The Fame Game
A Novel
CHAPTER ONE
This is the last time, I swear, the last time I’ll ever ride the subway, Gerry Thompson thought, feeling like Scarlett O’Hara when she dug out the turnip from the burned ruins of Atlanta. But this was New York, no burned ruin; it was life, excitement, the maddening, indifferent lover, her town even though she had not been born here, even though she had run away and returned. New York was a new job, new love, the smell of new paint in a new apartment. New York was promise even though all around you you saw failure. She gouged her way through the nine a.m. rush hour crowd, being gouged in return, stepped over a drunk left over from the night before, and emerged in the shriek of life that was Fifty-seventh Street.
The Plaza Hotel stood like an oasis in the wasteland of ugly progress. Whenever she saw it she imagined a wealthy septuagenarian peering out of one of its high windows, refusing to come out ever again into the tasteless mess below. That tasteless mess was where it was all happening. Even the Plaza was not immune; there was an office in there now, operating out of a suite, and that was where Gerry was going to work as Girl Friday to the super-publicist—personal manager Sam Leo Libra.
She had never met him. She had been hired by an employment agency in New York because Sam Leo Libra had been in California where he kept his main office. He was in New York now to open a permanent East Coast office, which would eventually be in one of those new office buildings. The employment agency woman had looked her over carefully as if she were casting her: a medium-sized twenty-six-year-old girl with shiny auburn hair, guileless green eyes, and freckles, who smiled a lot, who looked intelligent, friendly, and not easily ruffled; the sort of girl you would not hesitate to ask for directions in the street.
“Five years doing publicity for motion pictures here and in Paris and Rome,” the woman said thoughtfully. “Why did you leave?”
“Because I never saw Paris and Rome—all I ever saw was the inside of the office there from nine in the morning until eight thirty at night and then I was too tired to go anywhere.”
“Is money important to you?”
“I’m too old to work for nothing just because the job is interesting.”
“And too experienced.” The woman smiled. “You won’t be working for nothing, but you’ll be around a great deal of money, people making what seems like a ridiculous fortune for what they seem to be contributing to the world, and you may begin to think you’re underpaid.”
“I don’t expect to be paid as a star,” Gerry said.
“You’ll be getting two hundred a week.”
“My God.”
“Don’t be so delighted,” the woman said. “A year from now you won’t think it’s so much. You’ll still be working from nine in the morning until eight thirty at night, sometimes longer. You’ll have to be able to keep secrets, defend the wicked, lie beautifully, and never lose that look of wholesome happiness. Can you do that?”
“I’ve been doing it for years,” Gerry lied beautifully.
“I trust you have your own apartment.”
“What difference does that make?”
“The telephone. Mr. Libra doesn’t like roommates tying up the phone. You may have to get another line in any case, but if you do, he’ll pay for it.”
“I live alone,” Gerry said.
“And get an answering service.”
“Who pays for that?”
The woman looked at her shrewdly. “I should think you’d need one for your social life—you’ll be working many nights, you know. You can deduct it from your taxes.”
I suppose those people like to take over everybody’s life, Gerry thought, wondering what this Libra was like. But on two hundred a week, who was she to complain? She’d always wanted an answering service anyway, not that she knew anyone she wanted to call her. New York had changed in the two years she had been in Europe: all the exciting single men had vanished, or perhaps she had changed.
“Oh, yes,” the woman said, not looking at her for the first time since the interview had started. “And he wants to know how often you bathe.”
“What?”
“Don’t look at me. He wants to know.”
“Am I supposed to be a Girl Friday or a call girl?”
“I guess he had a dirty secretary once.”
“Well, every day, naturally,” Gerry said indignantly.
“Only once a day?”
She stared at the woman. She didn’t look any cleaner than anyone else Gerry had seen. “Once a day,” Gerry said. “And I wash my hair twice a week and brush my teeth after every meal. How often does he bathe?”
“My dear, he’s always damp,” the woman said.
That had been last Thursday, and on Friday Gerry had gone out and rented a new apartment on the third floor of a reconditioned brownstone in the East Seventies: three rooms with a working fireplace and a view of trees, for two hundred and fifty dollars a month. It was a steal, and she couldn’t afford it. But next week she would be out of her Greenwich Village rat-trap, and there would be the smell of new paint. There would be a green phone in the bedroom, a white phone in the living room, and a pink phone on the bathroom wall. With the last of her salary from Europe, except what she would need for food and subway fare, she bought a seventeen-dollar bottle of pink Vita-bath. Now let him fire me! she thought.
So here she was on a Monday morning in March, in air that was neither chill nor warm but a heady combination of both, bathed and shampooed and perfumed, neatly made up (her hand had been shaking so much from nervousness that morning that it had taken half an hour to put on her false eyelashes), immaculately dressed, looking more like a girl on a date than a Girl Friday—but wasn’t that what Girl Fridays were supposed to look like today? It occurred to her that she was already deeply involved in her job, if only because she had involved herself in debt and could not afford to lose it. But she had always known that she would settle in New York, on her own terms; with an interesting, challenging job, a good apartment of her own, and enough money to feel she was a grown-up at last. This new job had to work out; even if it was horrible she loved it already.
The door to Sam Leo Libra’s suite was open, propped open by a metal cart holding a stack of matched Vuitton luggage six feet high. Two bellboys were busy unloading it and adding the suitcases to the assortment, also matched, that lined the walls of the foyer. A small, thin, blond girl with her hair in two ponytails sticking out at each side, in a plaid mini-suit, a schoolboy’s tie, and textured white stockings, was standing inside the foyer with a clipboard in her hands and a pair of huge tortoise-rimmed glasses balanced on her little nose.
“There are seventy-two pieces!” the girl was repeating crossly. “Seventy-two pieces, and don’t you dare let one get in here before I’ve counted it! Where are the coats? Where are the coats?”
“They’re on the elevator,” one of the bellboys said.
“You left my mink coat on the elevator?”
“The elevator operator will watch it, madam.”
“Excuse me,” Gerry said, “I’m Geraldine Thompson, Mr. Libra’s new assistant. Is he here?”
“I don’t know; I didn’t count him,” the girl said. She pushed the enormous glasses up on her nose and looked at Gerry pleasantly. “I’m his wife, Lizzie Libra.”
She wasn’t a little girl at all—she was forty years old. It was a shock: the tininess, the blond ponytails, the little-girl clothes, and then suddenly the wicked little face, the eyes circled by crow’s feet magnified by the lenses of the glasses. It wasn’t an unpleasant shock but rather interesting.
“What do they call you? Gerry?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you can call Room Service and tell them to get that trash out of here, and then have them bring some more coffee and some Danish—there’ll be people coming in all morning. Get cigarettes too, one pack of each brand and six packs of Gauloise for me. Have you met my husband?”
“No. I was hired here while he was on the Coast.”
“You’ll find him in there,” Lizzie Libra said, waving at the suite, and went back to her list.
Gerry went down the carpeted foyer into the large living room. Tall windows gave a view of Central Park, the fountain on the Plaza, and the tiny hansom cabs waiting across the street. It was absolutely still except for a soft sound that sounded like breathing. She realized that all the windows were closed and the sound came from an air conditioner and a humidifier that had been newly installed, their warranty tags still attached. There were crystal vases of fresh flowers everywhere. God, it was hot and humid, like a greenhouse. The smell of the flowers rose up in the artificially humid air and on an empty stomach this early in the morning it was a little sickening. She went over to the window but discovered all the windows had been sealed shut. Not a breath of street air or a particle of grit could enter. She lit a cigarette and watched the smoke vanish like magic.
The customary painting above the fireplace had been replaced by a life-sized oil painting of Sylvia Polydor, one of the great ladies of the screen, who had been Sam Leo Libra’s first really famous client. People always said: “Oh, Sam Leo Libra, that’s Sylvia Polydor’s manager.” Her portrait was elaborately framed and lit from below by one of those oil painting lights. It was like someone in business framing his first dollar bill.
On the desk there was an office telephone the size of a baby switchboard, bristling with push buttons. Next to it was the hotel telephone. Gerry called Room Service and then located the rest of the office equipment: the typewriter, the address books, the steno pads and pencils, the appointment book. Now there was nothing to do but wait. The breathing of the humidifier felt like a monster in the room with her. She wandered into the bedroom.
The bedroom was immaculate although more Vuitton suitcases of various sizes and shapes were arranged about the wall space. There were two double beds separated by a night table with a push-button phone on it. The windows in here had been sealed shut too, and there was a new air conditioner and humidifier breathing away. There were no flowers. She remembered her mother, who was a terrified woman, often saying that you should never sleep with flowers in the room because they breathed your air and there was not enough for you.
“Mr. Libra?” she said timidly.
There was no answer. No one was there. The bathroom door was ajar, with the light on.
“Mr. Libra?”
Maybe there was no Mr. Libra. Maybe he was like the Wizard of Oz, just an amplified voice and a lot of machines. She felt so nervous she had to go to the bathroom immediately. She opened the door and went in.
The floor of the bathroom was partially covered by clean white towels. At the far end, kneeling on the tile and completely engrossed in his task, was a man with maroon-colored hair in a maroon silk bathrobe, painstakingly scrubbing the marble floor with Lysol.
Gerry let out what must have sounded like a startled squeak and backed out of the bathroom, but not fast enough, for the man looked up. An expression of terror crossed his face, then anger. She knew then who it was: the Wizard of Oz himself, behind his own battery of machines and protection.
“Who are you and what do you want?” he said sharply.
“I’m Mr. Libra’s Girl Friday and I’ll use the bathroom when you’re finished, sir. I’m sorry to have bothered you, I didn’t see you,” she said, smiling weakly and waving her hands like a duck. What an impression she was making! He’d probably either fire her right now or make her finish cleaning the already clean floor, and she couldn’t decide which would be worse.
Sam Leo Libra stood up and walked carefully across the clean towels. He looked calm now. She noticed that his hairline was very low, and his hair was indeed damp, glistening as if he had just washed it. Reddish-brown hair sprouted from the neck of the immaculate white T-shirt he wore beneath the maroon silk robe and crawled down his wrists and the backs of his white hands. That hair, too, glistened with health. He looked like a very clean, newly washed ape.
“You’re Miss Thompson,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll call you Gerry, you call me Mr. Libra, not sir. I’m not that old.”
“Yes, Mr. Libra.” She guessed him to be about forty, the same age as his wife.
“You can’t trust a new place,” he said, gesturing at the immaculate bathroom. “They clean it, but you never know what kind of slobs were there before. Don’t you agree?”
“Of course.”
“Why don’t you go down in the lobby to the Ladies’ Room. I’ll be through here in about fifteen minutes.”
The power play, she thought, beginning to wonder if she was going to be able to like him. Make the employees know their place. The public Ladies’ Room is good enough for her. Okay, if he wants to play, I can play too.
“I’ll be right back,” she said sweetly.
She took her time coming back, stopping at the magazine stand to buy a newspaper. The papers were full of second-page obituaries devoted to the recent death and funeral of Douglas Henry, one of the old-time movie stars with two first names. She read about it coming up in the elevator: one of the pallbearers had been Douglas Henry’s personal manager and publicist, Sam Leo Libra. It was well known, the newspaper said, that Libra kept only twelve clients, no more, no less, and there was speculation in Hollywood and New York about who would be chosen to take Douglas Henry’s place in the Libra stable.
In the hall just outside the suite there was a commotion. The floor policeman was there, chasing away three teen-aged girls. Two of the girls looked about fourteen, although who could tell, the way they were dressed. The thing that gave them away was their pimples, carefully disguised under layers of beige make-up. They were dressed as if they were going to a discothéque, with fake eyelashes and day glo plastic mini-dresses. The third girl was weird: she was about four feet eleven, with a scared little face and enormous eyes, and must have weighed seventy-five pounds. She looked like the Poor Pitiful Pearl doll. She had tears in her eyes. The other two girls only looked aggressive and annoyed.
“Please,” said Poor Pitiful Pearl. “Oh, please! We’ve been waiting here since six o’clock this morning. We just want to look at him.”
“And we want to give him this Mad Daddy beanbag we made,” said Aggressive Number One.
“You can’t hang around here,” the cop said. “You’re disturbing the guests.”
“We won’t say a word,” said Aggressive Number Two.
“You’ll just have to wait in the street. Go on, scoot!” The cop raised his hand menacingly. The little scared one cringed, the other two giggled.
“Can we leave the beanbag?” asked Number One.
“Oh, don’t leave it, Donna,” squealed Number Two. “Then we’ll never see him.”
“This Mad Daddy person is not a guest here,” said the cop. “I told you that but you won’t believe me.”
“We believe you,” said Donna, “But we know he’s coming here because his press agent lives here.”
Press agent, Gerry thought, amused. How Libra would cringe.
“She works there!” Number Two screamed, making a rush for Gerry. “Is Mad Daddy coming? Is he?”
“I don’t know who Mad Daddy is,” Gerry said.
“You don’t?” the three girls chorused in amazement.
“No.”
“He’s darling!”
“Well, if you like, I can see that he gets his present if and when he comes.”
“What do you think, Michelle?” asked Donna.
“I don’t know. What do you think, Barrie?”
Poor Pitiful Pearl was wringing her hands. “I just think we should wait in the street,” she said softly.
Michelle looked at her oversized wristwatch. “I can’t, I’ll be late for English class again.”
“You have to be prepared to make sacrifices …” Barrie murmured.
“Yeah, well I don’t want to get flunked.”
“Discuss it on the street,” the cop said, and herded the girls into the elevator.
Gerry watched the cage descend and smiled at the security cop. She remembered very well when she had been like that, and she felt sorry for the kids.
“This is nothing,” the cop said. “You should have seen with the Beatles. We caught a kid in the air shaft. She almost suffocated.”
In the suite Lizzie Libra had disposed of the last of the seventy-two pieces of luggage and Room Service had cleared away the breakfast dishes and delivered an enormous order of coffee and Danish pastries. Sam Leo Libra, now dressed in a silver-gray silk suit and a thin silver-gray knitted tie, was arranging the packs of cigarettes in a large Baccarat crystal bowl on the coffee table in front of the couch. The smell of disinfectant floated lightly in the air, mingling with the sweeter smell of the flowers.
“You get your ass out of here now, Lizzie,” he said pleasantly. “Do you have plans for the day?”
“I’m going to lunch with Elaine Fellin and then I’m going to my shrink. Then I’ll probably go shopping to recover from the shrink.”
“That’s good.”
“Elaine is picking me up here at twelve.”
“Well, what are you going to do until then?”
“Would you believe get dressed?” Lizzie Libra marched into the bedroom and shut the door. Then she opened it again and stuck her head out. “My husband,” she said to Gerry sarcastically, “he’s so concerned about me.” She shut the door.
“I’m not concerned about you,” Libra yelled. “I just want to be sure you get your ass out of here while I’m working.” He turned to Gerry pleasantly. “My wife always works up a mad at me just before she goes to her analyst so she’ll have something to tell him to make him think he’s worth all that money I pay him.”
“Who’s Mad Daddy?” Gerry asked.
“If you don’t know now you’ll know soon,” Libra said. “He’s got this afternoon kids’ show on television that the teen-agers have picked up on. He’s turned into their love idol. I’m getting the show changed to a night-time slot, probably midnight, next month. I’ll know for sure in a day or two. Then everybody in the country will know him.”
“A kiddie show at midnight?”
“Why not? Did you ever hear of one before?”
“No, I hadn’t,” Gerry said, embarrassed. There was something about this man that made her feel defensive, as if the idea of a children’s television show at midnight was perfectly plausible, if not a stroke of genius, and it was only her stupidity that prevented her from realizing it.
Libra looked at his Cartier wristwatch. “Before the people start coming in I’ll fill you in a little about what I do. You can’t expect to learn it all at once, but you can try to keep up or you’ll be no use to me. Do you want some coffee?”
“Thanks.”
To her surprise, he rushed over to the table and poured the coffee for her. “Cream and sugar?”
“Black, please.”
“Danish?”
She was starving, but she was afraid it would stick in her throat. “Maybe later, thanks.”
He handed her the coffee and a napkin. “Sit down. Now, at three thirty we’ll watch the Mad Daddy Show and you’ll see what he’s all about. His wife Elaine will be here to pick up Lizzie for lunch. Mad Daddy’s Christian name, would you believe Jewish, is Moishe—Moishe Fellin. When you meet him in a day or two, call him Daddy. If you call him Moishe he’ll have a coronary occlusion on the spot and I’ll lose a client. I already lost one that way three days ago.”
“I know. I read it in the papers.”
“Damn shame,” Libra said. “He was a grand old man and a great talent. You don’t see many like him these days. Today they’re mostly schmucks, which is where I come in, trying to find the few good ones and see that they get the success they deserve. You may not realize it, but you soon will—I perform a public service. With all the talent in the world, many of them would never get there at all if it weren’t for me. Now, as I’m sure you know, I always have twelve clients, no more, no less. I like to think of them as my Dirty Dozen.” He smiled. “I give each of them a one-year contract, which keeps them insecure. It’s very important in this business to keep the talent insecure. Otherwise they begin to believe the lies I tell about them and they think they’re too good for the man who created them in the first place through his toil and sweat—that’s me. If they’re good and it works out, I renew the contract.”
“May I ask you a question?” Gerry said.
“Please do. As many as you want.”
“Well, if they do get big, as you say, then what’s to prevent them from going to someone else after the contract is up?”
Libra smiled like the Cheshire Cat. “Insecurity. That’s why I tear them down. You’ll see. You may sometimes think I’m cruel, but it’s good for them, because I’m the best person for them and this is where they should stay no matter who else woos them once they make it. There are always managers and publicists waiting to woo clients who are already famous, but who takes the chances I do on semi-unknowns? Why should somebody else with less imagination and talent than I have reap the rewards of what I planted and cared for, huh?”
“You’re right,” Gerry said.
“Of course I’m right. There’s something else you ought to know. A celebrity, no matter how big he gets, thinks it’s all going to be taken away from him tomorrow. Even when he’s gotten up to the top of Mount Everest he thinks he’s going to fall right off. And I never let them forget that. Because do you know something? They’re right.”
“I’m not sure I agree with you,” Gerry said. “I mean, a Judy Garland, for example; everybody loves her even when she comes out on the stage hoarse.”
His eyes narrowed with genuine anger. “Listen, you, I can send you right back to that employment agency where I found you and that’ll be the end of you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You can be replaced in five minutes. I only have to pick up this phone. Then you can go right back to your schlock publicity job with some jerk movie company. Do you want to do that?”
“No, sir.”
“Then what do you say?”
“I’m sorry. I guess I’ll just have to learn.” She felt like a fool. She should never have mentioned Judy Garland; he was probably jealous because he didn’t have her for a client. She didn’t even know this man and he was yelling at her as if she was a cretin. She knew her face was getting red.
“I only took you on because I like to give young people a chance. You’re really too young for this job. And I wanted someone less attractive. You don’t look serious.”
“I am serious!”
“Then what do you say?”
“I’m sorry. I said I was sorry.”
“Say: ‘Please let me stay, I’ll be good.’” His eyes stared into hers like that game she used to play when she was a kid: Whoever blinks first loses. She could feel tears of rage and frustration beginning to spill over and she blinked. She put down the coffee cup, carefully so not to break it because what she really wanted to do was hurl it across the room, and went for her coat.
Libra didn’t say anything, he just watched her. She took her coat out of the closet and put it on. “Good-bye, Mr. Libra,” she said pleasantly.
Her hand was on the doorknob when she heard him laughing. “Red hair and a temper,” he said. “How trite.”
“You should know,” she said with revolting sweetness.
“Take off your coat, you asshole, and sit down.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“You’re not fired.”
“I know. I’m quitting.”
He strode over to her and took her by the shoulders. “Sit down … come on, I love you. Sit down. I wouldn’t have an ugly girl around here. They depress me. Come on.”
“You’re like somebody in brainwashing school,” Gerry said. To her horror she realized she was beginning to cry in earnest. She was glad she had not eaten any breakfast or she might have thrown up.
“That’s the whole point,” Libra said sweetly. He helped her off with her coat and handed her his monogrammed handkerchief. “I just wanted to show you how I treat my clients to keep them insecure. You see now how well it works. The only reason you were ready to leave is that this job isn’t your whole life like their success is theirs. But I want you to know what I do because you’re going to be very important to me. Your job will be to be sweet and cuddly and pick up the pieces I break. It’s a perfect balance and everybody will be happy. Now sit down.”
“I have one stipulation,” Gerry said.
He looked at her with the pleasant superiority of a teacher humoring a first-grader who has just thrown a tantrum. “All right.”
“You are never, never, repeat, never, to call me asshole again, or any name remotely like it.”
“All right,” he said, amused.
Oh my God, he’s won, she thought. He’s won, and I never hated anybody so much in my life. He’s made it seem as if I was ridiculous to mind what he called me. He’s managed to make me feel humorless and square and I don’t even know how it happened. But in a funny way, she admired him. He obviously had many insecurities of his own—that was an understatement—look at him, Lady Macbeth, scrubbing everything and calling his clients the Dirty Dozen: if that wasn’t Freudian, what was? He probably hated everything about himself. She felt almost sorry for him. He seemed to need something in her that she had to give; perhaps her clarity as an outsider. At any rate he was certainly the most interesting man she had ever met. Perhaps she could win him over … perhaps they could even become friends.
The doorbell rang. Libra looked at her. She fought back a smile and went to the door and opened it.
There stood a six-foot vision in white suede. He was smiling with capped white Chiclets, and his dark hair was neatly cut in a Prince Valiant fringe above navy blue eyes. He was wearing an immaculate white suede suit with a Mao collar, and white alligator loafers. He had a white attaché case in his hand.
“I’m here to see the vicious Libran,” the white-suede vision said. “Tell him Mr. Nelson is here, as in Rockefeller.”
“Hello, Nelson,” Libra said. “Come on in. This is my new baby sitter, Gerry Thompson. She’ll take care of all your needs when I’m not here. Gerry, this is Mr. Nelson, the society hairdresser, my client.”
“My, she’s pretty,” Nelson said, as if she were not there. “Where’s Lizzie?”
“In the bedroom,” Libra said.
“I came to see you, of course, but as long as she’s here I’ll do her hair. I want to welcome you to New York. We’re all so glad you’ll be among the living again.”
“Not all the time,” Libra said. “I’m keeping the old office too.”
Nelson clucked. “The Sam Leo Libra Doll—you wind it up and it flies back and forth to California.”
“Nelson is my personal creation,” Sam Leo Libra said. “You don’t mind if I tell Gerry, do you?”
“I don’t mind. I owe everything to you.”
“When Nelson came to me he was just struggling along, with a lot of talent but no way to sell it. He used to wear a black leather jacket with a fur lining with fleas in it.”
“I never had fleas …!”
“And he rode around on a big black motorcycle. He was burning hair in a dump in the Village where they played rock ’n’ roll all day and the clients danced when they weren’t having their hair set. I took one look at him in that black leather and I told him: ‘Nelson, you’ll never get anywhere like this. You look like the gutter, and the gutter is where you’ll stay. I want you all in white. White is clean, it’s respectable, it inspires trust like a doctor.’ At first he whined.”
“You wanted me in white suede,” Nelson said. “Hair sticks to suede.”
“So I decided that for work he would wear a white kid suit, something soft and clean and slippery. And whenever he wasn’t at work he would wear white suede, to keep up the image. Notice the haircut. He looks like the White Knight. Then I turned him on to several of my more glamorous clients, he did their hair, I sent them to parties and got them and their hair into the columns. Mr. Nelson is now a super-star.”
“Speaking of clients,” Nelson said, “I’m now doing both of the B.P.’s. I do them both at home. Her and him. He won’t let anybody else touch his hair now.”
“The B.P.’s,” Libra said to Gerry, “Peter and Penny Potter. The Beautiful People. You’ve read about them.”
She certainly had. You couldn’t avoid reading about them, ad nauseam; what they wore, where they went, how their apartment was decorated, what they served at dinner parties, what their guests wore, who they knew, how beautiful they were. They lived and entertained like forty-year-old people and she was nineteen and he was twenty-one. He was in his last year at college, but of course they lived in a ten-room duplex, paid for by their parents, and when they had a dinner party there was a liveried footman behind each guest’s chair and afterward all the Beautiful People’s beautiful young friends danced like crazy to the new hit rock group, the King James Version, also one of Libra’s clients. It certainly was turning out to be an incestuous little world.
“How did you like her in the Dynel braids with the lollipops entwined in them?” Nelson asked.
“Very good,” said Libra.
“I thought so too,” Nelson said. “Especially for her, as she’s so young. I don’t like her in just hair, it’s so dull.” He gave Gerry a professional look. “I’d like to do your eyes someday.”
“What’s wrong with them?” she said.
“I don’t know, just fool around and see what I come up with. Who cuts your hair?”
“I have it cut in the neighborhood.”
“Oh, my dear child, you can’t do that. Look at those ends! You’re working for Sam Leo Libra you know; you have to have an image.”
“If she’s good I’ll let her go to you,” Libra said. “Why don’t you go see Lizzie?”
Nelson went to the bedroom door. “Lizzie! Oh, Lizzie, Central Casting is here!”
Lizzie opened the bedroom door. She was wearing a white frilly eyelet bathrobe that stopped four inches above her knees, and pink ballet slippers. Her hair was loose.
“I’m looking for a short, skinny woman, about forty-five,” Nelson said. “To play the part of a little girl.”
“I have the perfect one,” Lizzie said. “Her name is Nelly Nelson.”
“Up yours!” Nelson squealed in delight. “Sideways—you shouldn’t be without a sensation.”
They flew into each other’s arms and embraced and kissed warmly.
“Oh, Nelson, I missed you so much! I’m so glad you’re here. I have lots of things to tell you.” She patted him all over, the shoulders, the sleeves, touching him and smoothing the nap of the white suede suit. She patted his face, but when her hand strayed to his hair he cringed and pulled away. “Isn’t he heaven?” Lizzie said. “Nelson, why aren’t you straight?”
“If I were, you wouldn’t have a pet fruit to play with, miss.”
“Up yours!”
“Let me go fix your hair now, Lizzie. I hope you’re going someplace really elegant for lunch.”
He shoved her affectionately into the bedroom and they shut the door.
“He makes a fortune for me,” Libra said drily.
“My,” Gerry said.
Libra looked up at the framed painting of Sylvia Polydor over the fireplace. “We’re living in strange times,” he said, rather sadly. “You won’t see anybody like Sylvia any more. She was, and still is, the greatest, larger than life. The kids just don’t have that today; they’re just electrically amplified midgets. Sylvia was a publicist’s dream come true. All I had to do was follow her and cover up the more sensational things she did so they didn’t get into the papers. She even married right—every time.” He looked at his watch. “Let me fill you in for a few more minutes and then you can call the operator and tell her to take the stop off the calls and collect my messages. Let’s see … you met Nelson … the B.P.’s, who you’ll have the chance to meet later in the week, are perhaps the two dullest people who were ever born. I like to refer to them as Clients Number Eleven and Eleven-and-a-Half. I handle two musical groups: the King James Version, a rock group that’s coming up very fast, and a singing group called Silky and the Satins, five colored girls from Philadelphia. The main reason I’m interested in them is because of the lead singer, Silky Morgan. The other four are nothing special, they just sing background. They’re two sets of sisters, actually, and Silky is a kid they found in school. They’re all from eighteen to twenty years old. The four of them hate Silky’s guts and she hates theirs. Eventually I’m going to take her out as a single; I think she could get to Broadway. They suspect it, of course, so there’s no love lost. But we present them as full of love, practically a family. I hope you’re free tonight.”
“Yes, I could be.”
“Good. We’re going over to the Asthma Relief telethon. Silky and the Satins are going to be singing, and I handle the TV director, too, a new young guy who’s making quite a name for himself with visual effects. His name is Dick Devere, better known to those who know and love him as Dick Devoid. You’ll probably fall in love with him. Are you married?”
“No.”
“Do you have a guy?”
“Nobody special,” Gerry said. “I’ve been away for two years.”
“And they all got married while you were gone, huh?”
“No,” Gerry said. “It’s a funny thing, but none of the men I was ever seriously involved with have ever married anybody. They wouldn’t marry me, either, so it’s not such a compliment.”
“Who gets married today anyway?” Libra said. “I love Lizzie, but I’ll tell you the truth: if I wasn’t married to her I wouldn’t marry anybody, including her. I met her in college—we’ve been married almost twenty years. Twenty years ago I was an insecure, homely kid who wanted to get laid and couldn’t make out; all the girls were either professional virgins or went for the handsome guys. Lizzie had a million boyfriends and she liked me. She liked my mind or something. So I grabbed her. It’s been okay, you know, ups and downs, but we never had any kids and I think, what’s it all for? Now I can get any girl to lay; they all want me because I’m older, I know how to talk to a girl, and most of them think I can make them famous. And wouldn’t you know—now I’m married. It doesn’t stop me any, but it makes it uncomfortable.”
She wondered how he reconciled jumping into bed with all those girls with his love of cleanliness, but she supposed he washed them first with Lysol, too. He certainly didn’t appeal to her as a possible lover, and his personal revelations so soon in their relationship (or whatever it was) made her uncomfortable.
“I don’t think Lizzie knows,” he went on. “She must guess, but she’s not quite sure. She doesn’t want to know, so she doesn’t let herself wonder about it. Anyway, I’m just telling you this because you’re going to become friends with her and I want you to know that anything you see and hear in this office is your business, not hers, or anyone else’s.”
“Naturally,” Gerry said.
“And I won’t tell anybody what you do,” he teased.
“There’s no one to tell,” she said, smiling.
“No family?”
“They live in Bucks County, and they’ll come to my wedding. If I ever get married.”
“Oh, you’ll get married,” he said. “Tell them to put the calls through now, and get my messages. And put in a call for me to Arnie Gurney in Las Vegas, at the Caesar’s Palace. He’s a client I really like: he works all year round, I never see him. You’ve heard of him—Mr. Las Vegas?”
“Sure,” Gerry said. “I’ve heard of most of your clients—who hasn’t?”
He looked pleased. “Maybe I’ll take you to Vegas with me one time if I can’t get out of going. Arnie Gurney, believe me, you can live without … in fact, I think I’ll get pneumonia and stay home. He’s just the same offstage as he is on: he says hello and tells you five jokes.”
“Mr. Libra …” Gerry said timidly, “you don’t really like them much, do you? The clients.”
“Does an advertising man love soap?”
She called down for his telephone messages, of which there were over a dozen already, and put through the call to Las Vegas. While Libra was on the telephone Lizzie came out of the bedroom wearing a blond Shirley Temple wig, all in ringlets, and a Little Orphan Annie mini-dress: red wool with a big white collar and cuffs. She had on white stockings and black patent Mary Janes. From far away she looked about ten. Mr. Nelson followed her out of the bedroom, preceded by a cloud of hair spray which he was aiming at the wig.
“Stop that!” Libra screamed. “Get that stuff out of here! Don’t you know it gives you lung cancer?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Mr. Nelson said. “Where did you ever hear that?”
“Out! Out!” Libra was beginning to choke, whether from rage, tear, or the hair spray, it was hard to tell. Mr. Nelson hurriedly capped the aerosol can and shoved it into his white attaché case.
“Doesn’t this look just like hair?” Lizzie asked Gerry.
“Exactly,” Gerry lied.
“Well, it’s Dynel,” Nelson said smugly. “Dynel is going to replace hair completely. Soon we’ll just shave all the ladies’ heads and fit them with a wardrobe of wigs. It’s easier, chicer, cleaner, and you’ll just send your hair out to be washed. No more dandruff.”
And all the fruits will keep their nice natural hair, Gerry thought, and then they’ll get all the men.
“Will this fall off in bed?” Lizzie asked.
“Depends on what you’re doing, darling,” Nelson purred.
“What do you think?” Lizzie asked.
“I’m sure you’ll have no trouble,” Nelson said nastily.
“Oh? Well, Nelly, someday if you’re really-really good I’ll tell you what real women do.”
“Oh, I may throw up!” Nelson cried in mock horror. He noticed Gerry looking at him and he gave her a wooden smile. “Don’t mind us, dear, we’re old friends.”
The doorbell rang and Gerry opened the door to the suite. A tall, leggy, very pretty blonde girl of about twenty-five was standing there, wearing a fluffy beige fox coat. She looked terribly clean and sparkly, with taut, glowing skin and earnest gray eyes, like a Miss America contestant about to say that the man she admired most in the world, next to her Daddy of course, was Bob Hope.
“Elaine!” Lizzie Libra said.
“Oh, hi,” said Elaine Fellin. The voice was a shock: it seemed to have nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of her—it was dead, beaten. She entered with a leggy stride and dropped her fox coat on the nearest chair.
“This is Gerry Thompson, who’ll be working for Sam,” Lizzie said. “Elaine Fellin, Mad Daddy’s wife and my best friend.”
“I’m very glad to meet you,” Gerry said.
“Hello,” said Elaine Fellin and nearly broke Gerry’s hand. She was not like a Miss America contestant at all; she was like some great, drugged lion cub. Perhaps she had once been a beauty queen and had never gotten over it.
“Do you have anything to drink?” Elaine said. “I was up all night—I took three Seconals and they didn’t do a damn thing. Daddy’s away in Atlantic City doing a Charity. The show’s taped today, but you can’t tell. I feel terrible.” She dropped into the chair on top of her fox coat.
“May I hang up your coat?” Gerry asked.
“No, forget it. Can you make me a martini?”
“I’ll have a Scotch,” Lizzie said.
Sam Leo Libra hung up the telephone. “You can all go drink at Sardi’s,” he said. “Go on, scram. Get out. Charge it to me.”
“Nelson, you’re coming with us,” Lizzie said.
“I can’t—I’ve got to get back to work,” said Nelson.
“You have to eat, don’t you?” said Lizzie.
“You can eat a sandwich at the salon,” Libra said to Nelson. “Do you want someone else to get your clients?”
“They wouldn’t go to anyone else,” Nelson protested.
“You want to bet? In five seconds. Five seconds. All they have to be told is that you’re out sick for the day and they have to go to whatever dinner party they’re going to with yesterday’s hair and they’ll go right to somebody else.”
“Oh my God!” Nelson said.
Lizzie, Elaine, and Nelson hurried out of the suite with a flurry of waving arms getting into coat sleeves and making farewell gestures. The telephone rang. The second line rang. The third line rang. The doorbell rang. Gerry was glad for the pressure. It meant she didn’t have time to think about those people who had just left and the life they represented, or her own life, which didn’t look as if it was going to be much better. It was all too depressing. She’d rather be an automaton. And please, God, she prayed, let the next client be a nice, sweet normal person I can stand.
But this one wasn’t a client; it was a middle-aged messenger carrying a script. He rushed into the room like the nearsighted Mr. Magoo and fell over the coffee table. It didn’t appear to faze him at all, for he picked himself right up and ran into the bedroom. Gerry ran after him, turned him in the direction of the living room, and let him run back in. Libra was laughing. Gerry plucked the script out of the messenger’s hand, signed the paper he held out to her, and pointed him to the door that led to the hall. He disappeared at a dead run.
“Messengers are getting worse all the time,” Libra said. He read the letter attached to the script. “Another horror story for Sylvia Polydor,” he said. “That’s what happens to them when they’ve had their last possible face lift and won’t play nice mothers—they have to play hatchet murderesses. They’re all doing it now; Crawford, Davis—all of them. When they’re young they castrate with their beauty, when they’re old they have to do it with an axe. I hate the idea of Sylvia, my beautiful Sylvia, doing it, but there’s money in blood … so what the hell.” He put the script on his desk. “I have to read every damn one of them,” he said. “I send on some of the dogs to the clients, along with the good ones—otherwise they wouldn’t know a good one when they saw it. Clients have infallible bad taste in scripts. Gerry, let me give you a word of advice in case you ever want to produce a play or a movie: if the client loves the script it means the script stinks and he has a big part where you have to see him every single minute.”
Gerry smiled. The doorbell rang again and she went to the door. There was a tall woman in her late thirties, with mouse-colored hair neatly pulled back in a bun, wearing a black mink coat and white space shoes. She was carrying a doctor’s black bag.
“Come in, Ingrid,” Libra called happily. His expression had changed completely the moment he saw her: he looked like a small boy greeting his beloved governess who is bringing toys.
“How are you, my dear Sam?” Ingrid asked in a slight accent.
“Ready for you,” Libra said. “This is my new assistant, Gerry Thompson—Ingrid the Lady Barber, my doctor.”
Gerry shook hands with the woman. Doctor or barber? It was sometimes difficult to keep track of what Libra was talking about—but on the other hand, before this morning she would never have believed there was such a person as Nelson the Society Hairdresser either.
“I am not a barber,” Ingrid said, reading Gerry’s bewildered look. “I give scalp massage, body massage, and, of course, vitamin injections.”
“They’re fantastic,” Libra said. “Completely fantastic. I can be exhausted, ready to drop, and Ingrid fills me up with B-12 and Ingrid-only-knows-what-else, and in five minutes I’m a new man. I can go for two days without sleep or food on one of Ingrid’s shots.”
Ingrid took off her black mink coat and handed it to Gerry. She was wearing an immaculate white nurse’s uniform under the coat. “Now I wash my hands,” she said. “And you come in the bedroom, please, Sam. Excuse us, please.”
The two of them went into the bedroom and closed the door while Gerry hung up the coat and poured herself another cup of coffee. She was beginning to feel starved. The telephone had stopped ringing, and she realized it was the sacred lunch hour. Libra had said nothing about her lunch hour—perhaps she should just ask him. The coffee had grown cold. Having signed the bill she knew the breakfast snack for the visitors had cost thirty-one dollars, and she also knew instinctively that none of the nervous, keyed-up people who came into the suite would touch it, and it would all go back in an hour or two, wasted. She wrapped up four of the Danish pastries in a clean napkin and put them into her tote bag. She couldn’t stand to waste food, and besides, she was poor today.
Libra and Ingrid came back into the living room. It was miraculous: Libra was bouncing with energy already. Gerry wondered if it was psychological.
“Coffee, Ingrid?” he asked.
“You always ask me for coffee, and I always tell you no,” Ingrid said disapprovingly. “Coffee has acid.”
“Well, it’s just a figure of speech,” he said. “To be polite. Would you like a glass of water?”
“Water I would like,” Ingrid said. She poured herself a glass of ice water and drank it down in one long draught. “Look at that cake,” she said with distaste. “Who eats that cake? Cake is nothing but starch and artificial preservatives.”
“You run your store and I’ll run mine,” Libra said.
“I eat all the time yogurt,” Ingrid said to Gerry. “When I was pregnant last year I ate four cups of yogurt every day. Do you know, my son was born with two teeth and all his hair?”
“My,” Gerry said.
“You should see him; a big monster! He walks already.” She patted her flat stomach. “Do you know I have four children?”
“Guess how old she is,” Libra said.
“Thirty-five?” Gerry said kindly.
“Forty-five!” Libra crowed. “Look at her! I’m going to make you a movie star, Ingrid.”
“It is not necessary ever to have the menopause,” Ingrid said irrelevantly. “With the new hormones women can function normally until they’re eighty.” She turned to Gerry. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-six,” Gerry said.
“You should be taking hormones already. After twenty-five one should start on hormones. Do you take hormones?”
“No.”
“Do you take birth-control pills?”
Gerry looked at Libra, embarrassed. She wished everybody in this office would stop treating her like an object.
“Tell her, for heaven’s sake,” Libra said, annoyed. “Don’t be so coy—she’s a doctor.”
Gerry nodded yes.
“Well, that’s good,” Ingrid said. “The Pill has hormones in it. But that’s not enough after twenty-five. I can give you some hormone shots if you’d like.”
“No thank you,” Gerry said.
“You don’t know what’s good for you,” Ingrid said. She snapped her doctor’s bag shut with a disapproving look on her face. “I come back tomorrow for your massage, Sam. What time is good for you?”
“Eight in the morning,” Libra said.
“Very good. How do you feel now?”
“Fantastic. You’re a genius, Ingrid.”
He bounced to the closet, took out Ingrid’s coat, and helped her into it. Then he walked her to the door with his arm around her and kissed her on the cheek. She was as tall as he was.
“Very nice to have met you,” Gerry said politely.
“Good luck with your job,” Ingrid said, and left.
Libra looked at his wristwatch. “I’m going to the gym,” he said. “You can go to lunch if you want, or call Room Service and have it sent up here.”
“I’d like to go out, if that’s all right.”
“That’s all right with me, I’ll save money.”
“Thank you, anyway. And speaking of money, do you think I could have my first week’s salary in advance? I’m kind of broke.”
He went immediately to the desk and wrote out a check. He tore the check out of the checkbook carefully, as if he was having a little trouble functioning. He inhaled deeply and patted his chest with both hands. He really did look like an ape. “Got to work off that excess energy,” he said cheerfully. He handed her the check. “I’ll be back at three.”
When he had gone Gerry looked at the check. It was for four hundred dollars: two weeks’ salary in advance. She could hardly believe it. He really wasn’t so bad—he was generous with money, he wanted to help her learn the job, he was a little peculiar, but after all, he had a right to be peculiar if he wanted to be. She called down to the operator to hold the calls, took the extra key for the suite, and rushed downstairs to find the nearest branch of her bank.
too much?WellI’ll think about it tomorrow