The Boys in the Mail Room: A Novel
Page 11
"Got my trades, mail boy?" she asked. She had a thick New York accent.
David put a copy of Variety and one of the Hollywood Reporter addressed to Rich on her desk. She was a cunt, a fat ugly cunt, and he hated her and the way she called him "mail boy."
But Rich listened to every word she said about everything. "Here you go, Enid," David said, smiling at her.
The door from Rich's office opened and a fourth girl who looked like the three girls in the chairs emerged.
"Thank you very much, Mr. Rich," she said over her shoulder. "And thank you," she said to Enid who didn't even look up. Then she turned to the three girls in the three chairs. "Good luck," she said insincerely to them.
Tom Rich came out after her. He was red-faced and looked very haggard.
"Next," he said. "Llewellyn?"
"Me!" one of the three blond girls said and jumped up.
"Hiya, Tom," David said.
"Whaddya say, Dave?"
Tom Rich was a real warm guy. Honest and sincere. And everyone knew he'd never get anywhere. He'd been stuck as a casting director for ten years because he was a yes man. He had no opinion. And he drank too much. There were three different heads of casting since Tom Rich started working at Hemisphere, but Rich had never been considered for the job.
The girl named Llewellyn brushed seductively past Rich into his office. Rich didn't even notice. That was the other thing. Ten years in the job of casting beautiful women and there had never been even one rumor about him.
"So how 'bout it, Tom?" David said to Rich. "Looking for an assistant?"
"Huh?"
The secretary, Enid, looked up at David and narrowed her eyes.
"Nevah mind, Kane," she said, "he's gonna hayah me if he needs someone to help him. Not one of you mail room creeps."
Rich shrugged at David and closed the door. David walked down the corridor dropping trade papers on desks, testing himself to see how many of the secretaries' names he could remember, and clenching his teeth trying not to think about that cunt Enid.
He looked to see what he had left to deliver. All the rest was on twenty. He'd stop in the men's room on the nineteenth floor and comb his hair before he went up.
The men's room was empty. David took a paper towel and wiped off one of the sinks so he could put the papers he was carrying down on it. Then he took a comb out of his pocket, and stood in front of the mirror that was over the next sink. He looked at his face. He was only nineteen, but his eyes looked like the eyes of an old man. Since Marlene died, he'd been living alone in the apartment in Beverly Hills, living carefully on Social Security checks and his small mail room paychecks, making the drive into the Valley every morning, occasionally having dinner or a beer with some of his high school friends in the evening, but most of the time staying late at the studio.
Mail room chores were usually finished by six every night. Mickey Ashman would run off to his acting workshop or some such bullshit and the others seemed in a hurry to get away each evening, too. Not David. He would wander around to see what was going on. There was frequently nighttime shooting of a picture on the back lot. David would find a spot behind the cameras and sit quietly watching. Occasionally there would be a pretty young actress or extra around who would flirt with him and he would join her on her dinner break, then take her home for some casual sex. But watching the movies being made got him more excited than any woman ever could.
David finished with the comb and looked at himself with satisfaction. His hair was his best feature. Besides being thick and healthy-looking, the bright carrot color that made people call him "Hey, Red" was outstanding. And he'd spent some of his Social Security check on this new seersucker blazer he was wearing, so he looked exceptional today. Maybe he would see Greenfield today. Maybe Jack Shear needed an assistant. He took the mail and headed for the elevator.
On the east side of the twentieth floor were the offices of World Records, a subsidiary of Hemisphere. The record company was headed by Henry Shmidt, a giant bear of a man who knew a lot about business and nothing about music except what some of his underlings and his teenaged daughter told him. There were three photographs on Shmidt's desk. David had seen them once when Shmidt was in New York, and Shmidt's secretary had been busy on the phone and waved to David to take the mail right in and put it on Shmidt's desk. One of the photographs was of Shmidt's wife, Jenna, currently a socialite, formerly a Las Vegas showgirl. The second picture was made as a joke. It was a shot of Shmidt in a World War II Nazi uniform complete with helmet. And the third was a photograph of Shmidt and his teenage daughter, Anna.
The girl was very tall and blond and statuesque and she was laughing. And Shmidt was standing behind her with his arm around her and had his left hand cupping her left breast. His daughter. Jesus. David had heard Shmidt was strange. The three pictures convinced him. Today he only had Billboard and Cash Box for Shmidt's office. The secretary was away from her desk so David dropped the papers off and left quickly.
He headed for Jack Shear's office. Shear's secretary was—let's see. A girl with a guy's name. Jean? No. Allyn Grant. With a "y." She wasn't at her desk.
"Allyn?" David said.
"Hi," she shouted out. She was sitting in Shear's empty office, looking out the window.
"Got anything for outgoing?" he asked. He dropped Shear's mail on her desk.
"No," she replied, "he's in Europe."
"Oh."
"Did you want to see him about something?" Allyn emerged.
David hesitated. Maybe he shouldn't say. Maybe this girl wanted to move up from being Shear's secretary the way Tom Rich's fat secretary wanted to be Rich's assistant. No, he thought. This one's too pretty to want to be an executive. She's probably looking for a husband. He could trust his instincts about women.
"Yeah," he said. "Think he needs an assistant?"
"Don't know," she said. She was twisting the end of her thick straight black hair. "I'll be glad to ask him."
"You been here long?" he asked. Secretaries were so boring, but if they didn't like you they could make your life miserable.
"A year," she said.
"I thought you'd been here longer," he said. "Usually girls are in the typing pool first."
She shook her head and laughed.
"Typing pool. I'd never have made it through that."
"Shear find you through an agency?" Who cares? David thought to himself. He'd go and talk to Dietrich's secretary. Or Greenfield's. Shear was out of the country. This girl had nothing to offer him. He was halfway to the door, not even listening, when he heard her reply.
"No. Harold Greenfield is a friend of my family's. In fact, we're nearly related."
David stopped and tried to look nonchalant.
"Really?"
"It's kind of silly," she added smiling. "My grandmother and his mother are best friends. He adores his mother so he gave me a job here and he and his wife, Julia, have been like parents to me. It's a sordid admission, I guess," she continued, bubbling on. "I mean everyone wants to think they got their jobs because of their own merits, not their grandmother's contacts—but if I hadn't taken this job . . . My God. I could have ended up staying in Pittsburgh married to some doctor or something. So here I am. With Harold Greenfield as my mentor." She laughed. "Not bad, huh?"
The story was totally guileless. The girl had no affectations about her closeness to the most powerful man in Hollywood. It was very matter-of-fact.
"Is Greenfield a good person?" David asked, moving back toward Allyn's desk.
"The best," she said, smiling. "I have dinner at his home nearly once a week and he sits at the dinner table and talks about the industry. And it's fascinating because Harold knows every detail of every film and TV show that's being shot on this lot, including what time the coffee catering truck stops at which sound stage. And he cares. He really cares. I guess he and his wife probably always wanted to have a daughter. I mean, I know that's true, so they're very kind to me. I'm very lucky," she said.
"I like your jacket," Allyn said. "That look reminds me of the East."
David's mind was racing. Harold's incredible. I have dinner at his home nearly once a week. He and his wife are like parents to me.
"Hey, listen," he said, "want to have dinner with me sometime?" he asked.
It looked to David as though she blushed. "Sure."
"I'll call you tonight."
"Great," she said. "I live in South Beverly Hills."
"So do I," he said. "Maybe I'll stop by . . ." She grinned. He made himself smile. She wrote down her phone number. He put it in the pocket of his seersucker blazer and headed for the elevator. He was elated.
nine
Allyn Grant walked back into the inner office, sat in the big swivel chair and looked out the window of Jack Shear's office. It was Jack Shear's swivel chair, the one behind his desk. Allyn liked sitting there when Shear was in Europe. It was just as easy for her to answer the phone from his desk as it was from the reception area. Besides, Shear had a window and she didn't.
Allyn loved looking out at the Hemisphere lot from the window. She had plenty of time to do it. In the year she'd worked for Shear, he had spent most of his time in Europe.
It was an easy job.
Allyn didn't want an easy job. She wanted a job that would keep her so busy day and night that she could stop thinking about Phil Gruber. How dumb. Phil Gruber. Here she was in the glamour capital of the world, in a cushy job at a movie studio, had been for a year, and she was still thinking about some ophthalmologist in Pittsburgh.
Of course. It made perfect sense. She was raised in Pittsburgh where ophthalmologists who were in love with you were a valuable commodity. Better than money in the bank. Or at least the same as money in the bank. Allyn Grant marrying Phil Gruber was a very logical step. According to her mother, her mother's friends, and her grandmother.
Except that Allyn was never sure she loved Phil Gruber. Really loved him. In fact, sometimes she didn't even like him. Until he said he couldn't see her any more.
What a move. What a spectacular move on the part of boring Phil Gruber. There he was, deeply involved with tall, brunette, blue-eyed Allyn Grant. A bright Engglish major at the University of Pittsburgh who had been the most popular girl in her high school, and very sought after in college—and he was dumping her. Kissing her off. Now she was sure she loved him. Had all along. Wanted him back. Wanted his babies. Hurt when she saw his car or a car that looked as if it might be his car, sobbed when she heard love songs on the radio and sat for hours in her room writing love poems, the first line of which was frequently "If you come back I swear I'll change." Rejection is a powerful force. Phil Gruber broke up with Allyn to go back with Janet Blumenthal, a girl he'd dated when he was at Penn State who had once rejected him.
Allyn slept through her own graduation ceremony. She wouldn't take phone calls from any of her friends for fear they'd tell her they'd seen Phil somewhere with Janet. She appeared at the family dinner table once with very bloodshot eyes and a red nose, and excused herself to go back to her room right after the salad, which she barely touched. Her nineteen-year-old brother raised his eyes heavenward, said "Oh, fuck," and was asked to please leave the table.
Allyn's mother, Sarah, was afraid to tell her own mother, Ethel, about the breakup because she knew Ethel was counting on walking down the aisle at a summer wedding. But when Allyn emerged from her room for the first time in something other than her old plaid bathrobe and announced that she was grateful to all of them for putting up with her childish ways, and that they'd soon be rid of her, because she was packing to go to New York where she would find a job in advertising, Sarah called Ethel. It was hard to be certain over the phone, but after she told her the news, Sarah thought the old woman might be hyperventilating.
"I'll get a cab and be right over," Ethel said.
When the old woman saw how bad her beautiful granddaughter looked, she clutched herself somewhere around the area of her chest.
"Grandma," Allyn told her. "It's for the best. If I married Phil I would have stayed in Pittsburgh and been a housewife all my life. In New York it's exciting and I'll have some kind of career."
Ethel uttered the word career, nodded, went to the phone and called Rosie Greenfield, née Dworkin, who had been her best friend for sixty years. Ethel and Rosie lived two blocks apart. Both were widows and both were active in the Temple Sisterhood.
"Call Harold," Ethel said to Rosie.
Everyone knew that Rosie Greenfield's son was someone important in Hollywood. His exact title didn't matter. What mattered was that he was a "big shot."
Before Allyn even decided what to pack for her move to New York, Rosie Greenfield, as directed, had secured a secretarial job for her at Hemisphere Studios in. Hollywood.
Hollywood. That was crazy.
"Oh, yeah," Ethel said. "Not as crazy as you think. At least I know Rosie's boy will keep an eye on you." Allyn laughed at that. The man her grandmother called "Rosie's boy" was fifty-three years old.
The instructions were for Allyn to call Harold Greenfield the minute she arrived in Hollywood. She did and he invited her to come to his house for dinner. What a house.
It was in Beverly Hills, on a corner, and the taxi driver who drove Allyn there whistled as he drove up the long tree-lined driveway.
"Geez, lady," he said to the fare he'd picked up at the rundown motel in Hollywood where she was staying, "you sure got some classy friends."
The Greenfields told Allyn later they had been surprised when she walked into their living room that evening. From the story they heard about Allyn being jilted they were expecting to receive a pudgy unattractive little heartbroken girl.
"And only the heartbroken part was true," Allyn laughed.
The Greenfields considered themselves connoisseurs of people. And because of their position in the community they were exposed to some exceptional people. On any given evening their palatial home was filled with political figures, foreign dignitaries, business tycoons and, of course, movie stars. Despite Allyn's inability to qualify as noteworthy, both Harold and Julia immediately took a liking to the pretty but downcast girl. She would mix well at their parties. And certainly Julia could find her a husband as was requested on Ethel Cutler's behalf in a recent phone call from Harold's mother, Rosie. A far more interesting husband than some dull whatever-he-was in Pittsburgh.
Julia Greenfield was elegant and warm. She spoke with humor about the one time Harold had taken her along on his annual Pittsburgh visits. She even remembered meeting Allyn's grandmother, Ethel, once, and both she and Harold agreed that Rosie's friendship with Ethel was the most important thing either old woman had.
Allyn told Greenfield her only qualification for getting a job anywhere was good typing. She had taken a typing course one summer a few years back so she could type her English papers. Greenfield smiled.
"You don't have to be that good. You'll be an executive secretary. Just a few letters and memos here and there."
She would start on Monday of the following week. Julia helped her find a one-bedroom furnished apartment in South Beverly Hills, and after she'd been in California one week, Allyn Grant sat down and wrote:
Dear Grandma,
Harold got me a job as a secretary for Jack Shear who is an executive at Hemisphere Studios (that is the place you and Mrs. Greenfield call "Harold's Studio"). Please thank Mrs. Greenfield for me even though I will write her a thank you note myself. I love it here, Gran. It's very exciting and they tell me it's warm all year round.
Who would have thought that a woman who came over from Russia at thirteen and spent the next sixty years of her life living in Pittsburgh would have so much pull in Hollywood?
I love you,
Allyn
Ethel Cutler framed the letter.
The first year went by and quickly Allyn's relationship with the Greenfields flourished. In fact it provided her with almost all the social activity she had that year. Harold taught her how to shoot pool at the antique pool table in the Greenfields' playroom, and she was getting very good at the game. Julia gave her some decorating tips for the new apartment and shopped for fabrics with her.
Parties at the Greenfields were heady affairs, filled with faces Allyn had seen before only in magazines. She was fascinated by the interesting people. Still, there wasn't a man in the crowd she wanted to date or, especially, to go to bed with. But now, that darling David Kane said he was going to call. She could hardly wait.
ten
Barry Golden spent three weeks avoiding Michael Allred. At first, when he asked to not have the route that included the costume department, saying he'd take any other available run, he thought there might be questions. On the contrary. Everyone seemed to have similar peculiarities about where he did and didn't want to be, so no one questioned him. Once the group began eating their lunch in the commissary, there was no avoiding the situation. The mail room table was right near the entrance and a few times Allred raced over to their table, recognizing Stan, who delivered his mail, and Mickey, who sometimes did, too, and, of course, Barry.
"Why don't you ever stop by?" Allred asked Barry. Barry was embarrassed. He was certain the others knew the whole story, that he and Allred had a former lover in common. But instead the others were impressed.
"He's the best," Stan Rose said after Allred left. "One of the major biggies in this business."
After he got the job in the mail room, Barry took an apartment on Flores in West Hollywood. He never called home, and only called Andy's apartment one time after their last conversation. A man Barry didn't know answered and when the man asked who was calling, and Barry told him, there was a muffled sound as if the man was holding the phone against his chest, a few muffled voices, and then the man got back on the line.