The Boys in the Mail Room: A Novel

by Iris Rainer Dart

  "Too bad," Allyn had said about Phil Gruber's divorce. And then she had a flash of fantasy that maybe she and Amanda would rush off to Pittsburgh to visit Grandma, and one night in Weinstein's Delicatessen there would be Phil Gruber and he'd beg her to leave David and be his wife, now that he finally had Janet Blumenthal out of his system.

  The electric typewriter was humming, and Allyn was sorry that she bought it. There was something about the way it hummed that got on her nerves. Okay. Let's go. Okay. C'mon. Ready, it said. And she knew she had two choices. She could turn it off and fall asleep, which is what she'd done for the last several days after she tried to work, or she could leave it on and insert a piece of paper, and start typing anything. Anything. She looked out the window. Amanda was playing on the front lawn with Berta. Allyn knew she should type and not look out the window and watch them, but—The phone was ringing. Thank God.

  "Hello, Mrs. Kane?" It was David.

  "Who's calling?" she asked, smiling.

  "The president of Premier Films."

  "David! They agreed to everything?"

  "Every single thing."

  "Fabulous. Terrific. Oh, David . . . I'll chill champagne."

  "I won't be home till late. I'm going over to Eastman's office now to talk."

  "Okay," she said, "I'll wait up and we'll celebrate later. And maybe I'll make some kind of a light supper and . . ."

  Allyn rambled for quite a while before she realized that David had hung up.

  * * *

  By the end of his fourth week, David knew everything about Premier Films. Every night he read. Company financial reports. Projects the studio was considering acquiring. Projects the studio had already acquired, some of which had been given "go" status, others which were fraught with problems and needed to be bailed out of trouble. And he screened and watched films. Every one Premier had made in the last ten years.

  And during the day he took meetings with every executive in the company. Called them to his office. Individually. And asked them to lunch with him, talk with him, explain to him how the studio worked best in their opinion. First the lawyers. David made them bring copies of all the contracts the studio had with creative people, so he could see who was worth how much. Then he met with Larry Deebs, the vice-president in charge of finance. David sat with Deebs for hours on end. Asking him questions, reviewing expenses, learning, remembering.

  "Jesus," Mel Eastman said to David one morning, during what had become their regular breakfast at the Polo Lounge. "You know as much about Premier as I do, and I've been there fifteen years."

  "That's not true, Mel," David said. "I know more than you do. For example, I know you've only been at Premier for fourteen years and three months."

  Both men laughed. Later that day, Eastman called David on the phone that was the private line between their offices.

  "I just got a call from Isaac Wolfson," he said.

  David closed his eyes and held the phone very tightly.

  "You know?" Eastman went on. "Over at the First Bank of Beverly Hills."

  "Yes," David said.

  "Seems he got a notice saying we wanted to move our business elsewhere. He's upset."

  "Oh?"

  "We've done business with the Wolfson brothers for years," Eastman said.

  David listened carefully. There was nothing in Eastman's voice to indicate that he had any feelings other than curiosity about this issue.

  "Deebs told me about the studio's relationship to the Wolfson brothers," David said. "But I've looked at the numbers very closely, Mel, and I know we can get much better terms at Greater Los Angeles. I'll send you the specifics."

  "No need to," Eastman said. "I'll put the resolution to the board and it's done. Makes no difference to me."

  He hung up. David placed the telephone receiver carefully back in its cradle, still holding it tightly. The Wolfson brothers. Isaac, Charles and Jack. Would Charles Wolfson tell his brothers why Premier Studios, a multimillion dollar account, was pulling their money away from the First Bank of Beverly Hills? Not likely.

  A large color photograph of Amanda Melanie Kane sat in a frame bought by her mommy on the left-hand side of her daddy's desk. David looked at the picture and smiled.

  "Hi, Mand," he said. "Everything's going great."

  Everyone who met Amanda commented on what a beautiful child was was. Today, while her daddy was lying on his stomach in the park reading a script, she sat on his back playing horsey-horsey. But Amanda was only two and a half years old, and the fascination of horsey-horsey was brief. That's why when the yellow-and-black soccer ball went rolling by and caught her eye, she decided to get up and play with it.

  The bigger children kicked the ball and ran happily, then kicked it again and ran some more. Maybe they would give her a turn. She followed them. Her green eyes huge with excitement and her little hands clapping. Doggie. The fluffy little white doggie that had been sitting on a blanket next to the man and lady who were kissing now ran at Amanda's heels. Amanda laughed out loud.

  David was nodding now. That was a bad sign. The script was boring him to sleep. He wouldn't even finish it. He'd try reading one of the others he'd brought with him. The property he chose for his first project as the president of Premier Films would have to contain irresistible roles, so that he could attract someone like Jane Fonda or Jon Voight or Jack Nicholson by showing them the script. That was crucial. But this script wouldn't do. He was sleepy. Up and dressed every morning by six to spend a few hours getting his calls to New York out of the way. But today was Sunday. As soon as Allyn got here to relieve him of Mandy, he'd go home and sit by the pool and nap on a chaise lounge in the sun. The maid's day off. Allyn said she wanted to get some work done.

  Allyn's work. At least she was home all day now. She'd set up her little self-important office in the new house, with the perma-plaqued notices from her television show hanging on the wall. And every day she sat in there and did something. Typed and talked on the phone and teased David that she would emerge from that room eventually with a script he would beg her to let him produce.

  "Hi."

  David looked up. He had to admit she was beautiful. Still beautiful.

  "Sorry I'm late, but I got caught up in what I was doing and I didn't want to quit. Where's Mandy?"

  David looked around. "I don't know."

  "David, stop it," Allyn said, smiling nervously.

  Mandy. She was just playing horsey a minute ago. No. Ten minutes ago.

  "Mandy!" David called out.

  "David." Allyn couldn't believe it. "Are you crazy? What were you doing here?"

  "Shut up," David said. "Mandy," he shouted. He didn't know which way to go. Where to walk. The park was enormous. And filled with people.

  Allyn looked around. It couldn't be. A little girl like that. Someone would know.

  "Excuse me," Allyn said. The couple on the blanket had a fuzzy white dog. "My husband was sitting with my little girl over there." The white dog sniffed Allyn's shoe. "She's two and a half, very little, has red hair, did you—" Blank faces. "Thank you."

  The white dog yapped at her feet.

  "Mandy," Allyn shouted, walking back to where David was.

  "I'll call the police," he said.

  Allyn felt weak. Again her eyes scanned the park. That bastard, David. That self-absorbed son of a bitch.

  "Don't leave," she said, grabbing his arm. "She's probably around here someplace looking for us. For you . . . She knows she came here with you. If she doesn't see you she's liable to—" Nowhere in sight. No Mandy anywhere. Allyn began to cry.

  "How could you, David? My God."

  "Stop it! We'll find her. She's a tiny little girl. She can't have gone far."

  "You stay here. I'll look," she said.

  The laughing picnicking crowds in Roxbury Park were a blur to Allyn as she walked, stopping people who only shook their heads when she asked them if they had seen her baby. Or they looked at her sympathetically for an instant, then back to
their game, or their sandwich or their book. That son of a bitch David.

  "Mandy," she shouted.

  The tennis courts were filled. Tans. White shorts. Bounce. Hit. Bounce. Hit. Nice shot. Deuce. Bounce. Hit. Mandy. My baby. Where is she?

  "Mandy!" Allyn's voice rang in her own ears. A German shepherd and a golden retriever romped on the grass barking noisily at one another. The little white dog ran off to join them.

  Kidnapped. No, she wouldn't think of it. A kidnapper wouldn't just pick a child up from the park. Too many people around. Besides, here in the park, it could be anybody's child. No one could tell by looking at Amanda that she was the daughter of a rich powerful man.

  Allyn stopped walking. She was probably going about this all wrong. She remembered when she was a little girl, she took an I.Q. test. Stanford-Binet was it? Where they showed her a square. A box drawn on the page. And the box had an opening on one end. This is a field, the psychologist said, or did it say that in the directions? And you have lost your wallet in the field. How would you go about finding your wallet? With your pencil, draw the path that you would take. Allyn remembered her answer. She drew a straight line into the middle of the square and said, I would walk into the middle of the field, turn around in a circle, and if I didn't see my wallet, I would start to cry. The psychologist told her her answer was unacceptable and went on to another section of the test. But that's what she wanted to do. Stand and cry.

  Maybe she should go back and tell David to call the police after all.

  "Mandy!" No answer. People were looking at her now and she realized she was crying.

  "Mandy!" Her voice was getting tired.

  She was almost near the parking lot on the far side of the park. The screeching of brakes was loud. And then the thud, and the voice, screaming.

  "Ohhh. Nooo!"

  People were running. Gathering. A crowd in the parking lot. The driver of the car had gotten out and was moving toward the center of the crowd.

  "Oh, dear God. I'm so sorry."

  More people were running to see.

  Mandy. I have to get there. A nightmare. I'll wake up. It felt to Allyn as if she were walking under water. Against some strong force, as though no matter how she tried to get to the accident she couldn't advance. Have to get there. Mandy.

  "Please," she said. "Please, someone, please. My daughter. Please." She was grabbing people in the crowd by their shirts, their hair, anything she could do to push them, force them, move them out of her way so she could get to the front.

  "Please, my baby. Please. You have to move."

  "Jesus, lady," a man in a gray sweatsuit said. Allyn, ridden with terror, looked at the ground in front of the car, where the little white dog lay dying.

  "Your dog?" the man in the gray sweatsuit asked.

  "I'll take it to a vet," the driver of the car announced to the crowd. "Maybe it can be saved." As the man knelt next to the dog, the crowd began to disperse. Allyn took a deep breath. Mandy.

  "Doggie."

  Allyn looked around. About ten yards away, next to the water fountain, playing in the mud that had been made by the spilled fountain water, was Mandy.

  "Mandy. Oh, Mandy. Oh, my God," Allyn said, rushing toward her baby girl, reaching for her, touching her, grabbing her, holding the child against her tightly. Thank you, God.

  "Mandy," Allyn said, her eyes blinking to hold back the tears that spilled out in spite of her.

  "Mandy, oh, my baby, Mandy."

  As Allyn cried, her tears fell into her daughter's bright-red hair. The beautiful red hair that Allyn combed and braided, and sometimes even envied. There were leaves in Mandy's hair, and dirt, and Allyn's tears turned to a smile when she saw there was a ladybug too. Gently she took it and let it walk along her hand.

  "Look," she said to the little girl.

  "Lucky!" Amanda said, grinning. Allyn had told her that once as they sat by their pool and she remembered. Mother's brilliant girl.

  "Very lucky," Allyn said, kissing her baby's sweet pink face on each pudgy cheek. "Very lucky."

  "Manda," Allyn said, pulling the leaves one by one out of the child's hair. "When you come to the park with Daddy, he sometimes gets very busy. Do you know what I mean?"

  "Daddy's reading strips," Amanda said, repeating what she thought she'd heard Allyn tell her, when David didn't want to be interrupted in his den.

  "Yes, he's reading scripts," Allyn said. "But you mustn't wander away from Daddy when he's reading. Because then he won't know where you are."

  "Okay," Amanda said. "I'm hungry."

  "Me, too," Allyn said. She brushed the sand from the seat of the child's overalls.

  "Dirty tushie?" Amanda asked.

  "Yes. Dirty tushie, and dirty everything else, too."

  Allyn took Amanda's hand. "Let's find Daddy," she said, and they walked slowly back toward the grassy area where she knew David would be waiting anxiously.

  "Oh, good. You found her," an older woman Allyn had approached earlier said.

  "Yes."

  David. She could see him now in the distance under the same tree where she'd found him earlier. She couldn't believe it. He was lying down again. Reading.

  "Daddy!" Amanda shouted. "Daddy!" David turned, gave a casual little wave, and went back to his scripts.

  That night, after Amanda was asleep, Allyn sat in the bedroom and watched the light over the seven eight three number. The minute it went off she got up slowly and walked downstairs, through the darkened hallway to the door of David's den, and tapped on it.

  "Yeah?" he said.

  Allyn opened the door slowly.

  "David. I want you to find another place to live immediately. I'm divorcing you. You're a self-involved unfeeling man, and I've lived with you as long as I can."

  David looked at her, saying nothing. She went on.

  "I loved you so much for so long, and I always thought, or at least hoped, the situation could change. That you would change. That being a husband and a family man would make you try to be responsible to someone besides yourself. But it didn't. And it's painful for me to live like this, and it's wrong for Mandy to live like this, too."

  Allyn was surprised at how calm her voice sounded, because her fists were clenched so tightly her nails were digging into her hands.

  "Allyn—"

  "There won't be a discussion, David," she said. "I've been holding this inside since this afternoon. If the baby hadn't been there to see, I would have strangled you. Killed you. Torn you apart for your indifference and your negligence. Toward Mandy and toward me, too." She hated her voice for sounding so shrill. She wanted to be calm.

  "You can let me know where you'll be and I'll have Berta pack your things and send them to you."

  David stood. "Allyn, please sweetheart. I think you're overreacting."

  That bastard. "David," she said. "I can hear you using your sweet killer voice. The one that makes everyone in this town tremble when you call them. Well, it won't work on me anymore. Or on my daughter."

  "Our daughter," he said. This was getting out of hand.

  "Our daughter now," Allyn said angrily. She was losing control. "But not in the morning when it's time for breakfast and you're gone. Or not when it's time to go to bed and you aren't home yet, or you're locked in this goddamned den. And not when it's time to decide which nursery school, and not even in the park when you're supposed to look up every now and then from your reading to make sure she doesn't get kidnapped or run over by a car, which she almost did. David, she could have. Do you realize she could have?" Allyn was screaming. "But you couldn't watch her. You had to pick the right script for your studio so you could be David Kane, the young Harry Cohn, or Jack Warner or Harold Greenfield. Well, fuck your scripts and your studio and your artistic control, you egomaniac. And get out of this house tonight. Because I can't stand you. And I can't stand what I've become from living with you. And I won't have Mandy become that either."

  For a moment it looked to Allyn as if David
was stung. Hard. And she was glad. She had shown him. Now she had shown him. But then she saw his jaw set and his eyes narrow, and he was saying something which she almost didn't hear at first because she was caught up in listening to the sound of his voice again. That sweet killer voice.

  ". . . wish I could contradict you, but I can't," he was saying. "Wish I could tell you how wrong you are, prove to you everything, all of it is some kind of paranoid bullshit, some middle-class housewife's complaint that she gets because she's watching her tits start to sag, and just write it all off to that, but too bad for me 'cause I can't. I've never wanted any of this, Allyn. This marriage, that child, or a life like this. Never."

  He didn't. Ever. She knew it. She'd always known it, but she thought it could change.

  "But I tried," he went on.

  Allyn wanted to interrupt him and scream, "No you didn't, you did not try." But she didn't.

  "Tried because I kept thinking I'm supposed to care about having a family. I'm supposed to love a child who looks like me. I'm supposed to be grateful and delighted that a woman who's as beautiful and as bright and as devoted as you are is in love with me and giving all of her energy to the David Kane family. Supposed to be glad. But it doesn't mean shit to me. You nailed me, Allyn. It doesn't mean shit."

  She was crying, crying hard. Her eyes were still sore and swollen from crying in the park earlier and the new tears burned. She put her hand on the desk and leaned on it for support. David put his hand on hers. That familiar freckled hand she had kissed and touched and held for so long. She couldn't understand. How could she hate him so much and love him so much all at once?

  "Don't cry, Allyn," he said. "You have you and Mandy and I only have me."

  "David, can't we—" She had never heard him like this, never heard him open up this way. Talk about his feelings, his inability to connect with her, with Mandy. Maybe it meant there was a chance they could work on it. Work it out.

  "No," he said. "We can't. I've been waiting for you to throw me out for a long time. If you hadn't, eventually I would have left on my own."

  He started toward the den door. Allyn ached looking at him.