Peter Flaherty’s office was furnished with white sofas, white chairs, and glass tables on chrome bases so that the sun pouring in through the floor-to-ceiling windows bounced off the reflecting surfaces, making Cee Cee want to put on her dark glasses, but she didn’t because she was afraid that would make her look too Hollywood, and for this meeting she had to look down-to-earth and sincere.
Flaherty was wearing a tailor-made shirt and an expensive tie and gray suit pants. The jacket was hung neatly on the back of his desk chair. He had a slim, boyish body, a fair complexion with freckles,
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and perfectly coiffed strawberry blond hair. There was no doubt the guy was great looking. Cee Cee knew that in television circles he was known as a cocksman and was sometimes referred to as “The Red Fox.” Probably, Cee Cee thought, he had given that name to himself, then hired a press agent to pass it around. As she watched him chatting with Larry Gold, she remembered one night at a party at Jerry Wcintraub’s house when Flaherty had pulled her into the powder room and made a pass at her. He was the president of the network. The girl, as Larry Gold had called her, was Michelle Kleier, the executive vice-president of programming. She was bouncy and cute with short blond hair and big brown eyes, and she was very obviously pregnant. Her greeting to Cee Cee was a little warmer than Flaherty’s, but there was a strain in her smile that made Cee Cee know this wasn’t going to be a welcome home party.
The third henchman was Tim Weiss, vice-president of specials. He was young and handsome, with dark wavy hair and horn-rimmed glasses, and he looked as if he had just walked straight out of some magazine ad for men’s cologne. Cee Cee remembered him from last summer, when he was the executive assigned to her special, as being wide-eyed and idealistic. This morning he looked at her with the helpless look people give to the mourners at funerals.
When everyone had greeted one another, Peter Flaherty announced to his secretary that he would stop taking phone calls, the door to the outer office was closed and everyone was seated, and then there was a long cold silence during which everyone looked at Cee Cee, making it obvious that she was the one who was supposed to talk first. She had made a big expensive mistake, and now they were waiting for her to explain why and to apologize humbly. All of their faces blurred in front of her, and she was sure she would never remember what it was she had rehearsed and then promised Larry she would say, but she started talking anyway, hoping it would come to her, and it did.
“Larry and I both thought it would be a good idea if I came in and told you why I walked out on the show. I’m sorry if it seemed irresponsible to you, and I understand why you’d be angry, but something very emotional happened to me and at the time I felt as if I had no choice but to do what I did.” Dumb, she thought to herself as she said it. I sound like a fourth-grader, apologizing for cutting school.
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“Yes,” Peter Flaherty said, “we heard there was a death in your family, and that kind of threw you for a while.”
“It was my best friend. She called me one day when I was in rehearsal for the show and said she needed to see me right away. So I rushed out and went up to Carmel, thinking I’d just stay the night and be back at rehearsal in the morning. But when I got there she told me she’d invited me because she wanted to let me know that she was dying and to say goodbye, and she wanted to do that in person in order to let me know she was okay about it.
“And she was okay. Brave and tough, with all her papers in order and ready to hit the road. Only the thing was that I wasn’t okay about it because she was the first real friend I ever had in my life, and also the only really close one I ever had, and I wasn’t ready to let her go. So I never stopped to figure out what it was going to cost anybody down here if I stayed with her until she died, because all of a sudden, all I could think about was that I couldn’t let her be escorted out of this life by people who might do a good job of keeping her sickroom clean and getting her fed, but who had already written her off as dead when there was still enough life left in her that she could be enjoying.
“So I stayed. I didn’t take the time to come down here and work out how and when to reschedule everything, because there wasn’t any time to take, and I guess I knew if I called to discuss it with Larry or my business manager, Wayne, they’d try to convince me to come back, and I couldn’t come back. Because, my plan was to escort her out laughing, since that was how she and I always handled everything bad in our lives. We laughed about them and made them okay. So when she was feeling low because she probably wouldn’t make it till Christmas, I got a tree and we had Christmas in July, and I sent for her daughter and got her to come out from Florida and be with us, and we all sat out on the beach and laughed and argued and did dumb jokes about dying. We really enjoyed the time until finally my friend had nothing left.., and I had to let her go.”
That was the end of what she had to say, and the minute she spoke those last words, she knew there was something irreverent and wrong about making the speech in the first place. Because now she understood that what Larry Gold told her was true. These people would never understand in a lifetime how much it had meant to her to be able to spend those months with Bertie.
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“Look, I apologize for screwing up the show by walking out, because when I finally took time to think about it I realized that part was wrong, very wrong, but I also know that staying with my friend in Carmel was right. The rightest thing I’ve ever done.”
The two men didn’t react at all, and the woman lowered her eyes and looked down at the floor.
“And now I’m okay,” Cee Cee said, knowing it was a dirty lie, because she wasn’t anywhere close to okay. She still woke up in the middle of the night feeling around for Bertie’s medication, sometimes jumping up out of bed to go to her, and some nights getting as far as her own bedroom door before she realized where she was and that Bertie was dead. But she needed these people to think she was okay so they’d give her back her show, and then she would be. She’d take off the extra weight she’d put on while she was in Carmel, work any hours she had to. Do whatever it would take to get the old show happening again.
“I’m ready to go back to work. In fact I need to work. To do something that’ll keep me busier than hell,” and while she was talking, hearing her own voice ring through the room, she could tell that though they might be listening they weren’t really hearing her. She was looking now at Michelle and Tim, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Peter Flaherty push the edge of his cuff up surreptitiously to take a peek at his watch, and she wondered how much time he had allotted in his day for this meeting. How did somebody figure those things out? Amount of time it takes for out-of-line former big star to beg forgiveness. Two minutes? Five? Ten?
She was losing them. In fact they all looked so uncomfortable they probably couldn’t wait for her to get out of there. This was a lot worse than the flop sweat she felt onstage when her jokes weren’t working, because at least in those cases she knew she could rewrite the jokes and try them again the next night. But if these network people wouldn’t put her on the air because she’d been trouble, they would tell everybody in the industry the reason why — that Cee Cee Bloom was a flake, difficult, unpredictable — and then she wouldn’t be able to get work anywhere.
“Well, you’re great to come in, Cee Cee,” Peter Flaherty said. “You’re great,” Michelle Kleier echoed.
“Great.” The word made Cee Cee cringe. It always reminded her
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of that character Warren Beatty played in Shampoo, the hairdresser who went from woman to woman telling each one of them, “You’re great, baby. Great.”
“Thank you,” Cee Cec said. She had to keep talking. Had to get Flaherty to say he would give her another chance.
“Please, take a shot with me,” she said, trying to catch his eye, because it always seemed as if he w
as looking just a little bit past her,
as if that was a way he had off balance, and she was off ing. “You know if you put
learned to look at people to throw them balance all right, but still in there pitchthis show on, I’m gonna bring in a big
audience share. This is the first time I’ve done television in years. People will be tuning in left and right to see me. You’ll make your money back. I’ll even do the show for free.” That sounded like a valiant thing to say, and she meant it, but she heard an intake of air from Larry Gold as he moved forward in his chair, and she suspected if she looked at him he would make some gesture for her to shut up.
“It would be nice if we could resurrect something, Cee Cee,” Peter Flaherty said, his brow furrowed, “because you know we’ve always believed in your talent, but frankly I’d have a hard time recommending it. Even with your promise, how could I ever be sure some other whim might not just take you off the set again, and that for some other reason which felt urgent to you at the moment you might not do the same thing again?”
Cee Cee sat back in her chair with an acidy ache in her stomach. A whim. Peter Fucking Flaherty didn’t give a shit about what she’d lived through. Wouldn’t give a shit if the story she had just told him had been about his own mother, and that made an anger rise in her like hot lava, so that she had to hold on to the arm of the chair to keep from getting up and walking out.
Okay, he was right she’d been irresponsible to leave the show the way she had, but to characterize it as a whim was cold and wrong. She thought about what Hal always said to her when they were on the road if she got upset by a bad audience or a rotten review, “It’s just a show. It ain’t life and death.” Well, spending those months with Bertie bad been life and death, not just another television show people forgot the day after it aired.
Flaherty’s eyebrows were raised, and his lips were pursed together as if he was expecting an answer from her. “I mean how would I
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know?” he repeated the question, like a teacher waiting for a student to respon.
Cee Cee’s blood boiled, her face was hot, and she knew with kind of drunken headiness that she was about to lose it and say what was on her mind. Later she would replay this scene in her mind and wonder how she’d let that rage take her over so completely at that moment
to make her mouth shoot off at the president of the network. .i “Maybe,” she answered, “you could ask your psychic.” l;laherty went pale. There was a split second when he seemed to be thinking about how to react, when it could have gone either way, maybe he would even take it as a joke, but then Cee Cee saw in his eyes the decision that there was no way-he was going to accept this kind of abuse from some former superstar prima donna who should be sucking up to him and begging for her show back. Who in the hell did she think she was? Now he stood, signaling that the meeting was over.
“Thanks for stopping by,” he said, his jaw clenched, his eyes completely drained of expression. Then he walked to the door and opened it. His lieutenants stood too. Cee Cee couldn’t look at Larry Gold, because she knew he was probably on the verge of a full-out stroke, that he would go apeshit over this, tell her what he always did, what Bertie always used to, that you didn’t always have to say the first smart-ass thing that comes into your head … but she didn’t care. These unfeeling schmucks would never know, never understand why she did what she did, and if that meant she was drummed out of the business, that would have to be the way it was. When she got to the doorway where Flaherty stood, she lookedup at him, and said to his indifferent face, “It’s a good thing you’ve got crystal balls, honey, ‘cause you sure don’t have the other kind.” And she stormed out, with Larry Gold rushing down the hall of the network building after her.
All the way back out to her house in Malibu, neither of them said a word, and Cee Cee feared with a sick feeling that probably she had made a big mistake taking Nina out of that boarding school so fast. Up until now there had been a shred of hope that things could fall into some state of normalcy, but for certain now her life would be a rat’s nest. She’d be traveling around, doing concerts, hoping for a good script with a breakout part to come along in a movie that could shoot God knows where.
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She shuddered when she thought back to what the concert tours had always been like, and some of the animals she had had to deal with. Not to mention the scrungy hotels and horrible hours. That was a lifestyle she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy. Finally, when Larry Gold pulled up outside her house, he stopped the car and turned his small body in the seat so he could face her.
“You were wrong, Ccc Cee. You should have been humble. What’d you get out of it? One second of making Flaherty uncomfortable versus getting your show back on the air.”
“They knew they weren’t gonna do another show with me before we walked in there, Larry, believe me,” she said, getting out of the car. But the truth was he was right, and she knew it.
“What do you want me to do?” he called after her. She turned around and looked at his helpless expression. She had behaved like a dumb headstrong jackass who didn’t know better, and if there had ever been a prayer to get the show back, she had blown it.
“Get me a job,” she answered, then turned and put her key in the front door, realizing how glad she was to be able to come home to Nina.
Hal’s high-pitched singing voice was the first sound she heard as she pushed the door open. He was belting out some old silly song he had written about a frog prince, and Nina was singing along, laughing at all of the funny lyrics.
“Well, what’d they say?” Hal asked, stopping the music as Cee Cee walked in.
“Wait. I’ve gotta clean the rug burns off my knees from where I
was down on them begging their forgiveness.”
“And?”
“And after that I succeeded in big-mouthing nay way right out of the business.”
“How’d you do that?”
“Never mind how. I’m ruined, I’m cold potatoes, dead meat. They don’t care why 1 left the show, and they’ll probably see that I’ll never work again. I’ll be back playing the High Sign Caf in North Hollywood. Remember that place, Harold? With the mice? And I can promise you they were not the ones from the cast of Cinderella. They didn’t make me one dress. In fact, you may recall I stood on a chair most nights when I sang just to avoid coming face to face with the
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little rodents.” She turned to head for the kitchen. “I’d better go call
the real estate broker and put the house on the market.” “Hey, Cee,” Hal said. “Yeah?” She turned back.
“If I were you, I’d get off the cross. You’ll probably need the wood for fuel.”
Cee Cee couldn’t help but laugh. And when she did, Nina did too.
“Flaherty is one network. There are two others. There’s cable there’s theater, there’re other studios who would kill for you. You’lli have a gig in no time,” Hal said.
“You think so?” Cee Cee’s eyes tested his for the possibility of a lie.
“I do,” Hal said. “And I don’t say ‘I do’ to just any girl.”
But no one was calling for her, the phone in the Malibu house was stubbornly quiet when they were at home, and the answering machine light didn’t blink with waiting messages when she and Nina came home from their visits to the various schools. For weeks they’d tried to find just the right one, but they were getting more and more discouraged.
“Today we saw ‘the free to be me school,’ where they wore Spandex pants, streaks of green hair, and everything visible that was piercible contained a cubic zirconia.”
“They let the kids walk around looking like that?” Hal asked her. “I haven’t gotten to describing the kids yet. Those were the teachers. And did I mention the hoity-toity one where they asked if I’d like to build a gymnasium in memory of Nina’s mother? Or th
e very regimented one where the headmaster asked if I believed corporal punishment was ever warranted, and when my answer was ‘Only during foreplay,’ he had me removed from l.is office. It’s getting exhausting, Harold.”
The next school they looked at was Elmhurst. On the way, Nina asked again, “Why can’t I go to our neighborhood public school? My friend Kevin goes there and he —”
“Neen, listen carefully. Those other kids, the ones you’re meeting on our road. Their homes aren’t listed on ‘Maps to the Stars’ Homes’ that any kidnapper can buy on the corner of Sunset and Doheny for five bucks.”
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“What does that have to do with school?”
“Your needs are special now, kiddo. Because as Cher once said to ‘,onny, ‘You’ve got me, babe.’”
“That was way before my time,” Nina said. “But I think what she ally said was, Tve got you, babe.’”
“Yeah? Well, what she meant was stuck is stuck.”
The physical plant of Elmhurst was shoddy, a group of ramshackle ,uildings sitting on a lot in Topanga Canyon that could hardly be ailed a campus, but the cheery mural of a playground painted by the hildren, which covered the side of one of the buildings, brightened p the look of the place. This morning Sandy Lowe, the director of e school, a tall heavy woman with long straight gray hair that she Core pushed back from her face with a plastic pink headband showed ee Cee and Nina around the tiny campus, and she talked to both of lem in the tone and cadence of somebody who spent most of her me with young children.
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