Show Business Kills (39 page)

And then that thing happened, that dumb accident. But at least there was real big news about that. Late last night on TV they
were saying the police caught the guy who did it. The guy who did it! Maybe her luck was changing. Now maybe it was safe for
her to go see the others. Go to their houses. She’d tell them she just got into town and heard the news on TV, and she felt
so awful. And then she’d ask if she could do anything for Jan’s little boy. She’d cruise by their houses
.

She looked in her purse for the list of addresses, but for some reason it wasn’t in there. Maybe she’d left it in the car.
Never mind. She’d copied all of them down in her address
book, so it didn’t matter, and she could find them with the
Thomas Guide.

It was a sunny, hot, smoggy day, and her car was like an oven when she got in. She opened all the windows and sat for a while
looking at the street map, and decided she’d try Rose’s house first since it was the closest. At a light she stopped next
to a black Porsche with a young girl driver about the age of her daughter Polly. The girl’s hand on the wheel had a gold watch
and a few bangle bracelets, and rings on three of her fingers. I want that for Polly, she thought. And I’m going to goddamn
get it
.

People in the city were so rude. Especially on the road, where they just cut in front of you or they leaned on their horns
if you took longer than one second to move after the traffic light changed. And then when they tore past you, they gave you
the finger. She remembered reading a few years back how some really pissed-off people on the freeway were shooting at one
another. She ought to pull out her gun and just hold it out the window at anyone who honked at her. That would shut the fuckers
up. Hah!

The gun. She patted the big striped plastic purse to make sure she still had the gun. She had to do something about the goddamn
broken strap on the purse. She couldn’t afford to get a new purse until one of them gave her a job. Once she got a job somewhere
and was settled in to some nice apartment, she’d go shopping and get herself some new things
.

At Rose’s street she made a left, then looked at the numbers until she found the house. Not bad. Not great, but not bad. She
sat in her car looking up the driveway, wondering if she could really pull off a straight face when she saw Rose
and had to say to her, “I felt so awful about Jan.” Hey, she reminded herself you’re an actress
.

She was startled when the door to Rose’s house opened and a little girl came out with a basketball. She was tiny, but determined
to shoot baskets into a hoop above the garage, which she was trying to do and not having much success. She would go down there
and help her, tell her she was a friend of her mother’s. Find out if Rose was home, just act as casually as if she were on
a leisurely trip
.

She already knew what she’d say if one of them looked cross-eyed at her clunker car. “Oh, I had to bring my daughter’s jalopy.
My car’s in the shop.” She got out of the car and started up the driveway, holding the big striped purse close to her, feeling
the gun bump against her side. “Hi,” she said, and the little girl looked at her
.

“
Hi,” she said. She was smiling. She was only a few feet away from the kid, but then there was a loud noise which turned out
to be a garage door opening, and a big black Mercedes backed out of the garage, and the little girl climbed in
.

She could see the driver, a guy with a beard who must be Rose’s husband, and as he got to the end of the driveway, he spotted
her and stopped, and rolled down the automatic window. She could feel the escaping air-conditioning blow cold at her from
inside the car. She could see the pretty little girl’s face as the man asked, “Are you lost
?”

“
No, thanks, I’m not,” she said
.

“
May I help you in some way?” he asked. The little girl was the age Polly was when Lou moved out. But Polly had never had the
confident look in her face this kid had. It was a look only rich kids had, like they didn’t have a problem in
the world. Not the beaten look that means my dad’s an asshole, and every night my mom cries herself to sleep
.

“
Uh… no. Thanks,” she said
.

She could tell that Rose’s husband was waiting for her to walk away from their property, so she strolled past and up the street
as if she was just visiting one of their neighbors and taking a walk. When he was gone, she walked back up the driveway and
all around the house, looking into the windows
.

Nice kitchen, she thought, pretty bedrooms, a little too froufrou for her taste, and in the cute little office with papers
all over the floor, she saw Rose’s computer where she did her writing, and all around it a bulletin board with photographs
on it. Pictures of that little girl, a few pictures of the bearded husband, and then a lot of pictures of Rose with friends.
What had to be recent ones, and some old ones with her daughter when the daughter was a baby, and then that old one that she
couldn’t believe she recognized
.

She had taken it. She was the outsider who walked by that day. In front of the dorm, Morewood Gardens, that the boys used
to call “The Cherry Orchard.” They were all standing outside together, giggling about some shit or other, maybe it was parents’
weekend or something because they didn’t look like dramats, not wearing the usual jeans and black sweaters. They were all
dolled up as if they were going out to lunch with their folks, and she walked by, and Rose said, “Let’s ask Betty
.”

They were so tight, such a cozy little group, they had to have their picture taken all together. Rose and Marly and Ellen
and Jan, to commemorate their friendship. Even now, thirty years later, she hated them for being so close and so
happy then. There were French doors on Rose’s office, and she tried turning the knob on one of them but it was locked tight.
She wanted to go in there. Just for a minute, to see what else Rose had in there from the past. She tried another door and
it was locked, too
.

She would have gone back to her car then, but a truck drove up, one of those little minicamper deals and a little Jap got
out and pulled a leaf blower out of the back, and some other equipment, and not six feet away from her, a door from the house
opened and a little fat Mexican lady came out and started talking to the guy about what to do and what not to do
.

She watched them yakking away as the maid pointed to some ground cover, and while they talked she led the gardener around
the side of the house, leaving the door ajar, so she slipped right in. Oh it smelled good in there. That maid must be cooking
something, because it smelled like garlic and butter and it made her hungry
.

She could see through the window that the maid and the gardener, rough life there, Rose, were in the backyard deeply into
some conversation in some language, so she got all the way to the office. Inside Rose Schiffman’s office. Jesus, she thought.
This is where the magic happens. An Oscar-nominated movie was written in this very room. She felt excited, like Shirley MacLaine
in
Sweet Charity
when she sings that song “If They Could See Me Now.” She ran her hand over the keyboard of Rose’s computer and then looked
up again at the cork board with those pictures
.

There was the one she had taken of the four of them. Now she took it down and held it at arm’s length, so she could really
see it, and the memory of it still stabbed her. Look at
them, she thought, I hate them so much, I always did, and I still do, because they never even said, “Let’s take another one
with Betty in it.” I remember feeling so shitful because of them. She was squeezing the push pin so hard it stuck in her hand
while she looked at their faces in the picture. But now she heard the voice of the maid getting louder, and she knew she had
to get the hell out of there
.

She started to put the picture back up on the wall, and then she looked at it one more time and felt so bummed at them, so
pissed, that she ripped it in half and then again, and then she threw all the pieces into Rose’s wastebasket and managed to
get out the door before the maid and the gardener got back
.

In her car she looked at the
Thomas Guide
for Ellen Bass’s street. It was a little one in Beverly Hills, south of Wilshire Boulevard. She’d go there next and check
it out. Maybe the hotshot herself would be home, and she could ask her why she never took one minute out of her schedule to
even dictate a thanks for the tape
.

Once she got a job working at the studio, she’d make a lot of contacts, the business was about contacts, and pretty soon someone
would say, “With that voice you ought to be acting,” and then she’d have to tell Ellen she was moving on. Ellen would get
it. She’d moved up in the world herself. She knew certain jobs were just stepping-stones to others
.

When she found the street and the house, she thought she’d made a wrong turn. Ellen Bass could no way live in that little
house. It was a nothing of a house. At least Jan’s little house had a view. This looked like a brick box in a section that
might be called Beverly Hills, but it sure didn’t look
it. The house was dark, so maybe she’d just park the car across the street and ring the bell
.

It was early in the morning on a Saturday, so unless Ellen Bass was shacking up with some boyfriend, she’d probably be there.
It was hard to believe this was Beverly Hills. This was a street where some of the places were houses and some looked like
apartment buildings. She walked up to the little porch and picked up the newspaper that was lying there
.

She knocked and then rang the bell. She could hear it ringing inside, but no one came to the door. After a few minutes she
walked around to the side of the house through the alley, past some big green trash cans, and then to the back gate. She had
to laugh when she saw the little swimming pool that took up practically the entire yard. There was a table and chairs and
two lounge chairs next to it
.

This must be where the big-time lady executive sits to read scripts over the weekend, she thought, and she opened the gate.
It was a clear, sunny, hot day, and the big tall palm trees that lined the street were barely stirring. She couldn’t remember
the last time she’d had a chance to sit around a swimming pool and feel the sun on her and just relax
.

The grass around the pool scrunched under her espadrilles as she walked over to the the pretty outdoor furniture. Prettier
than in any ad, very white and tropical-looking. She put her big purse down on the grass and then she sat down in one of Ellen
Bass’s lounge chairs and put her feet up, and after a minute her whole body relaxed, warmed by the day. The turquoise, glimmering
pool was almost hypnotic
.

She was still holding the
L.A. Times,
so she opened it to the Calendar section to read about what was going on in the
business, and she even kicked off her shoes. This was what life was supposed to feel like. This was how big people lived.
She was reading an article about violence in the media, nearly falling asleep over it, when a loud clang startled her
.

She could hear blaring rock music, and then a young, skinny guy with a flat-top haircut turned the corner. He was carrying
a pole with a net at the end of it, some big plastic bottles, and a boom box that was blasting some bad rock station
.

“
Mornin’,” he said to her as he dropped the stuff, walked back to a little shed that must be where the pool equipment was,
then came back out and picked up the long pole and eased it into the water. The music from his radio was too loud
.

“
Mrs. Bass awake?” he asked her over the sound
.

“
I don’t know,” she said
.

“
She was having trouble with her filter, but I’m not going to be able to look at it today, so if you tell her I’ll be back
Monday morning to look at it, I’d appreciate it. I mean, I might be able to get a part on my lunch break, and if I can, then
I’ll be back around three today, but I doubt if it can happen today, so will you tell her
?”

“
Yeah,” she said, not sure what he’d just said
.

He stirred the water around and poured some liquid from the bottles into the water and stirred again, and when he left, he
said, “Have a great day
.”

After she’d finished reading the paper, she went to the front door of the house again. She rang the bell a few times, but
there was no answer. To hell with it, she thought, and decided to move on to Marly Bennett’s house in Brentwood
.

  
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