The Boys in the Mail Room: A Novel

by Iris Rainer Dart

  "I'll put the deposit down on the Colossus," he said, "and we'll give you some percentage we can all live with."

  "But Blake won't—" Stan began.

  "Blake won't what?" Barry interrupted. "Do a Harley Ellis show? Maybe three nights sold out? You think he wants us to go to the Forum or Anaheim?"

  "They won't do business with me either," Stan said.

  "You asshole," Golden bellowed. Golden had become known for bellowing in the last few years. It was as if he had stored it up for so long, being timid, and short and shit on, that now he'd let it all come out. "If I tell them to, they will."

  That was true. Golden did have that kind of power. Now. He was big. One of his female stars, a folk singer named Minnie Kahn, wrote and recorded a hit song called "Brooklyn Boy," and it was the story of Golden's life. Everyone in the business knew him. He was a kind of a star in his own right.

  "Now do we do these dates as partners or not, Rose?" he said, still bellowing.

  Barry Golden saving his career. That was something Stan never imagined could happen. But then there were lots of things happening now that he never imagined could happen. He'd call Marty Leff immediately. They'd work out something fair with Barton, and Stan would find some way to capitalize the rest of his shows. Some backer who would look at his record as separate from Barton's. And he'd go on.

  "Yeah, we do them, Golden," he said. "We do them. And I appreciate it."

  "Call you later."

  Stan's secretary, Patty, walked in just as Stan hung the phone up.

  "I brought my Scrabble board," she said. "Thought maybe we'd play."

  "No more playing, Patty," Stan said.

  "Huh?" When she looked into the office, Stan Rose's secretary saw him sitting back in the leather armchair with his sneaker-clad feet up on his desk, the way he had sat when Rose and Barton was thriving. There was a toothy smile on his face that she hadn't seen in a long time.

  "We're doing three days of Harley Ellis at the Colossus," he said happily.

  twenty-seven

  Mickey was still thinking about his brother Harvey's wedding while he drove to work on Monday morning. The weekend in Chicago had started out as a good time on Thursday but began to deteriorate on Friday when Mickey's mother said, "What do I tell my friends you do for a living if they should ask?"

  "I'm an actor," Mickey said, hoping that would end the discussion.

  "Oh?" was what she said next. "I always thought actors acted."

  "Mother."

  "It's all right. I'll say you're in the furniture business."

  That was sort of true. Mickey had a full-time job now at a waterbed store in the Valley called Water, Baby! He worked on commission selling platform waterbeds with double-ply rubber lining, and punctureproof water mattresses, and satin-fitted sheets in every color with the top sheet attached at the bottom to the fitted sheet so it wouldn't slide out, and Day-Glo colored velveteen-fitted spreads and pillow shams. Water, Baby! What a shit-hole. The building used to be a Mercedes dealership.

  Mickey stopped at the newsstand on the corner of Ventura and Van Nuys to buy the trades. The guy at the newsstand nodded as Mickey picked up the two papers and left the change on the pile of wooden crates. He was a few minutes early for work, so he sat in his car in the parking lot at Water, Baby! and leafed through Variety. Jesus. A two-page ad. Stan Rose presents Harley Ellis in concert at Colossus. April 3rd, 4th and 5th sold out. Management: Barry Golden.

  Rose and Golden. Working together. Mickey smiled. Those two mild-mannered guys. Well, Golden was a faggot. That's why he was mild-mannered. But Rose was always—what was the word Mickey's mother would use? Genteel. His mother. She'd practically ignored him all weekend.

  "My Harvey is an attorney," she told some of her friends, "and so is his bride-to-be, Libby. Of course she'll give it up now and have some grandchildren for me." Then she laughed and Mickey hated her. Harvey's wife was nice to him, though. Mickey had the feeling that maybe Harvey warned her to be nice to Mickey, but she seemed sincere and very smart and she told Mickey she remembered him as Mr. Chunky. She said she felt the Mr. Chunky commercial had been a particularly impressive one in an era when the commercial was becoming an art form in itself. She was nice. But very unattractive. She was also polite enough not to mention that it had been four years since the Mr. Chunky commercial was on the air, and that Mickey hadn't been seen in anything since.

  Maybe something would happen this week. The hiatus was coming to an end, and maybe today he would get a call for an interview. Maybe. Maybe not. His agent, Milt, was out of it. He had a wonderful spiel that he repeated over and over to Mickey about, "It's slow now, don't worry, you'll work," but it was waterbeds, not Milt Stiener's promises that were paying Mickey's rent.

  Mickey looked at the ad again. Rose and Golden. He shook his head. Rose and Golden and Kane and Ashman. Mickey heard recently that those four names were legendary now with all of the new mail room groups, because the story of the Pinsky Caper had been told and retold since they left.

  Kane was living with Allyn Grant. And he was still working for Chuck Larson. Larson had trained him well. Kane already had a reputation as a tough deal-maker, and he'd only been a full-fledged deal-making agent for a few years. Stan Rose told Mickey that he bumped into Kane one night at Musso and Frank's, and that Kane was with Rue McMillan. Rue McMillan. Christ. Old Arch Andrews was hanging around with some biggies.

  Maybe Mickey should call Kane. Maybe Kane would remember the time Mickey got the waitresses to sing "Happy Birthday" to him in the commissary and Mia Farrow and Frank Sinatra were there. Shit, maybe Kane thought he was an asshole for doing that. No. He'd call him later today. What the hell. Mickey got out of the car and walked into the delivery entrance of Water, Baby! to start his day.

  He didn't think about calling David Kane again until twelve thirty and then he was sure David would be at lunch. No one in the business answered the phone between twelve thirty and two. Maybe he should call Stan Rose and get tickets for the Harley Ellis concert. Sold out. Oh, that was always bullshit. Stan Rose was sure to be holding some tickets for friends. He'd call and leave a message on the service for Rose to call him back.

  "Stan Rose Presents."

  The voice sounded familiar.

  "Stan?"

  "Yeah."

  "Mickey Ashman."

  "Aaay—Ashman." Rose sounded glad to hear his voice.

  "What are you doing there?" Mickey asked.

  "Well, if I wasn't here I would have missed your call," Stan teased.

  "Yeah. Say, listen . . ." Suddenly Mickey felt like what Barry Golden would have called a schnorrer. A person who was always looking for a handout. Maybe he would just say he called to say hello.

  "How's two in row three on opening night?" Stan said before Mickey even had a chance to ask. Mickey smiled.

  "Great," he said.

  "I'll leave the tickets at 'will call' for you, and a couple of backstage passes, too. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  "See ya, Reg!" Stan Rose said.

  He remembered the nicknames. Mickey opened the paper bag with the lunch he'd packed for himself. A bologna sandwich. Crap. He should walk over to Denny's and get a hamburger and fries. He could afford that. Then he'd call David Kane. By then Kane would be back from lunch. Arch. Mickey was glad that Stan remembered to call him Reg. Remembered the nicknames. Stan was his friend. A good friend. They were all friends, David would be glad to hear from him. There was a young couple looking at a bed out front. He'd go give 'em the old charm, then he'd go to Denny's and come back and call Kane.

  "Mr. Kane's in a meeting, Mr. Ashman. Will he know what this is regarding?"

  "It's a personal call."

  "Will he know your name when I mention it to him?"

  "Yeah."

  "Is there a number where you can be—"

  "Never mind." He hung up.

  Jeez. Arch was getting big. In a meeting. Like Lowell Spears. Next he'd hear Kane went to New York for a
few days, or Europe. Well, Kane was aggressive. Too aggressive. Isn't that what Don Morgan said? Don Morgan was so jealous of Kane. Kane lived with Allyn Grant now. Boy, that was to be jealous of. She was a doll. And making a few bucks herself now. She had some kind of a job in development at Hemisphere. Mickey saw it in the trades. The trades. He was reading the trades every day, watching the lives of his friends move up the show business ladder, and his name, Mickey Ashman, had never, not once, been in the trades, except for the time they put the obituary for Pinsky in Variety. And then it was only Mickey, his first name. He never even had a reason to take out an ad. One of those little ones with his picture in it saying, Tonight see Mickey Ashman on Hawaii Five-O. Because he'd never done an episode of Hawaii Five-O. Or anything else.

  Now Mickey felt like a jerk. Why had he called Kane anyway? He'd only seen him twice in years and one of the times was at DuPar's when he had to tell him he was fired. Maybe Kane thought Mickey was responsible for his getting fired. Or maybe now that Kane was hanging out with Rue McMillan, he didn't give a shit about a waterbed salesman from the Valley. The furniture business. An out-of-work actor. What was lower? To a big agent? But that was the point. Kane was a big agent now. He could help. Should help him. He'd try Kane again in the morning.

  "Chuck Larson and Associates."

  "This is Mickey Ashman calling David Kane."

  "One moment."

  ''David Kane's office."

  "Yeah, this is Mickey Ashman calling him."

  "Oh, yes. Just a minute."

  Mickey doodled with a pencil in a brochure that contained pictures of the bedspreads that came free with the deluxe Water, Baby! bed.

  "Hello." It was Kane. Maybe he wouldn't like it if Mickey called him Arch now.

  "Hiya, David, it's Mickey Ashman."

  "Hey, Reggie," David said.

  Relief flooded Mickey's chest. Kane was feeling friendly.

  "Seen the ad in yesterday's trades?" Mickey asked him.

  "Golden and Rose's ad? Sure. Well, Allyn saw it first and she called me. We're going to the opening show."

  "Yeah. Rose is holding a pair of tickets for me. Listen, Arch, I'd like to see you."

  "I'd like to see you, too, pal. We'll be at the concert. I'm sure I'll see you there. Boy, oh, boy, Golden really went out on a limb for Rose. I hope this isn't Rose's swan song."

  "Whaddya mean?"

  "Well, he can't make a business out of only doing Golden's acts. He's gotta get other acts, too."

  "Say, listen, Arch. What I actually wanted to do was to like . . . just sit and talk to you. You know? And I don't think we'd be able to—"

  "Ohhh. A meeting?" David said. "You mean you want to talk business?" His tone was slightly mocking, but Mickey didn't care.

  "Yeah, business," Mickey replied.

  "How 'bout tomorrow?" David said. "In my office around six thirty."

  That night Mickey went home and looked through his closet. He decided that maybe it would be good to wear a suit when he went to see Kane, probably because he remembered once hearing his father tell Harvey that a man wears a suit to let people know he's serious. He looked carefully at the suit he'd worn to the rehearsal dinner for Harvey and Libby's wedding. It was new and he looked very smart wearing it. So smart that Libby's aunt, who was pretty and was Libby's mother's younger sister, kept giving him the eye that night. The suit was wrinkled now. Probably from a combination of being worn once and being folded in the Val-pack on the trip back, but he could put it in the bathroom and run the hot water and close the door and maybe it would steam out. He'd have to iron the shirt.

  The next morning Mickey dressed carefully. He hated to wear the suit to the fucking waterbed store, but he had no choice. He didn't get out of work until six, so he'd have to race right over to Coldwater Canyon to get to Kane's office at six thirty. Everyone at work teased him all day about the way he looked and about how he wouldn't sit down even to eat the sandwich he brought, because he was afraid of getting wrinkled. At four o'clock one of the girls who worked in the waterbed store offered Mickey a donut and he panicked when some confectioner's sugar spilled on the lapel of his jacket, but it came right out.

  There was a lot of traffic going over Coldwater and Mickey looked at his watch. Perfect. He'd get there exactly on time. He looked for a space on the street on Camden, but he couldn't find one. The pay lots could break you. What the hell. He'd splurge. Maybe Chuck Larson validated. No. Why would he? Most of the people who came there were giant stars. What did three dollars for parking mean to them?

  Up the stairs and to the left. Chuck Larson and Associates. Wow. Pretty soon Arch would probably have his name on the door. The receptionist was pretty.

  "Help you?"

  "I'm Mickey Ashman, to see David Kane."

  "Yes. Have a seat, won't you?"

  She respected him. It was the suit.

  Mickey sat down and realized that the door to David's office was open. David was on the phone. His shirt collar was open and he was talking animatedly. The receptionist handed him a note which he glanced at, then continued talking. The receptionist came out and sat back down at her desk.

  "He knows you're here," she said to Mickey.

  "Thank you."

  Mickey couldn't stop looking into David's office. David may have known he was out there, but he never looked at him, so for Mickey it was like watching a movie that was starring someone he knew. David's office was beautiful. It had Mediterranean furniture, and brightly colored wall hangings, and a large ficus tree growing in a pot right behind the desk. The desk was large and made of wood that was stained very dark, and it was covered with piles of scripts. David looked like a real agent. He was a real agent. Why was it so hard for Mickey to believe that? He felt as if he were a boy and that everyone who had been a boy with him had grown up, like David in there, but that he continued to remain a boy. It might be because David was an agent, and Mickey had had it up to his ears with agents. He'd made a list of how many agents he'd seen before Milt Stiener agreed to sign him. Thirty-two. That's how many agents he'd seen. Thirty-two fucking agents. And every one of them had some bullshit cockamamie reason for not signing him. Signing him. What was it? The Screen Actors Guild contract said if you didn't have at least five days' work during a three-month period with an agent, the contract didn't matter anyway. Somebody in Jackie Levitz's group pointed that out to Mickey one night when he was complaining about Milt Stiener never sending him on interviews. That was the killer. All Milt Stiener had to do, all any actor's agent had to do, was just get him the goddamned fucking appointment with the casting people. He'd do the rest himself. He'd be brilliant. He was brilliant. In the Levitz workshop production he had been the best one. And everyone came. He sang "Nepotism," the special material song he'd written, he did the blackouts that were spoofs of old movies and he got huge laughs and applause. Stan Rose came with his secretary Patty, and Barry and Harley came, and David and Allyn were there and there were people from the business who came out of respect for Jackie Levitz. It was big. There were agents and casting people, and someone even said they'd heard Carl Reiner was out there. Afterwards a lot of people came backstage. Some of the agents who were there represented people who were in the show. Beans and Mitzi Cass were with William Morris and their agent told Mickey he was "a fabulous entertainer." Fabulous. And so Mickey called him the next day. And on the phone the guy didn't remember who he was. When Mickey reminded him, the guy said, "Oh, yeah. You're great. But you're not commercial at all. Hey, thanks for calling." Fuck.

  By the time he met old, slightly hunched-over white-haired Milt Stiener, Mickey was so defeated that even though he recognized that all Stiener had left was stories about the days of Hollywood long ago, and about how he knew "Jolie" personally very well, and the Gumm sisters when little Frances was just a baby; "And that girl became Judy Garland" was always the last line of Milt's story, as he peered over his glasses at the listener. Mickey had been the listener to the Frances Gumm story at least six tim
es. And he knew Milt had a very good heart, but sometimes he was sure Milt didn't even know who he was. And that he signed anybody who walked in. Why not?

  David Kane hung up the phone.

  "Ashman," he yelled. "Get in here."

  He sounded like he was in a good mood.

  David stood to shake Mickey's hand.

  Mickey felt nervous. He was scared. How could he be scared? This was Kane.

  "Jesus," Kane said smiling. "A suit. How come you're wearing a suit, Ash? Who died?"

  Mickey was embarrassed. He felt caught. He couldn't tell David the thing about suits being serious. He needed David to help him. Not to think he was foolish. David had to help him. He'd smile and not answer about the suit.

  "Arch," he said. "I'm having a hard time getting work," he said. "Getting anything. I can't seem to beat the system. I mean you saw my work that night last year. In the Jackie Levitz thing."

  "Yeah," David said. "You were pretty good."

  "Well, I'm still with Milt Stiener. And he's not doing anything for me."

  David smiled when Mickey mentioned Milt Stiener.

  "Milt's cute," David said, "but he's so senile he tells me the same story every time I see him."

  "Frances Gumm?" Mickey asked. Mickey could feel his heart beating in his chest. He was feeling a stage-fright kind of nervousness.

  "Yes," David said laughing. "Frances Gumm. That's the story. He always wears those little glasses and says, 'I knew the Gumm sisters.' " David kept laughing. And pushed a buzzer on the phone, and spoke into the receiver.

  "Remember the day we were trying to remember what story it is old Milt Stiener always repeats over and over? It's about Frances Gumm." Mickey figured David must be talking to Chuck Larson. Mickey had noticed that the door to Larson's office was closed. David was really laughing hard now, and the person on the phone was laughing hard too.

  "A guy who was in the mail room with me," David said into the phone. "Stiener's his agent."