The Boys in the Mail Room: A Novel

by Iris Rainer Dart

  "See ya, Beau," the photographers shouted.

  Barry was still laughing as Beau, who was now pulling him, headed for the parking lot. The attendant drove the Corniche up and Beau ran around to the far side of the car.

  "Can I drive it?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  No one had ever driven the car but Barry. Not even Harley. But there was such a little-girl need in the question he couldn't refuse her. As they pulled out onto Doheny, she said, "I don't have a license. Benny never let me drive. He made me go everywhere in limos. Since I moved out, Connie's been driving me around. But it's a drag. This is fun."

  She made a left on Sunset and they headed toward the hotel. Barry felt a tense knot starting to form in his stomach. What if she wanted him to come in to her hotel room?

  "Hey, listen," she said. "Why don't I just pick some clothes up and come and stay with you tonight? Huh?"

  "Uh . . . well . . ."

  "It would be fun. And I'll leave a note at the desk for Connie. It'll only take me a minute." Her eagerness made him nervous.

  "We could talk," she said. "Maybe smoke a joint or two. Stay up all night. Watch the sun come up. Can you watch the sun come up in Malibu or only watch it go down? I forget."

  Barry felt cornered. He liked Beau, but taking her back to his house? Where would she sleep if they slept? Could he put her on the living-room sofa? He only had one bedroom. With one bed. One big bed, but—

  "Please," Beau asked.

  He'd work it out.

  Beau drove the Corniche up Crescent Drive and made a U-turn so she wouldn't have to walk far to the bungalow to get her clothes. There were a few empty parking spaces, but she stopped the car in the middle of the street, and looked at Barry shyly.

  "I never learned parking," she admitted.

  Barry laughed. Tough bitch Beau Daniels.

  "I'll teach you," he offered.

  "No kidding, will you?" She was really excited.

  "Sure," Barry said.

  "Now?" she asked. Eyes enormous.

  "Pull up right next to the brown Mercedes. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  Concentrating carefully, with her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth as if she were a kindergarten child doing some serious coloring, Beau pulled up next to the brown Mercedes that was in front of a parking space.

  "Now put the car in reverse," Barry said, "and start backing up, and when you get about halfway back you're going to start cutting the wheel. That's it . . . halfway back. Now cut the wheel, Beau. No. No. The other way. The other . . . That's it. Slowly. Cut it harder. Harder. Then turn the wheel toward the curb."

  "You mean now?"

  "Yes. Now. Now. That's it. That's it. Uh-huh. Good."

  "How am I doing?"

  "Great. Great. Perfect. You're in."

  Both of them sighed with relief, then looked at each other.

  "Was it good for you?" she asked. They both laughed.

  "Go get your stuff," Barry said. "I'll wait here."

  "Oh, come with me," Beau said. "I'll just be a minute."

  Beau Daniels. Was she seducing him? Maybe. He'd stay in the living room while she changed her clothes.

  But Beau dragged him into the bedroom, sat him on the bed, pulled off her yellow sequined dress before he could look away, and put on jeans and a T-shirt and sneakers. She opened a shopping bag from the Right Bank Clothing Company, threw some clothes into it, then went to the night table next to the bed and pulled out something pink and shiny. She looked at it for a minute then held it up to show Barry.

  "Would you think I was a total jackass if I wore this to sleep?" she asked him. It was a pink satin sleep mask.

  "Uh . . . probably," Barry said.

  "Good," Beau said, tossing the mask into a nearby wastebasket. "Let's go."

  All the way to the beach, Beau told Barry about Benny Daniels and her love affair and marriage with him, and his involvement in her career. And at Barry's house they sat on the deck sharing a joint. Barry reminisced quietly about his relationship with Harley and how much he had learned from those years about loving and sharing. Beau just nodded, and he realized that she had known all along that he was gay. Of course. Everyone knew.

  For a quiet time they stared at the flickering reflection of the moon on the ocean and they held hands.

  At six o'clock in the morning in Malibu, when the dawn was just beginning to break, Barry and Beau, both in jeans, T-shirt and bare feet ran down the beach. Both of them were laughing a laugh that was a mixture of a marijuana-high laugh, and an affirmation-that-one-can-still-feel-happiness-after-great-pain laugh.

  By breakfast they had decided Beau was moving out of the Beverly Hills Hotel and in with Barry. By lunch they had decided Barry would be managing her career. And at dinner, which Beau cooked after a trip to the Colony Market, where maybe because she was wearing a big beach hat no one noticed it was her, they decided it was highly possible they were falling in love.

  thirty-five

  Jerri Marshall looked at her naked body in the bathroom mirror. "Hi, titties," she said out loud and then giggled. They were still good, those titties. Still plenty good. They would last her for quite a while.

  She walked into the bedroom, opened the closet and looked at her clothes. Her expensive Alan Austin wardrobe looked funny jammed into the tiny space. But she had to stay here in her parents' house until she got her life together. Soon. It would have to be soon.

  Actually, staying here was fun in a way. Her younger sisters and brothers idolized her and loved having her around. Some mornings her father would go late to the diner and the family would have breakfast together. Her mother did Jerri's laundry and cleaned her room for her. And late at night, which was when she got depressed about her breakup with Nick, there was always someone from the family still awake in the kitchen who would have coffee with her, and tell her she was prettier than a movie star, and she would find another man to take care of her the way Nick had. And that life was about change, and then she would be okay.

  Nick Jonas had served his purpose. He was an executive vice-president and the head of artist relations at Rainbow Records, and when Jerri met him at a party she was working at an answering service, but she told him she was a secretary and he said he might know someone who was looking for a secretary, and did she want a job? And she said maybe, and he said she should give him her number and he'd call her.

  He called her the next night and took her to dinner and she saw in his eyes all evening long how much he wanted her, and the way he watched her body when she got up to go to the phone to tell her mother she wouldn't be coming home that night. And in the morning, Nick said he'd fire his secretary and she could work for him. Jerri laughed when he said he didn't ever want to let her out of his sight again. She was too beautiful.

  She was beautiful and she knew it. She'd made it happen. She'd worked on it. Created it. Beauty parlors, manicurists, with her last dime. And the little bit of money her mother would beg from her father, "the restaurateur," as she called him jokingly. And when there wasn't money, Jerri managed, too. Like when she was eighteen and Arnold Pierce, D.D.S., told her the caps she wanted for her teeth would cost two thousand dollars, and she looked at him sadly, and told him she wanted the caps so much, but she couldn't afford them. And wasn't there some way he could work something out, she asked, never taking her eyes from his. Knowing he would get he message. "I have to have the caps," she said.

  Dr. Pierce had an erection. She reached her hand out and touched his trousers where she could feel it from the dentist's chair. "Can't I get a discount?" she said, grinning, and she and the dentist both laughed.

  Dr. Pierce fucked her that day in the dentist's chair, in the reclined position, and a week later at a motel, and two weeks after that he made her meet him in Las Vegas, where he fucked her for a weekend, and she made him come while he was talking on the phone to his wife, and after the caps were ready and perfect and he put them on her, she looked at herself in the mirror he
held up, smiled at him, said "Thanks, Doc," and never saw him again.

  It was worth it. Nick loved her smile. And her titties and everything about her. And she became his secretary. She was a wonderful secretary. More than a secretary. She was learning the music business. She went with Nick to see new acts, she tagged along to recording sessions, she went with him to every concert of every Rainbow act. And at the end of her first year of dating Nick, of having this gorgeous music-business biggie pull up in front of her parents' tiny boxlike house in Culver City to pick her up in his red El Dorado convertible, Jerri was thrilled when he asked her to move in with him. She loved his Hollywood apartment. It had a fur bedspread, and giant mirrored closets, and a sunken tub in which she and Nick fucked countless times.

  "No," her mother told her.

  "Mother, I'm not asking you," Jerri said, packing her suitcase. "I'm over twenty-one years old. I'm leaving."

  "You live with him and you'll be working twice for the same money."

  "What?"

  "If he wants you there so much, let him do something for you in return."

  "Mother—"

  "Men only want one thing," her mother said.

  Jerri laughed. How could her mother say such a dumb-asshole old-fashioned thing? "And I'm the girl to give it to them," she said. "Mother, I've been fucking since I was fourteen. I'm like you. I'm hot stuff."

  "You're not like me. I don't want you to be like me. You're prettier and you're smarter than I was, and I don't want you to let some man ruin your life with his sex the way I did." Jerri had heard this story before. Her mother always liked to think of herself as that woman in the movie A Streetcar Named Desire who was married to Marlon Brando. Stella. With a slobby husband she only stayed with because she had to have his fucking. Jerri and her sister laughed about it all the time, the way their mother imagined Ray Marshall to be like Marlon Brando when he was really only five foot seven and skinny and not very sexy at all.

  "Make him marry you. Make him give you a better job over there. Don't you want a better job?"

  Jerri had thought about advancing at Rainbow. And then decided to forget it. The only job she wanted was one in Nick's department, artist relations. But there weren't any women in artist relations at any of the record companies. Besides, no one at Rainbow would ever think she could handle a job like that. Certainly not Bob Frank, the president of the company, who probably thought, who probably knew, she'd gotten the job as Nick's secretary by fucking Nick.

  "Tell him no," her mother said. "Tell him no, and watch what happens."

  Maybe she would try it. She could always change her mind later and say she did want to move in.

  "C'mon, baby," Nick begged her that night. "You don't want to go home tonight. Sleep here."

  "I can't, Nick," she said, feeling around in the bed, in the dark, for her bikini underpants. "I have to go home."

  "Why?"

  "Because people will talk if I don't," she said playfully. "They'll say you're sleeping with your secretary. If I go home they can't say that."

  "Cut the shit, Jerri," he said. "What's going on?"

  "Nothing," she said, pulling her boots on. She stood up to look for her jeans and pretended to look around for them even though she knew she'd thrown them on the chair, because she knew he loved to look at her dressed just in her bikini underpants and her boots.

  "What do you want?" he asked.

  "Nothing." She located the jeans.

  "Baby . . ." he said. "I'd do anything for you."

  "Would you?"

  "You know I would."

  "Give me a job in artist relations."

  Nick was silent. He looked at the ceiling. When she realized he wasn't going to respond, Jerri pulled on her jeans and her turtleneck, and went downstairs to the lobby, and called a cab which she took all the way home to Culver City. The next day she called in sick to work. At six o'clock Nick called her mother's house.

  "She's asleep," Jerri's mother told him. Jerri was sitting at the kitchen table reading Cosmopolitan at the time. "She's very depressed," her mother went on.

  "Ask her to call me," Nick said.

  "Yeah." Her mother hung the phone up.

  "Trust me," she told her daughter.

  On April 4, three days after she had left Nick's apartment, Jerri Marshall became the first woman to work in artist relations at Rainbow Records. Her title was director of artist relations. Incredible! Sensational. An occasion for screaming and yelling and celebrating. She was happy. At least for now.

  She moved into Nick's apartment a week after her promotion. And even though she was making a decent salary, he got her a Master Charge and a BankAmericard for which he paid all the bills. Field day. Clothes shopping once a week. Sometimes with Nick picking the outfits for her. That's what she needed all along. Those clothes. The chic expensive clothes. Nick was proud of her. Proud of the way she looked and proud of the way she was becoming known right away as a "smart little cookie" around the office. Three months as director of artist relations at Rainbow, and she was getting very friendly with all of the acts, and she facilitated the signing of a new rock band that looked as if it was going to take off and be very hot. His Jerri. Why had he ever hesitated that morning, that awful morning, when she said she wanted a better job? She was a natural at it. He knew she would be. Women would be good in jobs like that, too. He wasn't angry at her anymore for leaving him that morning. Or for not taking his calls for those few days. He couldn't be angry with her. She was such a good person. In fact, now that he was supporting her, she gave her entire paycheck to her mother and Ray to help out at home.

  He wouldn't even be angry at her for the night he had to go to a recording session and Jerri went with Bob Frank to hear a new group perform, and didn't get home until 3 A.M. Frank was happily married. And Jerri was hot, but she wasn't crazy.

  At the end of Jerri's first year as director of artist relations, which was her second year at Rainbow, Nick was in a meeting with Bob Frank and some other executives when Bob Frank's private line rang.

  "Excuse me."

  The meeting went on without Bob Frank. He was red-faced and laughing quietly about something with the person on the phone. Nick, who was supposed to be running the meeting, was feeling very uneasy and he wasn't sure why. When Bob Frank got off the phone, he didn't look at Nick. In fact, he didn't look at him for the rest of the meeting.

  That night when Jerri got back to the apartment, Nick was waiting for her in the living room.

  "You called Bob Frank today at two o'clock, didn't you?" he said.

  "What?"

  "On his private line. Didn't you?" Nick got up and walked toward her.

  "Nick."

  "You've been fucking him, haven't you?" he asked.

  "No."

  "You lying piece of shit," he said, grabbing for her.

  "Let go of me, you asshole," she screamed.

  "Is he going to give you my job?" he asked her. "What did you say on the phone to him? Did you tell him he's a better fuck than I am and that's why he's the president of the company? Did you?" He was shaking her. "Did you?"

  "You're crazy, you asshole," she said.

  Nick was furious.

  "I'm not fucking Bob Frank at all," she spat at him. "And I'm not fucking you anymore either. I'm moving out of your stinking apartment tonight, because you're crazy."

  She ran into the bedroom and started packing.

  "Jerri, I'm sorry. I—"

  "Too late," she said.

  Nick walked back into the living room. When she left he was sitting in a chair looking out the window.

  Jerri went straight home and moved back in with her parents.

  In August, Nick Jonas was fired from Rainbow Records, and in September Jerri Marshall was made a vice-president and head of artist relations. Her family was very proud.

  "Mother," she called out. "Do you think it's cold enough for me to wear my fox jacket?"

  "Sure."

  "Okay."

 
When Jerri walked out the door of her mother's house, and got into the Cadillac the company had leased for her last month, all the neighbors watched her. Later, when they saw her mother, they told her, "What a lovely daughter you have."

  thirty-six

  Western Sound was booked solid. In the looping studio an advertising agency was working on a series of car commercials. In the largest studio, A, they were cutting the voice for an animated television special, and in studio B Beau Daniels was laying down the last three cuts on an album she'd started making a year ago, but which had been interrupted by the problems of her television show, and more recently by the problems of her dissolving marriage.

  Beau, wearing a black sweater and jeans that were so tight even she, with her skeletonish body, had had to lie down in order to zip them up, sat on a stool in the studio with headphones on. There were too many fucking people in the goddamned booth and it pissed her off. She just didn't know which of them she could throw out gracefully. Not her love, of course. Adorable delicious Barry. She was crazy about his black curly hair and his beard. He was walking around out there talking to Jim Garland and the engineer.

  The key was open so Beau could hear them.

  "Let Beau hear the headphone mix," Barry was saying. "Let her hear herself back with reverb."

  Stan Rose, the promoter, was out there. And Bob Frank from Rainbow, and some big-boobed artist-relations woman from Rainbow, and Connie, and some guy Connie was dating named Dino, who was a drummer on Beau's show.

  "Are you ready, sweetheart?" Barry asked Beau.

  "I think so."

  The tracks had been cut the week before. Everyone said they were great. Now all Garland had to do was lay in Beau's voice and they could get the album finished. Finally.

  The music started. Beau liked the sound. She'd been rehearsing at Barry's with her accompanist from the show and a rented piano.

  "It was a fine time

  It was a time and a half

  It was a fine time—"

  "Hold it," she said.

  Garland told the engineer to stop the track.

  "Something's wrong with the phone mix."