The Fame Game (3 page)

“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.