“I know it’s cable but Lily’s terrific in it,” Kelly is saying when I finally arrive. After letting myself in the kitchen—hi, hi, hi to Marta, Kelly’s housekeeper busy frying bacon, Chris her assistant, busy waiting for the bacon, and all the dogs yapping away—I follow the sound of Kelly’s voice, its whiskeyish resonances, through the cool barrel-vaulted living room that could stand a paint job, and into her bedroom. The one with the gold stars on the robin’s-egg-blue ceiling.
“And if it goes to series, she can do it,” Kelly says. A tiny red cell phone adorned with Swarovski crystals is jammed against her ear while she wiggles enough of her upper arm out of the neck of her black cashmere sweater to slap on a nicotine patch. I reach out to help her adjust her sweater sleeve.
“Well, if it shoots a season in three months, she could do it,” Kelly says, nodding at me and rolling her eyes. “Look, I have to go.” She wiggles her arm back into the sleeve. “I’ll talk to her when I see her this weekend.”
“Hi, honey,” Kelly says, putting the phone down and giving me a hug. “Did you eat? You look great. But then my standards aren’t much these days. Visible features qualify.”
Kelly quit smoking a month ago and gained something like ten pounds. Or maybe twenty. Now she’s on the patch and the Atkins diet. Or her version of it, which, by the looks of things, is not a match made in heaven. Atkins is the Hollywood diet: broiled fish, bottled water, and belligerence. Naturally, everyone is on it. Even Chris, her hyper assistant with the build and attention span of a schnauzer, is on it. But for an orally fixated, sugar-addicted woman like Kelly, eating bacon to lose weight makes about as much sense as eating dog food. Still, as Kelly’s publicist, her diet is my diet.
“No, I ate,” I say, straightening Kelly’s sweater again. “In your kitchen, a second ago. The bacon’s on its way.”
“I hate this diet, but what can I do?” Kelly says, moving on from the sweater adjustments to fishing a Diet Coke from the cooler built into her bedside table. “I feel so fat I’m only wearing black. Or mumus. But they don’t come in black.”
Kelly snaps open the can and flops onto the bed, where a plate of peanut butter cookies—the store-bought kind with filling—lies next to her Apple laptop. With most clients, I would have brought the meeting to order by now. But Kelly is one of those celebrities who takes a while to notice that others are in the room—and that they have a reason for being there—so I tend to let her run on a bit.
There’s a knock at the bedroom door: Marta with the plate of bacon. “Time for my afternoon feeding,” Kelly says, ignoring the bacon and reaching for a cookie. Expertly, she twists the halves apart and begins licking the peanut butter filling between slurps of Coke.
“I’m eating the insides of cookies.”
“Well, who doesn’t?” I say, reaching for a cookie. I’ve noticed Kelly likes to comment on what she is doing as she is doing it. Maybe it makes everything seem more significant. Or maybe it’s just the way her brain works. The bipolar thing. Or the drugs. Or maybe it’s her genius as a comedy writer. Everything is fodder. Her conversations are just rough drafts.
The first meeting I had with her—at home because she actually doesn’t like to leave her house all that much—Kelly spent the entire time in bed, fully dressed under the hand-worked Pratesi sheets, smoking and fingering chocolate chip cookie dough from a bowl on the nightstand.
“People say this house is so Catholic,” she said, blowing smoke at an antique-looking statue of some saint perched on a ledge up near the star-painted ceiling. “But that’s original. It belonged to Fay. Or maybe George. But I have thought about converting,” she said, stubbing out the cigarette and immediately lighting another. “Catholics seem to get over things so quickly. They go to church. Sing. Confess. Or they become Madonna and go on TV and say fuck a million times and everyone puts their picture on T-shirts.”
It was that kind of thing. And if I hadn’t had a filing drawer full of undereducated, overpaid, overgroomed narcissists as the rest of my clients, I would have run screaming from the room. But Kelly was worth knowing. Plus, she had great parties.
“I’m eating the insides of cookies,” Kelly says again, reaching for another. “But this day is doing that to me.” She suddenly changes course and leaps up to snap off the gas fireplace that is blazing away on what is a cloudy if not actually cold day. “God, I’m hot and now I’ve got to get packed to get the flight to Vegas.”
From what I gathered from Chris in the kitchen, Lily is getting some lifetime achievement award at the MGM Grand and Kelly is to present it along with the expected witheringly-funny-but-affectionate speech. “And I don’t have that,” she says, running a hand through her fine, expensively streaked hair. “It’s all so very exciting.”
“Your hair looks great,” I say, realizing I actually mean it.
“It’s the only thing that looks good now. But we’re working toward something . . . ,” Kelly pauses with the kind of timing that gets her upward of $150,000 a week for rewrites. “Magical.”
I would be happy to spend the rest of the afternoon hanging out, eating cookies, and listening to Kelly riff on whatever catches her attention. Besides, I want to see if I can get her advice—or at least commentary—on Charles. But I have to get her to sign off on publicity for Butterfly Girls, and given that her normally fluky attention span seems even flukier today, I decide to just jump in with the requests: a People magazine story and photo shoot with Lily, a Q-and-A with Lily for TV Guide, an NPR interview with Lily, and—this was the long shot—pose for a photo with Lily and a local troupe of honor students for the L.A. Times “Calendar” section.
“Ugh,” she says, when I mention the two photo shoots. “I forgot there’s always this end of things. Okay to the interviews but forget the photos. I look like shit.” She brushes cookie crumbs from her pant leg. “Even in black.”
“Well, what if we did something creative?” I say, trying to think of something to save the People shoot at least. “We can put you guys in a car. Like Thelma and Louise. Or behind some giant South American statuary or something. Or,” I say, scanning the room, looking for something, anything big enough to hide two actresses, when I catch sight of the hot tub burbling out the bedroom window. “Or what if we went for some vintage seventies shot? Black-and-white. You and Lily in your hot tub. Like just your head and hands on the edge.”
Kelly pauses just long enough so I think she’s seriously considering the idea. “Why don’t I just put my boobs up there if we’re trying to distract people? I mean, it’s the only part of my body that isn’t fat.”
Okay, moving on. But before I can bring up Plan B, Marta appears back in the doorway, this time draped with what looks like a dozen pairs of black trousers. “Kelly, do you want me to pack the cashmere pants or do you want to wear them?” she says.
“Pack. No, wear,” Kelly says, jumping up to fetch another Diet Coke.
I forge ahead. I need to get this nailed down before Kelly’s attention fully sails away. “All right, forget the L.A. Times, but think about People because I know they can shoot around you,” I say. “You could just stand behind Lily or something. How is she, by the way?”
“I think she doesn’t notice how much better she is since that last husband left. That’s the thing about our family,” Kelly says, bored now with the publicity requests, flopping back on the bed. “We’re survivors, but the bad thing is that you keep creating things to survive. To show off your gift.”
“I don’t know. Do you think that’s you or Hollywood?” This is the good thing about Kelly: you can actually ask her stuff like this. “It seems like there’s a lot of things to survive here.”
“For me and Lily? Yes. But I think that’s pretty much true for women here in general. You have to survive Hollywood.”
“Yes, but some women do well here,” I say, suddenly trying to think of one even as I say it.
“Well, Liz lives well,” she says, and I know she means Liz Taylor because Kelly always s
ays things like that.
“No, I mean some women continue to work into their sixties.”
“Name one who isn’t just doing cable films.”
“Shirley Maclaine. Meryl. Susan Sarandon. Goldie.”
“Except for Shirley, they’re in their fifties. You don’t get culled from the herd and killed until you’re sixty. Look, the point is, it’s hard for women in this town, and it’s almost impossible for older women.”
“I read somewhere that Joan Collins tries to make a million a year.”
“Jesus,” Kelly says, sounding genuinely nonplussed. “How does she do that?”
“I read it in TV Guide,” I say. “When she was doing that guest-starring role on Will & Grace. But look at you, you do great as a script doctor.”
“I don’t do all that great,” she says with such vehemence that I’m startled. “I do some of that, but it’s such an inflated notion that I do that a lot. It would be great if I could do more—financially, I mean, but there’s a lot of people who do that sort of thing—a lot of guys. I’m just one of the few who happens to be a celebrity.”
Before I took her on as a client, I knew Kelly had had some hard times. That she’d put her house on the market for a while. And then there was a jewelry line she and Lily had talked about doing—the Cohen Collection or something—and trying to sell it on QVC. But that’s a lot of actresses’ dirty little secret. Hawking something—a diet plan, a skin-care line, jewelry, clothing—on the home-shopping channels when your acting career goes south. Which it almost always does. And usually sooner rather than later. Unless they get lucky and make a lot of money, like a studio exec or like Julia Roberts or the actresses on Friends, and have the brains to save it or build a real business with it, like Connie Stevens did with her day spa down in West Hollywood, women never really stop looking over their shoulder.
“Yeah, and the industry has changed,” Kelly goes on, shaking her head. “It used to be a lot of people could earn a good living. Now it seems like there are the phenomenally rich and then the rest of us in this weird no-man’s-land.”
“That’s not what the rest of the country thinks. They think everyone working in Hollywood is phenomenally rich.”
Kelly snorts. “That’s because it’s in their interest to think that. And the media only encourages it. Hollywood is still our collective fantasy. Our big wet dream. We could all be rich and famous if only we had the right nose job. But the reality is, Lily can’t get a job. And it’s harder and harder for me to get jobs. It’s like being an athlete and having to retire at age thirty-five. Not because you can’t do it anymore, but because that’s just the way the business works.”
I decide to take a flyer and interject men into the equation. “Well, you could just meet the right guy and live happily ever after.”
Kelly looks at me. “Okay, stop right there, because we’re not talking about me. Not with my track record. Did you meet someone?”
Just when you think she’s totally on her own planet, she comes back to Earth. “Uhm, well, yeah. I don’t know.” I sound like I’m in third grade. “He’s a publicist. In our agency.”
“He’s a publicist?” she says. “Well, that’s your problem. Women are not only screwed professionally in Hollywood, but you can’t date any men here. Look at Lily. Look at me.”
Frankly I’d rather not, but she isn’t giving me much choice. “Well, why not?” I mew.
“It’s all food-chain rules. In a one-industry town, your social standing is always relative to others’. Someone’s up. Someone’s down. If he’s higher on the food chain than you, it’s all about him. But if he’s lower, then it’s all about him sucking up to you. Or you think it’s all about him sucking up to you. Either way, you can’t trust it. Because it’s never about being equals.”
“So, I should just forget it?” I say. “I should have just stayed unhappily married back in New York?”
“No, there are men you can date in L.A. You just have to know where to look.”
“Like where?”
“Plastic surgeons. They have great incomes, you get free work done, and they love hanging out with an industry crowd but aren’t competitive with it because they know eventually everyone comes crawling to them.”
“Oh great,” I say miserably. I realize I’m starting to feel worse—about Charles, about Hollywood, about all of it—not better.
“But it will get easier,” she says, smiling at me like I’m her kid although she’s not even ten years older than me. “I mean, it’s not like sex stops. Unless you’re like Joan Collins, who’s maintained a very active sex life, and you have to admire that. Sex just diminishes. It’s diminished for Lily. It’s diminished for me.”
Oh God. I do not want to know this. I seriously do not want to know this. Or see the world through Kelly Cohen’s eyes. Parsing out life in dollars and orgasms. Then you die. I have a sudden panicky urge to call up Charles, beg him to date me—marry me—and let’s figure it all out later, from some farm in New Hampshire, when my cell phone rings.
“Are you into the sugar or the drugs?” Steven says when I pick up.
“Yes and no. Actually, we’re just wrapping up. What’s up?”
“Suzanne moved that staff meeting up by an hour.”
I can’t tell if this is actual news or if Steven is just trying to provide me with an exit strategy. Whatever. “I’m on my way,” I say, giving Kelly a what-can-you-do? shrug.
“Have a cookie. For the road,” she says, offering the plate. “Or take all the bacon. It will only go to the dogs.”
I make some final noises about the publicity requests and start gathering up my stuff, when I notice a large signed photograph of Richard Nixon on Kelly’s dresser: To Kelly Cohen, from one of her biggest fans, Richard M. Nixon.
“I never saw this before,” I say, reaching for the photo. With Kelly’s fabulously famous life, it seems strange that she should have a photo of Nixon.
“That gets a lot of attention because I’m not much of a Republican,” she says, heading into the bathroom. For a second I fear she’s not planning on shutting the door. She did that once, but that was back when she was still drinking.
“It’s a long story that started when I was a kid,” she says, her voice muffled by the door. “I didn’t want to go to the White House but my mother made me and got me a picture of him then that said, ‘To Kelly Cohen, may all your dreams come true.’ So I wanted to write him back and say, ‘I dreamt you were impeached,’ ” she says, her voice drowned out by the flushing toilet.
“But I lost that picture somehow.” Kelly opens the door and turns to the sink and begins brushing her teeth. “And I told that story to someone who happened to be doing Nixon’s book on tape and so she got me that photograph.”
Kelly wipes her mouth and examines her teeth in the mirror. “It just goes to show you.”
“What?”
“Well, he died two weeks later.”
“So?”
“So, I hated him while he was alive, but once he died, I realized I missed the bastard,” she says, giving me a tired smile. “But then, that’s what fame is all about.”
“What?” I say, suddenly anxious for one piece of workable advice. “What’s fame all about?”
“That it’s no respecter of persons.”
11 How Old Did You Say You Were?
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Steven tosses a square red envelope onto my desk. “I’d say open it at your peril, except I already know what it is.”
I stare at the envelope, in no mood for surprises since it’s taken weeks to get everything tamped back down to workable chaos. Troy is under wraps until his court date, whenever that is. Carla Selena is a distant—bad—memory at the agency. I’ve gotten Kelly to agree to the People shoot. And most important, my stay in the doghouse is over after Suzanne took me to lunch at the Grill last week and asked me to help with the Phoenix. The Phoenix, who might or might not be quitting BIG-DWP. Depending on what her
astrologer says. Or maybe it’s her psychic.
We’ve even moved our offices. Finally. The one good thing about our merger with BIG. I now have a real office with a window—a view of a dying palm tree and a parking lot, but still—sisal carpeting, a new computer system, an Aeron chair, and my own orchid. With someone who comes in and waters it. Or mists it. Or maybe just talks to it. There’s even a masseuse who comes in on Fridays to give head and neck massages for those who feel the need. So far, I’ve felt the need every fucking Friday.
“Well, I know it’s not from Charles,” I say, poking the envelope suspiciously.
Charles. He’s the only unresolved issue. Ever since our disastrous date, or nondate, depending on your view, and his aborted mea culpas—culpas interruptus, as Steven said—I’ve taken to just avoiding him. Which isn’t hard given the chaos of the office move and the fact that there are at least twenty-five other DWP publicists he’s to meet with before heading back to New York. Most days we never cross paths.
“Oh, come on,” Steven says impatiently. “It’s the invitation to G’s birthday party. All the DWP publicists got them. It’s a goodwill gesture from the Biggies. ‘Our first joint social event.’ ”
Oh God. The birthday party. Rachel warned me about this. “Oh, great,” I say, gingerly slipping open the envelope. No telling what might be inside given that twenty-year-olds are planning the thing. But then twenty-year-olds plan a lot of stuff in Hollywood. Sparkly glitter rains down on my desk. Oh God. I hear a choking sound that I realize is Steven. Trying not to laugh.
“Hey, he’s your boss too,” I say, shooting him a look.
“Don’t look at me. I didn’t get an invitation.”
“Well, you’re my date to this thing no matter what.”
I shake out the rest of the glitter and pull out the invitation. Engraved. Red ink. At least it’s not shaped like a heart. Or a pair of tits. I’d heard that happened one year. I scan the details.
So 5 Minutes Ago Page 14
