Now the months of pain and waiting and Dr. Moore’s kindness were over. Now she’d see the best he could do. The face she would live with. And she was afraid. So afraid that she couldn’t do it alone. She left on the bandage, and avoided reflections in plate-glass windows; she’d long ago covered the medicine-cabinet mirror at the hotel. She simply had to trust this little man, the doctor, her only friend, and see what he had wrought. She made the appointment with the ever-cold Miss Hennessey for her final visit.
Now, at last, here in his office, the time had come for revelation. She was so nervous, she wanted to ask to hold his hand, but she was far too shy. As if he knew what she felt, Dr. Moore came up close behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders and walked her to the corner of the room. He had her face the wall mirror, and he lifted the last bandage from her nose.
She stared into the mirror.
A perfect stranger stared out at her. A perfect stranger. An oval face, with just a touch of squareness, firmness at the sides of the jaw. A broad, smooth forehead, thin, tapering brows, cheekbones that wouldn’t quit. And the nose. The nose! It was long, but perfectly so, straight and long, with a thin bridge and wonderful sharpness where it met her upper lip. It was beautiful. It was all changed and beautiful. She was beautiful! All changed, except for her eyes.
Then, for a moment, she had the panicky feeling that her own eyes were staring out at her, trapped in a strange, lovely face, while her own, her face, on this side of the mirror, hadn’t changed. Involuntarily she lifted her hands, and blinked as her fingers touched her, yet moved over the stranger’s perfect face in the mirror. It was eerie, but it convinced her this perfect face was really hers.
He gave her plenty of time. She looked and looked, and was surprisingly unselfconscious in front of him, perhaps because he was staring as hard as she was. At last he broke the silence. “Are you satisfied?” Dr. Moore asked softly.
With difficulty, Mary Jane pulled her eyes away from the mirror and looked at him. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you more than I can ever say.” She stared back at the mirror, the mirror that was now her friend. Gently she touched her face, her own face, again. Then she held out her hand to him. “You’ve given me a new life. Now I can leave. You’ve given me a second chance. I’ll never be able to thank you.”
He looked away; maybe she’d embarrassed him. But he turned back quickly and smiled. “Are you prepared for a new life?”
She nodded, proudly. “I’ve got it all planned. Even a new name.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Galatea?” he asked.
It was her turn to smile, and she shook her head. “Jahne,” she said. “I’ve always hated ‘Mary,’ but I was afraid to be plain Jane before. Now it will be J-A-H-N-E. Not plain at all.”
“So, Jahne Moran…”
She shook her head again. “Not Moran,” she said. “I’d prefer a new name. But with the same initial. I’d like to use ‘Moore.’ I mean…” She blushed. “…if it’s all right with you.”
“I’d be delighted. Truly. Quite a compliment.”
“Something else, Dr. Moore.” She paused. “Could I write to you? And Raoul? I mean just occasionally. I know how busy you are. You wouldn’t have to write back.”
“I’d be delighted. And I would write back.” The little man smiled.
Jahne stood up. She found it was harder to say goodbye than she’d expected. She had a lot of feeling for this artist, this healer, this good doctor.
“I’m going to make one last visit to Raoul.”
“He’ll appreciate that.”
“I hope that he recognizes me without the bandage.”
“He’s an artist. He can see deeply. He’ll know you. But no one else will.”
“Are you sure? Certain?”
“Mary Jane, you look twenty-four and magnificent. You have a flat stomach, thin legs, high breasts, and a perfect face. Not to mention Mai Von Trilling’s nose. Who is going to recognize you?”
“No one,” she agreed, and smiled.
“M.J., M.J.,” Raoul yelled as he saw her from a distance moving through the ward. They were special friends. He drew her wonderful pictures, and she brought him little treats. She would miss him very much. His speech had improved a lot since she’d started working with him. As she got closer to him his face changed. The sparkle left his brown eyes, the smile slipped from the wreck of his mouth.
“Buenos dias, Raoul,” she said. “What’s the matter?” For a moment, her stomach knotted. Perhaps she wasn’t what she thought. Maybe he was disappointed with her looks.
“What is it, Raoul?”
“Did the doctor do this to you?” the boy asked. It was still difficult to understand him, but she had learned to. Now she nodded. Oh, God. Maybe Brewster had lied to her. Perhaps she didn’t look as good as she thought. Raoul turned away.
“What is it?”
“You’ll go now.”
“How do you know?”
“Because now you are so beautiful,” he said, and tears welled up in his eyes.
“Oh, Raoul,” she breathed, and hugged him.
Mary Jane waited, listening as the phone up in Albany rang. Finally, Mr. Slater picked it up. “Mr. Slater, this is Mary Jane Moran.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Moran, I’ve been meaning to call you. But there has been no progress on the probate. I was thinking perhaps that we could simply probate your father as the heir and get you both executor and power of attorney. That would…”
“Mr. Slater,” Mary Jane interrupted, “I have a proposal for you. When the will is finally probated and the farm is sold, how much do you think it’ll be worth?”
“Well, the market isn’t good, but perhaps forty or fifty thousand dollars. Maybe less.”
“Would you be prepared to take the estate in lieu of fees, and simply send me a check for ten thousand?”
She listened for a moment to the silence at the end of the line. Greed fighting with morality? “Well, that’s quite irregular, and there is no telling when this might be settled and the farm sold…”
“I know. That’s why I’m willing to take so little. Is it a risk that you are willing to take?” She knew she had him hooked; she could tell by the tightness in his voice. All these small-town lawyers were alike. Now that it was in his interest to do so, he’d have the whole business cleared up in a week. Still, she needed the money now, to finance her new life. She held her breath.
“Well, I think I could see my way clear to do that.”
Yes! “One more thing, Mr. Slater. I also need you to do a legal name change for me. It’s important for my career.”
“That’s no problem, as long as you’re unmarried. I’ll need your birth certificate and a few other documents, though.”
“I have them, and I’ll get them in the mail to you today, but I expect my check in today’s mail as well.”
“No problem,” he told her.
And now there wasn’t any.
Jahne walked up First Avenue, the sunshine glinting off her glossy hair, her stride long, a tilt to her pelvis that ensured an alluring twitch to her walk. I’ll have to practice this, she thought. She might not have been born sexy or beautiful, but she was an actress, and she’d been watching the Bethanies of the world for half a lifetime. She might not know beautiful, but she could play beautiful, and now her old frame and face wouldn’t make the portrayal laughable.
She stopped at the bank machine at Sixty-fourth Street, pulled out her card, and got on the short line of people already impatiently waiting. A plump, youngish man was about to pull out his wallet as she joined the line behind him. He stopped, his hand poised on his back pocket, and looked at her. Just looked. Then, “Please,” he said, and indicated with his other hand that she should move ahead of him.
“Oh, no. That’s all right.”
“Please,” he said again, and then colored to his receding hairline.
She glided ahead of him, accepting the tribute due to the lovely from the unlovely. She inserted
her card and punched in her code, asking for her balance. Green numerals appeared on the screen: $694.18. She withdrew twenty dollars, then collected her card.
“Thanks,” she said to the plump guy.
“Thank you,” he breathed. She twitched by him, playing it, and walked up a block to Liberty Travel. The place was empty, just a single reservation agent at a middle desk. The agent was blonde and pretty in an obvious, big-hair way. Jahne walked up to her.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked, and gave her the head-to-toe once-over that attractive females reserve for the competition.
“Yes, please. My name is Jahne Moore. That’s Jahne with an ‘h’ in the middle and an ‘e’ at the end of Moore. And I’d like a one-way ticket to L.A.”
Discovery
“When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.”
—JOHN RUSKIN
“In Hollywood ‘breakfast’ means maybe we’ll do business, ‘lunch’ means yes, and ‘dinner’ means we’re in bed.”
—RICHARD ROUILARD
1
By now, unless you have spent the last two years as a hostage in some hostile third-world country, you know why three women as disparate as Lila, Sharleen, and Jahne came together. But even you, hip Reader, don’t know how.
Remember that I told you it was all because of a lipstick? An oversimplification, perhaps, but still the truth. It was, more accurately, an argument over a lipstick that set the wheels in motion.
For what seemed like a thousand years (but was really only a few decades), Hyram Flanders had to take back seat to his mother, Monica. Monica was the queen of cosmetics, the chairman of the board of Flanders Cosmetics Inc., and Hyram’s boss as well as his mother. No wonder Hyram hated strong women.
Since he had taken over—at last—as president and CEO, Hyram had been searching. Not, as his mother had, for a new beauty product. After all, he knew all the crap they sold was basically the same. He was searching for a way to cut the advertising budget. Because beauty is sold through advertising, and if he could keep selling current volumes but cut the astronomical ad budget, he’d be a hero to everyone.
Well, to everyone but his mother. Monica said no to every proposal to cut advertising spending. It was as if she, too, believed in the ads, the way the consumer did. And Hyram had watched as the cost-of-sale grew and grew, while the market segmented into more and more pieces. Flanders carried twenty-three separate lines to appeal to the young, the very young, the not-quite-so-young, the middle-aged who didn’t perceive themselves as such, the middle-aged who did…Well, the list was endless.
It was Hyram who first talked to Les Merchant, head of the Network, about sponsoring a show that would appeal to multigenerational women viewers. TV, unlike the movies, targets female audiences. Hyram and his advertising-agency rep, Brian O’Malley of Banion O’Malley, played with the idea. And Les Merchant, panicked at the Network’s dwindling Nielsens, took the idea up with Sy Ortis, one of the hottest agents and packagers in Hollywood. Sy in turn reluctantly brought it to Marty DiGennaro, the director who could do no wrong (and who also never did TV).
Well, Reader, you certainly aren’t surprised to hear that most, if not all, of what is broadcast on TV is spawned to sell you something. Perhaps you aren’t old enough to remember the early days, when television-set manufacturers sponsored programs simply so there would be something to watch? Or after that, when shows were called by their sponsor’s name? The Campbell’s Soup Hour? The Hallmark Hall of Fame?
It still happens. It’s just a little less obvious. Or sometimes more so. Plugs, endorsements, “infomercials,” and all the rest. So, when Monica Flanders told Hyram, her son, that it was impossible to sell more than one consumer sector at a time, Hyram was convinced he had to find a way to do it. “Don’t waste my time,” his mother sniffed. “No woman will wear the same lipstick as her mother.”
Which brings us to Sy Ortis. It is the agents who run Hollywood today. Agents control the stars, and put them together with the directors and screenwriters (also clients of the agents) in “packages” that they try to sell to the studios. Agents with a powerful stable of stars are the most envied, sought-after, and hated people in L.A. And among all the agents, Sy Ortis was the most envied, sought after and hated.
Sy Ortis stretched his little body, his feet lifted off the floor, his back arched against the black leather of the swivel chair that, with its eleven identical brothers, surrounded the electric-blue lacquer conference table. He turned from the glossy photographs laid on its shiny surface and the anxious faces that watched him. He stood up, walked to the window that overlooked La Cienega Boulevard, and sighed. Christ, he was sick of incompetent assholes! And it wasn’t as if Weinberg and Glick didn’t know better. They were one of the two best casting agencies in L.A. He turned to Milton Glick.
“Let me explain it again, shmuck,” he said to Glick. He spoke slowly, his high-pitched voice almost a whine. “Marty is a genius. And Marty wants three blank slates. New pennies. Fresh meat. Don’t show me these twenty-six-year-old twats who’ve been selling it up and down Hollywood Boulevard for the last decade. Marty wants new. And what Marty wants, I want.”
Glick licked his thin lips and nodded nervously, running his fingers through his equally thin hair, obviously replanted with even little tufts of curls that were plugged into his scalp. Sy turned away, not from any delicacy over Milton’s discomfort, but, rather, at a queasiness that had always made his stomach reactive. Jesus, where did those hair plugs come from? he wondered. Milt’s back? His armpits? His pubic hair? Why didn’t the guy cover himself with a hat, so decent people didn’t need to puke when they looked at him?
The room was silent. All of the young, trendy California go-go staffers looked down at their laps. As if, Sy thought, they had the answer in their crotches instead of their heads. Then Milton cleared his throat. “I think we can do it, Sy.”
“Not if this shit is any indication,” Sy snapped, and swept his arm across the table, dumping several dozen perfect, smiling, beautiful eight-by-ten faces onto the floor, decimating as many hopes with the gesture. None of the trendies moved.
Sy Ortis was, arguably, the most powerful agent in Hollywood, and one of the five most powerful men in the Industry. He’d scrabbled up the heap, he’d worked like an animal, he’d bled, and he’d performed bloodlettings. Most people in Hollywood would do anything he asked, just as a favor, gratis. And now he sat here in front of a bunch of morons he was paying to help him and got nada.
“Look,” he said again slowly, as if each of them was mildly brain damaged. “Marty DiGennaro has never done television before. This is going to be the biggest show, the biggest trend since spandex. He’s creating something totally new. He calls it a ‘content-free show.’ And the Network has given him carte blanche. Carte blanche, for chrissakes!” His face was red, his voice strangled. He’d negotiated the deal between DiGennaro and the Network, and it was unbelievable, unprecedented. But Marty had insisted on total secrecy, so—irritatingly—nobody could admire Sy’s handiwork. No one ever really appreciated what he did. They called him “the most powerful man behind the scenes,” and with secretive, paranoid clients like Marty, he’d had to stay there.
Sy now swept the worried faces quickly with a frustrated look. He’d try again. “So we’re trying to do a new thing. Get it? That means no sitcom hacks, no refugees from Budweiser commercials, no rat-burgers from slice-and-dice flicks. This is Marty DiGennaro we’re talking about, not Roger Corman. Marty wants fresh blood, and you’ve been given the exclusive to get it for him. Do you understand what that means?”
The little man was breathing hard, his voice rising almost to a scream. Christ, he couldn’t breathe! He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his inhaler, thrust it up against his mouth, and sucked on it like a greedy infant at the breast. Not another asthma attack! Madré de Dios, it’s the pressure, he told himself. And the smog in the Valley today didn’t help. City of Angels, my butt hole! he thought ang
rily. With this air quality, it was only the Angel of Death who worked here. But, this was where the business was, and Sy hadn’t become the most influential agent in the Industry by breathing calmly in Scottsdale, Arizona.
It wasn’t just Milton and the shitty job he’d done, Sy admitted to himself as he gasped for breath. It was this whole new Marty DiGennaro project. Marty was, maybe, the most prestigious big-money film director in Hollywood; he was class and cash, and then he gets this crazy yen to stoop to television. Television. The ghetto of the entertainment industry, with the Kmart of plots and the Walmart of actors. But Marty wanted TV. And with this nutsy idea: an MTV-type, hip, freewheeling show about three girls hitchhiking across America. What the fuck? Marty was a genius, and Sy’s most powerful client, but the thing made Sy nervous. “I want freedom from plots,” Marty had said. “I’m so goddamn sick of telling a story. Let’s forget stories. Let’s do something new.”
New! NEW! Christ, why not just say “dangerous,” “risky,” “a money-loser.” If DiGennaro got his kicks from losing big at the high rollers’ table in Vegas, that was all right with Sy; why the fuck did Marty have to pull this gambling shit with his career? Talent! Go figure. Talent loved to fuck with your head.
Then, to make things worse, Marty wouldn’t use any of Sy’s clients. An entire stable of stars, all of them willing to stoop to TV just to work with Marty, and Marty says no. A whole show to be cast, deals to be made, favors to extend, percentages to collect, and Marty says, “Bring me someone new.” Sy was ready to suck his own dick over this one. So here he was, in the offices of Weinberg and Glick, pulling on his inhaler and looking for an unopened can. ’Cause if he didn’t cast it soon, Marty would go to the outside, and Sy would lose control of the casting. Just the thought of losing control made Sy suck a little harder.
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