Show Business Kills (32 page)

“
Hey, Frank,” the man said warmly to the guard
.

“
Mr. S.,” the guard said, standing, and flushed and put out a hand for the man to shake. “How’s everything, sir? All of your
shows going well this season? The staff here sure goes bananas when your camera crew is out there. One of the other guards
told me he was going to join the professional extras union, after the last time one of your hospital shows was shooting exteriors
here and he was in them.” The guard let out one of
those apologetic self-conscious laughs people sometimes use when they’re in the presence of someone who intimidates them
.

“
That’s nice, Frank. Listen, I was just across the street at Chasen’s at an awards dinner, and I heard some very disturbing
news
.”

“
Sorry to hear that, sir, is there anything I can do
?”

She was sitting now on a sofa with her back to them, but in the black night the window became a mirror, and in it she watched
the guard and the man chatting away, and she was shaking because she realized the man had to be Jack Solomon. She could turn
around right now and say, “Jack, it’s me,” and maybe he’d be thrilled to see her. And the bad news he was talking about had
to be
…

“
Jan O’Malley, a lifelong friend of mine, is in here, and I want to go up and see her. So point me in the right direction,
will you, Frank
?”

“
Oh, yes, Mr. Solomon. She’s on seven in surgical ICU. Not doing too well, from what I hear. I’m sorry to break it to you,
since she was your friend, but that’s the word. There was a big press conference just a little while ago, and they were very
pessimistic about the prognosis. But you go on up, sir. And maybe things will have changed
”

“
Thanks, Frank,” Jack Solomon said, and breezed off toward the elevators. Jack Solomon. They’d had pajama parties together
in the dorms. She sat on his lap all the way to New York. Why hadn’t she called out his name
?

Seventh floor, ICU, she thought. How can I get there without going by that lying little weasel of a guard who said your name
had to be on the list and then he let Solomon go up but not me. I should have killed them both. Should kill the guard now
and go up. Why didn’t I at least have the guts to show
myself to Jack and beg him for a job? I’m too afraid. That’s why I married Lou, that’s why I put having kids in my way and
didn’t come to Hollywood before, because I was always too goddamned afraid
.

  
24
  

T
he regular sound of the breathing machine was hypnotic, and the cold temperature and soft light in the room made the whole
atmosphere sleep-inducing. Ellen yawned, and Rose stood to adjust the blankets around Jan.

“I’m worried that she’s not warm enough,” she said, like a mother hovering over a sleeping baby in a nursery.

“I’m glad they let us be with her,” Marly said. “I have a real sense that she knows we’re here. That she’s hearing us and
our stories and that somehow it’s helping her.”

“I probably should call home and see if there’s a message on my machine saying I’m fired,” Ellen said, opening her bag and
pulling out her cellular phone. “Is this okay?” she asked Marly, “or will my bad movie studio molecules bring evil energy
into her space?”

Marly forced a smile. “I forgive you for that,” she said, and Ellen dialed. After a minute she pressed one of the phone’s
buttons to activate the rewind on her home answering machine.

“Look at this, Janny,” Rose said, moving close to the bed, “isn’t modern technology something? It enables a studio hotshot
to run her business right out of the intensive care unit.”

Ellen was listening to her messages, and after a few minutes while she did, she smiled and then laughed out loud. “I have
to play this back for you,” she said to Rose and Marly. “It’s a message from Greenie, and it’s hilarious. Here.” She pushed
a button and handed the phone to Rose, and Rose and Marly put their heads next to either side of the flat little receiver
to listen to the playback from Ellen’s machine.

“El, it’s Greenie. I’m sorry to even call you with this bullshit, and I hope like hell that Jan’s going to make it, and that
all is well at Cedars, but I figured you’d call your machine and I needed you to know that after you left tonight, Bibberman
pulled a full-out shit fit.

“He turned around from going to the screening and came screaming in here and said, ‘Tell her that besides missing the screening
tonight, she walked out so soon, we never even talked about our Monday morning meeting with Jodie Foster. I told her yesterday
that if we can get Jodie to direct this project, I think we can get Julia Roberts and Geena Davis to star. Then our foreign
distribution will pay the difference. You can also tell her if she leaves one more meeting early, she can go back to carrying
coffee to the Monkees.’

“I was very calm,” Greenie continued. “I said, ‘Bibberman, darling, if you turn on the news, you’ll learn that one of Ellen’s
best friends was shot and is in a coma at Cedars, where Ellen can be found sitting at her bedside. You wouldn’t understand
that kind of caring, so I suspect you’ll be trying to reach her there. She loves this friend, Bibberman, in a way that you
have never loved, and probably no one has loved you. More than a deal with Jodie Foster, more than, and this may shock you,
even a deal with Julia Roberts
and Geena Davis. She is probably planning to stay by this friend’s bedside for a long time.’

“Well, don’t you know the little asshole actually took a moment and looked down at his Cole-Haans as if he was feeling a slight
twinge of remorse. For an instant I fooled myself into hoping that maybe there was a God looking over show business after
all, that maybe somewhere behind that ugly facade of heartless, bloodless studio exec, the man had a soul. Until he looked
up into my big blue eyes and said what he thought was a statement of having his priorities straight. ‘Tell her to call me
as soon as her friend dies!’

“I wouldn’t have left this message if I didn’t think it would make you and Rose and Marly laugh out loud. I love you, and
I’m praying for Jan.”

They were all laughing, the laughter tinged with disbelief at Bibberman’s megalomania. “A bigger asshole has never lived,”
Ellen said, putting away the phone, looking up when she heard the buzz of the ICU door. And through the open portal of Jan’s
cubicle, they could all see who was entering.

“I spoke too soon,” Ellen said, realizing before the others who the dapper-looking man was who came breezing toward them as
if he were one of the doctors on the hospital staff. “Here’s someone who’s an even bigger asshole. Did they forget to spray
in here? How did he get in?” The nurses at the desk all nodded a nod of familiarity to Jack Solomon, whose appearance had
been dramatically transformed for the better by his success. He had a slim physique, carved daily by a personal trainer out
of what once had been a round little paunchy body, a great hairstyle trimmed and shaped regularly by a great barber, a perfectly
shaped mustache that looked great on
him, custom-tailored clothes that fit to perfection, and a swagger of confidence that was unquestionably sexy.

Tonight he was wearing the best-looking tuxedo ever made. And the only remnant of the former schlemiel who once climbed in
the window of the girls’ dorms, to be their platonic friend, because that’s all that was available, was the occasional trace
of a New York accent.

“They know me here,” he said by way of explaining his easy access. Then he opened his arms wide as if he expected at least
one of them to come over and hug him. “I shoot my shows all over this joint, so I can go anywhere I want… and by the way,
it’s nice to see you, too, Feinberg.”

Ellen was deadpan.

He always called them by their last names when they were at Tech. “Bennet and Morris, can’t you teach her how to watch her
language?” he asked now, looked at his watch and said, “It’s still the family hour.” When he realized not one of them was
going to come to him, he moved forward and put an affectionate arm around Rose. “I can’t believe I was right across the street
at Chasen’s at an awards banquet, and out of nowhere Norman Lear leans over and asks me if I saw all the fans outside the
hospital when I came by. I guess I was on the phone in my car when we passed Cedars and didn’t notice, so I said ‘No, who’s
dying?’ And he said ‘It’s a terrible tragedy about that actress and what happened to her today.’ And then he told me who it
was, and I was so stunned I left right in the middle of my chili. How is she?”

None of them spoke as he moved past them and looked into the room where Jan still lay motionless, and then closed his eyes.
“Oh, Christ,” he said. Marly made a shushing gesture
and ushered all of them away a few yards to the heavy door that separated the ICU from the hall. Rose and Ellen followed.

“We think she can hear us,” Marly said softly.

“What can I do for her? I’ll pay for specialists. I’ll hire a private eye to find the guy that did it. I’ve got private eyes
on the payroll of two of my shows. I’ll call one at home right now,” he said, pulling a phone out of the pocket of the tux
jacket.

“Put that goddamned phone away,” Ellen said. “You narcissistic putz. No one wants your help. I heard you fucked Jan over so
royally she couldn’t even say your name without bursting into tears. What’s with you, you power-happy schmuck?”

Jack Solomon did a comedy take, looking back over each of his shoulders as if he were looking behind him to see who Ellen
could possibly be accusing of doing something to hurt Jan.

“Pardon me? I did something bad to her? What in the hell did
I
do to her? This I have to hear. I had the producer of my highest-rated show bring her in to do a plum part that I handpicked
out of one of the best scripts because I knew it was a part that had a chance of going into a major story line. I knew she
could chew the scenery with it, and she did. We tested that episode, and that scene went through the frigging roof. I sent
her flowers afterward and told her so. You people are out of your fucking minds calling me power-happy.”

“But you got her the part with no ulterior motives, right?” Ellen asked. “No old grudges. No power trips to get even for the
fact that you couldn’t have her back when we were at Tech?”

Jack’s face fell, and he shook his head and clucked his tongue. “You’ve been hanging around with those lowlifes at
Hemisphere too long, Feinberg. They may do things like that. I sure as hell never would.”

“Then what about the card?” Ellen asked him as if she were a prosecutor in a courtroom. “The card you sent with the flowers?”

Jack frowned and thought about it, as if he didn’t know what card she meant. Rose couldn’t stop looking closely at him, marveling
at the fact that he was aging so well. His mustache had strips of gray in it, but the rest of him had never looked better.
He’d become a great-looking middle-aged man.

“You mean because of the P.S. about finally seeing her tits?” he asked.

“Her breasts were used as a joke,” Marly said.

“Not at all. As an integral part of the story line.”

“Yeah, sure. That show and some of the rest of the shows on your network exploit women like crazy,” Ellen said.

“And you used them on the gag reel,” Rose said.

“I don’t make the gag reel, the editors of the shows do that,” he said, his brow furrowed with annoyance that she might think
that he had something to do with a job so menial. “I just show up at the party. And the joke I made to Janny about seeing
her tits was the exact same joke I made to her thirty years ago, when she always patted me on the head and laughed it off.
But now I make that joke and I’m bum-rapped as sexually abusive? We’re allowed to be sexy on television now, and why shouldn’t
we be? Sex is part of life. This isn’t the fifties. No one wants to watch ‘Beat the Clock’ any more. So I just dropped the
B and the L.”

Marly emitted an outraged sound at his joke. “Get out of here, Jack. Go back to your party at Chasen’s, and leave Jan
with people who care about her.” Jack ignored her and turned his anger on Ellen.