Stages (14 page)

Whenever she felt at her wits’ end, Kathy would look to Jean, whose response to anything outrageous—Mayor Daley, Judge Hoffman, General Lewis Hershey, the King Family—was always the same: a faint smile, and the words, barely whispered, “One fine day,
la guillotine.
”

The Democratic convention, already tumultuous enough, was showing signs of turning into a complete circus on the evening when Kathy, banging away on her Royal typewriter as usual, heard someone say in a voice that startled her, “Phil, Phil, what
happened
to you?”

Kathy looked up from her desk and saw Phil Campbell, the kid from Oregon who’d said at the party the night before that he was planning on defecting from the McCarthy organization if the Yippies were really serious about running a pig. Kathy barely recognized him. His face was yellow and his hair was pasted to his head as though he’d just stepped out of the shower. His shirt was soaked. With
blood.
Phil staggered, and the handkerchief he’d been holding against his mouth flopped onto the floor. As people helped him walk to the bathroom, Kathy picked up his blood-saturated handkerchief. Something fell out of it. Kathy looked down. On the floor were two whole teeth and part of another tooth.

For a minute, Kathy was sick. She had to sit down. When she got up again, she saw Stan Howard. They were trying to get his jacket off him. It was torn, and his nametag was askew, and…Kathy saw that his ponytail was gone. Somebody was holding paper towels to the back of Stan’s head, trying to absorb the blood.

“They tore his hair out,” Jean said.

“Who?” said Kathy. She was so stunned she couldn’t think.

“The cops,” said Jean. On the face of her friend, who had never before acted surprised by anything that cropped up in human nature, Kathy saw a look of absolute disbelief.

Another person stumbled into the room. He was holding his arm as if it were something that didn’t belong to him, and one of his eyes was swollen shut.

“Blankets,” Kathy said. “And first-aid stuff. Come on, we’ll go and get the blankets from our room, and maybe we can find a drugstore open.”

Nobody saw Kathy and Jean running out the door except Phil Campbell. No one was listening when he mumbled, “Don’t.”

As she raced along the street, her lungs and legs aching from exertion, Kathy began to feel a terrible foreboding. Then she heard Jean calling out to her.

“Keep
going.
Keep going
faster.
Don’t look back.”

Now Kathy was truly scared.

They were only a couple of blocks from their hotel, but Kathy knew that they were never going to reach it when she saw the flashing light lapping up the sidewalk in front of them.

The police cruiser drove up onto the sidewalk, cutting them off, and all four of its doors sprang open at once. Kathy heard their heavy shoes clumping on the pavement. Her mind slid as though on ice to a poster she’d seen on the wall back when she was in grammar school. A cop stooping to help a child across an intersection, and spelled out in big letters THE POLICEMAN IS YOUR FRIEND.

“We’re finished, Kath,” Jean said.

A heavy sleeve hit Kathy in the mouth. She fell, fell so fast she hardly knew she was falling, and felt the ground under her as if she had gone to sleep for a fraction of a second and had awakened on the pavement. Distorted faces looked down on her. She was kicked in the ribs. And then in her buttocks, again and again. The blows felt like dry ice against
her skin. She heard them screaming, “Hippie cunt, cheap fuckin’ whore, piece of shit.”

Involuntarily, in a dumb reflex, Kathy curled into a fetal position. A nightstick cracked against her elbow.

Kathy did not scream. All she felt beyond the blows was a widening wonder that her life was ending like this. But then, it didn’t end. A two-way radio crackled from somewhere far away. Kathy felt her watch being yanked off, and then she heard car doors slamming.

After they had gone, Kathy could hear Jean crying softly. She tried to say something, but she couldn’t. One of her front teeth had an edge, like a piece of broken glass. Her tongue touched it. Otherwise, Kathy did not move.

Perhaps fifteen minutes passed. Then Kathy and Jean were found by a couple from Cleveland who were wearing Humphrey buttons.

27

The studio where they were making the commercial was one of those nondescript show business warehouses in the West Fifties. Painted on the side of the building was what looked to Melanie like a television station’s test pattern. Over the door there was a cast-iron arch the color of a penny that’s been in the street for a long time. Other than the cryptic logo on the eastern wall, there was no sign on the place, except some equally cryptic lettering on the window in the door: LBHS ENTERPRISES.

Low budget, hard sell?
Melanie wondered as she pushed the buzzer,

She had dressed for the occasion, in a straight skirt and a ruffled blouse, every button of which she had secured. Her hair she had pulled back into a bun, yanking so sharply with her comb that the skin at the sides of her eyes still felt as though she’d peeled off adhesive bandages there.

Now she waited patiently at the door for the fat guy with the cigar in his mouth to appear.

But instead she was greeted by a tall, slender woman smoking a cigarillo who sidled into the door’s bar handle with her hip, then held the door while Melanie stepped inside.

“Hi, I’m Melrose Lane,” said the woman.

“I’m Melanie Chisolm,” Melanie said. “I’m expected, I think. My agent called.”

“Whose doesn’t?” Melrose said with a shrug. She was young. Twenty-five or so, Melanie thought. It took a few seconds to take her all in. She had on a black leather miniskirt, stiletto-heeled black vinyl boots, and a calico patterned sweater that was either angora or proof that there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Melrose had a look like Cher’s, and that together with her Nancy Sinatra boots suggested to Melanie someone who had started out singing the music and wound up facing it.

Following her guide up the steel stairs, which clanked underfoot like the cashboxes of Marley’s ghost, Melanie found herself in what seemed to be a studio. At one end of the room a couple of microphones on booms appeared to be eavesdropping. Someone was tinkering with the camera. A handful of people were standing around waiting.

The Borgia princess named after the L.A. avenue introduced Melanie to a guy named Ed, who was running things. Ed was wearing a polyester shirt with views of Paris printed on it, and enough gold chains to get through any New England blizzard if he wanted to put them on the tires of this car—which was no doubt a Cadillac Eldorado, Melanie thought.

If Dick Clark had aged, he might have looked like Ed. It was hard for Melanie to pin down Ed’s look, until something about him made her think of the half pint of milk she’d left in the back of her refrigerator for almost a month.

“You’re the bug?” Ed asked her.

“That’s right,” Melanie replied.

“Okay,” said Ed. Then he hollered, “Lucille,” and informed Melanie that Lucille would take care of her costume and makeup.

Lucille appeared and led Melanie to a dressing room. It was obvious to Melanie that Lucille was one of those people in the business who had spent years treating actors more or less the way a chambermaid treats a hotel room. While Lucille was gluing feelers to Melanie’s forehead, she complained in a singsong voice about life in general, beginning with her husband’s bad knees and ending with her own diverticulitis.

“My insides are all full of these little bubbles,” she explained.

A sound like that of a muffled drain came from somewhere below Lucille’s esophagus.

“See?” she said.

When Melanie finally emerged from the dressing room, looking, she thought, like one of the roaches on the side of a Roach Motel (done in, with an X across both eyes), Ed introduced her to Sid the Carpet Maven. He was stout, middle-aged, and balding, and dressed like Ali Baba, mostly in gold lame. All Melanie could think of was Mayor Daley out trick or treating.

“This should be pretty simple,” Ed said. “I’d like to see if we could get it in less than twenty-five takes.”

“I want it right,” Sid announced.

“Relax, you’re working with perfectionists,” Ed reassured him. “Sid, here, is going to deliver his pitch,” Ed informed Melanie. “He’ll finish with, ‘At the Carpet Maven’s, you’ll be snug as a bug in a rug.’ You’ll be reclining on the rug, and Sid’ll roll you up in it. Then you’ll stick your head out—big smile—and your arm, and you’ll wave.”

Melanie looked doubtfully at the thick broadloom on the stage. One of her feelers wavered.

“I don’t know about this,” she said.

“Trust me,” Ed said. “Just lie down there and relax, like you’re on the beach.”

“Like I’m the cardboard in a roll of toilet paper?” Melanie asked.

“You want to use a Method approach, it’s fine with me,” Ed replied.

“Think of yourself as a fly on a window shade that’s about to be rolled up,” Melrose put in.

“I won’t take that personally,” Melanie said. She sat down on the carpeting, gingerly. Up from her memory came a recollection of playing on the living-room rug as a child and sneezing violently.

“This carpet doesn’t have any dust in it, does it?” she asked. “I’m allergic to dust.”

“Are you kidding?” Sid replied with surprising fervor. “This piece is factory fresh, plus it’s an acrylic. It
resists
dust.”

“Bring that kind of feeling to your spiel and we’ll be all set,” Ed said.

“I always knew he had it in him,” Melrose said. Sid glanced at her reprovingly. Melanie pictured Sid
shtupping
Melrose while Lucille waited in the wings burping discreetly; what a rich tapestry of life the theater could be.

Sid pushed his eyeglasses back up to the bridge of his nose.

“Okay, are we set?” Ed asked.

“I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” Melanie said.

“Then let’s give it a whirl,” said Ed. The lights came up, and snake-charming music wafted from the sound booth.

How did I ever come to this?
Melanie thought. She thought of that commercial where Madge the manicurist tells her customer that she’s
soaking
in dishwashing detergent, remembered hearing somewhere that
Madge
had made a half-million dollars in residuals from that commercial so far, and took heart in spite of herself.

Sid seemed to have caught fire. He was pacing up and down and sounded as if he were speaking in tongues.

“Shop around!” he exhorted the darkness behind the camera. “Compare! Beat our prices per square yard anywhere else and we’ll give you,
absolutely free,
a matching velour bath mat and toilet-seat cover!”

Melanie saw Melrose watching with the interest of someone at the scene of an auto accident. She heard Sid shouting out the bug-in-a-rug slogan. Then he whirled around—his turban was askew and he was sweating—and came at Melanie like a steamroller.

In a matter of seconds she’d been caught up in the carpet and was somersaulting sideways, her mouth and eyes full of fibers. The momentum was too great. Melanie felt a moment of free fall, then a whump that made her see stars.

The carpet had rolled off the stage.

“Oops,” said Sid.

“Cut,” said Ed.

“Way to go, Sidney,” said Melrose.

Melanie lay there in the middle of the roll smothering to death.

She heard somebody saying, “You okay in there?”

“Mmmmmfff.”

Melanie felt the rug bumping clumsily, and herself revolving. Then she was again in the light and the air. She was dazed. She sneezed explosively three times. She shook her head.

“Acrylic…in a pig’s eye,” she muttered.

“Are you all right?” she heard.

“I’m pretty good,” Melanie replied. “For someone who just went over Niagara Falls in a barrel.” One of her feelers fell off. A stagehand helped her to her feet. Melrose was standing there with her clipboard.

“Lucille’s going to have to reglue that left feeler,” she said.

“Lucille went out to get a bottle of Pepto-Bismol,” said the stagehand.

“Oh great,” Melrose said.

“I’m not going to have my left feeler reglued,” Melanie said. “I’m going to sue Ed and Sidney and Abe my agent for everything they’ve got.”

“You don’t want to do that,” Melrose said without a trace of concern in her voice. “You’ll get a reputation for being difficult.”

Melanie sneezed again. “Okay, could I just have a Kleenex then?” she said.

“Get it in makeup,” Melrose replied.

“Here,” said the stagehand. “It’s clean.”

He handed Melanie a red bandanna.

“Thanks,” she said. She blew her nose loudly.

“All right, we can set things up again,” Melrose called out as she walked off.

“Heart of gold,” Melanie muttered. She offered to return the handkerchief, but the stagehand said to her, “Keep it.”

“Thanks a million,” Melanie said.

“Are you sure you’re really okay?” the stagehand asked.

“Nothing’s broken,” said Melanie. “Except my spirit.”