“He’s not exactly given to praise, but when he doesn’t foam at the mouth, I know I’ve done a good job,” Daisy shrugged.
“So you’re willing to settle for that kind of validation?” Wingo asked.
“Why not? Is there something wrong with that?” Daisy wasn’t about to complain to her coworkers.
“Lots wrong,” said Nick. “It’s like being satisfied with crumbs from a rich man’s table, campesina, and I, Nick-the-Greek, am here to tell you that in no way is it enough.”
“What are you trying to start, Nick?” Daisy asked curiously. “You get your commissions and they’re hardly crumbs.”
“You want to tell her, Wingo?” Nick asked the young cameraman.
“You bet I do. Listen, Daisy, Nick and I have been talking. We both think that we could go into business for ourselves. Nick’s the best rep in the city—he knows where all the accounts are who want the North look but don’t want to pay North’s prices. North thinks of me as just a cameraman, but I can do his stuff, too—lots of guys are director-cameramen. It took me five years to get my cameraman’s card—but I could be a director tomorrow just by saying I’m one. And I’m good—”
“How do you know?” Daisy challenged.
“I’ve been watching him long enough—I’m on to his tricks … and face it, how hard is it to direct a commercial?”
“This is what we have in mind,” Nick interrupted Wingo. “We want to start our own shop but we want you with us … as a partner and producer. You wouldn’t have to invest a dime, but you’d get a third share in the profits. Once I’m free of North, I could go out and sell Wingo—I’ve got a piss pot of prospects lined up. The reason we want you is because you happen to be the best producer anywhere—you work harder, you can talk people into doing anything for you, you watch the money as if it were your own, you double check everything—so, lucky lady, you get a free ride on this deal.”
“You and Wingo and I would just up and leave—taking the store with us?” Daisy asked.
“It wouldn’t be exactly that,” Wingo protested. “North could replace each of us … eventually … nobody’s indispensable.”
“Yes, eventually—but meanwhile he’d be crippled for how long? You’re talking rip-off, Nick,” Daisy said, in growing anger.
“Tough shit,” Nick said, carelessly. “This is a rip-off business.”
“Nick,” Daisy asked, “who gave you your first chance at repping—who took you out of that ad agency and taught you the ropes? Who showed you where to dress and encouraged you to let loose your natural chutzpah and okayed your expense accounts for those first months when you were getting nowhere? North, right? And Wingo, just who the hell hired you on a regular basis instead of using a free-lance cameraman like almost everyone else? How many days a year would you be working if you were merely another free lance? And who was the only person willing to take a chance on a kid who had just gotten his card? Most directors go for experience—they don’t want to touch a raw kid … too much trouble. And how come you think you’re such a hot-shot director when all you know is what you’ve seen North do? Don’t you understand that you don’t know why he does it, or how he gets his ideas? Perfect proof is that you think it’s easy to direct a commercial—maybe it is—a bad commercial or even a fair commercial. But a good commercial? A commercial you don’t absolutely hate when it interrupts your favorite television show? A commercial that doesn’t make you want to vomit with the sheer banality of it? A commercial that looks so good you remember it a week later? Or even a month later, when you’ve seen thousands of others since? What’s more, you don’t know word one about casting. Alix and I only make a selection of possibilities, North does all the final casting and that’s essential to the success of a commerical.”
“Shit, Daisy, if you’re going to talk about loyalty …” Nick interrupted in disgust.
“You’re goddamned right I’m talking about loyalty. I remember the time you got drunk and came on so crudely with that gal art director from BBD and O that we lost the job, and I remember the time you were so anxious to get those big beer spots that you gave them a Y and R firm bid without checking with Arnie and we lost money every day we worked, and I remember the time—or rather the times—when North was going crazy on shoots because of client interference and you showed up too late to take them to lunch and get them out of his hair for a few hours, and I remember …”
“Shut the fuck up, Daisy,” Nick said, looking sick.
“The hell I will—My point is that all those times North got furious, but he didn’t go looking for another rep—he stuck to you because he had a commitment to you and you’re more good than you are bad—but when you’re bad, you’re horrid!”
“But North’s so rude to you …” Wingo started, defensively.
“That’s my problem,” she snapped, “and I don’t need your sympathy. He’s rude because he never works any way but under tension. There isn’t a minute that the time pressure isn’t getting to him. If somebody can screw up, somebody will screw up … and he knows it. It’s my business to keep the confusion to a minimum. There’s nothing personal in his rudeness—I’m an extension of his work and he doesn’t need to play Sir Walter Raleigh with me. As a matter of fact, you two are only extensions of his work, too. Nick, if you weren’t selling North, you just might have to work for a living. Wingo, if you didn’t have North checking each shot before you roll a foot of film, I wonder just what your work would be like? You’ve both had a good ride on his back. I’m not saying you don’t have talent, Wingo—just that you aren’t ready to be a director-cameraman yet, and that for you and Nick to get together behind his back and try to steal off with everything he’s given you both in terms of learning and experience and confidence—and to try to get me to go with you—that’s the lowest kind of ingratitude!”
“Nick,” Wingo said nastily, “we’ve obviously made a big mistake about the princess here … she just hasn’t got what it takes to go out on her own. Daisy, you won’t get a chance like this again.”
“Maybe next time somebody will ask me to rob a bank … who knows, I could get lucky. Now listen, you two masterminds, I haven’t had one bite yet of this lunch you invited me to and I’m not hungry anymore. I’m going back to the studio and work. As far as I’m concerned this perfectly splendid meeting never took place. You didn’t ask me about anything and I didn’t tell you how I felt Whatever you decide to do is up to you. I’ve forgotten the whole thing. Personally I hope we’ll be together for a long time. We’re not a bad team—all of us. Or, on the other hand, if you do leave, good luck! I predict many wonderful days for the two of you shooting the attack of the fifty-foot hemorrhoid. See you later.”
As Daisy left, Nick looked at Wingo. “I wish I could say she’s a bitch.”
Wingo’s face was that of a man who had just missed being run over by a bus. “You can’t and neither can I. I just wish I could say she was wrong.”
When Daisy got back to her apartment that night she found Kiki thumbing through an issue of the SoHo Weekly News. “Daisy, do you have a date tomorrow night?”
“You know I do—your cousin is coming to town to take me out for dinner.”
“Oh, right, I’d forgotten … so he hasn’t given up on you yet, huh?”
“Henry? I don’t think he understands English. I’ve said no so many times it’s boring, but, my God, he’s persistent. He’s so sweet I don’t want to hurt his feelings. I keep telling him he shouldn’t see me because it’s like cutting off a dog’s tail in little pieces—it would be kinder to whack it off with one quick stroke—sorry, Theseus darling—but he won’t pay any attention. Why’d you ask?”
“Oh, I just thought we might do something—there’s a tap dance epic at the Performing Garage and a poetry reading at St. Mark’s Church and La Mama is doing Brecht for a change and there’s Microwave Music at Three Mercer—all kinds of things,” Kiki said glumly.
“Christ! What’s the matter? Have you taken your tempera
ture? Where does it hurt?” Daisy said, looking at her friend with concern. Kiki was curled up on the couch in an old caftan, surrounded by scripts, letters and magazines.
“Don’t be an ass—there’s nothing wrong with me—I just thought we should seriously invest in a little cultural enrichment, that’s all. I have my theater, even if it is temporarily dark, but you, what do you do all day but think about things that are directed at making millions of women have anxiety attacks?” Kiki asked waspishly. “That, plus those Horse People will make you a cultural idiot if you’re not careful.”
“Let’s just stick to the facts,” Daisy said, ignoring her words. “You’ve never gone in for cultural enrichment since Santa Cruz misguidedly gave you a diploma. That means you don’t have a date for Friday night for the first time in something like eight years, and you’re in a panic. Now that’s absurd and you know it. There are a dozen guys you could call who’d jump …”
“I don’t want them!” Kiki said, sounding more confused than adamant.
“Who do you want?”
Kiki remained stubbornly mute.
“Shall we play guessing games? Who is it my Kiki wants? Who did she fill the fridge for last Saturday so that we had to eat pâté and cheese for breakfast all week long to get rid of it, who was unkind enough …”
“Oh, stop it, Daisy! You’re getting so rotten,” Kiki snarled.
“Luke still hasn’t called,” Daisy said flatly.
“No, he hasn’t. I’d like to kill him. How dare he do this to me? I simply don’t understand it! Nobody does this to me, nobody!” Kiki’s whole little body was huddled and shivering under the caftan as if she were preventing herself from springing forward and pounding her fists on the floor like a baby in a tantrum.
“Nobody but Luke Hammerstein.”
“That’s right, rub it in,” Kiki said bitterly.
“Kiki, come on, I’m sympathetic! But you have to face facts if you want to change them.”
“Oh, spare me—Miss Lonely Hearts rides again.”
“Do you know somebody else you can talk about it with?”
“Daisy Valensky, you have the makings of a first-class bitch somewhere inside that glorious exterior. You know I don’t,” Kiki said, seizing Theseus in a despairing embrace.
“I think you’re right,” Daisy said with a pleased smile. “This is my day for telling it like it is or some such slogan left over from—was it the fifties or the sixties?—never mind … but you’re not the first person who isn’t happy with me today. And guess what—I don’t give a shit.”
“Oh, be quiet and listen. That son-of-a-bitch has refused my advances, not once but twice. How can there be any possible excuse for that? Do you think he’s impotent? Do you think maybe he has an incurable form of some kind of V.D. and doesn’t want to tell me? Do you think … oh, God … do you think he’s in love with somebody? Oh, Jesus … I bet that’s what it is—that’s the only thing it could be!” Kiki’s hands flew up and covered her mouth as she contemplated this worst of all possibilities.
“If he were, I’d know it. He and North are tight—I’d have picked up something, somehow—that studio is like a commune, gossip like that would have zipped around by now. Kiki, it’s simple, and you brought it all on yourself.”
The phone rang and Daisy picked it up. “Hi. Oh, hi, Luke, it’s Daisy.” Kiki lunged for the phone but Daisy backed away holding it firmly on its long cord. “Nope, sorry, she’s not here. No idea … could be any one of a dozen places … I haven’t really seen her all week, to tell you the truth, except running in and running out … but I’ll take a message.” Kiki signaled frantically but Daisy made horrible grimaces and ferocious eyes at her while she shook her free hand menacingly back and forth. “All right—I’ll ask her to try to call you when she gets a chance. I’ll leave it on the top of her other messages … I’m beginning to feel like a switchboard. I don’t know why Kiki doesn’t get a service or something. No, that’s all right … I don’t really mind … at least you’re a client which is more than I can say for all of the others. Bye, Luke.”
“Daisy! How could you?” Kiki cried as soon as she’d hung up.
“That’s how you do it!”
“You’ve got to be joking. That’s the oldest game in the book. Nobody does that anymore.”
“Everybody does that who has the sense she’s born with. Too bad you didn’t know Anabel better.”
“But I’ve never played hard-to-get in my life,” Kiki sputtered, “and I’ve had more men than anyone I’ve ever known.”
“Men you were not really after. It’s easy to get a guy if you genuinely don’t want him. I’ve seen you in operation for years; everything made easy for the poor sucker, and he walks right into your big, beautiful spiderwebs, thinking how he’s made a conquest, and before he knows what’s happened, he’s a goner because right at the heart of your whole number is the fact that you simply couldn’t care less—you’re just doing it for kicks, a slap and a tickle, and he senses this, subconsciously anyway, and that’s what drives him crazy, not your availability but your essential unavailability. I defy you to name just one man you’ve had whom you didn’t give up if someone more attractive came along … I defy you to tell me the name of one guy who made you suffer … up till now.”
“Why should I let a man make me suffer? What’s so good about that?” sniffed Kiki rebelliously.
“Nothing. Suffering isn’t noble. But the fact that you have steadily refused to put yourself in a position where you might have had to suffer is what I’m talking about You’ve always gone in for basically unimportant relationships; good sex, lots of laughs, but not ‘meaningful,’ if you can overlook that cliché. Sorry, sorry, but it’s true and you know it, too. Now, along comes a man who could be important to you and you haven’t got any idea how to approach him. You’re putting on your old act with a new cast and it just isn’t working. So try a new script Luke is smarter than you are, hard as that may be for you to believe. He’s got you figured out, he can tell that you’re used to having your way with men, and he isn’t going to let that happen to him. What else is he doing but playing hard to get with you? He waited five days to call? Well, you’re not going to return his call for a week … maybe more. And when you do see him again, you’re going to be a whole new Kiki.”
“It’s too late, I’ve already blown it” Kiki said dismally. “I mean I really let him know I could be had … and all that food! I could cut my throat! And, Daisy, I do adore him so …”
“First impressions can be changed. You’re an actress, aren’t you? It’s simple—you threw yourself at him because you had nothing better to do that particular week. But, since then, things have changed. Don’t ever be specific about what has changed—he’ll imagine them. Now you’re not interested in getting involved. You’re cool, restrained and maddeningly off-hand. You can’t accept the first two times he asks you out but you leave the door open—you’re friendly—in fact, it’s as if the two first encounters had just never taken place. But don’t overdo it. Be yourself, but don’t come on. Let him try to figure that one out! I think they call it ‘bait and switch.’ ”
“I think they call it entrapment,” Kiki murmured, radiant with admiration. “Daisy—I can do it—I know I can. But what if it doesn’t work?”
“Then you’ll just have to resign yourself. It’s better to know right away than to find out after you’ve turned yourself inside out for months over the guy. ‘Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.’ ”
“Betty Friedan?”
“Shakespeare—As You Like It.”
“Oh, what did he know. ‘Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?’ ”
“I knew you didn’t need cultural enrichment.”
“I put on Twelfth Night last year—don’t you remember—on skateboards?”
“Could anyone who had the good luck to be there forget that immortal evening? Listen, I can’t stan
d eating any more of last Saturday’s gourmet leftovers. Let’s go get a pizza as soon as I’ve cleaned up a bit. All right?”
“You’re on.” Kiki was already pacing the room like an oversized elf, holding herself tall, with an elusive, faintly amused, slightly preoccupied expression on her face and her body clearly expressing “touch-me-not.” Daisy flung her a fond look and left the living room quietly. When Kiki was getting into a character she liked to be alone. Daisy deliberately took her time washing her hands and suddenly she found herself plummeted from the peaks of the day into another of those strange pockets of sadness she had experienced only a week before, in Middleburg, at the Shorts. She’d been flying high all day today, telling Wingo and Nick-the-Greek what she thought of their sneaky plan and now straightening out Kiki.
But abruptly, face to face with herself, her life seemed, in a frightening way, to be composed of a patchwork of odd bits and pieces which didn’t form anything as substantial as a quilt. Her work at the studio, difficult though it was, didn’t have the virtue of continuity; with every new commercial the achievements, the triumphant struggle of the week before were immediately replaced by today’s crisis. North’s lack of anger was not really a substitute for genuine appreciation, no matter what she’d told the others at lunch. She felt that she was forever playing catch-up on the job, always having to prove herself, over and over. As for her painting: her scramble after commissions was at the whim of capricious patrons who often treated her sketches and watercolors as just one step higher than a professional photographer’s studio portrait And her raggedy excuse for a love life was even more unfulfilling than she’d admitted to Kiki. The reason she could sound so wise on the matter of Kiki’s refusal to be vulnerable was because it was a trait she knew all too well, an element that was far more deeply established in her own sensibility than in Kiki’s prankster emotions. The idea of spending another evening fending off poor, dear, damp-minded Henry Kavanaugh was dreary. She should never have let him make love to her in the first place. She had never been in love—it was as simple and bare as that, and a constant source of uneasiness and depression, like a low-grade fever which would not go down. She thought of Kiki, practicing being hard-to-get in the other room—that was the one constant in her life, her friendship with that great, good loony. Nothing she could ever do for Kiki would pay her back for all the emotional support and unswerving affection she’d given Daisy in the years since her father had died.
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