"Wait," Mickey said. "You can't say things like that. They're not true."
Spears shook Mickey off and turned to face him. He was glaring. His face was ugly.
"Keep your hands off me, you little piece of shit. I paid for your ticket here and gave you a chance. Then you walked in here after I got network brass to sit in, and you read like some two-bit amateur and made me look like a schmuck. Then you had the nerve to start calling here and bugging my secretary, and calling casting and bugging them like you were somebody in the business. Well, you're not. You're a lowlife. All actors are lowlifes. Even the big ones. So that makes you the lowest of the low. And you can tell your agent never to submit you for any jobs on this lot. Because I'll make sure you don't get them."
Spears left the office and the casita.
Mickey stood frozen to the spot for a few minutes, then walked out and got into the Chevy. His head throbbed and the rest of him was numb.
He closed his eyes and put his head on the steering wheel and cried. He was weak and tired and Spears was right about him. He was an asshole. A naïve asshole. Oh, shit. He stunk. Stunk? What a crappy fucking word to use. The network guy thought so. Thought he stunk. Smelled. Couldn't act. But what about . . . what about Chicago? And the agencies? What did they know? Spears was right. Why hadn't he taken acting lessons? Mickey banged his fist on the dashboard. He had to pull himself together. And get back to the house. And pack. Yes. He'd go back to Chicago.
Probably he wouldn't act anymore. Maybe now that Harvey was finally approaching the end of all his schooling and . . . He wanted to get out of here. His face was covered with tears and his breath was still coming in gasps. He rolled down the window and looked straight into the face of Tom Rich.
"I thought that was you, Ashman," Rich said. Warmly? It sounded that way—but then they were all full of shit—and he knew that Rich knew what the network guy knew. That Mickey Ashman had no talent. Stunk.
"I submitted you for a two-line part in an episode," Rich said, still smiling. "Last week. They used the director's brother. Say, I was real sorry to hear about the way Spears decided to go in Big Business," Rich went on. "They wanted a name actor. You know?"
Mickey still hadn't said one word.
"You were good, though. Hey. . ." Rich moved closer to the car. "Are you all right?"
Mickey was trembling.
"Jeez, Ashman, what the hell happened?"
Mickey was afraid if he spoke he would burst into tears. Tom Rich looked genuinely concerned, and he walked around to the passenger side of the Bel-Aire and got in.
"Back out and make a left over there," he said to Mickey, pointing out the turn. Mickey started the car and followed Tom Rich's directions. "Now a right. Pull up there."
Mickey saw another group of casitas. The one he was in front of bore a sign that said CASTING.
"Come into my office," Rich said gently. "I'll buy you a drink."
Mickey nodded weakly and followed Rich past a few desks of chattering secretaries into a small office containing a metal desk, a Naugahyde chair and a small Naugahyde sofa. Rich locked the door and took a bottle of scotch and two paper cups from his desk drawer. Without asking Mickey, he poured a cup for each of them and gestured for Mickey to sit down.
Mickey took a sip of the scotch. It occurred to him as the thick taste filled his mouth and his ears, and his eyes began to water, that it was only nine fifteen in the morning. Rich had already drained his cup. They were both silent while he poured himself another. Then he looked at Mickey.
"Visiting Spears?" he asked.
Mickey nodded. Rich nodded, too. A knowing nod that said he could probably guess the whole story.
"Son of a bitch is worth fifty million dollars," Rich said. He took another taste of the scotch. So did Mickey. Mickey's face felt hot and Rich's office was beginning to feel confining to him. Maybe if he got up and walked around. There wasn't even a window. Rich looked a little glazed as Mickey stood.
"Sit down, Ashman," Rich said, "and I'll tell you something. Something which if you're smart you'll listen to carefully, and live by forever, because I swear to you it comes from knowledge and wisdom, and years of observing the system, and being in on the secrets of many of the most important people in this town."
Mickey sat. If he had been his usual self he would have laughed at a statement like that because it sounded so full of shit. But he was exhausted, and he knew Rich meant well, and the scotch was going to his head.
Rich's com-line buzzer buzzed and he picked up the phone. He listened, nodded, promised to be somewhere by ten and hung up. For a minute he sat quietly as if he weren't sure where he'd left off, then he looked at Mickey with what Mickey remembered later looked very much like tears in his eyes.
"Ashman," he said, "don't be an actor. Find another life, my friend. But don't be an actor."
"That's what Spears said," Mickey told him.
"But it's different," Rich said, and poured himself some more scotch. "More?"
Mickey nodded. What the fuck. His career was over. Now it was Rich who was going to tell him he stunk. Maybe it would be a good idea to start every day with a glass of scotch.
"It's different," Tom Rich began, "because Lowell Spears hates actors."
"He told me."
Rich shook his head sadly. "That bastard. And he treats them like shit, and goes home to tell his friends about it. Makes young girls suck his cock for parts they'll never get, and young boys kiss his ass for the same. And he hates you all."
"But I didn't—"
"No. He treated you okay. At first. Because he thought you would do him some good. And he needed you. As soon as he decided he didn't need you anymore, you were nothing. Like the others."
"You mean after I read so badly?"
"Huh?"
"He told me what the network guy said."
"What do you mean?"
"That I stunk."
"Arthur? He never said that. He couldn't have. You were great. I was there." Rich's brow was furrowed.
Mickey was sweating. He'd had a cup and a half of the scotch and he was hot and heady.
"Are you sure he didn't say it sometime later?"
"Of course I'm sure. It had nothing to do with Arthur Brand. Or Lowell Spears. At all. It was because the sponsor wanted a name actor to play Bobby, and that's why you were out. Ashman, you gave a great reading. Oh, fuck," Rich said. "Oh, fuck." And as he shook his head sadly he really did look as if he would cry.
"Which only brings us back to my original point, Ashman. Don't be an actor. Because actors, in this town, never ever get treated a hell of a lot better than that."
"I don't believe that," Mickey said. "How can it be? What about the stars of—"
"Stars, yes. Actors, no," Rich said. "And there's a difference. You don't have to be an actor to be a star. Look behind you."
Mickey did, and for the first time, he noticed that the bulletin board above the sofa where he sat contained a dozen black-and-white eight-by-ten glossy photographs of young Hemisphere Studios contract players. He recognized them all.
"The contractees," Rich said to him. "I sat with the heads of this studio and auditioned seven hundred and fifty people to get those twelve. I heard Hamlet's soliloquy delivered, and I use the term loosely, seventy-four times. Emily's 'goodbye Grover's Corners' speech from Our Town twenty-six times. I saw eight versions of the George-and-Martha scene from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?—one of them where the parts of George and Martha were both played by men. I saw a grown man who was about to do a monologue throw up from sheer terror in front of an entire staff of studio executives, and learned that later that week that same man killed himself, and I ended up offering contracts to those twelve people you see there. Why? The blonde on the far left has a thirty-six D bust and gives allegedly great head on a regular basis to Al Dietrich, who is the next in line to Harold Greenfield, who is the president and chief executive of Hemisphere Studios. The dark-eyed lady to her right, though not nearly so enorm
ously endowed or reputationed, is the daughter of one of Hemisphere's in-house lawyers."
"Jesus," Mickey said softly.
"And the boy with the blond curls, Ashman," he said, "who I'm sure you can recognize as the star of a currently running cowboy series, is a master of S&M, of which a certain elderly film director cannot get enough."
"Stop," Mickey said.
"Are you getting the point?" Rich said to him. Now his teeth were clenched angrily.
"I'm trying to tell you that actors don't matter," he spat at Mickey. "I love them. They're vulnerable, beautiful, emotional, needy people. But not to these guys, Ashman. I swear to you that there were some really good auditions done during that hyped-up talent search. That's what those assholes had the nerve to name it. And not one of the good ones got so much as a phone call, or a thank-you, or even a two-line bit on this lot."
Mickey was slumped down in the Naugahyde couch. He wanted to die. Maybe kill himself. Like the guy who threw up.
"I need a job," he said finally. "I'm running out of money." He couldn't even look at Rich's face when he said it. What did it matter to Rich? He must know thousands of actors. He was in casting. Knowing actors was what he did for a living.
"I need a job," Mickey repeated. "If I want to stay here, and not go back to Chicago and face the"—he was crying—"and face, well, it isn't even my parents so much as the whole—" He couldn't go on. He just sat there on the sofa without covering his eyes, letting the tears drip in his lap.
Rich took a few Kleenexes from a plastic box on top of his desk, then walked over to Mickey and handed them to him.
Mickey felt like such a schmuck. Such a schmuck.
He wiped his eyes.
Rich helped him to his feet. He probably had to leave for his ten-o'clock meeting.
"I'll work on it, Ashman," Rich said. "I promise I will."
"But Spears said—"
"Spears is a bad-ass motherfucker and I don't give a shit what he said," Rich told him, opening the door. Mickey handed Rich the paper cup he was still holding, and Rich downed the remaining scotch. Mickey guessed Rich didn't care if anyone knew about his morning drinking habits, because the door to his office was open now, and lots of people were bustling past.
Rich gave Mickey a warm slap on the arm and Mickey walked outside to his car. Later he didn't even remember the drive home. When he got there it was ten thirty in the morning. He fell asleep on the couch in his living room and slept until noon the next day. When he woke up, he ate a Swanson's TV dinner and sat in a hot tub. He had dragged the phone with its extra long cord into the bathroom just in case. He was about to add more hot water when the phone rang at last.
It was Tom Rich's secretary. "Mr. Ashman?" she said. "Tom's in a meeting but he asked me to call and tell you that you've got a job!"
Mickey heaved a sigh. He was on his way. Fuck Lowell Spears and all the bullshit. Somehow Tom Rich had managed to come through with a job for him.
"On what?" he asked the girl on the phone.
"I beg your pardon?"
"On what show? Is the job?"
"Oh, no, Mr. Ashman," she said, "it's nothing like that."
She told Mickey that the message Tom Rich had given her said Mickey could start work on Monday if he wanted to. Tom would call him personally later to tell him about the pay and the insurance benefits. The job was in the mail room at Hemisphere Studios.
three
Barry Golden was the smallest boy in his class at P.S. 19 in Brooklyn. That's why he was glad that when the class lined up to go anywhere they did it alphabetically and not by height. Even when they went to toilet recess, as Miss Hausman called it, they went in alphabetical order. Barry always felt sorry for Arnold Zalmonowitz, who had to pee last, and felt glad that he himself only had to be third after Eddie Berkowitz and Marshall Feldman. But then Barry felt sorry for a lot of people. Not just Arnold Zalmonowitz. That's why he was referred to as "a sensitive child" by his aunt, "a little jewel" by his mother and "moldy-goldy" by a bunch of boys on his street who didn't like him.
Barry's uncle, Mashe, who was married to Barry's mother's sister, was very rich. At least he seemed rich to Barry's family because he was in the business of manufacturing ladies' clothing. The company was named Eldor Dresses, after Mashe's wife, Barry's aunt Eleanor, and Mashe's mother, Dora (not really related to Barry), and its label was carried in some stores that Barry's mother referred to as "fancy."
Barry couldn't quite remember exactly when his father got laid off from the job he had in the cleaning plant, but he did remember hearing his father tell his mother the news. Barry was supposed to be asleep but he crept into the kitchen and stood in the doorway and watched them both cry. His mother and his father, sobbing with their heads in their arms leaning on the kitchen table. Barry started to cry too, and crept back into his bed.
The next day, while Barry sat out on the front steps, a taxi pulled up and Mashe stepped out of it. Mashe always looked elegant, combed, rich. He didn't even acknowledge Barry as he walked past him and up the three flights to the Goldens' apartment.
Barry wasn't sure exactly what happened between Mashe and his mother and father that day. He knew it had something to do with a call Barry's mother had made to her sister, Aunt Eleanor, the night before with crying and what Barry's father called "shrying gevalt." It also had something to do with what Uncle Mashe called "seconds," and soon racks of dresses were being delivered to the Goldens' apartment by some men in trucks and then the Eldor label was being torn out, and lots of ladies in the neighborhood were coming over to the Goldens' apartment to look through the racks, which now lined the living room so you could hardly even see the furniture.
Most of the time Barry was at school when the ladies came to try on the dresses, but sometimes they would still be there when he got home and his mother would caution him, "No, no. Someone's trying on in the bathroom. Just a second, Barelah." And Barry would have to wait if he wanted to pee, the way Arnold Zalmonowitz always had to wait at school.
After a while, there seemed to be more and more dresses and more and more ladies, and sometimes they would come early before Barry left for school, and if there were a lot of them they would change in his room. He would pretend to be reading or getting his books together, and the ladies mostly acted as if he weren't even there, so he would get to see their breasts and their tushes and sometimes even the curly hair between their legs.
Most of them were ugly. Mrs. Pivar had breasts that were big and wrinkled, and even after she put on one of the dresses, the part that was her cleavage, as Barry heard his mother call it, was still crinkly and ugly. But she bought lots of dresses and gave Mrs. Golden cash for them, and there was no more crying at the kitchen table, and Mashe kept sending over more racks.
Barry's parents were much happier now. His mother smiled and sometimes served coffee to the "yentas" (as his father called them) who came by, and there was even talk that maybe the two of them would take Barry and go on a trip someplace soon. A real vacation.
Then Eugene died. Eugene was Mashe and Eleanor's son. He had meningitis. Meningitis. For the rest of his life, when Barry Golden heard that word, the horror surrounding the death of Eugene came rushing back. Barry was eleven, Eugene was thirteen. In fact, he had just had his bar mitzvah. It was vague what and where and how Eugene got the meningitis, but one minute he was in the hospital, and there were screaming phone calls, and Barry was left in the apartment with a neighbor while his parents rushed away and told him not to go anywhere. Where could he go? He was stuck staying at home with old Mrs. Farkus. Very old Mrs. Farkus, who sat all day and read the Forward, which another neighbor brought her. She also cooked a big soup pot of soggy vegetables and boiled chicken on the stove, from which she took a small portion every few hours.
Despite Mrs. Farkus's urging, Barry didn't eat the soup. Meningitis could be in it. Meningitis could be everywhere. When Mrs. Farkus answered the phone, Barry knew Eugene was dead. She only nodded, then handed the phone to
him. By the time he took it, his mother or father had hung up. They must have told Mrs. Farkus to tell him.
"A zachen vay," Mrs. Farkus said, putting her hands on Barry's head and holding it tightly. "Nicht far dere gedacht, mein kind," she said, and then spit gently on his face three times, saying, "pooh pooh pooh" with each spit, and even though Barry knew it was supposed to be some nice thing she was doing to ward off evil, he ran into the bathroom and threw up. In fact, he stayed in the bathroom for four hours after that. Until his parents came home. For a while they didn't look for him.
They sat at the kitchen table and said things like, "See. No matter how much money you have it doesn't mean anything at a time like this." Then they each had some of Mrs. Farkus's soup, for which they thanked her profusely.
Eugene's funeral was the first funeral Barry ever attended. He wore a suit from last year, and his mother combed his hair down with water, which is what she usually only did once a year, before they went to high holiday services. He was very nervous. There were some familiar faces at the funeral home. In a big outer room were relatives Barry had seen at family parties. Eugene's bar mitzvah party, in fact. One was a pretty young cousin who had recently been married. Barry flushed when he saw her now. She had tried on some Eldor seconds in his room and he had seen her naked. The memory was getting him very excited. At Eugene's funeral. Oh, shit. Maybe God would give Barry meningitis for thinking of the cousin's naked body.
He felt a nudge from behind him. His mother was moving him from the big room. They were heading into a smaller room where Eugene's immediate family was seated. Maybe Barry could forget the cousin's big breasts and her furry—Oh, my God. It was the first time he'd seen the casket. He reeled for a moment and leaned back against his mother. Maybe because everyone else had been grown-ups and Barry was so short he hadn't noticed it before but there in the middle of an archway, in what looked kind of like a puppet theater, was this big box. And the top half of it was open and Barry could see the face of Eugene. Dead Eugene. Wearing a yarmulke. Barry closed his eyes. Maybe if he looked at Eugene he would get meningitis. His mother was moving more quickly now into the back room. In the small room was Dora, Mashe's mother. She was in her eighties. She sat like a queen, all in black, holding her cane like a scepter. Relatives surrounded her. The relatives cried. Dora only nodded her head. Barry panicked. He remembered now he'd forgotten to ask his mother what you were supposed to say to someone when this happened. Now he was right in front of Dora. Dora only stared. Barry's mother leaned over and hugged her.
The Boys in the Mail Room: A Novel Page 4