The Fame Game (2 page)

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.”