by Jaime Clarke
Finally Jammin’ Jay materialized and we took the stage with all this on our minds but we tried to give the very best performance we could. Even though it was night, people were still fanning themselves, pouring bottled water over their heads. Most of the guys were shirtless and a lot of women were in bikini tops and bras. It looked hot from the stage and the industrial fans the crew had set up couldn’t beat back the day’s heat or the heat coming from the lights overhead. So yeah, you guessed it, we were just about to hit the refrain of our first song, ‘Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!’ when Daisy flat passed out. Midway through spinning around, something she liked to do, she hit the stage floor. I thought she tripped and would get back up but when the crowd started craning their necks I looked over and saw she was out cold, her voice coming loud and strong through the speakers overhead. There was a moment of confusion where the festival paramedics rushed the stage while I frantically yelled for Jammin’ Jay to cut the tape. The audience looked confused too but they quickly figured it out and started booing and hissing. The paramedics hauled Daisy offstage and Stella said she’d ride with her to the hospital. Jammin’ Jay said, We best get out of here. The crowd seemed to be getting louder and the stage was suddenly heaped with empty water bottles, plastic cups, frisbees and anything else people could find to throw. The only thing I could equal to the feeling of sneaking away from the SaltBed Festival is when you lose your wallet and you think, it’s not that big of a deal. Then you realize you have to cancel your credit cards. Then you realize you have to get a new driver’s license. Then you realize you didn’t cash your paycheck and will have to have another one issued. Then you realize you had over a hundred dollars in your wallet. That’s how it hit me, in stages. At the hospital Stella hugged me and I said, We’re ruined. It was on the radio, she said. Daisy looked pale and she drank and refilled two full glasses of water. In our minds we were both thinking what would Bananarama have done if something like this had happened to them. Surely all the times Sara and Keren went on stages in London there was at least one mechanical problem. How would they have coped?
Why doesn’t Ian call, Daisy asked. We dialed the number for the studio on the phone in Daisy’s room, but the answering machine came on. We hung up and the phone rang; it was Ian on his mobile phone. He told us he was in an accident and that’s why he couldn’t make it. His voice was changed. He was really somber and we hoped he would tell us it was going to be all right. But he didn’t seem to know anything about what had happened. We asked him if he’d talked to Jammin’ Jay and he said, I’ve got something to tell you. We thought he was going to tell us it was all over—which of course it was—but what he said really floored us. The songs Jammin’ Jay quote unquote wrote are old unrecorded Phantasm songs, Ian said, and Phantasm is suing me personally and the group professionally for copyright infringement. Ian said what he was going to do when he got his hands on Jammin’ Jay, but his cell phone cut out and he didn’t call back.
A woman from the front desk came with some papers and asked Daisy for her autograph. Daisy dotted her i with a flower but the woman didn’t notice. Stella sat next to Daisy and held her hand. She’s going to be all right, someone out in the hall said. Stella said, This isn’t anything, don’t worry about it. Daisy opened her eyes and breathed in deep and then closed her eyes again. I felt faint and fell into the chair in the corner. What time is your flight back tomorrow, I asked and Stella said, I’ll stay until we get out. But in the morning she was gone with a note that said, Please come visit me in California. Typical Stella.
In the morning we called Scott Key. As I tried to explain to the woman in Scott Key’s office who we were, an orderly came for Daisy’s breakfast tray and as he took it away I noticed the letters SOS traced in spilt salt.
Stella
The way you win a dead pool, if you’re not familiar, is you pick a list of people you think are going to drop dead. You pick for the entire year. The one with the most right wins. Like anything. The trick is to have a couple wild cards, people that no one would ever pick. You get those by doing your homework, like reading the National Enquirer and those kinds of papers. But also you have to think a little bit, too. You read the regular news and think, Why is so-and-so canceling all of his appointments? How is so-and-so doing now that his wife is gone? Sometimes silence is the biggest clue. If you go a while without hearing anything about so-and-so, that’s usually a good indicator.
Living in Hollywood helps, too. You hear a million rumors and all it takes is for the wildest one to be true and you move ahead of everyone else (any pick under age forty-five pays double dividends). Different dead pools have different rules; some say the obituary has to appear in at least three national newspapers to count, some prohibit two players from choosing the same celebrity, others are lotteries (names are drawn from a hat for $10 each and when a celebrity dies that ticket holder wins, clearing out the jackpot).
I’m in all the big pools: The Lee Atwater Invitational (http://stiffs.com), Chalk Outlines (http://pwl.netcom.com.~jluger/chalkout.html), and the original dead pool, started in the ’70s, The Game (http://members.aol.com/ggghostie/home.html). I had Kurt Cobain in ’94 and two years ago I had Chris Farley (yeah, for a heart attack—but points are points). But I haven’t been able to win it. This year my trump is Bryan Metro, the rock and roller who, my sources tell me, has fallen off the wagon in a big way. Metro canceled two shows in Tokyo last month due to ‘fatigue.’ So far, no other pooler has added Metro to their list.
My boyfriend, Craig, thinks I’m a sick puppy. He’s just jaded about Hollywood, though. I met him when we both went to network on a pilot. The show was called La Brea and was about these ten friends who all worked at a restaurant called—you guessed it—La Brea, and I was to play Katy, the waitress/photographer and Craig was going to be Blaine, the pool shark/model. Craig had already been cast as Blaine and they brought me in to read opposite him and the scene was one where Blaine asks Katy to take some head shots of him and they end up falling in love. It was sort of romantic, even though the room was full of people, and I was clicking away on an imaginary camera. The audition was my one millionth in the few months I’d been living in California, and there was a weird sort of connection with me and Craig. He’s not my usual type; he’s more handsome than the guys I dated back in Phoenix. I mean he’s too handsome. He’s a dead ringer for Christopher Reeve, which he thinks has hurt his career. People look at me and see Superman, he sighs. But it made him perfect for the role of Blaine on La Brea and even though I didn’t get the part, I moved in to his apartment at Highland Gardens, a ’50s hotel on the corner of Vine and Outpost someone had converted to apartments. The show wasn’t picked up though, so Craig had to go back to his old job doing dinner theater at the Starion, an old morgue turned into a restaurant down on Sunset Boulevard.
Since Craig is the star of the Starion, he was able to get me a job there, too. When it opened in the early ’90s the dinner theater was primarily based on the works of Agatha Christie. It was my idea to do celebrity deaths (the restaurant was a morgue, after all). Monday night we do the murder of Lana Turner’s mobster boyfriend, Wednesday is the drowning of Natalie Wood, Friday is a medley of automobile deaths: James Dean, Isadora Duncan and Jayne Mansfield. I suggested adding the murder of Bob Crane and a couple celebrity suicides, but management didn’t think the crowd would want snapped necks or bashed brains with their linguine and clam sauce.
Due to an exceptional review in the Los Angeles Times, Monday night is packed with guys in suits and their elegantly dressed ladies, everyone giggling nervously as the wait staff attend to filling water glasses and taking dinner orders.
Break a leg, baby, Craig says, kissing me on the mouth.
Break a leg, I say back. I put my hand on my stomach to calm the butterflies.
The house lights go down and the crowd hushes, squinting through the low light from the candles on their tables at the red-curtained stage. Craig switches on the microphone. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Monday nig
ht at the Starion. Now that your waiters and waitresses have your orders please stay seated and silent. Our presentation lasts an hour, without intermission, and we expect to hold you spellbound for that hour. If you should need your waiter or waitress, please extinguish the candle on your table and wait patiently. We hope you enjoy the show.
Craig switches off the microphone and takes two deep breaths.
On a rainy April night in 1958, he begins again into the microphone, the police were summoned to 730 North Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills… the home of screen star Lana Turner.
That is my cue. The stage lights go up on Lana’s gorgeous pink bedroom and I pretended to be folding laundry on the bed. I wear a white blouse and black pedal pushers with my hair up under a pink scarf. I’m barefoot, like Lana was that night. Craig’s voice booms as I walk back and forth to the closet and the dresser.
Johnny Stompanato, a former bodyguard for mobman Mickey Cohen, had fallen in love with the glamorous movie star. Theirs was a passionate affair, but when Turner learned of Stompanato’s underworld connections she refused to be seen in public with him. Nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Peyton Place, Turner wouldn’t allow Stompanato to escort her to the awards ceremony… so he beat her to within an inch of her life. The tension increased as Lana would phone Stompanato continuously, telling him how much she missed and loved and wanted him but wouldn’t meet him anywhere other than the seclusion of an apartment. Finally… the lies and confusion came to a head.
There’s a stage knock and Lana says, ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’
‘C’mon, baby,’ Stompanato says. ‘It’s me.’
‘We’re through,’ Lana yells through the door. ‘Go away!’
Three more loud knocks. ‘Open this motherfucker up!’
Lana hurries to the door, unlocking it.
‘We’re through,’ Lana says, looking Stompanato straight on.
‘You’ll never get away from me,’ Stompanato says, closing the door. Then, angrily, ‘I’ll cut you good, baby. No one will ever look at that pretty face again.’
Lana moves to the far end of the dresser. ‘First you lied about your name—-John Steele. God, it sounds like a porno name, I should’ve known—and now I find out you lied about your age.’
Stompanato feigns ignorance. ‘What are you talkin’ about?’
‘That’s why you left in such a hurry this afternoon, isn’t it? You knew Bill Brooks recognized you, right? He told me all about you back in military school in Missouri. He told me to stay away from you,’ Lana says, her voice rising.
Stompanato grabs her by the arm. ‘It’s too late for that now, isn’t it?’
Offstage, Molly Mann, in the role of Lana’s fourteen-year-old daughter Cheryl, yells, ‘Mother! What’s going on?’
Stompanato loosens his grip. ‘You’re not going to get rid of me so easy, Miss Movie star!’
‘Please, Mother, can I see you for a second?’ Cheryl says.
Stompanato turns to the wall, trembling with rage.
‘Come in,’ Lana says. Cheryl enters stage left and reaches out for her mother’s hand, feeling her icy fingers. The two take a few steps in the direction opposite Stompanato.
‘Why don’t you just tell him to go?’ Cheryl whispers. ‘You’re a coward, Mother.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Lana whispers. ‘I’m deathly afraid of him.’
‘Don’t worry. I won’t leave you,’ Cheryl says. ‘I won’t be far away.’
Cheryl exits stage right and Lana, newly confident, squares her shoulders and faces Stompanato. ‘I want you to get out.’
Stompanato turns on Lana. ‘You’ll never get away from me! Wherever you go, I’ll find you and I’ll cut you good, baby. You’ll never work again. And don’t think I won’t also get your mother and your kid.’
Lana pushes Stompanato. ‘I’ve had just enough!’
‘Cunt! You’re dead!’ Stompanato grabs a hanger from the closet and raises it to strike Lana just as Cheryl pounds on the door.
‘Let me in! Let me talk to both of you!’
Lana swings the door open, Stompanato behind her, and Cheryl enters, walking in a straight line, as if trying to pass the sobriety test of her life. She and Stompanato come together like they’re hugging.
‘My God, Cheryl, what have you done?’ Stompanato says, falling on his back.
Cheryl drops the knife and runs from the room as the curtain falls.
Several of the kitchen staff, who are also actors, appear in the second half, which consists of the circus surrounding the next few hours at the mansion in Beverly Hills. The cook’s assistant plays Jerry Geisler, the famous lawyer who got Errol Flynn acquitted twice of having sex with underage girls; others play the paramedics, the doctor who can’t get a pulse, the chief of police, and a reporter from a Hollywood tabloid. The show ends with Cheryl being hauled off to jail and Lana screaming, ‘Bring back my baby!’
After the show Craig takes me to the Denny’s on Hollywood Boulevard for grilled cheese sandwiches, our post-show ritual. I notice some fake blood dried under my fingernails so I give the waitress—Amy, a film student at UCLA—my order and go to the bathroom to wash my hands. The hot water doesn’t work. I scrape at the blood with my fingernails and then I see it, up above the automatic hand dryer, scratched into a beige tile: BRYAN METRO IS DEAD.
‘Beverly Hills Hotel’.
‘Bryan Metro, please.’
‘Room number?’
‘Don’t you know it?’
‘Ma’am, I‘m sorry but we can’t connect you by name, only by room number.’
‘Actually, I’m not sure that he didn’t check out already. Can you tell me if he’s even still there?’
‘I’m sorry. I can’t give out any information about our guests.’
‘I just remembered: it’s room six.’
‘There is no room six here.’
‘I said Room sixty. Six-oh.’
‘Goodbye.’
‘Beverly Hills Hotel’.
‘Room 2132, please.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Hello?’
‘Bryan?’
‘Oh, I’m afraid they’ve rung the wrong number.’
‘I’m very sorry. I hope I didn’t disturb you. While I have you on the line though may I ask you a question?’
‘Well, I really don’t know. Who are you calling for?’
‘That’s what I want to ask you about. Do you know if Bryan Metro is staying there? I mean, have you seen him around the pool?’
‘Who’s Bryan Metro?’
‘The rock star. You know, Big Noise and The Vegetable King. I’m his cousin in from South Dakota and I was supposed to meet him but I can’t remember the number.’
‘Did you ask the front desk?’
‘They were unhelpful.’
‘Well, I don’t know who he is. So I don’t know if he’s here. Sorry.’
‘That’s okay. Thanks for your patience.’
‘I did see Alex Trebek at the hotel bar last night.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah, he’s not as smart as he thinks he is. I asked him the four states whose capital shares the same first letter as the name of the state. He was stumped. Do you know that one?’
‘I guess I don’t.’
‘Maybe I should go on Jeopardy! What do you think?’
‘Go for it.’
‘Maybe I will.’
‘Anyway, thanks a lot.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘Chasen’s.’
‘Yeah, I was in Bryan Metro’s party last night and I think I left my glasses at the bar.’
‘Are you sure you have the right restaurant? Bryan Metro hasn’t been in here for weeks—’
‘Yeah, I’m sure.’
‘—and he’s not allowed back as far as my manager’s concerned, so it definitely wasn’t last night.’
‘Oh, maybe I do have the wrong place.’
‘Okay.’
‘But h
e was there a few weeks ago?’
‘It was maybe more.’
‘Before or after he was in Japan?’
‘What am I, his personal assistant? How should I know.’
‘Okay.’
‘ ’Bye.’
‘Wait. Why isn’t Bryan allowed at Chasen’s?’
‘You’re his friend—you ask him.’
‘Cedars-Siani.’
‘Admitting, please.’
‘Is this an emergency?’
‘No.’
‘One moment.’
‘Admitting.’
‘Yes, I’m calling to find out if Bryan Metro has been admitted to the hospital.’
‘I’m sorry, I really can’t give that information out.’
‘I see.’
‘Are you a reporter?’
‘Uh, no, not really.’
‘What do you mean not really?’
‘Well, you’re not allowed to talk to reporters, right?’
‘Not on the record, no.’
‘Are you saying you can say something off the record?’
‘Well, I might be persuaded, but you can’t use my name.’
‘I don’t know your name.’
‘Right.’
‘Well? Has Bryan Metro been admitted?’
‘No. But we did admit someone today.’
‘Yeah? Who?’
‘Someone pretty famous.’
‘Who?’
‘Guess.’
‘Uh, give me a hint.’
‘You’ll never guess.’