"Wait. I can't. I can't go out there. I'm scared. I can't. Tell the people to go away."
Stan put his hand on Annie Jordan's sticklike arms. Just by touching her he could feel her terror.
"Please. I can't," she begged. "I can't."
"Ahhh, shit," Arlene Warren said. "That crazy bitch's gonna put us right outta the business."
"Please, mister," Annie begged Stan, "don't make me go out there. You go and tell the kids I don't feel good. They'll understand."
Stan was weak. This must be a nightmare. Stanley Rose from Miami, Florida, and Annie Jordan, the star, standing in the open door of a dressing room at Santa Monica Civic, with her wailing for God only knows what reason, and behind him the sounds of an eagerly expectant audience. He could see the curious stagehands buzzing around, wanting to know what was happening yet keeping their distance. What in God's name could he do?
"Ooooh, please. I can't," Annie wailed again.
Stan saw someone moving toward them through the darkness of backstage. It was Walter Barton. Barton had told Stan he'd be late for the concert because he was shooting Give 'em the Hook. Thank heaven he was here now.
"What's going on?" Barton said.
"Oooh," Annie moaned.
"Annie's not feeling well," Stan said. Now the tiny girl was hanging on to him for support. Barton would straighten it all out. That's why there were senior partners. He would know just what to say to get poor Annie feeling well and onstage. Stan glanced at his watch. It was eight o'clock. He looked at Barton, who was looking at Annie.
"Okay, you nigger bitch," Barton said. "You get your pickaninny ass onstage or you'll be back in the ghetto by midnight."
Stan felt Annie's hold on him stiffen.
"Walter . . ." Stan had to stop him.
"You hear me, little mamma?" Walter asked in some version of jive talk he'd fallen into. "I'm gonna have your black ass in a fuckin' sling if you doesn't go out dere right now. You won't want me to put in da trade papers dat niggers is unreliable folks? Dat Annie Jordan is poison to promote 'cause she's so doped out she can't do no show?"
Stan was nauseated. This man was his partner. Representing his brand-new company. The girl, in the meantime, hung on to Stan like a cat in a tree.
"Walter. Hold it," Stan said.
"Shut up, Kid," Barton snapped at him.
Stan blinked as though he'd been slapped. This was a man he'd spent hours with. Talking about the business, excitedly planning the future of their company together. And this was the man who was paying him a salary, too. Who could take it all away right now.
Stan flashed on his last day in the mail room. Mickey, David and Barry took him to DuPar's for a goodbye lunch.
"This is it, Jug," Mickey said to him. "You'll probably be a zillionaire in the next five years." The mail room had been fun for Stan but he was excited to leave, to move on to a position of importance in the real world of the business. Now he wished he were back there. He was afraid. If he spoke up, Barton could get angry and take it all away.
"You can't go on?" Barton said tauntingly to Annie. "Then how 'bout comin' to my place on Tuesdays and Thursdays and cleanin' up after white folk, which is what you should be doin' to begin with?"
"Walter," Stan said. This was too much. "I won't shut up. What you're saying makes me sick."
Stan looked down at Annie. She was wild-eyed. Before Barton could say another word, he moved her toward the dressing room. "Come inside, Annie," he said, and he walked the girl inside and slammed the door in Barton's angry face.
"Now," Stan said quietly to her. "What is it? Tell me what's bothering you? I mean besides that asshole," he said, gesturing to the door.
"Ah, she's so full of shit," one of the girls volunteered, but Stan stopped her with a look.
Annie looked like a child about to recite in class as she pulled herself together to explain. "Well," she said sadly, "me and my boy friend, we had this here fight. See? And he's got a new woman and he's not here tonight, so I can't go out there." The last few words were said in tears. "Because I feel so bad." She was crying now. The other three girls looked disgusted.
"Annie," Stan said. "You know what I think?" Christ, he thought to himself. What do I think? What could he tell her?
"I think you're a fabulous singer and a very big star, and that's something really remarkable that you've achieved all on your own at a very young age."
Annie looked down at the floor shyly. Stan knew he had to get her out on that stage. But he also knew he had to do it with the truth.
"And I think that those things make you a very worthwhile person," Stan went on, "who doesn't have to live or die or rise and fall based on how some boy friend is treating her. Do you understand what I'm saying?" He meant it. He really did and she knew it, and the sad downcast face looked at him and slowly brightened until she was grinning happily and she hugged him, laughing.
Stan was laughing, too. So were the Etoiles.
Then Annie stopped for a moment as if maybe she'd believed him too quickly and wasn't sure she should have and looked deep into Stan Rose's eyes.
"No shit?" she asked.
Stan smiled warmly at her. "No shit," he promised.
Annie Jordan walked to the mirror and carefully put on the bouffant wig she'd been clutching in her tiny hand. Then she nodded to the others. Arlene Warren opened the door and the four of them walked toward the stage. The lighting man saw them coming and dimmed the houselights, and a squeal went up from the crowd.
Barton stood in the wings next to a live microphone. He looked at the four girls as they touched hands and wished each other "good show," and then at Stan Rose, who was trying to peek around the curtain and count the people in the house. Then, with his best disc-jockey voice, Barton spoke into the microphone.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said. "Rose and Barton Concerts is proud to bring you"—beat, beat, beat—"the fabulous Etoiles."
A multivoiced scream filled the air, the girls ran onto the stage and the first Rose and Barton concert had begun.
nineteen
It was eleven thirty in the morning and Mickey was bored. He had read Variety and the Reporter, done his morning mail run and reread Variety and the Reporter. Then he read the L.A. Times and went back and did the crossword puzzle in Variety when the mail room phone rang.
"Ashman?"
"Yeah?"
"Don Morgan."
Don Morgan was the head of personnel. He probably was all ready with a new kid to replace Stan Rose.
"Hey, Don."
"Can I see you in my office?"
"Yeah. Sure."
Mickey was glad to have any change of pace. Even a visit with the skinny and pimpled Don Morgan broke up the boredom of the day. As unattractive as he was, Morgan fancied himself a ladies' man and he loved to tell stories about his sexual conquests that Mickey was sure were lies. Mickey looked at the dilapidated bicycles lined up in the parking lot and decided to walk to Morgan's office. It was a beautiful day.
The lot was buzzing with tourists in groups being led on foot by uniformed guides. Mickey noticed that the anxious people in those groups always looked carefully at every passing face, hoping to spot a star who was on the way to lunch. More than once, as Mickey walked around the lot, someone from a tour group had stepped out and stopped him to ask, "Are you anybody?" That was a question it was getting harder for him to answer.
Don Morgan's office was in one of the small pink bungalows, or casitas, which used to house the producers' offices. In fact, Mickey noticed it was located in the building where casting used to be. The one where he'd come to see Tom Rich so long ago.
"Hi. Mickey Ashman to see Don Morgan."
Morgan opened his office door before the secretary could buzz him. He was grinning.
"Oh, Ashman, come in here," he said, pulling Mickey into his office by the arm. And closing the door.
"You wanna see pussy?" he asked. "I'll show you pussy, Ashman. Like pussy you've never seen."
"You
been to Sweden, Morgan?" Mickey joked, knowing that before Don Morgan told him why he'd called him there he'd have to put up with some bullshit.
"Not my pussy, asshole. Her."
From his top desk drawer Morgan extracted a recent issue of a pulp magazine containing a photo of a girl lying on a bed spread-eagled.
"I fucked her last night," Morgan said.
"Yeah," Mickey said. "That girl in the magazine?'
"Yeah, Ashman," Don Morgan said. "And she said I was the best fuck she ever had."
"Great," Mickey said. "Where'd you meet her? Why did he ask Morgan that? The lying bastard would keep him there forever now with some bullshit story.
"Through friends," Morgan said.
"Hmm. Great."
"She loves me, man," Morgan said, lowering his voice. "Begged me to come over again to fuck her tonight. But I can't. I'm too busy."
"Right. So what did you want?" "
"I just wanted to fuck her once and forget her, Morgan said.
"I mean from me."
"Huh?"
"I mean how come you called me over here, Morgan?"
There was a silence while Don Morgan tried to remember the answer to the question.
"Oh, yeah," he said, remembering. "Fire Kane."
"Huh?"
"David Kane. You know, the red-haired kid?"
"Yeah," Mickey said. "I know what color his hair is. But what do you mean fire him, Morgan? Nobody ever gets fired from the mail room. People quit, move up, people die of boredom, but nobody gets fired. What's the problem?"
"He's too aggressive."
"What are you talking about?"
"He gets on people's nerves."
"How?"
"He's pushy, a pain in the ass, always looking to move out of the mail room, and people on the lot don't like it. Hey, I could maybe get her to put out for you," Don Morgan said, holding up the picture again.
"Morgan," Mickey said. What was this ugly sex-starved bastard trying to prove? "The purpose of the mail room is for young guys like Kane and the rest of us to learn about the business, and what's going on on this lot so we can move up and get other jobs. That's what he's doing here to begin with. You can't fire him for that."
"Don't tell me my job, Ashman. He's fired. I called you in here so you could tell him. You don't want to? Then I'll do it."
"No, I don't want to. And I don't want you to. Kane does his job just fine. This is wrong."
"Ashman, get out of my office. The son of a bitch is fired whether you like it or not."
"Whose decision was this, Morgan?" Mickey asked. Morgan was an underling. A low-on-the-totem pole nobody personnel guy who could never be responsible for firing somebody.
"Mine," Morgan snapped. "It was mine and I made it after hearing those things about him all over this lot, and I don't give a shit if you like it or not, Ashman. So get your ass back to the mail room and tell that hotshot Kane he's out, or maybe I'll just decide you're out too."
"You know what, Morgan?" Mickey said. "I don't believe you decided this at all."
"Get out," Morgan sneered.
"You bet I will." Mickey walked to the door. "And I also don't believe that any girl who looks like that would ever be in the same room with you, let alone allow you to fuck her." Mickey left Don Morgan's office and headed back to the mail room.
How the hell could he tell Kane, poor old motherless fatherless Kane, that now he didn't even have a job? How did it happen? Kane was so good-looking and so bright. He knew everything that was going on in the business, and he had that great aloof attitude that made people want to find out what he was thinking. He should be a regular big-time executive. Not getting fired.
He was already a killer. Shit. Every piece of tail on the lot drooled over him. Not just Allyn Grant, but every secretary, every waitress in the commissary, wanted his ass in bed. Maybe that was it. Maybe that jerk Morgan did decide to do it himself, 'cause he was afraid Kane was getting more pussy than he was. Maybe. Oh, Christ. Whatever it was, Mickey couldn't stand the thought of looking at Kane's face when he told him the news.
When he got back to the mail room, Barry was on his way to lunch. "Kane never made it in this morning," he said, "and he just called in. Says he's sick."
Mickey took a deep breath. He was relieved. At least he could wait a day.
twenty
David looked at the clock on the night table beside his bed. It was seven in the morning and he had looked at the clock nearly every five minutes all night long, waiting for the day to break. Maybe he had slept. He wasn't sure. If he had, it was just for a short while. He was afraid.
It was only a few days since the Greenfields' party. The first day, Monday, he'd stayed at home after calling in sick to the mail room. Feeling as if he could never go to the Hemisphere lot again. Knowing that he could never do what he'd threatened. On the morning of the second day he got into the Falcon and drove toward Hollywood, planning to get on the Hollywood Freeway to the Ventura Freeway to the studio. But once he was on the Ventura Freeway, he got nervous. So he kept driving, and within a half hour he was in Malibu Canyon heading toward the Coast Highway. By ten thirty he was walking on the beach in Santa Barbara. It was a weekday and the beach was deserted. There was something about the vastness of the ocean, as David looked out over it, that made him feel even more lonely than before.
Maybe he shouldn't have said those things to Charlie Wolfson. Maybe he should have just acted nice to Wolfson at the party, and called him the next day at the bank in a friendly way and asked him to call Greenfield. It was all that venom inside him that had been stored up since Marlene's death. Since before Marlene's death. Ahhh, fuck. Maybe since the day his own father walked out, if he believed that Freudian shit. He was going to have to learn how to control those feelings. Otherwise he'd blow up again. Act on the threat he'd made. He drove home from Santa Barbara promising himself he'd go to work the next day, which was today. Wednesday. But now he was looking at the clock and he knew he couldn't go in to the studio anymore. Maybe he'd just not even go back. He'd get a job in sales somewhere. The mail room salary was rotten anyway.
The phone rang. No one called this early. Allyn? He hadn't spoken to her since he took her back to her apartment Sunday night. She'd been disappointed that he didn't come in, but he was shaking by the time they got into the Falcon outside the Greenfields', and she slid over next to him to kiss him.
"Have a good time?" she asked.
But all he could think about was Wolfson. And the conversation they had earlier, and the way even though Wolfson and his wife were at the same buffet table, and then eating dinner in another part of the same room David and Allyn were in, Wolfson never said another word to either of them all evening. Well, shit. Why should he? David had threatened to blackmail him. Blackmail. Oh, God.
The phone rang again.
"Hello."
"Kane?" It was Mickey Ashman.
"Yeah."
"Uh, how're you feeling?" Ashman asked.
"I'm okay," David said. Ashman was such a boring asshole. What did he want at seven in the morning?
"Hey, listen," Ashman said. "I need to talk to you. Can I come over? Or meet you for breakfast?" he asked.
What in the hell did Ashman want from him?
Breakfast. At the mention of it, David realized he hadn't eaten in two days.
"Yeah. DuPar's. About an hour," he said.
"See you there."
The bacon and eggs sat uneaten and cold on his plate and David was staring at Mickey Ashman.
"Look, Arch," Mickey said. "I think my guess is right. I think that putz Don Morgan is jealous of you and he doesn't want you around. Maybe if you stopped into his office and just—"
David shook his head. There was no point trying to explain to Ashman that Don Morgan was just doing his job and that the firing was really being done by a much higher power. Harold Greenfield. The highest-powered man at Hemisphere Studios. Maybe the highest-powered man in Hollywood. What had Wolfson to
ld Greenfield? The truth? Never.
"I'm sorry," Mickey said, and David could see it in his eyes. Ashman was sorry. He'd never treated Ashman very well at all, and the dumb clown was sorry to see him go. What a schmuck.
In DuPar's parking lot, Mickey shook David's hand.
"I hope you get another job soon, Kane."
"Thanks, Ashman. Thanks a lot."
David got into the Falcon, and turned the key. The car didn't start. Even that wasn't working for him. What in the hell could he do now? Ashman said he'd try to get Don Morgan to give David a few weeks' pay, and there was always the Social Security check. He tried the car again. Nothing.
Wolfson. That killer had gotten him again. Shit. God damn it. Everyone. All of it. He had nothing. No one. His stomach hurt and he was sweating when he got out of the car and walked to the phone booth to call the auto club. Their road-service line rang twenty times before he got a recorded message. All our lines are busy now but . . .
When he finally got through, the woman at the road-service switchboard said it would be at least half an hour before the tow truck got here. David sighed, trying to pull himself together. He would have to get a job right away.
He dropped another dime in the phone and dialed.
"Hemisphere Studios."
"Jack Shear's office, please."
"Thank you."
"Jack Shear's office."
"Allyn?"
"Pardon me?"
"It's David."
"Are you calling Jack Shear?"
"No, I'm calling his secretary. Allyn Grant."
"Oh. Miss Grant no longer works for Mr. Shear," the woman said.
Fired. My God. It was a pogrom. Just to save Wolfson's ass. Greenfield fired him and now her. Even the relationship between her grandmother and Greenfield's mother couldn't save her.
"She works for Mr. Greenfield now."
"What? She's Greenfield's secretary?"
"No, sir," the voice said. "On Monday Mr. Greenfield made Miss Grant his assistant."
David hung up the phone slowly. Then he left the phone booth and got into the Falcon to wait.
twenty-one
The Boys in the Mail Room: A Novel Page 18