.

  “Maybe we can come to terms,” she said.

  “And as far as the rest of it goes,” Julie told her, “you three friends do what the doctors think is best.” That was said in a voice that meant she was winding up this conversation.

  “Thanks, Julie,” Marly said and she put the phone down and sat on the bed just as a happy squeal from Joey rose from the yard. Then Billy was behind her kissing her neck and her back and moving her body against his under the warm comforter, telling her he loved her and they would work on it all together. He would help her decide what to do, he would make it all be right.

  After their lovemaking, she thought, as he took her nipple into his mouth and the sweet sensations filled her body, she’d tell him she wanted to adopt Joey.

  When it was Rose’s turn to go home, she made Molly breakfast and took a long bath. It was one of those vague school holidays, teachers’ conference day or something, she was sure she should have known about but didn’t, so at about nine she made a play date for Molly and then drove her to the friend’s house.

  “Mommy, are you sad?” Molly asked her.

  “I’m more than sad, honey,” Rose said, making a left turn off Valley Vista onto a street that was filled with jacaranda trees, their lavender blossoms falling gently onto the cars parked along the curb, and she remembered how much Jan loved jacarandas. “I’m devasted about Aunt Jan. I’ve loved her very much for a lot of years, and I know when I lose her, my life will never be as wonderful as it might have been with her in it.”

  Molly hugged her mother knowingly before she got out of the car. “Love you, Mom. And if you’re alone and it gets too tough, come and get me and I’ll come home and keep you company. Okay?”

  “Okay, honey,” Rose promised. When Molly was safely inside her friend’s house, Rose turned on the car radio to the news station, and as she drove up Beverly Glen she was only half listening when the news man said Jan’s name, and then she thought she heard the words “released for insufficient evidence.” They were saying that the stalker had been released. Good God. He had to be the one who shot her, and they released him.

  When she spotted the old gray car parked in her driveway, she felt a surge of fear under her ribs. Andy wasn’t home, and her house was isolated just like Jan’s. She felt some relief when she saw that the driver of the car was a woman. But instead of pulling into the garage, she pulled up alongside the car, and honked and startled the woman who looked at her.

  It was Rita Connelly, the police officer. Both she and Rose got out of their cars and stood facing one another in the driveway. Rita Connelly looked pre
tty and fresh in a red wool blazer.

  “I heard they released that fan,” Rose said.

  “He found his gun, and it was a thirty-eight but not the one that shot Jan O’Malley. How’s she doing?”

  “There’s been no change in her. I don’t… there probably isn’t much hope,” Rose said and her face crumbled into a teary mask and she patted her hip where her purse usually rested, hoping to find a Kleenex, but she’d left her purse in the car.

  “I’m sorry,” the police officer said and pulled a handkerchief out of her own pocket. It smelled of cigarettes, but Rose was glad to have it to wipe away her tears.

  “Mrs. Schiffman,” Rita said, looking searchingly into Rose’s eyes, “I called the alumni office at Carnegie early this morning, and they told me that the person they faxed that list of names to, the person who called them last week and said they needed the list to do some heavy-duty fund-raising, was you.”

  Rose’s stunned reaction was to let out a sharp little laugh. “Me? That’s crazy. I never got that fax. The first time I saw it was when you showed it to me. I never would have made that call. Somebody must have used my name.”

  “Got any idea who would do that? Do you know anyone in San Diego? It was faxed to San Diego. Have you been to San Diego lately?”

  “When Molly was two, I took her to the zoo there. That was eight years ago. Someone’s using my name. How do we find out who it is?”

  “Let’s call the alumni office together and see if they can tell us what else the person said,” Rita Connelly suggested.

  While Rose looked up the Pittsburgh telephone number on the Rolodex in her office and dialed it, Rita Connelly looked around at the pictures pushpinned to the cork board. She also squatted and looked down at the pieced-together photo on the floor of the four friends in front of the college dorm.

  “What happened to this picture?”