The Boys in the Mail Room: A Novel

by Iris Rainer Dart

  "Great."

  "And you? Kane. What trouble have you gotten into while I was gone?"

  "I'm leaving you, Chuck."

  Larson didn't even flinch. "Sounds like an exit line from a bad B movie," he said. For a split second David was afraid to say the next part, but he didn't have to.

  "Who's going with you?" Larson asked.

  "Doug Hart," David said. He'd save the coup de grâce for last. "And Rue."

  Larson's eyes met David's. David had imagined what this moment would be like almost from the first week he started working for Larson. Imagined it would be accompanied by a great feeling of getting even with Larson for treating him like a coffee boy, an errand boy, a gofer. He had always resented Larson and his smoothness. Yes, Larson was smooth, like Wolfson, like Greenfield. But now, instead of his feeling glad to have something over Larson, it made him strangely sad. Sad for Larson, who had probably once been as eager and aggressive as David was now, never thinking some punks like Golden or David would come along and unravel the powerful relationships he'd built with his clients. And sorry for himself, too, because for a moment he flashed on himself being the old boy someday, who would be betrayed by a young apprentice of his own. As always, he stopped the thought before it got to him. "Thanks for everything, Chuck," David said. "I know you probably don't want to shake my hand, so I'll be going."

  David turned and walked out of Larson's office, through the reception area and into his own office, packed up his briefcase and, as he passed the receptionist's desk, tossed her the keys he would no longer need.

  There was nothing for him to do at home. He had to find office space, but there was plenty of time for that tomorrow. Maybe he'd drive over to Hemisphere. Drop in on Allyn. Her meeting must be over by now. David headed over Coldwater Canyon toward the Valley. He couldn't wait to tell Allyn the news. She already knew about Doug Hart leaving Larson. But now. David was going to be Rue McMillan's agent.

  That didn't just mean status, it also meant they'd soon have a lot of money. They'd probably move right away. Maybe buy a house in Beverly Hills. North. And eventually he'd be a producer. David Kane Productions. And Allyn would quit her job. She'd like that. And he'd like it, too, knowing she was home all day, "doing little things around the house," as Marlene used to say. Marlene. She had always wished the day would come when she didn't have to work. Well, he would give that to Allyn. The cushy job of being the producer's wife.

  David could see the gold building as he drove into the Valley. He hadn't been at Hemisphere in a long time. He remembered his early days there. When he was in mourning for his mother. Maybe he was still in mourning for his mother. He drove past the guard and toward the casitas. Allyn's office was in one of the casitas. There it was. David found a parking space. I'm Rue McMillan's agent. Amazing. It felt like a dream.

  "Hi. Are you Mr. Kane?"

  "Yes."

  "I recognized you from your picture on Miss Grant's desk," the secretary said.

  "Where is she?"

  "She's on her way down from the gold building, Mr. Kane. Why don't you go and wait in her office? I'll get you some coffee."

  "Thanks."

  David looked around. He had delivered mail to the casitas for years. This office had housed several people during that time. He wasn't sure now who they were. Allyn did have his picture on her desk. A picture she took when they were in Las Vegas. Of David standing in front of the Little Church in the West, right after the wedding. She gave him one that she made him take of her, outside the church, and one of them together they had asked the people to take who were waiting to have the next wedding, but both pictures were still in his briefcase.

  He heard some voices in the outer office and Allyn walked in.

  "David," she said. Putting her arms around him. How perfect. "I couldn't wait to get down here so I could call you." She gave him a hug. She was glowing.

  "David. Guess what! I sold my show."

  Her show. Her show. Yes. She told him some idea she had for a show. A drama. About a couple trying to make ends meet during the Depression.

  "That means I'm a producer. Can you believe it?"

  "Jesus," he said. "That's great."

  "What happened with you?" she asked. "Did you see Rue?"

  "Yeah. He's leaving with me."

  "Great. Oh, honey, we really have to celebrate."

  "And I said goodbye to Larson."

  "Terrific. Oooh. Do you think maybe Rue would do a guest spot on my show? A cameo? In the pilot? Wouldn't that be funny? I'd have to negotiate for him with you."

  "That would," David said, "that would really be funny."

  UPWARD . . .

  thirty-eight

  Mickey sat alone on the floor in the large rehearsal hall at the Beverly Hills Academy. It was nine twenty in the morning. At nine thirty, he would be surrounded by twenty-five children, all under the age of ten. He was teaching them Creative Dramatics. "Exercises and games to free their imaginations and spirits and foster constructive creative thinking." That's what it said on the flyer Mickey left at all of the elementary schools and parks in the neighborhood. There was also a picture of Mickey on the flyer and under the picture it said, "Michael 'Mickey' Ashman has appeared in television commercials and television shows. He was also an employee for several years at Hemisphere Studios in Hollywood. His program is designed especially to explore your child's innate creative ability." It took him a week to write that.

  The classes had begun as an act of desperation. A way for Mickey to get out of the house, to make a few dollars, to do something besides waiting for the phone to ring. After the network passed on I Give It Six Months, Mickey had a few more little nibbles. A small part in an episode of Love American Style, a voice-over for a local Los Angeles bank. Enough to keep his unemployment going. But every day he woke up feeling empty. He remembered how the people in Jackie Levitz's comedy workshop snickered behind Levitz's back sometimes, saying things like "Those who can't do, teach." But teaching those comedy workshops gave Jackie Levitz something to live for. Kept him busy. With lessons to plan, exercises to work on, new students to talk to, individual progress reports to discuss, Levitz felt he was important to his students. And now, Mickey felt that way about himself.

  The door to the rehearsal hall opened slowly and Mickey looked up. It was Adam Grossman. Five. Adam had a pinchable face and a low gravelly voice that made Mickey smile.

  "Hiya, Adam."

  "Hello, Mickey," the little boy said. He was wearing jeans and Adidas and a green La Coste shirt, and he sat on the floor next to Mickey. "Mickey," he said. "I got to ask you something."

  "Sure, kid," Mickey said. "What is it?"

  "Is your last name Mouse?"

  Mickey smiled. "Yes," he said.

  The little boy laughed. A gravelly laugh. And Mickey laughed, and Mickey picked him up in the air and hugged him and swung him around. He had really come to love these children. To sit in awe of their fresh and unspoiled ideas, and their confidence in expressing them. A confidence to which he felt he had contributed by praising their work. By telling the parents to either wait outside the rehearsal hall, or come back later, because he felt the children would be freer without any other adults around. "Mickey Mouse," Adam screamed as Mickey swung him in the air.

  "Mickey Mouse," Mickey said laughing.

  The other children were arriving now and Adam and Mickey collapsed into a dizzy heap on the floor. The air was always filled with anticipation when the children arrived, waiting for the latest exciting exercises. Mickey never disappointed them. They would be giants marching through cities, and then they would be monsters, and then goblins, and Mickey had music recorded for them to work with. And there were enormous bags or props and costumes which he made and bought and borrowed for them and they would dress up and pretend. And for those two hours be anything they wanted. There was even an exercise called "temper tantrum" where the children were encouraged to scream and yell and let out all their anger. "Like you wish you could
at home," Mickey told them, and the children laughed conspiratorially with him. They knew he was on their side.

  They were just about to try to be motorcycles when the door opened and one of the mothers stuck her head in and nodded for Mickey to come out. The woman was Jeffrey's mother, Mrs. Klein, and she usually sat in the lobby of the academy reading while she waited for her eight-year-old son. She looked nervous.

  "Be motorcycles while I'm gone. I'll be back in a second," Mickey told the children and walked out into the hall.

  "I think you ought to come downstairs, Mickey. It's that woman. The one whose little girl has the pigtails."

  "Lucy," Mickey said. Lucy was a beauty. The most beautiful child he'd ever seen. Seven years old. Long blond pigtails and bangs and big blue eyes, but she was always very sad. Once the class had done an exercise called "If you could have your wish come true, what would you be?" One girl, Dawn, whirled madly around the room on her toes, to show that she wanted to be a ballerina; another girl, Debby, rocked an imaginary infant to sleep, to show that she wanted to be a mommy. But Lucy. When it was Lucy's turn, she put two chairs together and lay across them stiffly, with her arms folded on her chest. At first Mickey thought she was trying to say she wanted to be a magician's assistant because of the way she left a space between the part of the two chairs that was under her back. It looked to him as if she was going to be levitated, or sawed in half. But he was wrong.

  "What's she being?" one of the kids asked.

  "Yeah. What are you, Lucy? What's your wish?"

  Lucy opened her eyes and slowly sat up. "I wish that I was dead and in my coffin," she said.

  A few of the children laughed, but most of them looked at Mickey, who was trying to hide his surprise.

  "Oh, Lucy," he had said. "That's silly. Try another wish. A good one. A fun one."

  The seven-year-old girl looked at him through very old eyes. "I don't have another wish."

  Mrs. Klein, Jeffrey's mother, ran down the stairs of the academy with Mickey. "Right out front," she told him.

  Mickey pushed open the glass door and on the sidewalk outside stood Lucy's mother, a gorgeous woman who looked like a grown-up Lucy, slapping Lucy. On the face. One side. Then the other. Hard.

  "You said you would. You promised me. And now you'll go to this class and do what I say. Do you hear me?"

  The child was screaming and trying to pull away but the woman held her hard with her other hand.

  "Please," Mickey shouted. "Stop it."

  The woman turned and looked embarrassed to see Mickey. She tried to pull herself together but she still held tightly to the child's arm. Lucy's tear-filled eyes looked despairingly at Mickey.

  "It's nothing," the mother said. "Just some family problems."

  "No it's not," Lucy screamed. "I don't want to go to that goddamned class."

  "Shut up," the mother said to Lucy, then tried to force a smile.

  "She's just feeling nasty this morning," the mother said.

  "I'm not. I hate acting class. I hate acting and I'm not going to be an actress no matter what you say."

  There were people passing by, on their way in and out of the academy, and Mickey was worried about the twenty-four motorcycles upstairs getting out of control, but he didn't move as Lucy's mother suddenly transformed herself into a phony-voiced caricature, "Oh, my sweet girl, you know Mommy doesn't care if you're not an actress. She just wants you to be able to grow up and be successful so you can buy yourself pretty dresses and buy Mommy pretty dresses, like we always talk about. And you're so beautiful that everyone always says you could be in the movies."

  Mickey felt queasy. Lucy was silent. She looked down at the ground.

  "Lucy," Mickey said. "If you could do what you wanted to do on Saturday mornings, let's say, take any class you wanted to take, what would it be?"

  The mother pursed her lips. Lucy was still silent.

  "Lucy?" Mickey asked.

  When the child finally spoke, her voice was timid and choked.

  "A class with drawing and painting and crayons," she said longingly.

  "Oh, bullshit," the mother said.

  "Mrs.—" Mickey couldn't remember her name.

  "Hill," she said.

  "Mrs. Hill." Mickey was afraid. Afraid no matter what he said to this bitch she would take it out on Lucy. Little agonized Lucy. "To begin with, my classes aren't about show business. Believe me. Agents who represent child actors called me when they heard about the classes. They wanted to come here and scout. And I told them no way. Because I don't want these kids to feel pressured. That isn't going to do anything for them." He was trying to be controlled. Some people were standing around now listening.

  "You see," he went on. "I've been in the business for quite a few years. And I'm real talented, and I'm devoted to the classes I take because I'm always looking to be better, and I want to be a movie star or a television star more than anyone I know, but so far the business hasn't been interested in me."

  The woman looked at him blankly.

  "What I'm saying is. It's hard enough to make it in show business when you're doing it because you really want to and need to. But if you're doing it because someone else wants you to do it, that's got to be impossible."

  "Oh, she wants it—" the mother began.

  "She doesn't," Mickey said. "Why don't you give her art classes? They have them right here at the academy. We'll go inside and sign her up now."

  "But we already paid—"

  "I'll give you every cent back right now."

  "No. I don't—"

  "Please, Mama," Lucy said almost inaudibly.

  Mrs. Hill took a deep breath, walked inside the academy and up to the desk marked registration. Mickey had to get back upstairs.

  "'Bye, Lucy," he said, giving the little girl a hug. "Next Saturday you come over and say hi to me after art class. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  Mickey ran upstairs. The motorcycles had become racing cars, engines loud, brakes slamming on, crashing into walls.

  "Okay," he said. "Time for the prop-bag game."

  "Yayyy," the racing cars shouted and pulled to a stop around Mickey.

  At the end of the two hours, Mickey was always drained. Every Saturday morning, when it was finally eleven thirty, all the kids tackled him, piled on top of him, the door opened and the parents poured in to find out what the kids had done that day. Today, as the kids ran to their parents, Mickey saw a face in the group of grown-ups that looked familiar to him. It was Nina's mother. That's why he'd never seen her before. Nina was signed up for the class by an Englishwoman who appeared to be a governess, and either the governess or a chauffeur always picked her up. The woman was so familiar. The other parents were looking at her shyly. She was heading toward Mickey.

  "I'm Nina's mother," she said.

  I know. I know. But who are you? How do I—Betty Day. Jesus. The Betty Day Show was the longest-running variety show on television. And Betty Day was one of the best-known and best-loved television personalities.

  "Miss Day." One of the mothers handed her a pencil and paper to get her autograph. She signed it gladly, then turned back to Mickey, who was sitting on the floor. He was too surprised to get up. Betty Day sat down next to him.

  "Nina talks about nothing else but your classes all week long. Last week she came home and showed me how she had acted out being an earthquake in your class. I guess that's something only a California child can do." She smiled warmly. "I appreciate your policy of not letting any adults in to watch. It's certainly made Nina feel secure with you."

  "Thank you," Mickey said. "Nina's a nice girl." Betty Day. Of course. Why hadn't it ever occurred to him? The group of parents and children were gone now. Only little Nina remained, waiting for her mother, trying on the various hats from a laundry bag full of hats Mickey brought.

  "I saw what you did outside this morning with that horrible woman," Betty Day said. She had sympathetic eyes. "I was passing by and stopped to listen. I thought that
was really lovely of you. Actually, I was kind of a party to it myself," she said. "After you went upstairs she looked around as if she might change her mind and not sign the little girl up for art, and then she saw me standing there. She recognized me, and I said, 'Go on, Mrs. Hill. Sign her up.' And she did." Mickey and Betty Day laughed, and Nina came over. She was wearing a straw hat.

  "Hiya, vaudeville," Betty Day said. Now Mickey noticed how much the child looked like the mother.

  "I'm not vaudeville. I'm Nina," she said. Then she put her arms around Mickey. "I love Mickey, Mom," she said.

  "Well, I understand that," Betty Day said. "Mickey's pretty lovable."

  Mickey smiled.

  "I'd like to help you, Mickey," Betty said. "Maybe I can. Do you know who Danny Kohler is?"

  Danny Kohler. Important television producer. Three series on the air.

  "Sure."

  "He's my good friend. And he's casting a show."

  "A pilot?"

  "A sold series. And you're right for it. For the lead. Perfect. I hate to give anyone false hope. I mean you look right. And I have a hunch you're a good actor."

  "I am."

  "Give me your number. I'll have Kohler's office call you on Monday."

  Mickey wasn't sure what to feel. He'd been this route so many times, in so many shapes and forms, that it was hard to be excited. He was afraid to be excited because he knew how crushing the disappointment was after that. He gave Betty Day his number.

  "I know what you're thinking," she said. "I can see it in your eyes. And obviously I can't promise you that this time it will be different for you, because it's not my show. But I like you. Obviously my daughter likes you." Nina was hanging around Mickey's neck. "And we're in your corner."

  "Thank you," Mickey said. But he wouldn't let himself fall for it this time.

  thirty-nine

  "Six million gross on the Minnie Kahn tour," Barry said into the phone. "And Heaven's album is three with a bullet this week. Not bad, you know?" He rocked back and forth in the leather chair behind his desk, and looked at the gold-framed photograph of Beau. That face. He loved her. He would have to locate the painter who'd done the picture of Harley and have the guy paint one of Beau that would fill the whole wall over the sofa.