Piece of Work

by Laura Zigman

  “David,” Jack said, giving him a smile and a firm shake. Then he turned and held out his hand again. “Brian.”

  Julia couldn’t take her eyes off David Cassidy as Jack led him and his manager over to the two facing leather couches and coffee table on the other side of his office. Though he had, of course, aged considerably since playing Keith Partridge, he had aged well—his hair, no longer feathered with bangs and wings as was the style then, but combed back off his forehead and held in place with a bit of mousse or gel; his black suit and white shirt that he wore without a tie, tasteful and age-appropriate. Not to mention coast- and season-appropriate. This was no Don Johnson, wearing a turquoise T-shirt and a white linen suit and Italian slip-on loafers without socks for a meeting in Manhattan in the middle of February, the way he had during the peak of his Miami Vice fame when Julia was still an assistant at Creative Talent. Whatever he may have lost over the years in terms of his career, David Cassidy still had his dignity.

  And his dimples.

  And his sparkly eyes.

  Which were no less butterfly-producing and crush-inducing now than they were then.

  Julia felt her face redden—she was sure her normally olive complexion was now the color of a groovy glowing lava lamp—while David Cassidy’s music filled her head and her yellow-lined doodle pad:

  I think I love you! So what I am so afraid of?

  C’mon, get happy!

  “Welcome to our makeshift conversation pit,” Jack said, smiling as he referenced the seventies with obvious irony. Then he signaled her to join them.

  Which she did.

  But only after a slight delay:

  Whatever happened to my Partridge Family lunchbox?

  My Partridge Family thermos?

  My Partridge Family poster and albums and eight-track tapes?

  Did David and Susan Dey ever make out when they were on the show?

  How come I never looked as good in crushed velvet hip-huggers as David did?

  “This is my associate, Julia Einstein.”

  David Cassidy reached for her hand and shook it and when he did, time stopped and the earth moved. One of her earliest childhood fantasies was coming true, and after all the years of working with celebrities, she finally understood what it felt like to be a drooling fan.

  David Cassidy just touched me.

  David Cassidy is polite and has good manners.

  I ♥ David Cassidy.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” he said.

  She nodded without letting go of his hand. “I’m Julia.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I know I speak for Julia, too,” Jack interrupted, “when I say we’ve both very much been looking forward to this meeting.”

  Smiling and nodding vigorously, she glared at Jack. She wished he would just shut up for a minute so she could “process” the moment: there she was, holding hands with David Cassidy on her first day of work! If his manager weren’t sticking out his big furry paw for her to shake, Julia never would have let go of David’s hand.

  “I’m Brian Young.”

  She shook his hand without taking her eyes off David Cassidy. “Great. I’m . . . I’m . . .”

  “You’re Julia Einstein,” David whispered, as if they were both actors and he was feeding her a line.

  She almost collapsed with nervous laughter. “Thank you!” she said, reaching for his hand again. “Thank you so much!”

  She was too busy making a complete fool of herself to notice that Jack had rolled his eyes and pointed to them to sit down. “Let’s get started,” he said as if he never got weak-kneed around has-beens even though she was certain he must have made a complete ass of himself in front of Kathie Lee Gifford, or Justine Bateman, or whatever other females lurked on the farthest reaches of his Wall of Shame.

  “Getting started” in public relations meetings always seemed to mean “providing beverages,” and so without bothering to ask any of them what they wanted to drink, Jack picked up the phone closest to the couch he was about to sit down on and called Vicky. Almost instantly she appeared with four individual bottles of chilled water on a wooden Zen-style tray and put it down on the table in front of them. Julia thought it was weird that Vicky didn’t seem nervous at all with David Cassidy just inches from her beverage tray until she realized that Vicky probably had no idea who David Cassidy was because she was so young.

  Jack handed the drinks out—a bottle of Evian for both David and Brian, a Pellegrino for himself, and a Poland Spring for Julia. Under different circumstances Julia definitely would have liked nothing more than to obsessively try to interpret what the distribution of water really meant—of course Jack took the Pellegrino because he was the most pretentious person in the room. But why had he given her an unimported Poland Spring instead of an imported Evian? Was it because she’d made googly-eyes at David Cassidy or simply because they’d run out of Evian?—but today there wasn’t time to fully do the question justice.

  “As I mentioned, we’re all very excited here to have the opportunity to work with you, David,” Jack said, sitting down next to Julia, who had finally collected herself and was acting her age. “Not only were you and your show a personal favorite of mine when I was growing up, but I know that John Glom was acquainted with your father and was a huge fan.”

  Shocked that he would reference David Cassidy’s father in his opening salvo—and not even sure if John Glom was an actual person—Julia immediately shot a glance across to the other couch to gauge the reaction. It was a risky move on his part, she knew, one that would either endear Jack DeMarco to David or show him to be an opportunistic kiss-ass—Jack Cassidy was dead and there was, of course, no way to prove or disprove that John Glom, assuming he existed, had ever even met the man, let alone been a fan of his—and she held her breath until somebody said something.

  David Cassidy smiled uncomfortably. “Thank you.”

  Brian Young, who hadn’t yet said a word except his own name when he’d introduced himself but who had been staring at Julia’s ample bosom with such unchecked lechery that she looked down to make sure she hadn’t spilled coffee all over herself or that she wasn’t inexplicably lactating, put his unopened bottle of water down on the table next to him and moved forward on the couch, causing the leather to squeak and squeal like a cheap whoopee cushion.

  “I’m not sure if I made this clear to you when we first spoke,” he said slowly, defensively, protectively, the way most managers and agents of has-beens generally did, “but David is speaking with several other agencies to see which one best suits his needs.”

  “Of course he is. Playing hard to get.” Jack made a show of nodding magnanimously and closing his eyes like he was a big sport, and Julia couldn’t tell if he’d known that fact all along or if he hadn’t and was processing it now. Taking a swig from his little green bottle of Pellegrino, he leaned back on the couch, telegraphing the message that he enjoyed, even relished, exactly this sort of competition.

  Brian leaned back and spread his arms out over the top of the couch, smug in the knowledge that he’d played his opening hand marvelously thus far, but his apparent victory didn’t last long.

  “The only problem with that strategy,” Jack said, “is that there has to be interest in the client to begin with.” He stared at both men on the couch and shrugged dismissively. “You can’t play hard to get when no one wants the get.”

  Shocked and horrified, Julia stared down at her pad.

  Not to put too fine a point on it.

  “I think what Jack is trying to say here,” Julia interrupted with an enormous and desperate smile on her face, “is that the business has become incredibly competitive. Which means that we have to become much more creative about achieving the goals of our clients.”

  Brian, clearly taking umbrage at the picture Jack had painted of his client as a loser and at his implied role in that loser status and completely disinterested in her bosom now, sat for
ward on the edge of the couch again.

  “Let’s just get one thing clear here,” he said to Jack. “David Cassidy was, and still is, one of the highest-grossing, best-known, and best-loved recording artists in the world. His records have sold over twenty-five million copies, including four consecutive multi-platinum LPs. In fact, his newest album, Touch of Blue, was just released in the U.K. to fabulous reviews and very strong sales.”

  Jack smiled: Hyperbole and reference to Jerry Lewis syndrome (being famous anywhere else but here) = desperate has-been-speak.

  Then he leaned forward and whispered:

  “I’m well aware of the success of Touch of Blue outside the U.S. Which, if I’m not mistaken, is the only place it was released since the album still hasn’t come out in America. Unless, of course, I missed it in Billboard.” Jack had clearly done his homework and was now beating them all over the head with it. “I mean, no one releases an album in a foreign country without releasing it here because they want to. They do it because they have to. When their recording label passes on its option to release it here.”

  Brian shifted nervously in his seat and Julia almost felt sorry for him.

  But she felt more sorry for David Cassidy, who was being forced to listen to Jack and Brian discuss his personal continuum of success and failure right in front of him as if he weren’t even there. Despite the fact that this was standard operating procedure, Julia had always found these sorts of meetings difficult to sit through—the separating out from a potential client’s life the wheat from the chaff—but this one was particularly brutal. Perhaps because she wasn’t yet used to Jack DeMarco’s “style”: insulting, attacking, bullying, and shaming has-beens into agreeing to become clients.

  Jack glanced over at Julia and, whether it was true or not, she could tell he thought he was home free—that he had sealed the deal, sunk the putt.

  But then David and Brian asked her what she thought and all bets were off.

  It occurred to her suddenly when they did, that Jack hadn’t once asked her for her input, and in a flash she realized what should have been obvious from the beginning: that the reason he had asked her to stay for the meeting wasn’t so he could see her perform in a client-acquisition situation, but so she could see him perform—so she would be impressed by his preparation, his delivery, and his ability to make people pay attention. He wanted to make sure that before Julia Einstein went home that day, she knew exactly who it was she was working for now:

  Jack DeMarco, Jackass.

  Motivated by an intense desire to beat Jack at his own game and by the freedom that came from knowing she had absolutely nothing to lose—she did, after all, as Jack had mentioned right before the meeting, already have this stupid job—Julia sat forward on the couch.

  “I agree with Jack’s ultimate goal, but I would focus instead on David Cassidy’s many strengths, on all the things he’s done right over the years,” she began, speaking with euphemistic positivity the way she’d been trained to. “Because he has always been a musician, first and foremost—because he has never pretended to be anything he wasn’t—the public knows that whatever ups and downs he may have had over the last three decades, David Cassidy is still David Cassidy, authentic in a way that most celebrities, past and present, are not.”

  She pushed her pad aside, tugged at her skirt in the hopes that it could be coaxed into just grazing her knees. But it wouldn’t budge and for an instant she stared in horror at the impossible hugeness of her knees. “My main strategy would be to find a philanthropic or charitable organization that David is either already involved with or wants to get involved with and offer his services as a celebrity spokesperson. All celebrities need to have a cause, a platform. It maximizes their chances of interacting with the public and humanizes them.”

  David and Brian exchanged glances while Jack shifted uncomfortably on the couch.

  “In the same way that Paul Newman’s name has become synonymous with unprecedented business-driven philanthropy,” she said. “In the same way that Elizabeth Taylor’s name became synonymous with AIDS research, and that Jerry Lewis will forever be the face of muscular dystrophy, David could become associated with a prominent worthy cause. Using his celebrity in a way that is meaningful and that provides a service instead of using it to endorse a sneaker or a carbonated beverage would allow the public’s first reconnection with him after all these years to be a completely positive one. All subsequent endeavors to reposition David in the entertainment industry would then have a far greater chance of succeeding, since the public would already be predisposed to being receptive.”

  Whether it was the content of what she’d said or merely the fact that the words had come out of her mouth and not Jack’s mouth and were thus not insulting or offensive, both David and Brian responded immediately, David mentioning the charity he and his wife had started and Brian mentioning how he knew and could approach the executive directors of two different organizations: one for dyslexia and the other for attention deficit disorder.

  Or autism.

  He couldn’t remember which.

  “Not that it really matters,” he added almost giddily.

  It was when they wanted to go to Julia’s office to discuss the matter further—an office she hadn’t even seen yet and wasn’t sure existed—that Jack stepped in to recoup his losses. Uninterested now in acquiring David Cassidy as a client since it was clear that both men had responded much more positively to Julia than they had to him, Jack stood up, walked over to the doorway, and poked his head out to ask Vicky if he had any messages. When he returned to the conversation pit empty-handed, he stuck his arm out.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, shaking hands and making it clear that the meeting was over. “Thank you for coming. We’ll look forward to hearing from you.”

  Without walking them to the elevator or even asking Vicky to, Jack returned to his desk, picked up his phone, and started to dial, probably calling Information, Julia suspected, or the weather, or his home machine in order to save face. Since Julia hadn’t seen her office yet and didn’t even know where it was, she led them instead to the elevator, getting kissed on both cheeks in the faux-European way by Brian and almost fainting when David Cassidy took her hand in both of his to shake it.

  When she returned to Jack’s office, he looked up from his desk and smiled.

  “You two should have gotten a room.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “If I’d known you were so in love with Keith Partridge, I would have let you meet with him alone.”

  “I’m not in love with him.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “I am not.” She rolled her eyes and pulled her cardigan closed. “I was just a little shocked. I mean, you didn’t give me any notice for the meeting and I was completely unprepared.”

  “That’s life in the fast lane,” he said, looking around his loser office without a trace of irony. “Anyway, now that that’s out of the way, I’ll show you around.” He came out from behind his desk and bent down for the straps of her briefcase. “Don’t forget your bag,” he said, handing it to her from where she had left it on the floor. “And your pad.” He turned around slowly and picked it up off his desk where she knew she hadn’t left it and held it out. She grabbed it from his hands and shoved it into her briefcase.

  “I’ll show you your office first.”

  She looked at him warily, trying to gauge whether or not he’d flipped through her notes while she’d been escorting the Partridge Party to the elevator, then followed after him.

  “Oh, and Julia? If you think of any questions later, just call me on my intercom.”

  She stopped dead in her tracks behind him and closed her eyes.

  “But when you do, ask for ‘Jack DeMarco, Jackass,’” he said. “That way I’ll know it’s you.”

  7

  Later that morning, after the briefest of orientations—“Your office”—and introductions—“Jonathan Leibowitz, your assistant”—Jack called her back into h
is office.

  “Mary Ford,” Jack announced before getting up and walking around his desk with his hands tucked into the pockets of his pleated pants. He was wearing a cheap glen plaid suit with Top-Siders, and it occurred to her that Jack wouldn’t be half as bad if he only dressed better. He was talking in bullets the way she remembered he had during her interview the week before—as if everything he said was to be written down immediately, it was that important—and Julia hurried to uncap her pen.

  “Born: Marlene Fliegel,” he continued.

  Bullet.

  “Claim to fame: Former star of screen—All the While and What I Did for Love.”

  Bullet.

  “And stage—Kick Up Your Heels, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And even some Shakespeare in London—Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice.”

  Bullet.

  “Current status: Former Hollywood legend desperate for a comeback.”

  Jack had looked at her over his glasses to make sure she wasn’t missing anything, then added just in case she was:

  “Hence the product name, ‘Legend,’ and the fact that she’s retained our services.”

  Julia nodded, scribbled furiously.

  Duh.

  “Particulars and coordinates: Lifelong resident of the Ansonia apartment building on the Upper West Side. Frequent uninvited hanger-on in Hollywood, Miami, Paris, Cannes, Milan.” Jack turned and headed back toward his desk. “Personal information: Lives alone. No husband. No male companion. No female companion. No dog. No cat. No hamster. No gerbil. No partner of any kind. All she has is an assistant. But every time she hires someone, they quit.” He glanced briefly at his Palm Pilot, presumably to try to find Mary Ford’s entry and the name of her most recent assistant, then thought better of it. “By the time you start working on this—like, tomorrow—there’ll probably already be someone new, so let’s skip this for now.”