The Fame Game

by Rona Jaffe

  “I never should have married him in the first place,” Elaine went on. “If I had it to do all over, I never would. What did I know? I was sixteen years old. Daddy was the first and only man I’d ever slept with. I thought I had to marry him just because I’d been to bed with him—I thought otherwise it was dirty. He never talks to me. He never wants to take me anywhere. Oh, he loves to go out with those stiffs from the station he does business with, but he won’t take me. All he ever wants to do at night is watch television. He’ll watch anything. He makes me give him his dinner in front of the set. He sits there till his eyes are ready to drop out. He doesn’t know if I’m giving him meat loaf or dog food. He watches vampire movies. Vampire movies! When I try to talk he goes: Shhh. Son of a bitch!”

  Across the tiled walk from the swimming pool was the King Cactus Bar, where Lizzie could hear soft music from the jukebox. It was all done up very wagon wheels and horse bits. The afternoon bartender looked exactly like Paul Newman. It was uncanny. Lizzie had made several trips to the bar simply because the young man with the blond hair and stop-traffic blue eyes looked so much like Paul Newman it made her almost horny. What a shame he was only a bartender! This place was dead.

  “At night when I can’t sleep I just wander around the apartment and cry,” Elaine said. “I used to take only one Seconal; now I take three. He doesn’t even know I’m awake—he’s snoring away, the pig. Once in a while he notices I exist and then he grabs me just as if I’m some tart. He thinks he can ignore me all the time and then expect me to go to bed with him. The trouble is, he still makes me so hot. I hate him, and I’d divorce him in a minute, but the damned bastard makes me so hot.”

  Lizzie opened her eyes and sipped the dregs of her piña colada. It was time to see Paul Newman and get another. Elaine was half smashed, as usual. She was really a gloriously pretty animal, with her tawny hair down around her shoulders and that Miss America body. Elaine could still wear a bikini. Lizzie sighed and tried to hold in her stomach. Elaine didn’t have midriff bulge; Elaine had a double ridge of muscle from her solar plexus down to her impeccable navel. Elaine’s tits didn’t sag when she didn’t wear a bra. Elaine didn’t have to get that job with the wire under the cups. Lizzie sighed again and thought she would have to get to Kounovsky’s more often. What the hell—Garbo was old and she looked great. What was wrong with her? She was only forty-two years old; that wasn’t an old bag. She felt depressed.

  “He completely ignores his own child,” Elaine said. “He’s doing that damn show every night, playing Daddy Two-Shoes, and he doesn’t care about his own kid. Sometimes I think he’s even forgotten her name. He says she’s spoiled. I tell him, well, you never do anything about bringing her up, so if she’s spoiled it’s your fault. He says it’s my fault because a girl needs her mother as an example. I tell him, a fine example she’s got for a father. She thinks her father is that nice guy she watches on television. She doesn’t even know that grouch who lives with us.”

  When they’d first gotten to Vegas, two weeks ago, Lizzie had looked in the paper to see who was playing at each of the hotels. Arnie Gurney, of course, and they’d had to spend several boring evenings with him and that drab he was married to. There was absolutely no one for Lizzie. She’d balled each and every one of the stars years ago, with the exception of Sinatra, and he wouldn’t have anything to do with her. There wasn’t even an interesting celebrity to talk to anywhere in this crass hotel. There was only the gambling, and as usual she’d done very well, winning more than she’d lost. She and Elaine had decided to stay on for another week or ten days. The trip wasn’t costing them anything, and New York in the summer was even worse than here. Elaine sat and complained all the time, but she couldn’t decide whether or not to establish residence and divorce Mad Daddy once and for all; she preferred to complain. By midnight every night, Elaine was dead drunk. Elaine attracted a lot of men, but she wouldn’t have anything to do with them. It made her feel like more of a martyr to be a faithful wife, and it gave her something else to complain about. Lizzie hadn’t had anything either, but she didn’t care to drink herself to sleep the way Elaine did. What a shame that Paul Newman look-alike was only a bartender! A middle-aged married woman on vacation away from her husband, having a fling with the hotel bartender, was just too trite. She couldn’t lower herself to be trite, no matter what else she did. Why couldn’t he really be Paul Newman? He even had that same sexy voice.

  “I don’t know why I’m still faithful to him,” Elaine said. “I know it would serve him right if I wasn’t. But I just can’t put myself on the level of those whores we know. They’re all whores. Oh, not you, Lizzie—you’re just a nut.”

  “This nut is getting another drink,” Lizzie said. She looked into her compact, fixed her hair, put on a little more lipstick, and got up.

  “Bring me a double vodka on the rocks,” Elaine said, handing her the empty glass. “Hundred proof—not the eighty.”

  God, the tiles were hot! It must be a hundred degrees out. Lizzie hobbled back for her thong sandals and slipped them on. Except for the kids playing, the pool area was deserted. Everyone was either gambling or sleeping it off. Nobody ever came here to work on their tan or swim. She didn’t even know who those two kids Elaine’s rotten kid was playing with belonged to. An arm opened the screen door of the cabana apartment to let them in and out. Maybe she should stay indoors, too. Sun aged the skin.

  Feeling ancient, Lizzie entered the dim, air-conditioned bar. The bartender saw her and gave her a big, sexy Paul Newman smile. She held in her stomach. Goddam power net anyway; she should have gotten something with a little overblouse.

  “How ya doin’, Mrs. Libra?” the boy said. He winked.

  “Pretty good, Jared.” The bar was nearly empty; just two tables with drinkers at them, and a middle-aged bleached blonde with a lot of clanky charm bracelets, playing the one-armed bandit in the corner. Clank, clank went the charm bracelets. Clunk went the steel arm. Clank, clank. Dimes tinkled into the steel well, maybe five or six dimes in all. The woman, whose bracelets by weight alone must have cost five hundred dollars, whooped with joy. Lizzie hoisted herself up to the tall bar stool, wondering if she looked as old and grotesque as that woman.

  “You’re certainly looking great today, Mrs. L.,” the bartender said. “You looked like a little kid standing there in the doorway.”

  Lizzie smiled. “Yes?”

  “Man, your husband is crazy to let you come here alone. Some millionaire is going to carry you off on his yacht.” Deftly, he began mixing her another piña colada. “This one is on the house.” He winked again.

  Lizzie felt her body relaxing. It was crazy to feel old just because Elaine was younger than she was. If there were any men here except creeps and gangsters and husbands and tourists she wouldn’t feel so old. She took out a cigarette and Jared was right there with his cigarette lighter aflame for her.

  “Hey, I got something to show you,” he said. He reached behind him and took out a manila envelope. “Photos. I just had them made. Friend of mine is a photographer.”

  He spread the photos out on the bar in front of her. He certainly was photogenic, especially with his shirt off. There were the standard arty shots, silhouetted against a desert sunset, on a motorcycle, with a standard-brands pretty girl.

  “Your girl?” she asked.

  “No, the photographer’s wife.” He smiled. “I don’t have a girl, or a wife.”

  “Have you ever been married?”

  “No, but I have a kid, back home. A boy.”

  They always said they had an illegitimate kid, and it was always a boy. Lizzie guessed they thought it made them sound more masculine. She figured he was probably a bisexual hustler, but then again, he might not be.

  “How old is your son?” she asked.

  “Six.”

  “You don’t look old enough.”

  “I’m twenty-three.”

  Why were they always twenty-three? They could be nineteen, they could be t
hirty, but they always said they were twenty-three. She was no fool.

  “I haven’t seen him in years,” he went on. “See, I had these pictures taken because I thought I might be able to do some modeling. I’ve been doing a little, and they told me to get some good photos. I’m planning to go to L.A. in a couple of weeks.”

  “You should try New York,” Lizzie said, for something to say.

  His bright blue eyes lit up. “New York? You’re from New York, aren’t you? Do you think there’s something for me there?”

  Lizzie shrugged. “It’s the city of broken dreams, baby. That’s where it’s all happening.”

  “Do you like my pictures?”

  “They’re very good. It’s too bad you look just like Paul Newman, or you could make it in the movies one-two-three.”

  “Yeah,” he said disgusted. “If someone tells me that one more time …” He put the photos back into the envelope. “You know, a day doesn’t go by that somebody doesn’t ask me for my autograph. Maybe I’ll go get my nose broken or something and dye my hair.”

  “You don’t want to be in the movies. That’s no life.”

  “Is your husband in the movie business?”

  “He’s a publicist and personal manager. Sam Leo Libra.”

  “Wow,” he said. “You’re really right in the middle of all that, aren’t you? And I thought you were just a little girl.”

  “I suggest you get tinted contact lenses,” Lizzie said. “Prescription.”

  “Oh, come on. What’s the matter with you today? Feeling rotten about something, aren’t you?”

  “I am feeling rotten about life,” Lizzie said. She sipped her drink. It probably had two hundred and fifty calories and she shouldn’t have had the first two, either. Well, she wouldn’t eat dinner again.

  “Hey,” he said, “if you ever get really bored around here, I know this groovy bar where they have a live group that’s out of sight. They’re friends of mine. If you ever wanted to go slumming with a member of the working class, I’d be more than glad to take you there after I get off here.”

  “You’re sweet,” Lizzie said.

  He lowered his voice. “You like grass?”

  She shrugged and smiled.

  “I’ve got something fantastic from Mexico.”

  “I’m not buying.”

  “Who said anything about buying?” He sounded hurt. “This is just a present from me to you, as a friend. I’m sorry. It’s just that you don’t look like those other ladies here.”

  “How do I look?”

  “Alive. Living. You’ve got this smile that lights up your whole body. I think you’re probably a very wild lady when you get going—am I right?”

  Lizzie didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted. There it was again, that thing in her that attracted the unlikeliest men. That hunger they smelled out right away, while she was busy trying to look like an asexual teen-ager. She wondered if this boy only wanted her because of what he thought Sam could do for him. He was smiling at her. She tried to read his eyes—nothing. Friendship, sweetness, her face mirrored in their gleam.

  “I’m lonely,” he said.

  “You?”

  “Why not? I have no one to talk to here. When I’m not working I just sit in the sun and stay around my room and read and play my guitar. I write songs … oh, they’re not very good, but they amuse me. It can be very lonely here.”

  “I guess it can,” Lizzie said.

  “I hate nineteen-year-old girls,” he said. “They have nothing to say and they’re lousy in bed. They only think about themselves, how they look, do you admire them enough. Nineteen-year-old girls are all alike; nowhere.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “What do you want to stay around here for, gambling every night? You never win here, in the end. They take everything away from you.”

  “I win,” Lizzie said.

  “Not in the end. Stop when you’re ahead. I’ve been around here a long time; I know.”

  “There’s nothing else to do here,” Lizzie said.

  “I could take you out on the desert under the stars on my motorcycle.”

  “You really are a mass of stereotypes, aren’t you?”

  She expected him to be furious, but he wasn’t. “Isn’t everybody, till you get to know them?”

  “Am I?”

  “No …” he said thoughtfully. “There has always been something a little different, a little mysterious, about you. Like a lost little girl, but secretly wild.”

  “I bet your songs aren’t so bad,” Lizzie said.

  “I’ll sing them for you if we get to know each other better.”

  I bet you will, she thought. Always auditioning. “I need a double vodka on the rocks for my friend,” she said. “Hundred proof.”

  Later that evening when she was dressing in her room to go downstairs for a late dinner, Lizzie heard a rap on the door. She opened it and was not surprised to see the bartender standing there. He knew her room number from all the bills she had signed. She did not pretend to be surprised and he looked as if he knew she had been expecting him. The night outside was purple velvet and the room was cool. He had not brought his photographs, or his guitar, or the pot he had promised her. He had, however, brought his incredible face, a perfect body to go with it, and a beautiful cock, hard and smooth as marble. She let him do it to her because he was there and it would have seemed hysterical to throw him out, and because she ached with loneliness. She felt nothing. He was nobody. It was strange to feel nothing with a boy that beautiful. She was glad when it was over.

  He told her she was wild and wonderful, that he wanted to get a lot more of her, and several other lies, and then he dressed and went away, after making her promise to see him in the bar the next day. Lizzie took another shower, and discovered with surprise when she went to make up her face again that she had seldom looked more radiant. She felt empty and a failure, and she looked beautiful. Sex was a very strange deception. She would have to discuss it at length with Dr. Picker when she got back. She inwardly cringed at the thought of admitting her failure to the old letch.

  When she met Elaine in the bar Elaine said, “Well, you certainly look rested. What did you do, catch a nap?”

  “Yes,” Lizzie lied. For dinner she had a lettuce salad with lemon juice instead of dressing, and black coffee. She began to feel better. He was twenty-three! If she’d made him sick he wouldn’t have been able to do it, no matter what he wanted to get out of the wife of Sam Leo Libra.

  “Daddy never helps me around the house when the maid isn’t there,” Elaine was droning over her seventh martini. “He wouldn’t lift a finger to help me if I was dying of cancer. Not once does he ever offer to help in the kitchen. He wouldn’t make himself a sandwich if he was starving to death. Other husbands bring their wives breakfast in bed. Lizzie, what do you think I ought to do? Should I stay here and divorce him? What do you think, Lizzie? Now, while I’m still young?”

  “I think we should go home tomorrow,” Lizzie said.

  “Home?”

  “Yes. New York. I’ll get the reservations now.”

  “Oh. Well, all right …”

  Lizzie went to the desk and booked two seats on the two-o’clock jet. That would give them time to sleep late and pack. Anything as long as they got out of here before that damned King Cactus Bar beckoned to her again with its message of temptation and defeat. Never, never had she ever done it before with a bartender, beach boy, or gigolo.

  What’s going to become of me? Lizzie Libra wondered, feeling panic for the first time in her life.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Late that Summer, Silky Morgan began rehearsals for Mavis!, which was now called (temporarily) The Love Ticket. The first time she saw Dick was on the first morning of the first line reading, in a hot, bare room where they all sat around a long table. He gave her a warm smile and shook her hand. She almost choked to death.

  “You’ve lost weight,” Dick said.

 
She nodded.

  “It’s becoming. Don’t lose any more, though.” Then he introduced her to the cast, which was mixed, and to the author, a middle-aged white cat who looked as if the only black person he’d ever known was his maid. She figured he was just trying to get on the bandwagon with this musical because black was in, but after a while she discovered he wasn’t so bad; he had an impish sense of humor, humility, and he owned every record she’d ever made. Two really old white guys had written the songs, and they weren’t even there. Silky had always thought that Broadway was very exciting, but now she began to think it was like the stock market, full of old guys selling blue-chip stocks, with gambling reserved for the wild and the crazy. The only decent thing the show had, it seemed to her, was Dick Devere.

  She tried to do everything she had learned from Simon Budapest, and felt very dissatisfied with the first day of readings, but Dick said nothing to criticize her. Afterwards she hung around hoping he would talk to her, but he patted her on the shoulder and told her to run along home as he had to talk to the author about changes. She went into the hot street, feeling lonely and sad, trying to pretend she was in a hurry so no one in the cast would try to be friendly to her and ask her to go for coffee or anything.

  Dick had given her the script in a beautiful dark-red leather folder, from one of those fancy leather stores, with her name embossed in gold on the front. That was evidently what a star got. She was a star. It seemed unreal. She stroked the smooth leather and tried to think of herself as a star, but all she felt like was a scared kid who was going to make a disgrace of herself in front of a lot of strangers.