Show Business Kills (25 page)

“It’s Marly Bennet,” I reminded her, figuring she’d had a memory lapse about my name, which happens to the best of us, particularly
at this age. And she
is
about our age, I mean she’s been around for years. I remember when she first started out, forever ago, at Screen Gems. Besides,
she had to
recognize me, since according to Harry’s messages, she was requesting me for the commercial. But still her expression showed
nothing. “Harry Berman said you were looking for me,” I tried.

Her response was to look at her watch, then back at me. “Yeah, I was, Marly Bennet,” she said, kind of sing-songing my name.
And her face, which isn’t too pleasant to begin with, had the nastiest little expression on it I’d ever seen. “Do you know
what time it is?” She asked me, out of pursed lips that made her look like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Well, all of a sudden it was as if I’d never lived the forty-nine years I’ve lived. As if I wasn’t a well-respected actress
for years, a pillar of the community. I felt as if I was a bad child being scolded for something, and I didn’t know what.
And I was so shocked that a little funny voice came out of my face, and I said to this Mammy Yokum of a woman, “Oh. Uh. Time
it is? Well, let’s see. Is it… two uh? I mean, I…”

“It’s two o’fuckin’ clock,” she bellowed up at me. “I called your agent at nine o’clock this morning. Where were you this
morning? At ten o’clock? At eleven o’fuckin’ clock?”

“Me? Oh, I was… well, at eight I was dropping my girls off at school and…”

“Yeah, well if you want to have a life and work in this business,” her nasty, mean, contorted mouth informed me, “you better
go out and get yourself a beepah.”

“A what?” I asked, leaning forward because I thought I’d misheard her. But it was the New York accent. A beepah.

“A beepah,” she sneered. “Holy Christ! Even my teenage daughter has a beepah.”

A beeper. She was telling me that if I wanted to have a life of my own and still be in commercials, I had to go out and get
set up with the thing that Andy wears to tell him that his patients are in a life-and-death situation, so he can rush to their
aid. A device which, when it goes off in Rose’s house, means that a human life is in danger. Not that there’s a part available
in some goddamned meaningless television commercial.

“I cast that part at twelve-fifteen, and I closed the deal before I went to lunch,” she said, twisting the knife. And then
without a “good-bye,” or a “sorry,” she walked past me into one of the other offices in the suite, while I stood there in
my now flat hair and my sticky, overpainted face and my best white silk suit, which was spotted from the rain. And after a
minute or two of digesting what had happened, I turned and walked out the door into the rainy day.

I just walked slowly and miserably to my car, even though the raindrops were pelting down on me. I guess I was hoping it would
look as if the raindrops were causing what were now big mascara tracks down my cheeks. I was furious at myself. What in God’s
name was wrong with me? I couldn’t let another incident like that go by. I couldn’t let that woman get away with that behavior.
My entire body was throbbing when I turned and walked back into the casting office and called her name.

“Delia,” I called out in my biggest Carnegie Tech voice.

“Yeah?”

“I want to talk to you, right now.”

“Well, you’ll have to wait, I’m on the Ameche,” she hollered back out, meaning she was on the telephone, because Don Ameche
once played the part of Alexander Graham
Bell and that’s a cute thing some people like to call the phone. Well, the cuteness made me even surer I was doing the right
thing by coming back and confronting her.

“Then get off it,” I said. My heart was banging, and I walked into that little office right to where she was sitting, ripped
the phone out of her hand, slammed in into the cradle, and said, “And listen to what I’m going to say.”

Her face was fuchsia when she looked up at me. “Hey, who the fuck do you think you are?” she said, but I was sure there was
a little flash of fear in her eyes.

“No, Delia,” I said. “The better question would be who the fuck do you think
you
are? Because all of the evidence up to now has it that you’ve been behaving like a nasty, odious little drunk-with-power
troll. Not just to me but to every actor in this business. And I need to know why you think it’s okay to turn your condescending
sneer on actors who need the work, want the work, count on you to understand them, and have to prostrate themselves in front
of you while you strut around here acting as if you have some talent superior to ours.”

“Get a grip, Marla,” she said, getting my name wrong on purpose. “I can ruin you.”

“No you goddamn well can’t. You can’t ruin me because I have mental health and a wonderful life and children who love me and
friends who are there for me and confidence in my talent. My wellness is what has enabled me all these years to be able to
tolerate walking into a room of people like you who want to demean and criticize people like me. A bunch of idiotic flea brains
like yourself who think they have to say something in a meeting to prove their high-paying, no- talent-required
jobs, so they say something negative. People like you destroy all the good in this business.”

“Hey, you were late. It’s not my problem,” she tried, but I was on a roll.

“Terrified sycophants who are feeding off the talented people. Little leeches who are so panicked that someone will realize
one day that they have zero to contribute and fire them, so their fears come out in lousy behavior to everyone around them.
And you know what I’ll bet, Delia? I’ll bet all of that pent-up hate you have has collected at the top of your head and it’s
what’s keeping you so short and twirpy.”

And hearing myself say that brought me back. Made me burst into laughter, giggling at the insanity of what I was doing and
what I just said, and looking into her bugged-out eyes and realizing that the reason I was now looking into her eyes instead
of over her head was that I’d actually lifted her from her chair by the collar and was nearly choking her to death, to the
point where she was wheezing out what she wanted to say next. And it was such a cliché that when she did say it, I just kept
laughing into her frightened little face.

“You’ll never work in this town again…”

“Oh come on, Delia. That’s such shitty dialogue from such a bad, dumb movie that it’s funny,” I said, and that was when I
dropped her, and while she was adjusting her clothes, I said, “You don’t control who works here and who doesn’t. You’re just
another little casting grunt. You don’t have that power, and you can’t frighten me the way you do every other poor soul in
this mean and vicious business in this awful city that’s so morally bereft that God is trying to warn us by shaking us the
way a parent shakes an errant teenager. I’ll work whenever I damn well please,” I said, brushing my
hands together in a gesture of extreme distaste, as if to get any trace of her off them. And then I stormed out of her office.

“You’ll pay for this, you over-the-hill piece of shit…” I could hear her screaming after me. But I kept walking, and when
I got outside the rain had stopped, and the sun was shining down on me, and I was glad I’d gone back in there and said what
I did.

“And was there any aftermath?” Rose asked, as the fluorescent lights in the hospital cafeteria buzzed, making it sound as
if there were a fly trapped inside one of the long white bulbs.

“Oh, not to speak of…” Marly said wistfully. “Except that I haven’t had a job since then.”

  
19
  

I
t’s bad news,” Rose said as she saw Andy come into the hospital cafeteria. His stethoscope was hanging around his neck and
bumping against his body as he moved. “I can see it in his eyes.”

“They’re having trouble stabilizing Jan’s blood pressure,” he told them when he got to the table. “Her condition is looking
pretty serious. I think one of you should call her sister and get her to come out here.” He looked almost apologetic, as if
he knew they’d been counting on him to use some medical magic to fix Jan. Telling them it was time to call Julie was a portent
of doom, and Marly closed her eyes as if to shut it out. “I mean, I’ll call her if you like,” Andy said. “But I think it’ll
probably be better coming from one of you.”

“And tell her what?” Ellen asked.

“I think she ought to have a chance to get here,” he said. “Sometimes family members like to say good-bye even if the patient
is comatose.”

“I’ll make the call,” Rose said, and was immediately sorry she volunteered. What could she say to Jan’s poor younger sister,
who would certainly fall apart when she heard? She’d probably get hysterical, and Rose would have to calm her.
Jan and Julie were more like mother and daughter than siblings. Jan always talked about her sister the way a doting mother
talked about her favorite child.

“Julie’s the jock, not me,” she’d say after a tennis game. “Nobody can hit the ball the way she does.” Or she’d leaf through
a magazine and spot some great-looking dress, and instead of wanting it for herself, she’d say, “I’m going to call and see
if they have it in Julie’s size.” Rose was sure Julie would want to get on the next plane to L.A.

“There’s not a whole lot more I can do here right now,” Andy said, “and Molly’s baby-sitter needs to leave, so I think I’ll
go home and pay her and send her off. Call me if there are any questions, of if there’s anything I can take care of,” he said,
giving his wife a kiss on the cheek. “I told the nurses in ICU to let you in when they think it’s okay. They usually only
allow family in, and only one at a time, but I think they’ll probably let you all in tonight.”

“Because you insisted?” Marly asked.

“Must be because he told them it was Girls’ Night,” Ellen joked.

But Rose knew exactly why the nurses were willing to break the rules. “Because it’s probably her last night?” Rose asked her
husband, and Andy nodded sadly.

“No, it isn’t,” Marly insisted, but without her usual conviction.

Andy waved a helpless little wave to them all and left.

“Let’s go up, and I’ll call Julie,” Rose said, moving her glasses to her nose so she could peer over them and look at her
watch. It was nine o’clock. Midnight in Pennsylvania. Maybe if she got through, Julie could call the airlines tonight and
book an early morning flight west. As the three friends
moved together through the oily smell of the cafeteria and back to the elevator, their arms looped around one another’s waists,
Rose wished she could go home with Andy.

Get into her own cozy kitchen and make a piece of toast and jelly and a cup of tea, then crawl into bed under her comforter
and sleep. Not spend the night on a hard chair in a hospital. Not go upstairs to call a woman she barely knew and give her
the worst news of her life. She promised herself as the elevator rose to the seventh floor that after she accomplished the
hard task of calling Jan’s sister, she’d go back down to the cafeteria and reward herself with the brownie she’d been eyeing
earlier.

“Remember to tell her Joey’s surrounded by people who love him, because I know he’ll be her first concern,” Marly said.

“Tell her I can have a studio driver pick her up tomorrow if she needs a ride,” Ellen called after her as Rose moved down
the hall toward the phones, glancing down as she passed the big windows at the dark street below, to see that the legion of
Maggie Flynn fans, their ranks somewhat thinned, were still out there.

She remembered Jan’s anxiety when the company her sister worked for went under, and Julie found herself unemployed. “Don’t
worry, honey-lamb,” Rose heard Jan say affectionately into the phone one night. She had arrived at Jan’s to take her out for
a birthday dinner, and Jan had gestured for her to wait while she finished talking on the phone with Julie. After a few minutes
she gave Rose a look of distress. “I’ll send you a check every month until you get back on your feet,” Rose heard her say
reassuringly. When she hung up that night, Jan shrugged helplessly at Rose and said, “I’m all she’s got.”