The Boys in the Mail Room: A Novel

by Iris Rainer Dart

  "They're takin' 'em outta here afterwards in an armored car," one of the guys Walter knew said. " 'Cause if they don't, man, those little teenaged chicks'll kill 'em. You dig?"

  Stan nodded.

  "Jumped on by a horde of prepubescent girls," Walter said. "You can kill me like that anytime."

  Stan smiled and looked at Walter, wondering if there wasn't some seriousness in what the little man just said. He'd met Barton's wife, Phyllis, a few times and never saw any display of affection between them. The first time Stan met her she was overweight and she was wearing a red fox coat which made her look even wider than she was. The coat was the same color as her red hair. The staff and crew of Give 'em the Hook were having a buffet dinner after the shooting of the show and Phyllis was piling her plate with food.

  "Eat up, fatso," Barton shouted at her from across the studio. "Eat all that starchy shit. 'Cause you need it, honey. You're a growing girl."

  Everyone became very quiet and Phyllis didn't even look up. She put the plate with a sandwich and potato salad and macaroni salad and cole slaw and French fries down where she was standing and walked toward the door. No one said a word while she crossed the length of the stage. As soon as she was out the door everyone resumed their chattering and kept taking food. They walked past the piled-up plate she'd left on the table as if it weren't there, and as if Phyllis had never been there.

  The next time Stan saw Phyllis Barton, it was six months later, and he didn't recognize her. She couldn't be described as skinny, no, it was more like gaunt. Her cheeks were hollow, and her eyes looked corpsishly deep-set. She was wearing a tight sweater and her chest was very flat, and the bell-bottomed jeans she wore seemed small enough to fit a pre-teenaged girl. That's how she looked. Like a teenaged girl with an old face. It was awful.

  The noise from the stadium was getting louder and Barton pulled Stan over to one of the wings to watch the people pour in. Stan and Walter had entered the Bowl through an interior back door, so this was Stan's first real look at the seats and the massive capacity of the house. Jesus Christ. It was exciting. The rows were filling in with people.

  "Thousands and thousands of people," said Barton, giving voice to Stan's thoughts, "times seven bucks, kiddo. You dig?" he added, imitating the guy who'd told them the story about the armored car. Stan grinned and Walter took out their tickets.

  "Let's find our seats."

  Walter and Stan's seats were close to the front of the Bowl, and when Stan turned around and looked back, there were teenaged girls as far as he could see.

  "What'd I tell you?" Barton said. The buzzing from the crowd was loud and frantic and a helicopter was circling over the Bowl with flashing lights. Onstage the huge red letters KRLA glittered. It was exciting all right. Stan hadn't imagined anything like this. Barton grinned. "So, Stanley. This is the concert business. What do you think?"

  Stan was about to tell him when the screaming began. Eighteen thousand voices were shrill and piercing and it must have begun spontaneously because no one was on the stage, and no one had done anything. It was just getting close to the time and everyone knew it. And then the lights dimmed.

  Someone was singing some KRLA song, then an announcer was trying to be heard over the screaming, and flashbulbs were popping like a fireworks display. It was so outrageous it made Stan laugh. Barton was laughing, too, and the orchestra began to play. Now the kids were screaming for each song in the overture.

  Dick Biondi, an L.A. disc jockey, came out. More screaming.

  Stan never even got the name of the opening act. Something like the Headhunters. The kids didn't care. The roar was as loud as if there were no act out there. Another disc jockey, Casey Kasem. Another act, Brenda Holloway. Several times Stan wanted to say something to Barton but before he could another surge of screaming would go up. Another group. Stan looked at his watch. Barton saw him and grinned. The third group was a six-piece band, playing something very loud that sounded remarkably like the William Tell Overture. It must have been good publicity for these acts to open for the Beatles, Stan thought, because they sure weren't doing it to be heard. Nobody was listening.

  The band finished. Dave Hull, the president of the Beatles' fan club, came out and introduced Bob Eubanks the promoter, who introduced the Beatles. My God. There they were. Stan had seen them on television. Their music filled the last year of his life but this. This chaos, this madness, this had nothing to do with the music. Most of the time you couldn't even hear the music.

  "Paullll. I'll kill myself. I love you."

  "Ringo. Oh, God. Ringo!"

  "I wanna hold your . . ."

  "John. Oh, John. I can't stand it."

  Stan shook his head in disbelief.

  The Beatles. The rock business. It was overwhelming. Rose and Barton Concerts. Barton and Rose Concerts. What did it matter? It could be good. Sensational maybe. The worst it could be was a ticket out of the mail room. Hell. He was only twenty-three years old.

  The Beatles played their last song and, from all the way in the back, the crowd began moving toward the stage.

  Stan looked around again and saw the waves of people heading right toward where he and Walter were sitting. All of them screaming. He shook his head in disbelief.

  Suddenly the fountains that separated the stage from the seats went on, and bursts of water sailed into the air. Clearly it was an effort on the part of the promoters to keep the kids back.

  "I don't care," a girl yelled, and dove into the fountain.

  Announcements came over the P.A. The screaming was now combined with crying.

  "Stanley?" Barton said over the noise. "Are we in business or what?"

  Stan heard him and smiled.

  "We are," he said, and Stan Rose and Walter Barton shook hands on the formation of their partnership.

  thirteen

  Mickey was in three actors' workshops that he attended regularly after work. One of them was called the Underground, and since he'd joined they'd only done one production, García Lorca's House of Bernarda Alba, which had an all-female cast, so he was bored there. Another one was a small group that got together casually on Wednesdays to practice cold readings. They would bring scripts of plays, and take turns reading them in front of one another, and then creatively evaluate one another's work. But Mickey's favorite was his Monday-night group, the Jackie Levitz comedy workshop.

  Jackie Levitz was a character actor who had appeared briefly on Broadway, unnoticed in a few television series, and with a line here or there in numerous commercials. He was always a second or third banana. Agents referred to him as an ethnic character type because he had dark hair and dark eyes and was short and pudgy. His timing was good and his style was broad in the manner of vaudeville comics, which he was too young to have been, a fate he bemoaned aloud frequently. Levitz's decision to teach a comedy workshop came at a time when he had been out of work for a whole year. Both Jackie and his wife, Ruth, a former Broadway dancer, knew if he spent one more day during which walking to the corner newsstand to buy the trade papers was his only activity, he would soon be telling jokes in the lockup ward at Camarillo.

  Five years after Levitz's comedy workshop began, there was a waiting list to get in. It was well known among young actors. Mickey applied right after his incident with Lowell Spears and was invited to come as an observer. For months he sat in the back row of the small theater where Levitz's group worked out. He watched carefully as the regulars did improvisations, rehearsed sketches, played theater games and performed exercises that Levitz made up. Most of them tried too hard and weren't funny. There were only a few good ones. Even fewer very good ones. And according to Levitz, after Mickey had finally waited long enough for Levitz to allow him to try out, "There was only one great one, and that was Mickey Ashman."

  "I can't teach you a thing, Ash!" Levitz said to him one night when the others had left the theater for a coffee break. "You are a pro, my friend. Better than nearly anyone I know."

  Mickey's heart swelled.
God, he needed to hear that. His career had been nothing if not shitty. Even now at the studio, where he was rubbing elbows with dozens of producers every day, he couldn't get a day of acting work. Acting work? He couldn't even get a goddamned agent. And he'd tried. Hard. He had the list to prove it. Thirty-two agents. He'd met and talked to thirty-two agents, some when they came to make calls on the Hemisphere lot, some after he left work and rushed to their office with his picture portfolio, and some during his lunch break. And not one of them wanted to sign him.

  "How old are you?"

  "Twenty-two," Mickey said, trying to sound spritely. Sometimes he felt like a hundred and five.

  "Gee, you look a lot older," one agent said, looking at Mickey's most recent photographs. "You're a character type. I already got plenty of those."

  Then there was that woman agent who loved him. At least that's what she said.

  "I love you. Oh, God. I absolutely love you. I mean I love your type. I mean you're funny. You're silly. You're just a riot. I love you. But there's no work in the industry for someone like you."

  "Thank you."

  He had some photographs in his book of himself as Mr. Chunky which were taken on the set when he was shooting the commercial. One of the agents he saw looked at them while he was leafing through Mickey's book, squinted and said, "Oh, yeah. That was you. God, that was a million years ago."

  Nevertheless, in Jackie Levitz's class Mickey was a star. He was fast on his feet in the improvisations, and creative, and every time he got up to do an exercise the rest of the group paid attention. They knew what they were about to see would be good.

  But they were all working in the industry. And he wasn't.

  Dal Mitchell was skinny and unshaven and did a great Western dialect and he always played the hero's sidekick in cowboy pictures. Beans and Mitzi Cass were a husband-and-wife comedy team and they had just done a series of coffee commercials that helped them make a down payment on a new home in Studio City. Barbara Rogers, a buxom blonde whose stock-in-trade was playing the part of a dumb blonde, and whose secret was she was as dumb as she acted, was the "game girl" on a daytime quiz show. She stood beside the prizes when they showed them to the audience. It wasn't exactly acting, but she was paid two hundred and fifty dollars a show. And they shot five shows a week.

  Mickey couldn't stand it.

  "It's a fluke," Jackie Levitz told him. "A guy with all that talent should have his own series." Mickey smiled and shrugged, but he wasn't sure when Jackie said that if he was talking about Mickey or himself. And Jackie would call agents on Mickey's behalf. But even though everyone knew who Jackie Levitz was, everyone also knew he hardly ever worked anymore, and they connected Mickey with him. So the answer to Jackie was always some variation of "Hey, Jackson baby, I'm up to my ass in comic types," or "Love to see the kid, Jackie, but it's almost hiatus, so gimme a call in June. Okay? Ciao."

  One Monday night Mickey left the studio and drove home. He stopped to pick up his cleaning on Ventura Boulevard, then he stopped at a small market near his house and bought a package of sliced bologna and a loaf of bread and a bottle of orange juice, because for some reason that's what he felt like eating. Then he drove home and had a bologna sandwich and a glass of orange juice.

  After he finished eating, he sat at the tiny kitchen table and looked at the clock. It was seven thirty. Levitz's workshop met at eight o'clock. Ordinarily Mickey couldn't wait to get there. He would be the first one to arrive. Even before Levitz. But tonight it was different. He couldn't go. Couldn't. He couldn't move from the table. He felt as if his body were tied to the chair. There was a pounding behind his eyes that made his whole face and head ache.

  The mail room. Maybe he was stuck there. Forever. Running the mail. Incoming. Outgoing. Mailboy, leave those on my desk. Mailboy, send these out. Stan Rose and Walter Barton. David would be leaving the mail room soon. So would Golden. Mickey had been there before all of them, and there he was. Still. Everyone was moving ahead but Ashman. Mickey Ashman. Carry your briefcase, Mr. Holloway. God damn it, he was tired. Maybe he should skip Levitz's class tonight. Yes, skip it. That's what he would do. And sleep.

  He walked into his bedroom and looked at the unmade bed. The pounding behind his eyes was getting harder. It would be good to lie down. Take the phone off the hook and sleep. The phone. Who would call? Stan Rose sometimes called and the two of them would go to a movie in the Valley. But Rose was pretty busy now with the concert business, and . . . yeah. Everyone was busy. Everyone was making money. Big money. Everyone in Levitz's class but him. Everyone in the mail room but him. Maybe he'd take a couple of aspirins.

  The water in the bathroom sink was dripping. The sink was dirty and the soggy towel from his morning shower was on the floor where he'd left it. He hated the house when it looked like this. But lately he had no strength, no energy, to keep it clean. Aspirins. He opened the medicine cabinet. Contac Nasal Mist, Rise, Naturade one-a-day vitamins, Valium. Valium. This was an old bottle from Dr. Sobel in Chicago. Mickey never took them. The plastic container was full. The cotton was still in it. Valium. He had been having some lower back problems a few years ago and Dr. Sobel said these would ease the muscle spasms and relax him. But he'd never even opened the bottle. Maybe he should take one now. Maybe he would take more than one. All of them. Mickey picked up a plastic cup. The rim of the cup was caked with toothpaste from the sink. He rinsed the cup carefully, put some water in it and took it and the Valium bottle into the bedroom. It was dark in the bedroom now except for the light from the bathroom. Mickey sat on the bed and held the plastic Valium bottle in his hand. Who would miss him? Harvey? Maybe. His parents? Yeah. That was it. He had nobody. He was nobody.

  He put the cup of water on the night table and pulled the plastic lid off the container and took the cotton out. Blue pills. Ten milligrams, it said on the label. Lots of them. Little blue pills. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Little blue pills and he would never have to pick up the trades and see who else was working. Little blue pills and he wouldn't have to hear any more agents say, "You can't work, Mickey. You're too character. You're too young. Maybe you'll grow into yourself." Can't work. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He threw the open bottle of Valium hard against the wall. The little blue pills flew everywhere. Fuck. Can't work. Can't even commit suicide.

  Five or six of the pills were scattered on the floor next to the bed. Maybe that would be enough. He stooped down on the floor to pick them up, and as he did he could see his reflection in the mirror on the bathroom door.

  Chubby, schmucky Mickey Ashman killed himself last night by swallowing a bunch of dusty Valiums that he picked up off the floor of his slovenly room. Tears welled in Mickey's eyes and he laughed. At himself. He was schmucky. That part was true. But he wouldn't kill himself. At least not tonight. He'd go to Levitz's class and let everyone tell him how wonderful he was.

  fourteen

  David Kane had it figured out. Finally. Maybe. The maybe was because he wasn't sure it would work. When you were dealing with something as elusive and uncertain as romance it was hard to be positive about what the results would be. Romance. It was romance that had brought his parents together. Marlene hadn't told him too many details, but every time she'd spoken to him about her relationship with his father she used the word "passionate," and even though David remembered very little about the two of them together, one of his memories had to do with tiptoeing into their room in the morning, and always finding them locked in one another's arms whether they were asleep or awake. Big deal. Then the son of a bitch left her. And never even came back, or called or sent a fucking cent.

  And Wolfson? Wasn't he romantic? That rotten asshole. He knocked Marlene up and never had any intention of leaving his wife. Wolfson. God, how David hated him. Marlene's funeral had been very small. A few of David's high school friends saw the announcement in the paper and came. Two women from the cosmetics department at Saks came, and they cried until their very heavy black mascara ran, and Wolfson was late. David was sure he wouldn't
be there at all and he was surprised when he looked back to see him in his three-piece pinstripe suit, leaning against the back wall of the tiny room where Marlene was laid out. David hated Wolfson when he looked at him, and wished he'd killed him that morning in the poolhouse. At the cemetery Wolfson called him Davey and gave him a piece of paper where he'd written the time and date David was supposed to report to Hemisphere. He never said how he got him the job; probably the Bank of Beverly Hills did business with the studio. What difference did it make?

  "Good luck, boy," Wolfson said to him. Then he got into his Rolls-Royce and drove away.

  The friends from school looked sadly at David and left. The women from Saks had apologized but they couldn't come to the cemetery because they had to get back to work. David went home alone to the apartment and sat in a chair in the living room for hours, alternately staring into space silently and then sobbing loudly. He had no one. Roman had seen to that. He would never get caught up in it. But he knew how to use it. And that's what he would do with Allyn Grant.

  The mail room was the lowest. And he couldn't stay there anymore. It was demeaning and he wanted more money than that piddly-shit salary. And status, too. A car. A good car, not Marlene's old Ford Falcon. Allyn Grant was close with Harold Greenfield. Maybe she would get David to Greenfield. Take him there. Not maybe. She would. He was playing it cool with her. First he said he'd call her, and then he didn't call. That always drove women crazy. He could see it in her eyes after the three weeks on the other runs when he went back to the gold building. She was aching to say something to him but she was afraid. That was the system. Women waited. Men were the aggressors. The askers, the callers. He was running the show She'd be there waiting when he called.