An American Love Story (39 page)

“It’s late, it’s late,” he cried like the White Rabbit, in a panic, and was gone.

She got up slowly and walked to the door. She heard his car driving away. Clay had not even left her the wet spot to sleep on; the wet spot was still seeping out from between her legs and running down the inside of her thigh.

What was wrong with him? She tried to compose herself, and waited for her swollen readiness to subside. If he had stayed they could have had real passion together. He seemed guilty to spend even a moment doing something so removed from his work and the plan he had put together to save his life. Suddenly Susan felt a sharp pang of loneliness. She threw on sweat pants and a T-shirt and went to find Dana.

Dana was in the den watching television. “Where’s Clay?” she asked.

“He left.”

“So soon?”

“He had to.”

“Well, that’s a shame. I thought he might stay all night.”

“You’re a romantic,” Susan said. She sat down on the couch with Dana and they watched an old black and white movie and ate fake ice-cream pops that were supposed to contain only thirty calories each. She didn’t know what she would do without her friend; Dana was family, security.

At the party the following night Susan had never looked prettier. She had on a new black dress, and had even had her hair done. People she knew were glad to see her, and Clay introduced her to everyone he knew whom she had not already met. Some people asked her about the plans for
Like You, Like Me.
It was
obviously not forgotten, even after all this time. A few of them said what a great TV miniseries it would make, and Clay agreed and said he had decided to do it as six hours now, not eight. It was sheer bravado, but at that moment, standing by his side as his partner, the successful author of a book people wanted, she believed it.

The party ended late, and Clay dropped her off at Dana’s house in the limousine and went home. It reminded her of their early dates together, so many years ago, back in time.

He was working hard. Some nights he took her to dinner, and others he had dinner with Anwar and she was not invited, and she had dinner with Dana. He was so distracted Susan preferred to be with Dana. “Goujon acts like that when he’s on a project,” Dana said. “That’s why I wouldn’t be caught dead going with him to Canada this trip. The last picture we were on he never spoke to me except to ask if I’d sent out his laundry.”

“The other day we were in the parking lot outside Clay’s office,” Susan said, “And he opened the trunk of his car to show me it was filled with clothes for the laundry and dry cleaner, all stirred around in a mess. Shirts, suits, ties, everything. He said: ‘Look at the way I live now.’ It was pathetic.”

“It’s his choice.”

“I’m not sure he has a choice …”

In a way Susan was relieved to go back to New York after two weeks. Clay promised he would come soon to see her.

26

1985—HOLLYWOOD

B
ambi had been up all night trying to decide how she should present herself to Clay Bowen. As soon as she’d mentioned Sally Exon’s name to his secretary she got an appointment. She could see that people respected Sally, but who should
she
be to impress him and make him give her a job?

The waiflike sad widow did not strike her as someone an important producer would hire. Simon was dead, and she no longer had to struggle against the image of being just his wife, or even just his widow. It was someone like Sally she wanted to be; independent. Covered with silver jewelry as she was, there was no wedding ring on Sally’s finger. She traveled alone and quickly, and had friends everywhere. Bambi looked down at her own hand. The past was over: her wedding ring only gave the wrong impression. With a quick pull she took it off.

Her finger felt strangely free, and so did she.

But she didn’t want to be exactly Sally, she wanted to be
Bambi, special. She tried to think what Sally would have been like starting out. Probably feisty but humble. Talented and more than willing to work hard and learn. By dawn Bambi had decided to take along her script as well as some of her mood pieces from the coffeehouse. Everybody knew a fiction writer took bits and pieces of life and blended them with imagination—let Clay Bowen think what he wanted.

It was so hot out that walking from her car to his office her new shoes had already stretched. When she got into the air-conditioned coolness she realized that she was still perspiring from nerves. This could be her chance, at last.… His office made her gasp. There were photos of everybody who had ever been anybody, including people she knew had been famous but couldn’t place. There were actual Emmy awards, and plaques. Everything screamed success. Bambi was so impressed her heart was pounding.

“You can go in now,” his secretary said.

Clay Bowen was sitting behind a huge desk. There were more important mementos here too, and against the wall there was a big bookcase filled with books and scripts. He was not really so scary; an ordinary-looking man, oldish—probably in his middle fifties—tallish, lean and very tan, sort of grayish brown hair. He had reading glasses on and he looked like a teacher. Then he took them off and smiled, and suddenly Bambi felt totally comfortable. She smiled back.

“Sit down, Bambi Green,” he said.

She sat in the chair opposite him, clutching her manila envelope.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

“I want to learn the business. I’ll do anything. Sweep the floor, even.”

He had a funny little laugh, like a chuckle, that made her feel he was on her side. “We have a dropout Arab kid named Anwar Akmal to sweep the floor,” Clay Bowen said. “I don’t think you’ll have to do that.”

“I write,” Bambi said. “I brought some things.” He held out his hand and she gave him the package. “Some of these I performed
in a coffeehouse named Simon Sez, you may have heard of it, which I owned with my late husband, and there’s also a TV script I wrote called ‘The Far Waters.’ I haven’t submitted it to anyone yet. I wanted you to have a sample of my work.” She looked around at the treasury of his past, trying to think of something intelligent to say. “Oh, you have
Like You, Like Me.
I read that. It would make a wonderful movie.”

“Actually, I’m doing it as a miniseries.”

“Even better,” Bambi said. “It’s a very important book. I could never understand why any woman would let a man abuse her like those women did, but after I read it I understood, even though that son of behavior, to me, I mean, it’s like on Mars, I would never let any man get away with anything remotely like that. It’s frightening that they became such total slaves. I’m more than a bit of a feminist.”

“Your generation is,” he said mildly, as if she were a little girl. But perhaps to him she seemed like one.

“Economic freedom is very important to women,” Bambi said.

“To men too,” Clay said.

She laughed. “Yes, of course.” He liked her, she could see that. And she liked him too, had right away. She wasn’t sexually attracted to him, he was way too old, but she admired and respected him and he made her feel protected somehow. What she wouldn’t give to be able to work for him, to learn from him, to have a piece of the world she had dreamed of for so long.…

He looked at his watch. “I’d like to know some more about you, but I’m sick of this place. Let’s go downstairs and have a drink.”

He gathered some papers into his briefcase, including her script and sketches, and led her out. “I’ll be back,” he said to his secretary.

“Good-bye, Penny, it was very good meeting you,” Bambi said, reading her name off the little plaque on her desk. You had to be nice to secretaries, they had a lot of power. They could keep you away from their boss.

“How does the Polo Lounge sound?” Clay Bowen asked.

“Like the gates of heaven,” Bambi said.

He laughed. “Does that mean you’ve never been there?”

“Oh, once. But I’m sure it would be different with you.” They walked to his parking lot. He had a vintage T-Bird convertible, she couldn’t believe it. That was so hip. They drove to the Beverly Hills Hotel and everybody knew him there; the parking boys, the bartender, and a couple of television producers in the Polo Lounge in the prized front booths.

“I used to live here,” Clay Bowen said. “In a bungalow. I still use this bar as my second office.” The maître d’ led them right to a small table in the front near the bar. The one time Bambi had come here with Simon they had been made to sit way in the back, even with a reservation and a tip. Cher had been in front, and a lot of other important people. Simon Sez, where Bambi had been the queen, had seemed a million miles away.

“How about a glass of champagne?” Clay said.

“That would be lovely.” Champagne, and a vintage car, and those stars all over his walls—it was like being in an old movie, it was so glamorous. She began to appreciate his being older; he seemed experienced, sophisticated.

“You look very wistful,” he said.

“Everybody always said I was so talented,” Bambi said. “I was the star of Simon Sez, every night; it was packed with people who came to hear me. But I still feel like a struggling artist.”

“I was a struggling artist once,” he said.

Bambi sat there rapt while he told her about his days as a very young agent putting together packages at AAI, his impudent talent, his rapid rise, and then his days at RBS, and the shows he had created, formed, or discovered; the actors who owed their careers to him; so many famous people he was friendly with. He had become a legend, and still was. She began to realize that those young writers she had been so impressed with in Simon Sez were really nothing. They had to try to sell their scripts to people like Clay Bowen. They were totally at his mercy. The air was very rare up here.

She gazed at him with her large doe eyes, her longing to be a part of his world so clear on her face that only an unfeeling man could have sent her away with nothing. What had happened to her intention to be feisty?

He looked at his watch again, and gestured for the check. “I have to get back to the office,” he said. “I’ll try to read your script and the other things in the next few days.” He signed the check and stood up, and Bambi almost sighed. “Come on, I’ll drive you back to your car.”

He didn’t call for five days and Bambi began to panic. She had put her address and phone number on the top page of every single piece of material, he couldn’t have lost them. Maybe he was just busy. He was obviously far too important to put everything aside to read an unknown person’s script, even a friend of Sally Exon’s. But then, on the morning of the fifth day, just when Bambi was writing him a thank-you note, for lack of any other suitable way to get his attention, Clay Bowen called.

“Can you have dinner with me?” he asked.

“I’d love to.” Dinner, my God, dinner!

“Seven-thirty at La Scala,” he said. “We’ll talk about your future.”

La Scala was legendary, it was one of those expensive Italian places with red leather banquettes and a power front room for movie executives and TV stars. Clay Bowen was already sitting there, and he stood up to greet her when she was led to him. There was a bottle of Montrachet waiting in a cooler; it must have cost a fortune. He smiled at her. He liked my script, she thought, or he wouldn’t be doing this, and she smiled back. She had been expecting to be terrified, but he was so in control, so sure of his ordered world, that she felt almost normal. I want this, she prayed, please let me have all this.

“Don’t bite your lip,” he said.

“Oh, was I?”

“Yes.” He tasted the wine. “Fine. Well, I read your script, and the stories. You have promise.”

“Thank you,” she said, trying not to bite her lip.

“Tell me a little bit about yourself. How long ago did your husband die?”

“A year. He was in a car crash.”

“Terrible thing. I hope he left you with enough money.”

“Oh, yes. And then I sold Simon Sez. I couldn’t stand to be in that business. I’m really a creative person, not an administrator.”

“Any children?”

“No. Children were never an issue.”

“You were smart,” he said. “Children are a financial drain forever.”

“Not forever?” Bambi said.

“They would be if they could.”

“How many do you have?”

“Just one. She’s working in New York, living with some jerk I can’t stand. My wife lives in New York part time, comes here part time.”

He’s lonely, she thought. His wife must be away. The captain came over and they ordered; she ordered what he did since she was too excited about her career to care what she ate. “And what about you?” he asked, smiling. “Are you living with some jerk I won’t like?”

“I’m not living with anybody,” Bambi said. “I don’t even go out.”

“That’s very sad,” Clay Bowen said, but she could see he didn’t mean it.

“Most of the men my age in this town are worthless,” Bambi said. “They think women are objects.”

“I agree. Actually, most men of any age do.”

“That’s why I want to devote my life to my work,” she said.

He chuckled. “I can see we make a good pair.”

“Would that were so.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. “I mean, I would be so helpful to you, and I could learn so much from you.… You said my script had promise. Does that mean you might actually think of producing it?”

“Well, it’s not that ready,” he said. “But I could use an assistant. I would have you read material, write coverage, I’d show you how the business works. I wouldn’t pay much in the beginning; you’d be my apprentice.”

“Oh, I’d work for nothing,” Bambi said.

“I would never let you work for nothing. Why don’t I start you
off free-lance, and we’ll see how it goes? Say, a month? And I’d want you to be thinking up ideas for projects, reading all the newspapers, finding things that are in the public domain.”

This is the happiest night of my life, she thought. “I won’t disappoint you,” she said eagerly. “I’m very imaginative.”

“Good,” he said.

If that portentous dinner was the happiest night, then the next month was the happiest month. Bambi was overflowing with ideas, and even though Clay, as she called him now, didn’t use any of them, he taught her more than she could have believed existed about the television business. When his wife was in New York—apparently she was an ex-dancer who was very active in charities—he met Bambi for dinner every night, at one or another small restaurant in Hollywood to “meet her halfway,” as he put it, so she wouldn’t have to drive so far to meet him in Beverly Hills. He was concerned about Simon’s fatal accident, concerned about her. He was very protective. She was still a little in awe of him, but not a bit afraid. If anything, she had a crush on him, and the magic life he held out to her with all his power. He was kind, generous, and attentive, but she couldn’t figure out how
he
felt about
her
. She knew he wasn’t very close with his wife.