Some Nerve

by Jane Heller

  Another smirk. “But you’re not afraid to tell me?”

  “Obviously not. You may be Hollywood’s hottest leading man, but you need to learn some manners.” We were standing nose to nose now. I could see every pore on his face. And sure, I was afraid. But I wasn’t backing down. I’d had enough of his crap.

  “So let’s see,” he said, narrowing his blue eyes at me. “If I’m such a monster, what does that make you for sucking up to me? A parasite maybe?”

  “Oh, please.”

  “Please what? You are.” He downed the rest of the booze in his glass and then threw his hands up, as if he were the one who’d been victimized. “Look, I didn’t ask for this tonight. I was sitting here having a nice time with my friends. You’re the one who intruded. You’re the one who misrepresented herself. You’re the one who wanted something from me—who tried to buy her way into my good graces—so don’t you go making me the bad guy, babe.”

  I was all set to respond with a snappy, stinging retort, but I was stumped for one. His words had shut me down, because it occurred to me unexpectedly and with a horrible wave of self-loathing that they might be true. If he was such a monster, why had I gone there to suck up to him?

  I continued to sort of stand there speechless as I let what he said sink in. I mean, the guy wasn’t wrong. There was a predatory aspect to what I’d done, and for a split second I admired him for his own brand of integrity. But I had only been doing my job, the job my boss had commanded me to do. I was being a good soldier, following orders, working hard to earn a living. That wasn’t wrong either, was it?

  “Fine. I did want something from you,” I admitted. “And I did try to buy my way into your good graces, not that you have any. I’m not proud of that, but your reaction was—Well, it was exactly what I should have expected. You really lived up to your reputation tonight, Malcolm. Great performance.”

  “And you lived up to the reputation of the media,” he countered. “Always trying to steal my privacy. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “Not as ashamed as you should be. You just wasted a perfectly delicious cheesecake.”

  He glanced down at the cake, which looked as if it had exploded.

  “I didn’t waste it at all,” he said as he sat back down and began to scoop up what was left of the cake with his fingers and eat it, caveman style, right off the table. He was an actor, all right, hogging the spotlight. “Hmm. It’s the best. Want some?” He glanced up at me as he licked his index finger.

  “I’d rather starve.”

  I turned to the Germans and fake-smiled. “Nice to meet you all.” Then I stormed out of the garden, assuming Tuscany would follow on my heels. Instead, I waited outside the restaurant for ten minutes before she finally appeared.

  “I was about to call a cab,” I said impatiently. “Was making plans with Wilhelm Holtz really that important?”

  “I wasn’t making plans with him,” she said. “I was telling him to fuck off for being Goddard’s friend. He doesn’t understand much English, so it took a while.”

  I smiled, and the movement of my cheek muscles made me wince. I could feel my eye starting to swell.

  “Let’s get you home,” she said. “I’ll put ice on it. By tomorrow, you won’t feel a thing.”

  Chapter Five

  But I did feel a thing on Saturday morning. More than one thing.

  I felt ridiculous that I had an actual reddish-purple welt under my eye—the price I paid for being “fresh faced.” My skin was fair and easily irritated, but why did it have to blow up from contact with something as benign as a chunk of cheesecake?

  I felt enraged that Malcolm Goddard had pitched a fit instead of granting me the interview. Sure, he was drunk, but did that excuse conduct that could only be described as over the top?

  But mostly, I felt a nagging, debilitating awareness that he had nailed me on the parasite thing. I had intruded on his dinner out with his friends. I had misrepresented myself by posing as a devoted fan. I had tried to worm my way into his good graces. But wasn’t that exactly what Harvey wanted me to do? Expected me to do? Directed me to do in order to be a killer and keep my job? Of course it was. Still, the label ate away at me. A parasite wasn’t the image I’d ever attributed to myself, not in the entire five years I’d been at Famous. I’d viewed myself as a good person and a good journalist, bringing news of the stars to their adoring public. No harm, no foul. In my eyes, it was the Malcolm Goddards of Hollywood who were the villains. Who asked them to punch out a photographer or tell an interviewer to shove it? Who held a gun to their heads and forced them to become celebrities? Why couldn’t they be gracious when they were sought after by the media? Why did they have to get all belligerent and uppity and downright reclusive when all we wanted was a story in their own words? And yet, I couldn’t ignore the accusation that had been leveled at me. It kicked up a sudden ambivalence toward my job, a discomfiting new uncertainty. I’d been uncertain about how to cope with a dying father as well as a mother, aunt, and grandmother who saw every event as a potential catastrophe, but I’d never been uncertain about my career.

  Oh, and I felt exhausted, totally wiped out. James had been up to his old tricks the night before, blasting Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” at 1 A.M. Instead of defaulting to my broom-handle-on-the-ceiling measure, I’d put on a robe and traipsed upstairs to threaten to rat him out to the landlord if he didn’t turn down the volume. He took one look at me and my pathetic eye, said, “How on earth did we get that boo-boo?” and I caved. For the next hour, we sat on his couch, trading swigs from his bottle of Baileys Irish Cream while I told him the whole sob story. Donna was wailing, “She works hard for the money,” at one point, and it seemed like the perfect soundtrack.

  “Was it so awful of me to try to get Goddard to agree to an interview?” I asked glumly.

  James, a slightly built forty-something who’d had the fat sucked out of his butt and injected into the lines around his mouth, shook his head, which had recently been implanted with hair plugs. “Absolutely not and don’t let one jerk’s opinion throw you. People want to read about the guy.”

  “I know, but you should have seen his face when I showed him my card,” I said. “I swear, James, you would have thought I wrote for Hustler.”

  “Celebrity magazines like Famous don’t cure cancer, but they do serve a purpose,” he insisted. “When I’m reading about Lindsay Lohan’s life, it makes me forget that I don’t have one of my own.”

  “You do so have one,” I said, thinking of all the years he’d been on staff at The Bold and the Beautiful.

  “Really? Then why was I home dancing by myself on a Saturday night?”

  “Same reason I was home sleeping by myself,” I said. “Both of us are going through a phase during which we aren’t seeing anybody, that’s all.”

  He laughed. “Your phase has lasted over a year. And mine—” He rolled his eyes. He’d had them done too: the upper lids tightened and the lowers de-bagged. The surgery made him look vaguely Asian. “Reading about celebrities is a diversion. They wear great clothes and travel to exotic places and have sex with other celebrities. What’s not to love?”

  I exhaled a plaintive sigh. “All I know is that when I started in this business, it was fun for me. What happened last night wasn’t fun at all.”

  He patted my knee. “Aside from the clothes and the travel and the sex, celebrities are just people, Annie.”

  ON MONDAY MORNING, I listened in astonishment as Harvey, pacing around his office like a tightly coiled tiger, ordered me not to back down from my mission, but rather to redouble my efforts. While he wasn’t entirely unsympathetic about my eye and all the rest, he insisted that Goddard’s outright hatred of the media made him an even bigger get.

  “Think about it. Sales will go through the roof if we’re the ones who land him,” he said.

  I couldn’t believe it. I was sure he’d hear what had happened and then let me move on to somebody else. But no. Goddard’s attit
ude was a turn-on to him, and I shouldn’t have been surprised. It was as if the more the celebrity he coveted rejected him, the more he coveted the celebrity. And the theme carried over into his personal life. His wife had rejected him twice—she’d divorced him both times—but he’d chased after her like a lovesick pit bull and they were currently on their third marriage, to each other.

  “Harvey, he’s not going to do an interview with Famous or anybody else. He made that very clear. It’s over.”

  “It isn’t over until I say it’s over!” His arms shot out. The left one belted the hand-hammered singing bowl that his kundalini yoga teacher had given him. “Now is not the time to give up! So he trashed your cake! If you’re a killer reporter, you dust yourself off and try again!”

  “But he’s not likable,” I said gently, the way you do with a deranged person. “I honestly think he might make statements in the interview that will repel the readers we’re trying to attract.”

  “Oh, really?” he said, eyebrows arched. “Do you think Scott Peterson is likable? The guy murdered his wife and unborn child. But that didn’t stop Diane Sawyer from interviewing him, and you know why? Because he was a big get.”

  Diane Sawyer again. I wondered if she’d sent Scott Peterson a gift and, if so, whether it was something he was allowed to take with him to death row.

  “Honestly, Harvey, I don’t see how I’m supposed to make this work after what—”

  “Figure it out!” he thundered. “Or I’ll find someone who will!”

  End of meeting.

  I walked back to my office feeling as if I’d been run over by a bus. I plopped down at my desk and sat there for several minutes, just staring at the ceiling and wondering how I could possibly make Malcolm Goddard change his mind. Killers weren’t quitters. That much I knew.

  I looked around my office, searching for answers, and my gaze rested on the framed covers that hung on the wall. There was the story I did on Angelina Jolie in which she clarified that she did love her brother but wasn’t “in love” with him. There was the story I did on Ben Affleck in which he revealed that he hired a Hollywood witch to remove the curse from the Boston Red Sox. There was the story I did on Kelsey Grammer in which he discussed openly and for the first time the agony of having to decide which of his four residences would get the Christmas tree each year. Yes, it’s true that these candid offerings weren’t earth-shattering in their importance. But for every goofball I’d talked to, there were the smart, articulate ones who spoke of their commitment to their family, of their battle with a serious illness, of their real feelings about being in an industry that values youth and beauty over all else. The point is, I’d had easy access to celebrities of all types until I’d hit the roadblock with Goddard. I’d be damned if I’d let him cost me my job.

  “Okay,” I said out loud with renewed determination. “Harvey wants a killer? I’m a killer.”

  I grabbed the phone with the aggressiveness of an athlete on steroids and dialed Peggy Merchant’s number.

  “It’s Ann Roth,” I told her assistant. “I’m calling about Malcolm Goddard. Famous is breaking the story that he’s checking himself into an anger-management facility in Santa Barbara.”

  The assistant didn’t even ask me to hold. Within a heartbeat, Peggy was on the line.

  “Malcolm’s not going to any facility in Santa Barbara. What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded.

  “Maybe not right away,” I said coyly. As far as I knew, there was no anger-management facility in Santa Barbara. “But it’s only a matter of time before he does. In case you haven’t heard about the stunt he pulled—”

  “I heard,” she snapped.

  “Good,” I said. “Now hear this. If you don’t set up the interview I’ve been asking for, I’m running my own story about him. It’ll be very juicy, Peggy, I promise you. I’ll write that he got drunk at Spago and threw a cake that found its way onto the face of Golden Globe–nominated director Wilhelm Holtz. I’ll write that he verbally abused his dinner guests. And I’ll write that the cake throwing was only his latest tirade and that Paramount—aren’t they the ones who are paying him twenty million dollars to star in that action movie based on that video game based on that comic strip based on that children’s book?—is rumored to have ordered him into anger-management rehab.”

  “But…but…that’s patently false,” she sputtered.

  “Only the last little part about Paramount is,” I said. “The rest is true. I was there. I witnessed it and so did everybody else at the restaurant.”

  Silence.

  “I don’t have to tell you how the press works these days,” I continued. “As long as we print what’s mostly true, we’re in the clear. Our readers believe us and our subjects don’t sue us, and it’s all good. For us, anyway.” I paused to let my words sink in. “Peggy? You still there, dear?”

  After a few beats she said, in a much more conciliatory tone, “Okay, I’m very sorry about the incident at Spago. But don’t write about it, Ann.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Because it would be unfair. Malcolm was just having a bad day.”

  “Really?” I scoffed. “Does he have any other kind?”

  “Sure he does,” she said unconvincingly. “I admit he goes overboard when he feels cornered by the media—by anyone he thinks is trying to take advantage of him—but he’s a sweetheart, deep down. Don’t smear him. I’m begging you.”

  She was begging me. So the dirty tactics Harvey advocated really worked. And what a pleasure to have her over a barrel for a change.

  “Just look the other way, won’t you?” she pleaded. “As a personal favor to an old friend?”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Now she was my friend? She was such a phony and so good at playing the game. But I was better. I had it in me to be better, and now I was about to get exactly what I wanted. “Set up the interview and I won’t have to smear anybody,” I said. “Malcolm can tell his own story. To Famous. Exclusively.”

  “All right, all right,” she said. “I guess he owes you one after what he put you through.”

  “You guess?” Yes, I was starting to enjoy this.

  “I meant that I can certainly see your point, and Malcolm will too,” she said. “I’ll talk to him as soon as we finish up.”

  “So I’ll be hearing from you about a time and place for the interview? Within the hour?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “Fine. You’ll hear from me within the hour.”

  “Great. Oh, and Peggy?”

  “Yes?”

  “Have a lovely day.”

  I hung up and pumped my fists in the air. And then I ran down the hall to the art department and recounted the entire phone conversation to Tuscany, who was sitting at her computer, Photoshopping the nose hair out of Michael Caine’s nostrils.

  “You did it!” she said, jumping up and hugging me. “You totally proved Harvey wrong.”

  “I know,” I said. “Now maybe he’ll give me that raise I’ve been hoping for.”

  “You bet he will,” she said.

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Peggy called back. I held my breath as I waited for her to determine my fate. My hands were clammy and my mouth was dry. For all my tough talk, I felt a sense of dread. If Goddard said no, I was done at Famous. If he said yes, I’d actually have to sit in a room and converse civilly with the guy.

  “I’ve spoken to Malcolm and he agreed to do the interview,” she said, rather subdued. “I hope you’re happy, Ann.”

  “Very.” Yes, of course I was happy. I would keep my job and get a raise, and I’d have the upper hand with Goddard this time. I was thrilled, in fact, my anxiety disappearing completely.

  “He’s still miffed that you horned in on his private dinner,” she went on, “but he regrets that he reacted so childishly.”

  “Apology accepted,” I said, aware now that I was grinning from ear to ear.

  “He’s
going to make the time to talk to you,” she said. “With a few conditions.”

  “Right, right.” The usual. I was so grateful and relieved—I mean, the pressure was off! I had accomplished the impossible!—that I wasn’t about to fight her on The Conditions. “I already told you, Peggy. He gets the cover. He gets photo approval. He gets me to sign a waiver with your litany of no-no questions. And he gets to choose the location of the interview.”

  “Yes. Speaking of which, he did the Vanity Fair piece while he was shooting Sea of Dreams in the south of France. The writer spent an afternoon with him onboard his sailboat.”

  “I remember,” I said, recalling that the entire interview took place while they were cruising around the Mediterranean. “Hope nobody got seasick.”

  “Malcolm’s not one for contrived Q and A sessions in hotel suites. The only way you’ll get anything spontaneous or intimate out of him is if you catch him while he’s focused on something else.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ve already suggested that we go hiking or—”

  “With him, it’s important to select a location that’ll open him up, help him communicate his passion about acting.”

  “All righty. Then how about a walk on the beach in—”

  “The key is to lull him into forgetting that he’s even talking to the media. So I think the location he picked is a perfect one.”

  “Great. Just name it already,” I said, more than eager to move things along. Harvey wanted the interview done ASAP. He hoped to run it the following month, to coincide with Oscar madness. Goddard was nominated for best actor for Famous Last Words, the story of an out-of-work housepainter who’s married to Jennifer Connelly. He wins the lottery only to learn he has lead poisoning.

  “In case you didn’t know, Malcolm is an avid flier,” she said.