The Fame Game (51 page)
Authors: Rona Jaffe
He thought for a minute and then sat down again. “I suppose you’re right. You have a good head. I don’t mind; you can handle her. She’s gotten too obnoxious for me to bother with anyway.”
“The other thing is, I want Silky’s thirty per cent commission. She’s agreed.”
“You’re dreaming,” Libra said.
“No I’m not.”
“Then I’m dreaming. You didn’t say that.”
“I did. Silky’s and Bobby’s.”
“Bobby you can have. He’s nothing, he’s nobody, you can operate his career out of your desk drawer. But you can’t take Silky’s commission! I’ve treated you just like a daughter. I made you what you are today. What were you before I gave you a chance—a two-bit flack?”
“A publicist,” Gerry said calmly. “Thirty per cent.”
“Look at everything I’ve done for you!”
“You’re not my father and I’m not your daughter. That was my salary, not my allowance. I’m handling Silky and doing all the work, so I want the commission.”
“Presents, cars, the use of my house …”
“I worked twelve hours a day. Sometimes more. Thirty per cent.”
“Fifteen. The other fifteen is mine for overhead, the use of the office, the use of my
name
.”
“Your name is the last thing Silky wants.”
“You see how far you get in this business without my name. Fifteen per cent.”
“Twenty,” Gerry said.
Their eyes locked. She felt nothing, no fear, no sickness, no shaking; just a mild exhilaration at the contest. They were two business people sitting down to a business conversation. He wasn’t Big Daddy Libra any more and never would be again.
“All right, twenty,” Libra said.
“It’s a deal,” Gerry said. “For
now
.”
Libra shook his head. “I’ve created Frankenstein’s monster.”
“And by the way,” Gerry said, ignoring that, “while I was in California I had an idea for a package we can put together, a remake of a film I saw at your house. I’ll check on the rights. There’s a boy I want you to see. I think he’d be perfect.”
“Who is he?”
“A client of mine. His name is Vincent Stone.”
“All right, bring him in and I’ll have a look at him. Vincent who?”
“Vincent Stone.”
“You can’t go picking up clients off the street,” Libra said. “That’s no way to run a business.”
“As you told me yourself,” Gerry said, “that’s how you got started.” She smiled prettily at him and went back to her office to type up the contracts.
She buzzed the new secretary to bring in the standard forms, and typed in the changes that signed Silky, Bobby, and Vincent over to her as their publicist-personal manager. She found a rubber stamp in the desk drawer to stamp the squares where they would initial the changes. It looked a lot more professional than the piece of paper Libra had typed up himself the time he had signed Bonnie Parker, and she was pleased. Her first real clients!
She realized, then, that along with everybody else, except Libra who would never change, she had changed. She wasn’t just an experienced assistant any more, she was a business person. It wasn’t what she’d planned, or dreamed, or even thought life would be, but it wasn’t bad, either. This wasn’t the end, but the beginning. All this time she’d been working to make other people famous, but it had turned out to be her fame game too.
She found herself smiling. She’d do the office in blue and white, with a couple of kinky antiques from that place Dick had sent her to last year, and there was a Robert Indiana poster that said
LOVE
on it that would look nice over the couch. She certainly wasn’t going to put an oil painting of Silky over it the way Libra had with Sylvia Polydor. That might make him froth at the mouth. But an eleven-by-fourteen photo of Silky framed on the wall would be nice, and one of Bobby, and she was sure Vincent had more of the one he’d hung in their apartment. When he got some money, Vincent would have to get his own apartment. She didn’t want gossip. After all, everyone was supposed to think Vincent was a sex symbol, and it wouldn’t do for him to be shacked up with his manager. Everyone would think he’d made it in the business because they were lovers, and that certainly wasn’t the way
her
clients were going to get ahead.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1969 by Rona Jaffe
ISBN: 978-1-5040-0841-9
Distributed by Open Road Distribution
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
