Flavor of the Month

by Olivia Goldsmith

  Somehow, though, none of it was enough to banish thoughts of the past. Thoughts of Sam.

  She knew that the answer was to make new friends. But it was harder than she’d expected. Perhaps she could build some sort of relationship with Sharleen. And she was becoming friends with Mai. The rest would just take time. Slowly, she knew, her world would expand, and as she met more people, tested their loyalty, she would build a new community. Transitions were hard, she reminded herself, and thought of nursing school, of her first auditions, of the New York cattle calls, her first summer-stock job. She’d been alone then, and it was only natural to be alone now.

  But since she’d seen Sam, something had changed. The loneliness she’d tried to assuage first with Pete and now with Michael seemed to grow: it was palpable, a real feeling in her chest. During the day, the busy, frenzied workday, she was all right, but in the evenings she found herself reliving those moments with Sam at the party and the lunch at Chasen’s, trying to read their meaning.

  He had seen her but not known her. In a way, it was a graduation: her transformation was complete. She was the consummate actress. If no one knew it, it should be enough that she did. And now she should forget him. But the feeling of his hand against hers, or their brief conversation on April’s terrace, came back to her again and again.

  She was proud of her performances: I walked away from him, she told herself. I haven’t called them back about the audition. But she thought of his aftershave, and the warm scent of his breath. “That way madness lies,” she murmured, and tried not to remember how he had looked at her, the approval in his eyes as he had complimented her hair, her dress. Twice since then, she had slipped into it again and stared at herself in the mirror, looked at what he had looked at. He had flirted with her. He had been attracted to her, had singled her out. Could she work with him? What would she do if he ever called her about the film? What would she do if he asked her out?

  Maybe I could see him, she thought. Maybe I could try to make him love me, and then leave him. The ultimate revenge. She almost smiled, then shook her head. She had schooled herself to play the belle dame sans merci, the femme fatale, but could she really do it? Could she be the victimizer, not the victim? What would it be like to make him want her, love her, and then reject him? Sam deserved it, but could she trust herself to stay uninvolved? Perhaps the worst part of all this was how guilty it made her feel about Michael. Here she was, thinking about Sam, and she had a date with Michael McLain tonight! He was kind to her, but she knew she was using him. I’m acting the way men do! she thought. They are the ones who sleep with a substitute when they can’t get the real thing. Oh, she was confused, but she had to admit it was a heady, exciting confusion.

  Right now, however, there was no time for it. She sat, her legs up on the low deck railing, and waited for Laura Richie. She was going to be interviewed! And not just for a silly squib in TV Guide, but for a Vanity Fair cover story. Me and Demi Moore, she grinned to herself. And I’m not pregnant or naked. Of course, it made her nervous, even though she had been interviewed alone before.

  How the interview with Laura Richie would go was anyone’s guess, but the one thing Jahne did know was that she was not going be so relaxed with Laura. Richie had a reputation for both looking for the dirt and then getting you to spill it. On her televised interviews, she pushed and probed for the soft white underbelly. It was said that she hated to air one if the subject didn’t cry. Jahne knew it was a fine line she was going to have to walk today: to seem open and interesting enough to keep Richie interested, yet not so stupid as to let her catch wind of what the story really was.

  Network Publicity had offered to have a representative present, to field those questions that interviewers had the habit of dropping like bombs. But Jahne had decided that one-to-one was better. She didn’t want to have to divide her attention.

  And Publicity did tell her a little about Laura Richie. Not enough for Jahne to feel completely comfortable, but enough for her to know that Laura could be a tricky interviewer. So ground rules were set. The focus of the interview was Three for the Road, not just Jahne Moore, so that would keep some of the pressure off Jahne.

  She’d decided that limited truth was the best approach. Small-town life. Upstate New York. Keep the dates blurry. Year of the Dog. If pushed, she’d tell about the car accident, though she could barely remember it. And she’d say both parents had died. She’d play the orphan; God knows she had always felt like one. She closed her eyes for a moment, visualizing the role she was about to play, as she often did before going out onstage or before the camera. “Hi, I’m Jahne Moore,” she said to herself, and waited while the words sunk in.

  When she opened her eyes, a car was pulling into her driveway. Jahne got up and walked through the house to the front door, and had it open before Laura Richie reached the top step. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Jahne Moore.”

  That was the first time I met Jahne Moore. I stood outside the door of that little tarted-up bungalow in Birdland and I wondered how long it would take her to move to Laurel Canyon. She opened the door herself, dressed in white slacks and a deep-blue silk T-shirt. She invited me in, took me through to the kitchen, and indicated a stool at the breakfast counter. She poured the coffee and took out a tray of finger sandwiches the Network caterer had probably dropped off that morning, along with a small selection of petits fours. Of course, now I’d like to say that somehow I knew I was on the edge of the showbiz scoop of the decade, but it wouldn’t be true. To me, this was just a routine profile, and I hoped it wouldn’t take too long. I mean, how interesting can a twenty-four-year-old TV star be?

  As Marty DiGennaro might have said: “Go know.”

  “So you cook,” I commented, watching Jahne move gracefully around the kitchen. If she lied straight off about making the sandwiches, I would know where I stood.

  Jahne paused, and tried to figure out if I was making a joke or not. She laughed. “No, I just heat, or reheat. I used to cook a lot, but now, with my schedule…” She let her explanation trail off.

  Well, she passed the first test. “What a lovely little house, Miss Moore.” I like to start off formal, see if they want the “Miss” stuff, see what they call me. Hollywood is an informal town, but it’s best to know your place before someone puts you in it.

  “Please, just ‘Jahne.’ If I can call you ‘Laura.’” Well, she passed the second test. She seemed like a nice kid. “I like the house a lot,” she agreed. “It’s just the right size, too. Manageable.” Jahne picked up the tray of coffee and snacks and started to walk to the living room. “Would inside be okay?” she asked. “I’m still not used to so much sun all the time.” That was certainly true. Her skin was pale. She took me into the living room. It was furnished charmingly—big Mickey Mouse armchairs in old faded florals, a few cute chotchkes here and there. Jahne had the white drapes drawn, softening the light. Maybe so I couldn’t examine her too closely? But I didn’t note it at the time.

  I sat on the sofa and peered around the room. “You’ve done quite a lot in such a short time. I take it you did it yourself?”

  “Well, it’s only a furnished rental. But some things I already had. And I’ve picked up some others since I came here. Somehow, it all feels like home to me.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I see something in the store, I think it’s pretty, I bring it home. I stare at it for a few days, then wonder where I got my taste. It always looks like shit, and never feels comfortable. I’ve got to get some professional help. You’re very lucky. You have a wonderful touch.”

  Jahne looked over at me and shrugged. I liked her. She looked like she didn’t bullshit anyone, herself included. Go know.

  “That’s a gorgeous suit, Laura. At least you have good taste in clothes. I hate to shop, and I never shop for clothes alone.”

  I sat forward, ignoring the compliment. After all, we weren’t there to talk about me, and the suit ought to be nice—twenty-six hundred bucks at Escada bought nice.
“Can we consider this the beginning of the interview?” I asked. “That’s something I know readers are interested in. How you choose your clothes, how your house is decorated. All that good stuff. Have you ever been interviewed before?” I took a small black cassette recorder out of my bag and set it on the table between us, clicking it on.

  “I’m going to consider this interview with you to be my first real interview. You certainly must have some clout if you were able to be the first person to interview all three of us.”

  “Nah, it’s not clout, honey, it’s persistence. Keep your finger on the doorbell, I always say. Like a vacuum-cleaner salesman. Pretty soon, someone will open the door just to get you to go away.” I put down my coffee cup on the table in front of her, picked up my notebook, and opened to a clean page. “So just a little background. How did you get to where you are today?” Sometimes that corny question is all I have to ask to keep them going for hours. All actors are narcissists.

  But Jahne just shrugged. “I’ve been asking myself the same question. At first I told myself it was talent—that always surfaces, like cream rising to the top. Then I thought, my looks didn’t hurt. Then, well, I figured it was my time. Now”—she shrugged again—“all I can say is, it’s a confluence of influences. Nothing more.”

  “That’s very grounded of you, Jahne. But certainly your time practicing your craft paid off. You were discovered at the Melrose Playhouse, weren’t you? Tell me how you got that part.”

  Jahne laughed and started talking. The usual kid-comes-to-L.A.-scrabbles-around-for-work-and-gets-lucky saga.

  I asked a little about her background. I’ve gone over the tape now a dozen times, but there really wasn’t any clue that what she seemed was not what she was. Except perhaps for the momentary pause that stretched out when I asked her if she’d always been so pretty. Now it seems to me her voice was strained when she asked, “What do you mean?” but I didn’t notice it then.

  “Were you an ugly duckling? Did you go through a rough adolescence? Or were you always a prom queen?” I asked. It’s a funny thing. Almost every beauty I’ve ever interviewed likes to tell me how plain she was as a kid. Like they feel guilty about their looks. And a lot of them try to tell me how they’re not really pretty now.

  But Jahne just laughed. It was a bit more sustained than the question warranted. “I guess I was always nice-looking” was all she said.

  “Any men in your life?” I made sure that that came out of nowhere. Inevitable, but sudden. Sometimes it surprises them into honesty. And I’d heard a rumor about her and a certain much older Lothario-about-town. Plus, I’d seen her talking to Michael at Ara’s party. But she was cool. “Not at the moment, but in the past, and, hopefully, in the future. Right now all I can do is work and sleep. I’m in love with my job.”

  Just before I got up to leave, I turned to her and said, “You’re remarkably mature for someone so young. I wish I had been as smart as you at your age. Good luck, Jahne.” I leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Don’t take any wooden condoms,” I told her, and waved goodbye.

  Out on the street, I threw my notebook onto the car seat. A pretty girl who got lucky. A real dull but pleasant enough interview. Nothing new there.

  So much for Laura Richie’s nose for news, right?

  Jahne needed a little time to get herself together after the interview. The woman had eyes like gimlets, she thought. And that question had, unexpectedly, completely unnerved her. Had she always been so pretty? Jahne didn’t know if she should laugh or cry.

  She bathed and laid out her clothes for the evening: her first public Hollywood date. Her first date as a celebrity.

  Celebrity was like a club, Jahne was finding out. And if there was someone else in the club you wanted to meet, you only had to ask another member. That’s how Sam Shields and Michael McLain got Jahne’s telephone number. She was now a member of that club.

  She’d probably agreed to go public out of guilt. At first she and Michael had agreed to keep the thing private, but what was there to hide? If Michael was going to use her for publicity, she’d benefit, too. After all, wasn’t she using Michael to try and keep her growing obsession with Sam under control? She liked Michael, but he was no Einstein. Still, she enjoyed his company.

  And she had to admit, tonight would be a kind of threshold, another peak she had reached. There was a certain thrill that she—plain Mary Jane Moran—was now one of the starlets she used to read about. Michael McLain, whose performances in movies had been lackluster for the last decade, seemed always able to sweep down on the latest really hot starlet and score. It made her a little uncomfortable that she’d once mocked those starlets. Now it seemed different. Now she could empathize with them. Because, for her, dating Michael McLain was really a rite of passage, an announcement that she, too, had arrived. If it helped her career, she couldn’t afford to ignore that possibility.

  Earlier that day, the doorbell had rung, and Jahne had found herself facing a tall bunch of flowers hiding a short delivery man. “For Ms. Jahne Moore,” he said, and grinned at her in recognition as she handed him a twenty. When you were a celebrity, you had to tip generously, Sy had cautioned. The flowers were roses, three dozen of the palest-pink roses Jahne had ever seen. The card said, “Your beauty makes white roses blush. Michael.” It was the corniest shit she had ever heard, but the roses were breathtaking. And it was sweet of him.

  Now she lifted the flowers in their vase and held them in front of her like a Miss America Pageant winner, while watching herself in the full-length dressing mirror. She was wearing a simple A-line dress that Mai had sewn. The underlayer was black silk jersey, overlaid with sheer blue organza. Another Mai masterpiece of simplicity. Jahne pressed her face into the abundant blossoms and took a long, heady whiff of the bouquet. She now understood what the word “swoon” meant. It was hard to believe her life was real, and not some silly Danielle Steel novel being televised. There was only one person she could share her feelings about this moment with, who would understand. She must write to Dr. Moore, first thing in the morning.

  Michael picked her up himself. No limo. That was nice. Just the two of them in that luxurious Rolls. The interior was like a leather-lined velvet jewel case. It made her feel pampered, as if she herself were a jewel. And when they arrived at the restaurant, Jahne was delighted Michael had been so original in his choice. She had assumed that they would be going to one of the big name spots, and had dressed accordingly. But this elegant little Thai restaurant was perfect for the occasion. It was furnished with rattan, and there must have been three hundred pots of orchids, all as purple as the walls. As if reading her mind, Michael spoke.

  “Every Thai place I’ve ever been to is painted this color. I think it’s a patriotic thing,” he said. “But I wouldn’t have taken you here if your outfit clashed with the decor.” Jahne smiled.

  “It was nice of you to send me the flowers,” she said. “I really appreciated it.”

  “My pleasure. Wasn’t it nice of Sy to set us up? Sy rarely has such pleasant suggestions. Sy and a lot of people don’t really get along.”

  “Really? Like who?”

  “Oh, like April Irons. She doesn’t like him.”

  “Neither do I.”

  Michael laughed. “A point in your favor,” he said.

  “I don’t know what to order. It all sounds great. I’m torn between the red curry and the noodles in red nut sauce.”

  “Don’t tell me you need a Thai breaker,” he said, and she groaned at the pun.

  The meal was excellent. And Michael couldn’t have been more gentlemanly. After their arrival, Jahne had felt herself begin to relax. It was the first time she’d been out, doing something normal, in months. She began to talk to him about work, as she always did. In fact, he almost seemed more interested in her work and her career than in her body.

  “What are you going to do when the season ends?” he asked her.

  “I was thinking about taking a part in a movie
during the hiatus.”

  “Good idea. Can you fit it in?”

  She nodded. She felt too guilty to mention Sam or Birth of a Star. “Of course, I have the Flanders Cosmetics commitment. God, I hate doing that stuff. I never meant to be a model.”

  “Good exposure. I saw them in Vogue and Harper’s. They’re very classy.”

  “Oh, they’re just ads. I hate them. It’s degrading. Don’t you think?”

  “It is for an artist,” Michael said.

  Jahne smiled, pleased that he took her seriously, and as she did she realized she could sit here talking with Michael for three more hours but there was nothing more she could manage to eat. And three cups of tea were more than enough to counter the effects of the champagne the very grateful owners presented to them with their meal. Jahne was impressed that Michael paid the bill, instead of pulling the bit that she had heard so many of the other actors did: “My presence alone pays for the meal. Here’s an autographed photo, signed ‘to my dear friends at Siam House.’” He paid in cash, she noticed. And left a huge tip for the waitress. Jahne was having such a good time that she didn’t want the evening to end. So what if paparazzi photographed them leaving the place? She hoped they would make the papers. She was delighted when Michael suggested they go on to a club. “It’s a real dive,” he explained, “but lately it’s become hip to be seen at the late show. Guaranteed to show in Army Archerd’s column. We’ll see some of my friends there.”

  There was a huge crowd outside the place, but after the paparazzi had again blinded them with strobes, the doorman waved Michael and Jahne through. Some of the women in the line started calling Michael’s name, but Jahne was surprised to see that people also paid as much attention to her as to Michael. Once inside, she saw that the club was bigger than she’d expected, and it looked as if every table was taken. The maître d’ led them to the front of the room, however, and a small table with chairs seemed to appear out of thin air, and was placed in front of the tiny stage for them.