The Boys in the Mail Room: A Novel

by Iris Rainer Dart

  "How 'bout a Coke for you, honey?" she said to Barry.

  "Uh . . . sure," Barry answered, lowering his voice a little.

  This was his third trip to Las Vegas in three weeks. The first time Shmidt sent him to service Gigi Boyd who billed herself as peppy, perky Gigi Boyd, and referred to herself as a girl singer even though she was at least fifty. In her act she not only sang in her own voice, she did impersonations of other women singers, ending one medley by doing her version of Peggy Lee, which sounded more to Barry like a bad James Cagney. Afterwards, when Barry went to her dressing room to introduce himself, which was the way World Records made sure the act knew that someone had been there, caring, Gigi was all alone. She smoked a cigarette in a long black cigarette holder and wore a chenille robe, and a blond wig. She had false black eyelashes that looked okay from the stage, but now, up close, they were bizarre.

  "How's Henry, that old doll?" she asked.

  An old doll was hardly the way Barry ever imagined anybody thinking of Henry Shmidt.

  "Great," Barry said. "He's just fine, Gigi."

  "I used to be in love with him," she said. "He's my type. Yeah. Henry is definitely my type."

  "Yeah," Barry said. "Well . . . he's just fine."

  Gigi put the remainder of her cigarette out in an ashtray that was on her dressing table and inserted another cigarette in the holder.

  "I really liked your act," Barry said. God would forgive him for that lie. This was business.

  "Yeah?" she said. "Well, you got good taste." She laughed at her own joke and lit her cigarette with a gold lighter. "I'm gonna record two of those new tunes. Tell Henry to set some studio time for me. I'm really ready to do another album."

  "That's true," Barry said. "You really are." He was nodding a lot. He realized now he had been nodding since the minute he walked in the door. Probably because Shmidt's instructions were "Be positive. That's A&R's job. Get them to trust you. Get them to like you."

  "Hey, listen," Gigi said, standing. "I got a great idea." She was much taller than Barry. "Why don't you come over to my place for a nightcap?" Barry didn't answer. He couldn't think fast enough. He hadn't planned to get her to like him that much.

  "Well, I—"

  "C'mon, cutie," she said. "You're my type, you know. You're definitely my type."

  Barry smiled a very stiff smile. That was supposed to be flattering, what she just said.

  "Gigi," he said, and the words raced through his head. Am I a fool without a mind or have I merely been too blind to realize. No. That wasn't what he wanted to say. "I have some people waiting for me or I would love to. I would. Honestly. Love to. You're really great. Really. I'll tell Henry you send your love." He was edging toward the door. "And we'll book some studio time. Right?" She looked disappointed. She was bad enough looking when she was smiling, but now with that scowl on her face. Ugly. Unequivocally ugly. " 'Bye."

  Barry walked through the corridor, out into the empty showroom and through the casino holding his breath. He didn't even sigh with relief until the elevator door opened and he was safe inside and on his way to his room.

  His second visit to Las Vegas was better. After Harley and Yona and Marty heard the story of the first trip, they decided they wanted to join him. Yona packed sandwiches that she brought along to eat on the plane.

  "My woman has to have something on her person to eat at all times," Marty snickered as they headed for the gate.

  "Eat this, you critical cocksucker!" she snapped at Marty, and she did a little bump for punctuation. "No offense, boys," she said to Barry and Harley. "Neither of you two is critical," and the four of them laughed. They laughed at everything that day. And they hadn't smoked a thing. There was just something about the whole Las Vegas scene that seemed outrageously funny to them. Yona and Marty's room in the hotel was wallpapered with bright red flocking, which opened a whole world of jokes for them.

  "Hello, front desk," Marty said, picking up an imaginary phone. "My wife isn't happy with our flocking!"

  "Well," he answered in a different voice, "maybe you should try a vibrator."

  "Room service, room service," Yona said, picking up another imaginary phone. "Send me up some coffee."

  "Yes, ma'am," she answered herself. "What room are you in?"

  "The one with flocking," she said.

  "Oh, lady," she answered, "in this hotel everyone's doing that!"

  On that trip Barry was in Las Vegas to service the Barones. Three pudgy look-alike sisters who sang in close harmony, and whose career outside of Las Vegas included a yearly Christmas special on television. Before he left Los Angeles, Barry called the William Morris Agency and asked to have a table for four. The table was right down front.

  When the Barone Sisters came on, Barry was afraid to look at Yona because he knew she would start to laugh and make him laugh, and the Barones were singing "May You Always," which was a very serious song. So he just looked at the stage. He watched the Barones dance and jiggle as they sang "La Bamba," and then from offstage someone threw them straw hats and canes and they did a medley about vaudeville, and then while the other two hummed "Tarantella" in the background, one of the sisters talked about what it was like to grow up in an Italian family, and then they all sang "That's Amore," and then one of the other sisters said, "We'd like to do a little change of pace for you now and sing our version of a tune we're sure you've heard on the radio," and they started singing Harley's song "The Rain Is Like My Tears." They were slaughtering it. In fact, they were already halfway through it by the time Barry realized what it was. And when he turned to look at Marty and Yona and Harley, the three of them were laughing so hard that Marty had his face down on the table and Yona had to get up and run out of the showroom.

  Afterwards the four of them were in the casino.

  "I have to go backstage," Barry said. What if they recognized him? What if they knew he was at the table where the woman ran out and the three guys were laughing so much their drinks were spilling. Yona was still giggling.

  "Don't go," she said, "those three porkers are a waste of time."

  "Yona," Barry said. "It's my job to go backstage. Remember?"

  "Take Harley," Marty said. "Tell them who he is. They'll shit."

  "Why don't you send Harley into their dressing room and have him pretend he's you?" Yona told him. "They won't know the difference."

  They were all laughing again.

  "This is my job," Barry said, "not a practical joke." But he had to laugh.

  "You chickenshit putz," Yona said. "Where's your balls?"

  "C'mon," Harley said with the nerve he'd summoned to try something silly. "Let's try it."

  "I'll walk you over there," Barry said to him.

  Later, when they were sitting on the floor in Yona and Marty's room, passing a joint, Harley told them the story. The Barones would never know who it was who came to see them. He had said "Barry Golden, World Records" when he came into the dressing room and none of them looked up. They were sitting at three identical dressing tables in their identical bathrobes taking off their makeup, and close up, without the sequined dresses, they looked like Buddy Hackett, Lou Costello and Jackie Gleason.

  "Whaddya say?" one of them asked. She might have glanced at his reflection briefly in her mirror.

  "Great show, ladies," Harley said, trying to imitate people who said bullshit things like that to him all the time.

  "Betchyerass," the one who looked like Lou Costello said.

  "Nice choice of material," Harley said. Maybe that wasn't what you said to Vegas acts. But Barry told him to butter them up.

  "Except for that one shit song," another Barone Sister muttered. Harley bit the inside of his cheek. He was afraid to ask.

  "That rain number. It really sucks. And we're cutting it from the show."

  "Good idea," Harley said, trying not to laugh.

  "You know, they just don't write 'em like they used to," the Jackie Gleason sister mused.

  "That's true," said
Harley, and he practically ran back to the casino to meet the others. He was laughing so' hard people were turning to look and see what was so funny.

  "Let's go upstairs and order munchies," Yona said. They stayed up all night and at six thirty in the morning, when the sun was coming up and they were ripped, Yona and Marty and Barry did their version of the Barones doing their version of "The Rain Is Like My Tears," and didn't stop until the hotel manager called to tell them someone on their floor called him to complain that they were too loud.

  This time Barry was doing the trip alone again. To see Jerry Wayne. A white-haired ballad singer who'd been around the business for what seemed like a million years. Most of Wayne's money was earned as a Vegas act, but there was a large group of middle-aged women across the country who were mad about his albums, so year after year World Records continued to record him. The flight was bumpy and Barry was nervous. He hated Las Vegas and these old-fart acts he had to bullshit with there. This wasn't his idea of what it should be like in A&R. He told Shmidt that on the first day. He wanted to bring what he was learning about rock 'n' roll to World Records. He knew what the figures were, and what it could do for the image of the company, but Shmidt didn't even try to understand that. Didn't want to talk about it. Several times Barry asked Shmidt to come to a club with him where new acts were playing.

  "Nah, I got a poker game tonight," Shmidt told him. Or sometimes he'd just say, "Can't, Golden. I'm busy."

  Maybe Barry should try to get a job at Rainbow. Oh, sure. Fat chance. He could say, "I want a job here. I've had lots of experience. I worked at World Records once for six weeks." Big deal. Of course, Harley could get him a job at Rainbow. Harley's album was coming out this month and everyone was predicting major stardom for him. Never. Barry would never even mention it to Harley.

  Jerry Wayne had a beautiful voice. And the room was filled with middle-aged couples who shouted "Bravo!" after every song he sang. Barry sat alone at a small table in the back, and when Jerry Wayne sang "The Anniversary Waltz," Barry began to cry. He thought about his mother and how she used to sing that song to his father every year on their anniversary, and then make his father dance with her, waltz with her while she sang: " 'Oh how we danced on the night we were wed. . . . ' "

  Barry's father would be embarrassed and she would taunt him. "What are you? An alter kocker or something? This is romantic," she would say.

  Mah, Barry thought. Mah. I want to come home.

  Jerry Wayne's dressing room was very large and filled with people and the attitude was festive. Several of them talked to one another while others stood waiting in line to talk to Jerry Wayne. Barry spotted someone ahead of him in the line who looked kind of like himself. The fellow spotted him, too, and extended a hand past the people who were in lined between them.

  "Larry Levy. William Morris," he said.

  "Barry Golden. World Records."

  Barry flew back on the plane with Levy the next morning.

  "I begged the Morris office to put me in rock 'n' roll," Larry Levy told Barry. "And you know what they said about servicing Jerry Wayne?" he asked. "It's an ugly job, but somebody has to do it."

  Barry laughed.

  He was really depressed.

  When he got home from the airport he bumped into Harley on the stairs.

  "Hey, man," Harley said. "Remember Danny Kyle, the drummer from Flight?"

  Barry remembered.

  "He called today. He's started a new group and asked me if I'd come and listen. Want to come along?" Barry nodded. Harley came back up to the apartment with him and waited while he unpacked.

  "How was it?" Harley asked.

  "The same," Barry said. "I had a rotten flight up. My room looked like a whorehouse, I had dinner alone. My table stunk. Wayne has a good voice but the act is boring. I went to meet him afterward in the dressing room and he looked right through me. Last night there was a drunk in the room next to mine throwing up and moaning till four in the morning. My plane back from Vegas was late leaving and then had to circle here for an hour because of fog."

  "Jesus," Harley said, shaking his head. "Why don't you quit that fucking job?"

  "What?" Barry said, grinning. "And leave show business?"

  Harley laughed. It was a joke they used every time something bad happened.

  "I'll drive," he said.

  Harley had a new Mustang convertible, and even though it was kind of chilly, they put the top down and drove out to the Valley, where Danny Kyle's act was performing.

  It was a high school auditorium and by the time they arrived, there were teenaged kids pouring in to fill the three or four hundred seats.

  "I guess this is some kind of showcase," Harley said.

  Barry wondered what these kids would do if they knew this slight timid boy he was with was Harley "The Rain Is Like My Tears" Ellis. Harley had only done a few personal appearances and was pretty anonymous.

  There was no announcer. The first act was two brothers who dressed alike and tried to sound like Simon and Garfunkel. They sang three songs and received polite applause for each one.

  The second act was a girl with long blond hair who played the piano and sang Beatles tunes. Harley's friend Danny Kyle's group was third. It took them a while to set up, and the kids were getting restless and talking loud. The lead guitarist did a quick sound check. "The group's called Heaven," Harley told Barry. "Dawson, the lead guitarist, writes the tunes."

  Heaven's first song was well done. It was about how difficult it was to write gentle music in a world that was full of anger and killing. There were one or two places in the song where people in the audience yelled out "Yeah." And, at the end, the ovation was very enthusiastic.

  "That's really good," Barry said.

  Harley nodded in agreement.

  The second song was called "Where Do I Belong?" about coming to Los Angeles from New York and how different the life-style is. Barry laughed out loud at some of the lyrics. The melody was great, too.

  Heaven did two more numbers. They were as impressive as the first two. When the group finished playing, Harley nodded to Barry and they left the auditorium through a side door.

  On the way home, Barry's mind was racing.

  "How well do you know Kyle?" he asked Harley.

  "We went to high school together."

  "Does the group have a deal with any label?"

  "Don't know."

  "Find out. Okay?"

  "Sure. You want to get Shmidt to sign them to World?"

  "Why not?"

  On Monday morning Harley called Danny Kyle. Kyle said, "No, man, we don't have a record deal. Why?"

  "Just asking."

  When Barry got to the office, he called Shmidt's office. The secretary said Shmidt was on another line.

  "He'll call you right back."

  Barry wanted to get Shmidt to listen to Heaven. They were really good. Maybe the best group Barry had ever heard. He would convince Shmidt to sign them and he'd be their A&R man. Then he'd get them a really hip independent producer and cut some of their tunes. They would be World Records' first venture into rock 'n' roll.

  Barry waited two days before he called Shmidt's office a second time.

  "Oh, yes, Mr. Golden. He's out of town."

  "What?"

  "He left on Monday right after lunch so he never had a chance to return your call that day. You see, he only came in on Monday morning to finish up a few things, then he and Mrs. Shmidt left for Hawaii."

  "When will he be back?" Barry asked.

  God damn it. He didn't want to wait. He wanted to bring the group in and have Shmidt hear them immediately. Before someone else grabbed them. They were a great find. Why couldn't Shmidt have taken five minutes out on Monday and called him back? Maybe he could have given Barry some kind of authority to take a preliminary step toward getting the group to sign with World. Shit.

  "They're going on to Hong Kong, Mr. Golden," the secretary said. "It'll be about two weeks."

  "Thanks." Barry
slammed down the phone impatiently, and looked around the tiny cubicle that was his office. It wasn't very far from the mail room—just two flights up in the gold building. And it was painted the same dull gray as the mail room. The mail room. He was beginning to wish he'd stayed there. Or at Eldor. Fuck. He'd go over to the commissary and get some breakfast. He'd sit at the counter alone and read the trades, and then maybe he'd feel better.

  The Hemisphere lot always made Barry think of the college campuses he'd seen in old musicals. People walking by in groups, chatting, waving at one another, sitting at lunch with a whole gang, laughing. He stopped to buy a copy of Variety from the old blind man who sold papers just outside the commissary door, and then walked inside.

  "Hi, Barry," a voice said.

  It was Allyn Grant. She was standing with a few executives from the gold building. One of the men was Harold Greenfield.

  "Hi, Allyn," Barry said. She was Greenfield's assistant now. How in the hell did a woman ever get that job?

  "How's it going?" she asked. She didn't leave the circle of people she was with to come over to talk to Barry, but she nodded as though she wanted him to come over to where her group was standing. He did. Greenfield was deep in conversation.

  "It's okay, I guess," Barry said to Allyn. What was the answer to a question like that? Did people expect you to tell them the truth? That the president of the record company owned by Hemisphere Studios had no clue about what was happening in the music business, and working there was a fucking bore?

  The men Greenfield was talking to were saying goodbye. "We'll close it up next week, boys," Barry heard Greenfield say to the men. The men seemed pleased. All of them were smiling as they left the commissary. Greenfield turned to where Allyn and Barry stood. He was smiling, too.

  "I'll leave for New York next Thursday to handle that. Hello, Golden!"

  "Hello, Mr. Greenfield," Barry said.

  "Want to join us for lunch?" he asked.

  "Sure," Barry said. What a surprise. Barry couldn't believe it. He thought of all the times he'd watched Harold Greenfield walking through the commissary toward the booth in the back, with heads of other studios, or big movie stars, or some famous director. And now Barry was walking along behind him. Well, actually behind Allyn Grant, who was behind Greenfield, on their way to that very booth.