“The transfer is designed for an Alfa. We may have to rethink it.”
The set was a frozen pond, strictly man-made of course, and it was located in a weedy lot at the edge of a trailer camp, in the blazing sun. It was like the scene of a terrorist bombing. A kind of stunned chaos. About seventy people from the production company, Larry Berman told me. Taking pictures, making sketches, checking lights and cameras. People from the agency, people from the client. Strangest of all were the people from the trailers, drifting down to watch in twos and threes, many of them still in their robes and nightgowns, asking questions, starting rumors.
Four cops kept them away from the pond.
A silvery Porsche pulled up. Larry Berman delivered me to Spike Mallory. This fellow Mallory was in his early fifties, an active-looking man with a weathered, crinkly face and short gray hair. He wore a T-shirt, faded jeans and faded sneakers, and a pair of mirrored ski glasses with sky-blue frames, to sort of set off his deep, weathered tan. He was probably an accomplished yachtsman who liked ocean racing. And he’d probably divorced his wife of twenty-eight years to marry a much, much younger woman. He had that look about him.
“Vicious tan,” Larry told him.
“Cost me plenty.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“British Virgins.”
“Monster tan.”
They might have been talking about a disease he’d picked up. Larry went away to check on something. I asked Spike if he’d talked to Floss Penrose.
“Larry talked to her. She loves the script.”
“You didn’t talk to her?”
“Chain of commandwise, it would be a Larry Berman who would talk to a Floss Penrose.”
“She runs Floss Penrose Associates,” I said. “She’s at the top of the chain, or the pole, however you say it.”
“Cleo, we bill three hundred million worldwide.”
That seemed to settle that. He uttered the figure softly and a little sadly, as if Floss shared office space with a man who sold artificial limbs over the phone.
We left my suitcase in the Porsche and went over to meet Bandy Stratton. She was the ad manager for the Kelloid Company. The client in other words. We moved slowly through mobs of technicians. Spike said the writer and art director hated the producer. Everybody hated the director, who acted as though he was shooting a feature-length film about death and redemption on a rocky island in the North Sea. The client was merely worried, watching everything and everybody, waiting for some disaster to occur. And the grips called everybody fags.
Bandy Stratton was standing near the pond, reading a script. A pleasant-looking woman in a handsome white suit and green-and-white-striped aviator glasses with polarized lenses.
She shook hands all around. She was an enthusiastic handshaker. She pumped way up and down, like someone just learning how to do it.
After pleasantries between Spike and Bandy, he drifted off toward the clamoring mob.
“Don’t you love it?” she said. “God, it’s in my blood. I swear it is.”
“I don’t even know the name of the product.”
“Well, you’ve been busy-busy. We’re very happy with the script. It sings. It absolutely does, Cleo. You skate onto the pond wearing a turtleneck and jeans. Plain, ordinary, everyday. It’s a little Iowa-type pond. Trees in the background, banked snow, a few little girls skating around.”
“Sounds nice.”
“It’s what you’ve come home to.”
“What I’ve come home to?”
“Sure, you skate toward the camera and do one of those sideways braking maneuvers. Then you say, ‘This is what I’ve come home to, the good, the simple things.’ You mention life in the big city, life on the road, a woman playing a man’s game. Then the little girls sort of flock around you, and you say, ‘That’s why it’s so good to be back among the Amazons.’”
“Amazons?”
“Sure, they all have bags of our new snack food. And you say, ‘Amazon Ringos, Amazon Discos, Amazon Nuggets, Amazon Noshes.’”
“Amazon Noshes?”
“A little ethnic never hurts,” she said.
“And they all have these bags of snack food on this Iowa-type pond.”
“Right. And they’re all skating around you eating the stuff, and you say, ‘That’s right, the new crackle-snackers from Kelloid’s. Amazon Ringos, Amazon Discos, Amazon Nuggets, Amazon Noshes.’ Then we have a close-up of one of the little girls, and we hear you say, ‘Women-tested Amazons. The snack we packed for women. Every age, every size, every make of woman.’”
“A snack food for women?”
“Right. You say, ‘It has the action ingredients today’s women demand. Amazons. The new crackle-snackers from Kelloid’s.’ We cut back to you. One of the girls skates up and hands you a bag of Amazon Discos. ‘Be good to yourself,’ you say into the camera. ‘Take an Amazon to the movies, to the roller rink, to your favorite country pond. Women-tested Amazons. The snack we packed for women.’”
I was a little speechless by this time.
“Then the background gets misty,” she said, “and the girls kind of fade into the mist, and music comes up, something nostalgic but with a beat, and you skate around in slo-mo eating your Amazon Discos, and we hear your voice over the music. ‘So come home to Amazons,’ you say. ‘Amazon Ringos, Amazon Discos, Amazon Nuggets, Amazon Noshes. The new crackle-snackers from Kelloid’s. Amazons. The snack we packed for women.’”
I guess she’d memorized the thing.
“Then it starts snowing,” she said.
“What does it snow, Amazon Brain Maggots?”
Bandy moved her glasses down toward the tip of her nose in order to look at me in natural light.
“I don’t think I quite understand.”
“I don’t either, but I felt something disgusting was called for.”
“Oh dear, what does this mean?”
“I don’t know, Bandy. Beats me.”
“Cleo, it sings.”
“But snacks for women?”
“We want women to be good to themselves. I do jazzaerobics two minutes a day, every day. I use a rubber massage glove when I shower, to get rid of the ripples on my heinie. Amazons is part of this whole womenshape, womenform, be-good-to-yourself thing.”
Jazzaerobics?
“We’ve copy-tested this idea all through the heartland. It’s a wonderful marketing strategy. It will sell and sell and sell. I don’t see the difficulty, Cleo.”
“Okay, the turtleneck is fine. The turtleneck and jeans I like. But I can’t skate up to the camera and say this is what I’ve come home to—Amazon Noshes.”
“You’ve come home to the good things, the simple things. You’ve been on the road, suffering anguish in lonely hotels. You’re back on the pond of your childhood. You have a snack. Everyone has a snack now and then.”
“The pond is fine. I don’t mind the pond. But I can’t say crackle-snackers from Kelloid’s. That’s just too stupid.”
“Oh dear, I think we’ve got a problem.”
She went off to find Spike Mallory. My own fault. Glenway Packer had offered to read the script to me over the phone. He’d said it was acceptable. This meant no cleavage. My only concern was cleavage. Shortsighted of me. But how could I know they were devising action ingredients for women in their junk food laboratories in Battle Creek?
Spike Mallory suggested we go to lunch. He and I. A working lunch. We got into his Porsche and a few minutes later were ensconced in a cushy banquette in a very smart, dark, hostile restaurant. All the waiters looked like matadors and seemed to hate the patrons, although Spike, in his faded jeans and T-shirt, got a pretty good fawning over.
“Everybody comes here,” he said. “But you have to get the right table in the right part of the restaurant. Otherwise you’re better off staying home. It’s better to stay at home than to sit in the wrong place at the right restaurant.”
Peop
le were having margaritas and guacamole. There was a fair amount of necking going on and a little drunkenness here and there, early as it was. All the women had cigarette-leg jeans, frizzed hair, and bluish lipstick. The people without margaritas and guacamole had strawberries and champagne.
“Once you’re at the right table in the right part of the right restaurant, you have to get a phone call,” he said.
Even his voice was weathered and chapped. He sounded kind of amused by the world. I couldn’t help noticing his impressive forearms. They were the forearms of a man who’s been fighting the wheel of oceangoing yachts through years of heavy seas.
I kept seeing myself in his mirrored ski glasses. About three-quarters of the people in the restaurant wore sunglasses. Tense, bitter, cynical remarks flew from table to table. The lithe, angry waiters glided through the dimness.
“Tell me what’s bothering you,” Spike said.
He took off his glasses, revealing clear, gray, flinty eyes. The eyes of a man who billed three hundred million worldwide.
“Well, you have me on this pond, talking about real things, lonely hotels, life on the road, and it turns out that what I’ve come home to is crackle-snackers from Kelloid’s. A junk food for women. Amazon Dildos. I can’t skate out there and say those things.”
“We’ve tested this idea. People like it, Cleo. It’s got a lot of cute.”
“A lot of cute?”
“Sure, when the little girls skate around you, and you say you’re back among the Amazons. Or when you skate in slo-mo munching on Discos.”
“I want to talk to Floss,” I said.
Our strawberries arrived.
“I don’t think it’s crackle-snackers that’s got you upset. I think it’s the pond.”
“The pond is fine.”
“You don’t believe the pond.”
“I believe the pond.”
“You don’t like the idea of a frozen country pond at high noon on a sweltering day in Southern California.”
“I’m sure you do it all the time.”
“You don’t think the pond is real.”
“The pond is real. It’s the rest of it that’s fake.”
“It’s the rest of it that’s real,” he said. “The Amazons are real. That’s real snack food those kids are eating. Those are real kids. If anything’s fake, the pond is fake.”
“I want to talk to Floss,” I said.
He slumped a little lower in his chair, nodding at someone across the room. In seconds, a phone appeared at our table as though on little cat’s feet. Spike put his glasses back on and dug into his strawberries. I watched myself in his mirrored lenses as I talked to Floss in New York.
“I don’t think I can do this commercial.”
“Why not?” she said.
“It’s mindless.”
“Of course it’s mindless. It’s a junk food commercial.”
“Well, I’d feel stupid standing out there saying the snack we packed for women. They make me say everything three or four times. Crackle-snackers, for instance. I’d feel so stupid.”
“Of course you’d feel stupid. Who wouldn’t?”
“Can we just forget it then?”
“It’s got a lot of cute,” she said.
“Floss, every age, every size, every make of woman.”
“Kelloid’s of Battle Creek,” she reminded me.
“I know, but half of it is real and half of it is fake, except Spike and I can’t agree on which is which.”
“Spike Mallory is there?”
“Yes, but tell me what to do. Can we just call it off?”
“Cleo, you sweet, dimply, blue-eyed, innocent child.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Give Spike the phone. I want to talk to Spike.”
“I’m not sure he’ll talk to a Floss Penrose.”
He smiled faintly and reached for the phone. I started chugging champagne. In two clean, jerking motions, I went through two glasses. Spike said something to Floss about legal action, moral obligations, time, money, talent, man-hours, the client, the agency, the production house, and he ended with the human commitments people make to each other on a one-to-one basis.
I looked at myself in his mirrored lenses.
I knocked back another Moët. Not half bad. A lean, dark waiter refilled my glass. This one I merely guzzled, letting my throat contract, or whatever it does, between gulps. So although the glass never left my lips, the long pauses I took between swallows meant, I think, that it was not a true chugging exploit such as we used to do with beer in Lethbridge, Saskatoon, and Billings, drinking it without throat contractions so that the backup of beer caused near death by drowning, under the big western skies.
Spike said something about the dynamics of trust. He put down the phone and took off his glasses. Those flinty eyes were impressive. A little more flint and you’d have a homicidal maniac.
I finished off another champagne and held the glass out near the edge of the table. Someone passing by filled it skillfully. The man and woman at the next table had their hands in each other’s jeans. They necked fitfully. His face was full of bluish lipstick. They seemed to dislike each other.
“Athletes are symbols,” Spike said.
“The last person who told me that had a credit card up his ass.”
He put his glasses back on. Someone took away the phone. I drained another glass and held it near the edge of the table. A hostile presence loomed like the shadow of a giant wing. Too soon for DTs, I thought. It was a waiter with champagne.
I chugged it noisily, sensing that Spike was looking on.
“Ever eat Ralphies?” I said.
He took his glasses off to stare flintily.
“Never mind,” I told him.
I rode out to Inglewood in the team bus. The driver was new and kept getting lost. I don’t recall much of the game against the Kings.
There was another bed check that night. Not Jeep this time. Two darkish fellows with beards. They carried flashlights and wore New York Ranger Windbreakers. One of them also wore an Arab headdress.
The road trip was winding down. All we had to do was fly from Los Angeles to Atlanta. Then back out to Tacoma-Seattle-Vancouver. Then back east to New York.
Murray Jay came and sat with me on our flight to Atlanta.
“I wonder if the pilot will get lost,” he said.
“As long as I have a window seat, who cares?”
“All these dislocations, expansions, disappearances.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t feel well, Murray.”
“Some teams are named for places they don’t play in. Other teams are named for places that don’t even exist anymore. Still other teams are named for entire regions. And still other teams are named for lofty descriptions of cities, states, or regions. Some places have names but no teams. Some places have teams but no names. Some places have names and teams but don’t exist in people’s minds as the places that have these teams because the teams are named for different places. That’s why bus drivers get lost going to arenas. It’s like some secret geography. Anaheim, Inglewood, Landover, Bloomington, Uniondale, Irving.”
That romantic drumroll of American place names.
“As much as I love the idea of America,” he said, “I can’t wait to move into my new building. The doormen are tiny and pink.”
“Where’s your Wüsthof?”
“They seized it at the boarding gate.”
In Atlanta, they play hockey in a thing called the Omni. The usual, friendly mixture of imbecile organ music and smoky lights. Forty miles to the east lay Shalizar with its white columns, and its honeysuckle and parakeets and Spanish moss, and its old ruined church sinking in the swamps.
Which world is the real world?
14
Glenway’s mother’s chauffeur was a young woman named Bette, pronounced bet, McCatty. Actually she was more or less a free-lance dri
ver and worked only parttime for Mrs. Packer. Most nights she worked for a topless chauffeur agency, driving visiting businessmen to and from Atlanta nite spots.
I wondered aloud whether this attracted the attention of other drivers.
“The novelty’s kind of worn off as far as local people driving off the road or anything.”
“What about the police?”
“Topless driving doesn’t have too much priority around here what with all the high-profile crime. Although some people would say nothing’s higher profile than bare breasts across four lanes of speeding traffic. It’s strictly business anyway. Men with expense accounts who want a little different time come dark. If one of the drivers wants to make private arrangements, that’s up to her. Otherwise it’s just a cutesy kind of evening for these guys. They seldom get fresh. At least with me. I’ve always been big chested. Driving around, I kind of sense a hushed silence back there. There might be four or five men crammed back there. They don’t say a whole lot. Ask me where I went to school. Things like that.”
“Do they ever sit up front?”
“Not supposed to, but some drivers make exceptions. You’ll get a whole bunch been drinking, there’s always one that wants to sit up front. ‘Hey, I want to sit up front.’ Like that, you know. I don’t let them. Some drivers might.”
“You think we’ll ever have total nude?”
“New Orleans maybe. Not here.”
I dozed the rest of the way. When I opened my eyes, we were coming to a stop in front of the main house at Shalizar. I thanked Bette and got out. As the car crunched away over the pebbled surface, Glenway came bounding down the stairs like the Master of the Hounds after a hearty breakfast.
He wore soft, white Italian pants and a hooded shirt the pale blue color of his eyes. Behind him, the old plantation house loomed above marble columns. Ivy climbed one wall and I caught a glimpse of giant plants on a veranda along the near side of the house. Everything half sagged, but in an interesting, realized way.
Glenway took my bag and we went inside to meet his mother. He said she was in the parlor, and she was, surrounded by plants and bird cages and ivory-inlaid chairs and mahogany cabinets and silver candlesticks and four-bladed ceiling fans and rolltop desks. A parrot was squawking in its cage and a Great Dane lay by the fireplace.
Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Woman Ever to Play in the National Hockey League Page 33