Some Nerve

by Jane Heller

  “I thought he was dating Rebecca Truit,” Tuscany mused, craning her neck to get a good look, “but she’s not with him.”

  “It must be boys’ night out,” I said. Rumor had it that he and Rebecca were an item, possibly engaged. I intended to ask him about their relationship once I had my shot at him. “Now, revive your appetite and let’s order. Harvey’s paying, so pick something expensive.”

  After we each had a glass of Spago’s best pinot noir, we focused on the main course. Tuscany went off her diet of yogurt and pine nuts and ordered the beef stew with spaetzle, while I chose the Wiener schnitzel. When the food arrived, neither of us could do more than pick at it. Try as we did to indulge ourselves, we were too distracted by what was going on at Goddard’s table—Tuscany, because she decided her trophy for the night would be Wilhelm Holtz, who had slicked-back golden hair and rosy cheeks and looked like much more fun than the movies he directed; me, because I couldn’t help glancing over to see how their meal was progressing, which was extraordinarily slowly. They seemed to be drinking more than they were eating, and I was getting antsy. I wanted to hit my target and win the prize and put Harvey’s doubts about me to rest once and for all.

  Eventually, our waiter ambled by. “Finished?” he asked, although our plates were full of spaetzle and schnitzel.

  “No, we’re still working on them,” I said. And we’ll continue to work on them until Goddard and his guests are no longer working on theirs, I thought.

  As the hours crawled by, we played with our food, moved it around the plates, built little Prussian castles with it, but mostly let it sit there until it was hard and dry and very unappealing. I was beginning to think the night would never end when I saw the busboys finally clearing Goddard’s table.

  “This is it,” I whispered excitedly to Tuscany. “Let the games begin.”

  Henry, the maître d’, caught my eye and gave me a conspiratorial nod. We were on track. All systems were operational. Over at Goddard’s table, it appeared that everybody was being served after-dinner drinks. Yes, it was dessert time.

  I gulped down some water and sat there clutching and unclutching my napkin, nearly bursting with anticipation while trying to look nonchalant.

  “Here it comes!” squealed Tuscany, who didn’t understand the concept of nonchalance.

  Sure enough, Henry reappeared, carrying the cheesecake on a large platter that had been garnished with a cascade of fresh flowers. He was beaming proudly, as if he were holding a baby.

  He strode past our table, winked surreptitiously, then continued to his destination. When he placed the cake carefully down in front of its recipient, he announced, loud enough for the whole restaurant to hear, “A gift for you, sir. From Zabar’s in New York.”

  Goddard looked totally taken aback. I leaned toward him and strained to pick up his response. “A Zabar’s cheesecake?” he said as if it couldn’t possibly be true.

  “Yes, sir,” Henry confirmed.

  I sat up straighter in my chair and practiced different smiles. I had to be ready. I intended to project just the right balance of friendliness and professionalism. Oh, and modesty, as if I made benevolent gestures all the time but was a very humble person.

  Goddard’s own smile reflected the delight of a kid at Christmas. Gone was the morose expression. Suddenly, he was transformed. I had transformed him. It dawned on me that if making grumpy people like him happy was a by-product of being a killer journalist, maybe I wouldn’t mind being one. “I love their cheesecake,” he said in an adoring tone, not unlike the one he’d used in their recent movie when he told Jennifer Connelly he loved her. “I mean, this is incredible. You have no idea, Henry.” I really had come up with the perfect gift, if I did say so myself. “If I were alone, I’d inhale the whole thing, but I guess I have to share it with my friends here.” Everybody at the table chuckled and said what I assumed were hilarious German things. “How did Wolfgang even know that I—”

  “The cake is not a gift from Mr. Puck, sir,” said Henry. “It’s from the lovely lady sitting over there.”

  All heads turned in my direction when Henry pointed at me. I quickly chose from among the smiles I’d been rehearsing and trotted one out for Goddard. He sort of stared at me for several seconds, as if he couldn’t figure out what was going on.

  “Apparently you told a television audience that the cake was your passion,” Henry explained to him. “She knew you would be here tonight—she read about it in a gossip column, I guess—and, as an avid fan of your movies, thought it would make a great little surprise. Very generous of her, isn’t it?”

  God, Henry was good. But then I’d paid him handsomely. Well, Famous had.

  Goddard nodded and waved at me. Then he said something to Henry, who scurried over to our table. “Mr. Goddard would like to invite you both to join him and his guests, so he can thank you properly,” he reported with obvious satisfaction. “I’ll have the busboys pull up two more chairs.”

  “Excellent job,” I told him out of the side of my mouth.

  After he raced off, I turned to Tuscany, who had removed her black cape only to reveal a pink slip dress that was slipping right off her shoulders, soon to be a wardrobe malfunction. “Listen, no flirting,” I said. “This is business, okay?”

  “You got it,” she said, nevertheless reaching into her purse for a tiny bottle of vanilla and dabbing some behind her ears.

  I gathered myself up and marched over to Goddard’s table, Tuscany in tow. He was standing to greet me, extending his hand, welcoming me into his domain instead of shooing me away.

  “Malcolm Goddard,” he said in his trademark mumble as he pumped my hand. “Your name?”

  My name. It wasn’t a trick question and yet, without any warning whatsoever, my brain froze.

  You know how I just told you that I was no longer awestruck when it came to meeting movie stars? Well, for some reason I was momentarily tongue-tied in the presence of this particular one. No kidding. Instead of introducing myself to Malcolm Goddard, I stood there gawking at him. Tuscany was right. He was better looking up close. Taller, maybe. Broader. And definitely more vivid in living color. Those turquoise eyes were freakishly beautiful, and it was impossible not to be awed by them. Still, let me repeat: This sort of thing hadn’t happened to me in years.

  “Your name?” he said, prompting me.

  Tuscany gave me an elbow in the back.

  “Oh,” I said. “It’s Ann. Ann Roth.” I giggled idiotically. “Like Ross, only with a lisp.”

  Another shove from behind.

  “And this is my friend Tuscany Davis.”

  “I love you,” she said to him.

  “I love you too,” he said with a laugh. “Both of you. Now, join us. Please.”

  We sat down at his table—me to his right, Tuscany to Wilhelm’s right because he was the one she’d been psyching herself up to snare—and he introduced us to the others. Then he refocused on the cheesecake and cocked his head at it in amazement.

  “This is the sweetest thing a fan’s ever done for me,” he said, grinning, although the grin was slightly off-kilter. He’d had many, many cocktails, I realized. Now that I was within inches of him, I could smell the intensity of the alcohol on his breath. “You’re terrific, Ann Ross with a lisp.”

  I giggled again, out of apprehension this time. A fan. Hardly.

  “You’re terrific,” he repeated, as if he hadn’t said it a nanosecond ago, the way people do when they have no clue that they’re drunk.

  “Well, you did rave to James Lipton about how much you love that cake,” I said. “I thought it would be a great way to show you how much I admire your work.”

  “A better-than-great way,” he said, slurring. “A super-super-superfine way.”

  “Thanks,” I said, wondering if I should order him some very strong coffee.

  “How about I cut everybody a piece?” he suggested. “Like, before I eat it myself.”

  “Sure, unless you’d rather take it
home and save it for another time,” I said. “Zabar’s told me it keeps well.”

  “I’m on a diet, so none for me,” Tuscany volunteered, pulling her chair closer to Wilhelm, who fingered the strap of her dress and called her Liebling. She was moving quickly, even for her.

  “Then there’ll be more for the rest of us,” Goddard said. He instructed the waiter to bring a knife and seven plates and forks. While we waited, he asked me to tell him which of his films I liked the best. Since I was such a fan.

  “I guess I’d have to say The Whistle Blower,” I replied, referring to the movie in which he’d played a corporate snitch who was kidnapped by the CEO’s evildoers and held prisoner in a filthy Arizona shack, only to escape, testify before Congress, and die of West Nile virus. Malcolm Goddard died in a lot of his movies, and his character was always brave and strong in those instances, never whimpering or whining or moaning in pain. I had a feeling that in real life, he was the type who moaned over a paper cut.

  “The Whistle Blower is your favorite, huh?” He nodded, then blinked rapidly, as if summoning up the memory of the film. “We shot it in Romania in winter and I froze my ass off. And the food just sucked there.”

  “How interesting,” I said. I would have my work cut out for me once I got him to sit down for the interview. I’d need more than his impression of Romanian cuisine to produce an in-depth piece.

  “What’s your second favorite of my movies?” he asked, soaking up the attention from his number one fan. I couldn’t let this charade go on, but I didn’t know exactly how to stop it.

  “I liked all of them,” I said. “In fact, I was hoping we could talk about them in more detail. At your convenience, of course.”

  He patted my shoulder. “I’d love that, babe, but I’ve got a tight schedule these days. If you go on my official Web site and click on the FAQs, you’ll get my take on every film I’ve ever made.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said, “but I’d still appreciate it if we could have a substantive talk.”

  He leaned back in his chair, his arm dangling over the side. “We’re talking now, aren’t we? Substantiously?”

  Yes, he was drunk, but he also wasn’t getting it and why should he? I needed to be straight with him. No more stalling.

  I took a deep breath, reached into my purse for my business card, and handed it to him with an air of pride, just as I always did when I was representing the magazine. “I write for Famous and I’d love an interview, Malcolm.”

  Okay, I knew he wouldn’t be thrilled by this news, but I honestly thought the gift would have softened him up.

  Not a chance. He took the card and stared at it, then he stared at me, then back at the card, then back at me. With each stare, his smile faded, until his lips formed a thin, tight line. He seemed too angry to speak.

  “I should have figured,” he growled finally. So much for the delight. In its place was disgust. He flipped the card into the air as if it were a Frisbee, and it landed in Wilhelm’s water glass, where it floated and eventually sank. “You people just won’t leave me alone, will you?”

  “Please don’t lump me in with other writers,” I said, wanting to appease him and maintain my dignity at the same time. “I’m good at what I do. I’m not into gratuitous hatchet jobs. I don’t cut and paste from other sources. I—”

  “What you do is worm your way into restaurants,” he said, glowering at me.

  “Spago is a public place,” I reminded him.

  “My table is not public.” He pounded it with his fist just in case I didn’t catch his drift. The dishes and cutlery jumped. “You pretended you were a fan giving me a present, which is the only reason I invited you to sit here.”

  “I am a fan, but I’m also a journalist,” I said, my knees beginning to knock in a very un-killerlike way. “And the cake was my attempt to show you that the readers of Famous would like very much to learn more about you. All I’m asking is that you let me tell them your story.”

  “You want to tell them my story, huh?” His blue eyes flashed with fury. “Well, here it is: I don’t like your kind of journalism and I don’t mind showing it.”

  What came next felt as if it were happening in slow motion, the way train wrecks do. Before any of us could possibly anticipate his next action, Malcolm Goddard rose from his chair, lifted up the entire cheesecake with his bare hands, and smashed it down on the table, a toddler having a tantrum. People nearby took a furtive look to see what all the commotion was about, then turned away with a shrug, figuring it was just another movie star misbehaving.

  As for me, I wasn’t joking earlier when I said the cake was dense. It was like a brick, sort of bouncing up after it hit the table and then breaking into pieces that flew everywhere. A very large chunk nailed me in and around my left eye. No one was spared—Wilhelm, for one, had bits of graham-cracker crust splattered across his face—but I bore the brunt of the dessert. Or should I say my charcoal gray pantsuit did—the one I’d had dry-cleaned and pressed especially for the evening. I stood up from the table and a cascade of crumbs fell to the floor, as if I were some gross pig with a coordination problem who couldn’t manage to navigate my food directly into my mouth.

  “Are you okay?” asked Tuscany as she came rushing over. She’d emerged relatively unscathed with only a small piece of cake dangling from her right breast. Wilhelm couldn’t take his eyes off it.

  Too upset to speak, I just nodded. I had never cried on the job, not even during one of Harvey’s meltdowns, and I wasn’t about to start now. No way. But it took all the effort I could muster to put the brakes on the tears. I’d never felt so humiliated, never felt so utterly out of control.

  “Ann?” said Tuscany with growing concern. “You’re doing that swaying thing again.”

  At that very moment the garden was, indeed, spinning, just as the paper-goods aisle at Bristol Farms had spun a few nights before, just as the entrance to Spago had spun earlier in the evening. And this time my heart began to pound and my legs turned to rubber and I became extremely short of breath. Oh, and sweat started to pour down my armpits and dampen the nape of my neck. Attractive, huh? Yep, I was a mess, literally and figuratively.

  Dear God, what on earth is going on with me? I wondered as I grabbed the back of my chair to steady myself. My body was falling apart and I had no idea why or how to fix it. Sure, I was pissed off that Goddard had gone ballistic over the cake, but why the physical symptoms?

  And then I knew. I recognized them.

  It was anxiety that was overwhelming me, not an infectious disease. I’d experienced the feeling before, whenever I had to fly. The dizziness, the rubbery legs, the palpitations—they all showed up when I was at thirty-five thousand feet. But I wasn’t aboard a 767 that night at the restaurant. I was on terra firma, surrounded by people who must have been just as baffled by my swoon as I was. Why was I coming apart there, of all places?

  “Hey, I didn’t mean for you or anyone else to get hurt,” said Goddard, who seemed, if not apologetic, more subdued once he saw how wobbly I was. He actually reached out to touch my arm and then thought better of it. “I was just trying to make a point, um, uh—”

  “It’s Ann,” I said, praying that the swaying, spinning, and sweating would cease and desist. I didn’t need him seeing me in this condition. I wasn’t some weakling. I was a killer journalist. I had to pull myself together and take charge of the situation.

  Summoning all the strength I had, I picked up a napkin from the table and wiped my eye with it. The area was tender, and I had a hunch it would be black and blue the next morning. A cheesecake shiner. But at least the dizziness and palpitations were letting up, and I was immensely grateful for that.

  “As I said, I was just trying to make a point,” said Goddard in a more combative tone now that it was apparent that I wasn’t going to pass out.

  “And you made the point loud and clear, Malcolm,” I said, my voice beginning to come back, along with my nerve. I had never mouthed off to a celebrity, b
ut I was about to break my record. “You hate the media. We all know that. But here’s a bulletin for you.” I held my head higher, even though it was matted down with cream cheese. “The media hates you too. Precisely because of incidents like this. You’re rude and boorish, and you should have thanked me for the cake instead of thrown it at me.”

  I was amazed by my outburst, which was so uncharacteristic for me. No, I hadn’t viciously cursed him out—I was from the Midwest, remember—but as I said, I’d always been so careful not to offend or provoke a star, particularly a star I was supposed to court. There was something about Goddard that brought out the fighter in me, and I had a powerful desire to set him straight. He’d asked for it with his ungentlemanly actions. Besides, there was no reason to hold back. Once I told Harvey what Goddard had done, my boss would be incensed on my behalf, praise me for at least trying to get the interview, and then reassign me to some other celebrity. So why shouldn’t I let this guy have it?

  “Is that right?” he said with a derisive laugh, as if no one had ever had the audacity to call him on his bad behavior. “Well, first of all I didn’t throw it at you. I’m sorry if you got some on you, but—”

  “Sorry?” I said. “I could have you arrested.”

  He smirked. “For what? Assault with a deadly dessert?”

  I looked at Tuscany for moral support, but she was trying to rub out the stain on her tit.

  “Your problem, Malcolm, is that you don’t know how to treat people,” I said, my voice surprisingly cool considering the level of my emotion and the fact that my legs were still mush. “You surround yourself with the Peggy Merchants of the world and all they do is yes you to death, like a scene out of The Emperor’s New Clothes. They’re afraid to tell you that the things you do are unacceptable.”