The Fame Game

by Rona Jaffe

  “I’m surprised.”

  “No, I mean what do you think about what he said?”

  “Well … I think he was wrong.”

  “I knew you’d understand,” Silky said. “You have no idea how good I feel to be rid of him. When are you coming home?”

  “Soon, I think,” Gerry lied.

  “Good. Call me as soon as you get in and come have lunch at the apartment. I’ve fixed it up a little and it’s cute. I miss you.”

  “I miss you, too. Thanks for calling me.”

  They hung up. Gerry lit a cigarette. Libra really blew it this time, she thought. I could have kept Silky. She’d work for me.

  My God, she thought. She stubbed out the cigarette after one puff. For the first time since she’d come to California she felt alive, interested in something. How could Libra have been so stupid? He thought he was the only one who could change people, Geppetto the puppet-maker, and he never realized that life changed people, and that they could also change themselves. He’d been so sure of himself that he’d never even bothered to look at Silky and see that she was changing into a woman; she wasn’t his little girl from the gutter any more. She hadn’t been that for ages.

  I thought it was the life I hated, Gerry thought, but it wasn’t the life that dealt me a blow, it was just life. Mad Daddy could just as easily have been hit by a car, God forbid, or had a heart attack. I could have been engaged to an accountant and he could have been mugged. But if it wasn’t for my job I might have been engaged to an accountant, or to nobody, because I never would have met Mad Daddy at all. I wouldn’t have not met him and not loved him for anything. I can’t blame the business for the bad thing that happened to me … but I can thank it for a lot of the good things. I can’t stay here and rot another minute. Whatever else is meant for me, I can’t let this be my life.

  She went into the kitchen and told the housekeeper to chill one of the bottles of champagne and bring it to her in the bedroom. Waste not, want not. Then she called the airline for a reservation on the midnight flight to New York that would get her there in the morning, and she started to pack.

  She had forgotten how lovely New York was on a spring morning. Central Park was getting green, the days would be long again, the air sometimes even smelled good. Vincent (whom she’d called from California before she caught the plane) had actually cleaned the apartment for her return, and even waxed the floors. He had hung a new eleven-by-fourteen photo of himself on the wall with Scotch tape (he wouldn’t dream of spending his own money for a frame) and under it he had printed VINCENT STONE. He was halfway to paradise now: never to be mistaken for a girl again, more easily to be taken for a very handsome young man—perhaps not too virile yet, but no more asexual than a lot of other boys she’d seen walking hand in hand with their equally asexual girl friends. No … he was more sexual than they were … Bonnie’s cuddly, animal quality lingered; he would be sexy whoever he was. She watched him while he cooked breakfast, so pleased and gratified by the changes in his appearance that she could hardly take her eyes off him.

  “How do I look?” Vincent asked. “What do you think of me?”

  “I’m thrilled. I don’t know whether to thank nature or me.”

  “It’s both,” Vincent said, flexed a bicep, and giggled.

  “Don’t ever giggle,” she said. “Please.”

  “Haw, haw, haw,” Vincent said, very basso profundo, and then they both giggled.

  Gerry tossed her clothes out of the suitcase onto the bed so they would not be too wrinkled, took a quick shower, and called the office to say she would be in at ten thirty.

  She liked the new office building because she had never seen it before, it had no memories, it would be a new start. Everything was very modern and spotless, with the smell of new paint. The glass doors to the reception room had a small astrological sign painted on them, the scales, and above them: LIBRA, in gold letters. It occurred to her that Libra probably wasn’t his real name, that he might have invented Sam Leo Libra just as he had invented all his clients. There was so much she still didn’t know about the man, even after all this time. She was going to have to try to know him better now. It would be interesting.

  Libra came out, in immaculate silky gray, his maroon hair damp and glistening, his skin smelling faintly of a cologne that was like freshly cut grass. He gave her a great smile (oh, beautiful King Kong, foolish, pig-headed genius!) and said: “It’s about time.”

  He showed her the office which was to be hers, unfurnished except for a telephone and a horrid metal desk (that would have to be replaced) and took her into his office to talk.

  “That nitwit I hired while you were gone is driving me crazy,” he said. “You’re lucky. But she’s too pretty to fire, so I’m keeping her on to do some of the dull secretarial work so you’ll have more time for the important things.”

  Gerry knew him well enough now to know he was leading up to something—he never gave something for nothing. She waited, smiling a pretty thank you.

  “Silky’s left me,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “Oh?”

  “She called me last night in California.”

  “Good,” he said. “You’re still friends. Coffee?”

  “Please.”

  He poured her a cup of coffee and she noticed that his office was much like his old office had been, with expensive, tasteful accessories, flowers, and the free breakfast assortment on a table. Sylvia Polydor’s picture hung over the black leather couch.

  “When are you going to see Silky?” he asked.

  “Probably this week. I’m to call her.”

  “You call her now and see her today. I want you to get her back.”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “Of course you can,” Libra said. “You’re her best friend. You can get her back on the basis of your friendship. Tell her how hurt you are that she’s left the office.”

  “I can’t do that,” Gerry said. “I’m sorry she’s left, but I think you were wrong to speak to her the way you did. You can’t keep hurting people and expect them to keep taking it.”

  Libra glared. “And me? What about me? Don’t I get hurt? Am I inhuman? I am very hurt at Silky’s ingratitude. Without me she’d be nothing. I made her. All those stars think that when they get big they can turn around and do it all on their own. They don’t know how fast they’ll come running back whimpering for advice. She’s doing a stupid thing, a stupid thing.”

  “Nobody likes to be called stupid all the time,” Gerry said mildly.

  “So she took something the wrong way. She’s probably under the influence of that hustler she married. Next thing he’ll be wanting to be her manager. He’ll ruin her. You have to go to her and explain the facts of life … sweetly, of course, as you do so well.”

  “What do you want me to tell her?”

  “To come back. To come back because she’s your friend and you’re her friend. You know what to do.”

  “Would you be willing to apologize?” Gerry asked.

  “No. But you can apologize for me. That’s one of the things I pay you for.”

  “All right—I’ll try.”

  “You can do it. Oh, by the way.…”

  She stopped at the door and turned.

  “You’d better start looking for office furniture and things,” Libra said. “Charge them to me, I take it off my taxes.”

  “Thank you.” Thank you for nothing, she thought, knowing it was just a bribe. She went into her office and called Silky, and arranged to see her at one thirty.

  Funny, Gerry thought as she went to Silky’s apartment, she and Silky probably were each other’s best friend, but neither of them had been to the other’s apartment, ever. In this business the people you worked with became your best friends, and sometimes it was the other way around, but how little they bothered to know about each other’s private lives! When I get Silky back, she thought … No, if I get her back … we’ll have to start to know each other bette
r on all levels.

  Silky and Bobby were waiting for her in the apartment, a star-type place with a terrace. They really were a stunning couple, no matter what Libra thought of Bobby, and they seemed to love each other very much.

  “Coffee or champagne?” Silky said.

  “Whatever you’re having.”

  “Sha, let’s have champagne; you’re back.”

  Bobby brought a bottle from the refrigerator, opened and poured it. He’s very fetch-and-carry, Gerry thought, but definitely the man in this house. She didn’t know how to begin saying what she had come to say.

  “What did Libra say?” Silky asked.

  “About you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” Gerry said, “he’s very sorry and he apologizes.”

  “You bet he’s sorry,” Bobby said.

  “I’m in a funny position,” Gerry said. “Libra feels terrible about your falling-out and wants you back, and naturally I feel terrible about losing you, too, because you’re my best friend. I think you’re absolutely right to object to the way Libra treats you, but on the other hand I think our office is in the best position to help you because we’re so good. If you did consider coming back to us I can promise you that I’ll be the buffer between you and Libra and see that he never mistreats you again.”

  Silky shook her head and looked at Bobby.

  “I’m going to tell you the facts of life,” Bobby said to Gerry. “Do you want to listen?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. First of all, if you’re Silky’s friend you’ll be her friend whether or not she comes back to the office, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay. Now, what Silky needs right now is not a friend, she needs a manager. If you’re willing to be Silky’s manager, then she’ll sign with you, not with Libra, with you. That means you, not Libra, not you fronting for Libra—you. You know what to do, you’ve had enough experience. She trusts you. But she wants a separate contract, with you. Her contract with Libra has run out, so you’re in the clear.”

  “I think he’d kill me,” Gerry said. She drank her champagne and Bobby poured more.

  “This is a tough business, girl,” Bobby said. “This isn’t a business for friends; it’s for business people. Life is tough. You have to have guts or you’re nowhere. You can’t be a little girl forever, expecting people to be nice because they like you. That isn’t business, that’s social life. You have to grow up. You have to be tough.”

  “That’s true,” Silky said. She held out her empty glass and Bobby filled it.

  “I think you can be tough,” Bobby said. “You’re just too used to doing other people’s work for them without taking any credit. If you can be tough enough to handle Silky’s career, and do a good job, then sign her yourself. Otherwise she goes to another agency. There’s your choice.”

  I like him, Gerry thought. He’s going to go somewhere and he knows it. I can’t lose Silky. I’d be a fool if I did. He’s right. I can handle Silky and Vincent, and Bobby too, and then if Libra kills me I can have my own clients and start my own agency. I think I’m going to be sick.

  “What do you say?” Silky said.

  “Do you want to sign with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. I’ll sign you. To me, not to Libra.”

  “Great!” Silky said. They shook hands. Gerry stopped feeling sick and began to feel excited.

  “Bobby—you don’t have a manager yet, do you?” Gerry said.

  “Not yet.”

  “Will you sign with me, too?”

  “I’d be glad to.”

  “All right, it’s a deal. But remember—this isn’t two against one; I’m handling both your careers separately.”

  “You’re learning,” Bobby said approvingly, and they shook hands.

  “I’ll draw up the contracts this afternoon,” Gerry said. “You’ll give me the same percentage you formerly gave Mr. Libra.”

  “You’re really learning,” Bobby said, grinning. “Agreed.”

  “Agreed, Silky?”

  “Absolutely.”

  They all shook hands again, a little high, and killed the bottle. Gerry made a dinner date with them for the end of the week, and went back to the office to face Libra.

  Libra was waiting in his office. He had changed his suit and his hair was damp. “You look pleased with yourself,” he said. “I take it she’s coming back.”

  “Not exactly. She is coming back, but she’s signing with me. I’m sorry, but it’s the best I could do. I’m also signing Bobby La Fontaine.”

  “For what? I don’t want him for my twelfth client.”

  “He won’t be. He’ll be my second client. Silky will be my first.”

  Libra stood up, enraged. “Your client? What do you mean, your client?”

  “She said it was that or nothing. So it’s that.”

  He thought for a minute and then sat down again. “I suppose you’re right. You have a good head. I don’t mind; you can handle her. She’s gotten too obnoxious for me to bother with anyway.”

  “The other thing is, I want Silky’s thirty per cent commission. She’s agreed.”

  “You’re dreaming,” Libra said.

  “No I’m not.”

  “Then I’m dreaming. You didn’t say that.”

  “I did. Silky’s and Bobby’s.”

  “Bobby you can have. He’s nothing, he’s nobody, you can operate his career out of your desk drawer. But you can’t take Silky’s commission! I’ve treated you just like a daughter. I made you what you are today. What were you before I gave you a chance—a two-bit flack?”

  “A publicist,” Gerry said calmly. “Thirty per cent.”

  “Look at everything I’ve done for you!”

  “You’re not my father and I’m not your daughter. That was my salary, not my allowance. I’m handling Silky and doing all the work, so I want the commission.”

  “Presents, cars, the use of my house …”

  “I worked twelve hours a day. Sometimes more. Thirty per cent.”

  “Fifteen. The other fifteen is mine for overhead, the use of the office, the use of my name.”

  “Your name is the last thing Silky wants.”

  “You see how far you get in this business without my name. Fifteen per cent.”

  “Twenty,” Gerry said.

  Their eyes locked. She felt nothing, no fear, no sickness, no shaking; just a mild exhilaration at the contest. They were two business people sitting down to a business conversation. He wasn’t Big Daddy Libra any more and never would be again.

  “All right, twenty,” Libra said.

  “It’s a deal,” Gerry said. “For now.”

  Libra shook his head. “I’ve created Frankenstein’s monster.”

  “And by the way,” Gerry said, ignoring that, “while I was in California I had an idea for a package we can put together, a remake of a film I saw at your house. I’ll check on the rights. There’s a boy I want you to see. I think he’d be perfect.”

  “Who is he?”

  “A client of mine. His name is Vincent Stone.”

  “All right, bring him in and I’ll have a look at him. Vincent who?”

  “Vincent Stone.”

  “You can’t go picking up clients off the street,” Libra said. “That’s no way to run a business.”

  “As you told me yourself,” Gerry said, “that’s how you got started.” She smiled prettily at him and went back to her office to type up the contracts.

  She buzzed the new secretary to bring in the standard forms, and typed in the changes that signed Silky, Bobby, and Vincent over to her as their publicist-personal manager. She found a rubber stamp in the desk drawer to stamp the squares where they would initial the changes. It looked a lot more professional than the piece of paper Libra had typed up himself the time he had signed Bonnie Parker, and she was pleased. Her first real clients!

  She realized, then, that along with everybody else, except Libra who would
never change, she had changed. She wasn’t just an experienced assistant any more, she was a business person. It wasn’t what she’d planned, or dreamed, or even thought life would be, but it wasn’t bad, either. This wasn’t the end, but the beginning. All this time she’d been working to make other people famous, but it had turned out to be her fame game too.

  She found herself smiling. She’d do the office in blue and white, with a couple of kinky antiques from that place Dick had sent her to last year, and there was a Robert Indiana poster that said LOVE on it that would look nice over the couch. She certainly wasn’t going to put an oil painting of Silky over it the way Libra had with Sylvia Polydor. That might make him froth at the mouth. But an eleven-by-fourteen photo of Silky framed on the wall would be nice, and one of Bobby, and she was sure Vincent had more of the one he’d hung in their apartment. When he got some money, Vincent would have to get his own apartment. She didn’t want gossip. After all, everyone was supposed to think Vincent was a sex symbol, and it wouldn’t do for him to be shacked up with his manager. Everyone would think he’d made it in the business because they were lovers, and that certainly wasn’t the way her clients were going to get ahead.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1969 by Rona Jaffe

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-0841-9

  Distributed by Open Road Distribution

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  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com