“The fact is that I may not stay on.”
Shit. So G is right. The agency is heading for a complete overhaul. I mean, she’s pretentious in her white suits and Southern accent that comes and goes depending on her audience, but Suzanne is old school, which means she’s not totally without principles. More important, she’s the heart of DWP. Without her and Stan in New York, we’ll be left without any of the agency’s original partners. Even with Charles heading up New York, BIG-DWP will essentially belong to G.
“Why would you leave? Are you retiring?” I say, trying to keep my voice level. Stay calm. Stay cool. Maybe she’s just selling her third of the agency to G and getting the hell out of Dodge.
Suzanne shakes her head and leans back. “It’s complicated and it might not even happen. I mean, I will retire one day, but it’s probably not a surprise to you that I had hoped this merger with BIG would bolster the agency. That we could grow faster together and that we could, within a year or two, be acquired by another larger company, and then I would retire. I mean, I’d like to think that DWP didn’t completely miss the big PR wave, when the rest of the world discovered that celebrity can sell more than just movies and that Hollywood publicists have the keys to the kingdom.”
I’m stunned by this conversation, this level of intimacy. As long as I’ve been at DWP, the agency has been run largely by the same rules my parents kept when I was growing up: When in doubt, don’t talk about it. Especially if it’s unpleasant. Now, I’m sitting here with Dr. Phil. “I’m sure you’re right,” I say, still choosing my words carefully. “This recession can’t last forever. The agency will grow and someone will want to buy us.”
Suzanne shakes her head. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think Stan and I had our heads in the sand. That we underestimated the whole ‘youthquake’ and we didn’t make the changes we needed to make when we should have. I mean, we should have hired you—and half a dozen more like you—ten years ago. We should have gone after younger clients—all those kids on the WB and MTV that you can never keep straight or even care to. But I really thought we could remain a white-shoe firm. Handling Old Hollywood. Now, I think I was wrong. I mean, we should have been signing people like Courtney Love.”
“Oh, forget Courtney Love. Besides, you’re making the right changes,” I say, jumping into full cheerleader mode. Or maybe it’s just denial in a uniform. “I’m here and Charles is coming on and we’re getting younger clients and BIG is certainly a youthful agency and it should still work out like you planned.”
She looks at me like I have the brains of a cheerleader. “Look, whatever pressure you feel to keep your clients, to add to your client base, is not dissimilar to what I feel,” she says. “What we all feel. And we’ve had some high-profile defections, as you know. The agency has suffered and I take responsibility because most of those who have left were my clients.”
“Clients always come and go,” I say, still in cheerleader mode.
“Well, let’s just say it’s awkward at this juncture. With the merger. And in this economy. First Carla and now the Phoenix. Technically she’s fired us, but it’s not finalized and with her new MTV show coming up, it’s potentially a huge, embarrassing loss.”
I’m beginning to catch on. “How huge?”
“Let’s just say, if we can’t retain her, then there is a very good chance that I will leave the agency as well.”
“But why? You own half this agency.”
She sighs. It’s too complicated to explain, as most things with lawyers are, but it’s how the merger was done. How it was written. “G and I each have contractual obligations to the agency, to the maintenance of the agency, to its value, and if either one of us does not fulfill those obligations, then—”
“Then what?”
“Then bad things happen.”
“You might leave.”
“I would have to leave.”
This is crazy. She either has the stupidest lawyer in town or she was so desperate to get in bed with BIG that she agreed to those terms. It’s always been difficult if not impossible to put a value on a PR agency. It’s why no one bothered with them until recently. What were you actually buying? The publicists or their clients? And everyone knows clients come and go. It’s why publicists are essentially independent contractors. It’s all too fluid. But that’s how it works. Or has until now.
“You’re right,” I say, holding up my hands. “I don’t get it, but I get what you’re saying. But why are you telling me?”
It’s fairly simple, as she spells it out. Nothing I don’t do every day of the week. She’s asking me because she trusts me. Because the client trusts me. And because I’m young.
“Do you know what it’s like to feel old?” she says, getting up and moving to the window, where she stares down at Wilshire in the dusk. “Do you know what it’s like to feel like you no longer matter? That you don’t count?”
Every day of the week.
I almost get away clean. Key in the ignition, car in reverse, eyes on the rearview mirror so I don’t run over any Biggies no matter how much I’d like to, when I’m startled by a knock on my driver’s-side window. I turn, expecting to see one of the valets with instructions not to use the west exit or something. Fuck. G. Smiling and waving his finger at me to roll down my window.
“Heading home?” he says when I get the window down.
“Uhm, yeah, actually,” I say, looking up at him. Except for Steven, I’ve never spoken to anyone from the agency down here. Bad enough dealing with everyone in the office.
“Well, don’t let me stop you.”
“Okay, I won’t,” I say, eyeing him because this is more than a little strange and maybe even scary running into him like this, right after my meeting with Suzanne.
“I just wanted to say one thing.”
“You followed me into the garage to tell me something?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘followed,’ ” he says. “I would say our paths crossed. Fortuitously.”
I don’t say anything. This is way too much of a coincidence to be remotely fortuitous. Creepy, yes; fortuitous, no way.
G smiles, puts his hands on the car door, and leans toward me. “It occurred to me after our conversation at the club last week that I left out a crucial piece of information.”
“Oh?” I say blandly.
“Yes, some additional information that should help you come to your decision.”
“My decision?” As I recall, G basically laid out the coming pogrom—the slaughter of DWP agents with the implication that those who manage to survive will be compensated. Like the finalists on American Idol. If there was something to decide, I missed it.
“Well, see,” he says, nodding. “There actually is a decision to be made. So I’m glad I can clarify that now.”
The Audi isn’t all that roomy to begin with and it’s getting more crowded in here by the minute. I shift in my seat, pulling back a bit from the window.
“I promise to make this as painless as possible,” he says, smiling again.
I don’t smile back, which G takes to be a green or at least a yellow light. In the next few weeks, there will be more fallout from the merger—maybe even a further exodus of clients. “Although I don’t know that, I am braced for it,” he says. “So we’ll all just deal with these events as they arise. But BIG-DWP will survive, I can assure you of that.”
“What are you saying?” I say, not following him.
“I’m saying that whatever happens, I don’t want you to be concerned about the short term. I mean, there is more than enough to do, for everyone to do, servicing their own clients without worrying about others.”
“Others?”
“Other publicists. And their clients.”
He says this casually. Too casually. In fact, if I was the suspicious sort, I would say that G was 1.) onto my meeting with Suzanne and 2.) telling me expressly not to do what she asked me to do not thirty minutes ago.
“I’m sorry, I’m still not following
you.” If you want me to side with you and let Suzanne twist in the wind, you’re going to have to spell it out.
But G just shakes his head. “I’ve kept you long enough.” He drops his hands from the window and steps back. “Is this a BMW?” he says, glancing at my car.
“Audi.”
“Oh, right,” he says, smiling broadly. “Right. Volkswagen.” And he keeps right on smiling as I roll up the window, put the car in reverse, and rocket out of his lair.
14 Dr. Faustus, Line One
I’m home staring into the refrigerator trying to decide if I want a Diet Coke to perk myself up or wine to calm me down. After the day I’ve had, it could go either way. I’m just deciding on hedging my bets and making a cup of tea—tea, there’s an idea—if I actually have any, when I hear my phone ring for what seems like the millionth time since I walked in. I don’t own a thing. The house is rented, the car is leased. I don’t even have a magazine subscription, but telemarketers still hunt me down.
“Land Shark” comes floating over the machine.
Steven. I pick up.
“Where are you, still in your Ryan O’Neal phase playing racquetball?”
“Actually, he played squash and rather well. At least better than me. So how’d it go with Suzanne?”
“News sure travels fast in the big city.”
“Yes, it does. Now open up.”
“Open up?”
“Land Shark? Don’t tell me you don’t remember that episode of Saturday Night Live?”
“Wait a minute, you’re here?”
Steven and I are close, but we have our limits. Our one unspoken rule is that we don’t go to each other’s houses. The office. Drinks after work. Parties. Constant cell phone contact. But not home visits. That’s a little trop intime even for us. Other than the time I had the flu and he dropped off a week’s worth of chicken soup from Greenblatt’s, Steven has never been here.
“Yes, now open your gate. I have food.”
“You have food? That changes everything.”
I buzz him in through the front gate and flick on the porch light. It’s always amusing to watch people navigate my stairs at night. Not exactly user-friendly. Stone, pitched at roughly thirty-five degrees, which is probably not even code, and with half the path lights out.
“God, you need a funicular to get up and down your stairs,” Steven says when he finally reaches the bottom. “Or a guide dog.”
“Bitch, bitch, bitch,” I say, opening the door.
“Here,” he says, handing me a large white bag. “I may be uninvited, but I don’t come empty-handed.”
I peer into the bag. A white take-out container of salad, another smaller bag, and a bottle of Viognier. Good Viognier. “You brought me Viognier and salad?”
“I brought us the Viognier and you the salad. But not just any salad. It’s that salad from that restaurant in Laurel Canyon.”
“We’re in Laurel Canyon.”
“I live in Coldwater and I can never keep all the canyons straight. They’re like all those former Soviet republics that became countries. Like where is Chechnya and who really cares?”
“The salad?”
“It’s the one that’s supposed to make women go into labor.”
“Okay, first that’s a myth and second, you thought I needed it why?”
“Because I thought it might make you let it all out. Like what the fuck is going on with you lately?”
“You’re right and I’m sorry,” I say, taking the bag and heading into the kitchen. I was wrong not to tell him about G’s little come-on at the Viper Room. And I was seriously wrong in thinking Steven wouldn’t notice. “But first, I have to have a glass of wine.”
I open the wine and tell him everything. Hop onto the kitchen counter and go through it all. G at the Viper Room. His threats about layoffs and his creepy implications about how I can keep my job, right down to his running his hand down my arm.
“Ew,” Steven says, leaning against the counter and giving a little shudder. “I still can’t believe you never told me.”
“I was too busy telling myself I imagined the whole thing.”
“I suppose,” he says, nodding like this could be true. On Mars. “But didn’t he tell you what venal acts you could commit to keep your job?”
“I’ll get to that.”
Then I do Suzanne. Our little come-to-Jesus meeting this afternoon. When I finish, Steven stares morosely into his wineglass. “She really asked you to beg the Phoenix to stay on, on her behalf? That’s so sad.”
“No kidding. I mean, I worked with her for what, maybe a month when I first got out here? I didn’t think I made any kind of impression. Now, out of the blue Suzanne thinks I’m the one with keys to her castle?”
“Look, you got me,” he says with a shrug. “I still don’t get why it’s so important she stays on. I mean, clients come and go all the time.”
“I don’t totally get it either,” I say, hopping down and reaching for the salad. “But Suzanne made it sound like it was the way her contract with G was written. That they each had to maintain a certain number of clients. For all I know, specific clients were listed by name.”
“So what are you going to do? Go out to Malibu and get Rapunzel to let down her hair?”
“I haven’t gotten that far yet,” I say, dishing out the salad onto two plates. Steven peers at it suspiciously.
“It’s lettuce,” I say, holding out the plate. “I don’t think it’s going to cause you to give birth.”
He tastes a leaf, shrugs, and takes the plate. “Okay, where were we?”
“That I don’t know if I’m going to go out to Malibu to plead on Suzanne’s behalf.”
“Right. So why not? I mean, what’s to lose besides your self-respect which apparently neither of your bosses thinks you have anyway?”
“Because G asked me not to.”
“What? When?”
“You asked me if he spelled out the venal acts I could commit to keep my job? Well, he did. Tonight, in the parking garage after I finished up with Suzanne. We just happened to be leaving at the same time. As if.”
“Normally, I would say some wiseass thing about Deep Throat—”
“Yeah, I know, so just save it because this is really freaking me out a little,” I say, cutting him off. “G basically said if I wanted to ensure my future with the agency, I needed to cast my lot with him. Become part of his team.”
“How? By fucking him?”
“I think he has other employees for that,” I say, rattling off G’s little speech in the garage. “All of which comes down to letting Suzanne twist in the wind—whichever way it blows.”
Steven looks incredulous. “Come on. Two weeks ago G was practically putting you on probation. Now he’s recruiting you for his special ops team?”
“No, he’s saying that when Suzanne leaves—not if, but when—her equity position in the agency will be divvied up among a handful of key employees who have apparently proven themselves worthy.”
“Which is worth what, a few grand a year maybe?”
“Now. But if they sell the agency, it could be worth millions.”
“Okay, and don’t take this wrong, but why you? Why is G offering this to you? You’re hardly the most devoted employee now.”
“I think that’s part of it. That I’m the newest DWP hire and presumably have the least amount of loyalty to Suzanne. I also think that he needs at least one DWP publicist and her clients on his handpicked team. I mean, BIG-DWP can’t just be BIG with a different name.”
“So what are you going to do?”
I look at him. “I guess what everyone does in Hollywood. Betray someone.”
An hour later, the salad is gone, no one has given birth, and we are no closer to figuring out what I should do. But after half a bottle of Viognier, I’m starting to get sick of the whole thing.
“I’m just going to quit,” I say, all but prone on the sofa with Steven sitting facing me at the far end. “I mean, I
’m sick of publicity anyway. Why should I help either one of them? They’re both just using me.”
“Is that patio furniture?” Steven says, ignoring me to study my dining table that is, yes, wrought-iron patio furniture dragged in from the back deck.
“Yeah, it came with the house. I only got the sofa and chairs when Josh and I split up. So I brought that inside for the winter.”
“Oh, good thinking,” he says. “I mean, it goes so well with the rest of your stuff.”
“Hey, have you priced furniture lately? Every time I go shopping for a new table, I just get depressed and wind up buying a new handbag instead.”
“Okay, why shouldn’t you quit?” Steven says, off the furniture issue now. “Because if G is serious, you could be looking at some potentially serious money, as you say. Or the potential for some serious money. Which is the only reason anybody comes to Hollywood. To quote the late, great Sam Kinison, the assholes would show up for yard work if it paid as well as Hollywood does.”
I’m just wondering if that’s actually true, when Steven suddenly jumps up. “Wait,” he says, heading into the kitchen. “I totally forgot. The coup de foudre.”
“’Clap of thunder’? Don’t you mean coup de grâce?”
“Wait till you see what it is.”
He emerges a minute later carrying the second, smaller bag. “Here,” he says, handing it to me. “Open it.”
“What is it? OxyContin?”
“That would be nice. But no.”
I sigh, sit up, and unfold the bag. Inside is a white ceramic soufflé dish covered with tinfoil.
I look up at him. “Open it,” he says again. “You’ll be happy.”
I pull back the foil. Rice pudding. With a crinkly wrinkled top, like the top layer of paint that has congealed in a can. “Oh my God, where did you get this?”
“Did you notice it’s baked, not stirred? Just the way you like it. And no raisins.”
“I’m not kidding. Where did you get this? You can only get stirred at Greenblatt’s.”
“Where do you think? I made it.”
“You made me a rice pudding?” Either I am to be completely pitied or Steven has unknown talents.
So 5 Minutes Ago Page 19
