I Don't Have a Happy Place

by Kim Korson

  She was at once hateful and enviable. We felt silly in her presence, as if we didn’t take the nature of the buying and selling of actors seriously enough. SuperAssistant had a super show-biz attitude—her work was the most important, most serious work of all. She was taller, cut from a better cloth, and at the end of the day she found the lot of us ridiculous. SuperAssistant was Pac-Man buzzing along the maze, we the Pac dots she ate to get to the next level.

  SuperAgent One eventually decided he’d move into the oversized conference room, the only area large enough to contain the lot of us comfortably. There was a rarely used mini–conference space, stuffy and crowded, one that barely fit six chairs, and you couldn’t get in or out without knocking something over. This was now our only place to meet, with clients or with each other for the officewide weekly council. It was the least impressive room we had. It was also where my agent was moved, told she’d have to vacate the premises any time any meeting needed to be held by anyone in the entire office. The real estate of it all spoke volumes, letting my boss know they thought her work was comedic—but not in the good way. They took away her view and her desk and her pride and, surprisingly, her assistant: I was to start working for SuperAgent Two, effective immediately.

  “We’re gonna make a lot of people a lot of money and have a lot of fun doing it,” said my new boss, SuperAgent Two. I sat across the desk from him, per his request, as he unpacked the boxes he’d had messengered over from the William Morris Agency. Removing three oversized drums of vanilla protein powder, a case of protein bars, and one red binder, he placed them on a shelf overhead. The final check of the box produced a Rolodex, with one thousand teeny white index cards neatly fanned into place. He didn’t bark at me for help. Instead he flashed his expensive teeth, then asked for my opinion on some wall-art placement, movie posters he’d had framed, autographed by clients. This behavior was SuperAgent code for I will not demand you pick up my dry cleaning or the pieces of my personal life, just maybe the odd lunch—not that I really eat food—when we’re too busy making deals together. We are pals here. Equals, even. I plan to learn from you as much as you learn from me. I am the cool parent. I was dubious of his nature, believing it was a gimmick, something to reel in clients and disorient producers. SuperAgent Two was Good Cop to the rest of the agency’s Bad.

  I was the only assistant whose desk was positioned in her superior’s office. This station left me little wiggle room to slack off or talk to the other assistants freely. I spent a lot of time by the copier or the other cubicles and most of my day involved the phone, just like in my two previous jobs, but in real show business this was called rolling calls. Your boss gives you a list of numbers in a certain order and you do the actual dialing for him, and when the designated person answers, your line is “I have SuperAgent Two for (insert important show business name here).” If I wasn’t on the phone, I was typing up submissions or organizing files or calling actors to check their availability and desire to audition for certain jobs. It was basic assistant stuff but the agents made it seem like open-heart brain surgery performed on the president of the universe.

  The two things that kept me going in this line of business were (1) my fellow not-so-merry band of assistants and (2) the information. I loved knowing what movies were coming down the pike, what television pilots got picked up, which producers were nightmares. I even liked chatting with the actors on the phone, especially SuperAgent Two’s clients, because they, for the most part, were lovely and fun and flirtatious and took the monotony out of the day.

  Now officially three years into real show business (and five years into sort-of show biz), I wondered every day when I would move up the ladder and become a junior agent, even though I’d done nothing except the time to deserve it. But it was the goal, after all. I was finally making a few bucks (although it was very few), so when was I going to make a difference? In the back of my mind, I still longed to be discovered, even at the SuperAgency. Sometimes I’d have to put an actor’s audition on a videotape if they couldn’t be in Los Angeles in person, and I’d do my very best reading, still hanging on to the possibility that a producer or director would hear my excellent work and ask who the reader was and hire me to be in the movie. If I went to a Broadway show, I waited for an actor to get the stomach flu, believing a stage manager would run over to the house seats I sat in and ask me to take over. I was ready, Mr. DeMille. But, until that happened, I felt the least show business could do for me was bump me to Junior SuperAgent so I could make some deals and get my damn note cards already.

  One morning at the end of April, I was called into Spiker’s office. Occasionally, one of the agents would pick up the phone and let you know they needed you and you’d have to walk into their office so they could tell you the same thing they very well could have just told you on the phone, but it was a great show of power to have us jumping in and out of our chairs, standing at attention in front of their desks. SuperAgent Two was at a meeting out of the office and I was minding the store, as he’d asked. When I arrived at Spiker’s door, I saw Sponge sitting on the guest couch inside. My scalp began sweating. They are firing me, I thought.

  “Get in here,” said Spiker. “Look, you’ve been here awhile now.”

  “Three years,” added Sponge.

  This is going to take forever, I thought, desperate to flee. I stood, working my thumb cuticles, ready to be ankled, probably not before they read me a long list of all my shortcomings.

  “We’re going to give you your first deal,” said Spiker through her thin lips and toxic face.

  “It’s for my client,” said Sponge. “So mess it up and die.”

  They laughed like it was the best joke on the planet. Spiker put her head in her hands and I saw a red sore on her scalp. Sponge lifted her porcine legs off the floor as she laughed. They told me that SuperAgent Two was aware of the deal I’d be making for them, that he supported the decision, and that it was a theater gig.

  In the SuperAgency world, film deals were the best, then TV, then Broadway. About ten rungs below that were the regional theater jobs, and they only submitted actors to the top ones. About twenty-seven rungs below that were the odd touring companies that they made fun of, drawing straws to see who would take the lead on them. This is the deal they gave me. But no matter, it was a deal. If I made this one properly, I’d get franchised—meaning I’d be able to negotiate SAG deals and be an official junior agent. It was my moment. All that Sondheim singing and pretending to be Liberace on the bus, all those hours filing and walking the city hoping something would happen to me, led to this. My very first deal.

  The job was for a B-list client, one who used to be a series regular on a decent sitcom. The gig was for a tour of Death of a Salesman at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Florida. It was my understanding that after its run at the Playhouse it would tour the rest of the state, followed by a national tour and eventually hit Broadway. And although Hal Holbrook was starring as Willy Loman, no one had high hopes. It was a theater project—in Florida and this is why it was given to me. You don’t cut your teeth on a Bob Redford picture, I was told. For a brief moment, while they were describing the deal, I thought it might be some twisted joke, like Carrie being asked to the prom. I hoped I, too, had telepathic ways to collapse the SuperAgency before they spilled the pig blood on me.

  “They are offering him eight hundred dollars a week,” said Sponge. “Which is fucking ridiculous.”

  “Totally,” said Spiker.

  They both looked at me and I could see that they needed me to do something, I just didn’t know what. I nodded. Sponge and Spiker looked at each other and cracked up at my expense.

  “Okay, genius,” Sponge said. “You are going to tell the producer that you find that number insulting. That this actor was a very successful part of a very successful television show, that they are fucking lucky to have him. You say that you’d take two thousand a week. Plus a nonshared dressing room. And
a case of Perrier.”

  This was the New York minute in which I realized I wanted nothing to do with any of this. I didn’t want to make this deal. Or any deal. I had no interest in being an agent. I had trouble asking a storekeeper to break a dollar for quarters, so how was I going to ask some real live theater producer for a sum I found ridiculous? In my eyes, that actor should have been delighted to get a job offer in the first place. It’s not like he worked all the time, or ever. Half the time the agents turned down jobs before consulting with the client because they’d found the money insulting or the role beneath them or the project too piddling. I never really paid attention to what they were saying because all I had to do was Xerox and mail stuff. Now I was in the game. And for the first time in eight years, I found the game completely ridiculous. I was all about the show and wanted nothing to do with the business. Business gave me hives.

  • • •

  The call was to take place the next morning. I spent the remainder of the day at my desk with my head down, trying to figure out how to get through it. Whose big idea was this, anyway? I wondered if I could quit just to avoid the call. Sponge and Spiker, against their will, told me I’d be franchised after I made my first deal. It’s what all the assistants wanted, what I thought I wanted, but now no longer wanted. What I wanted, I realized, was to leave my Gotham-based shingle, to spend more time with my family. Please ankle me. I will be a terrible ten percenter.

  In bed that night, I conjured up all the sports movies I’d seen in my life for inspiration: speeches from coaches, slow-clap moments. You want fame? Debbie Allen shouted at me in my head. Well, fame costs, and right here is where you start paying. In sweat. I didn’t have this in me. I didn’t want to pay. I didn’t want to sweat.

  The next morning, I sat at my sliver of a desk, facing the wall. I put my headset on, then took it off, deciding I needed to use the receiver instead of talking into a small mouthpiece. I wanted to hold something heavy and real, maybe even twist the cord like I used to do with the beige wall phone in my childhood kitchen. The world got a lot better when I found out that SuperAgent Two would be out of the office and I’d be able to handle my business with no one eating PowerBars behind me. Or listening.

  2:30. It was time. I dialed the number.

  “Irv Shatz.” He answered his own phone. This threw me. His voice was craggy, like he’d swallowed a bag of sand. Even from the way he said his name I knew he was old-school, probably called women dames or broads. For sure he said gams.

  “I’m Kim, from the SuperAgency,” I said. “I’m calling about Ron Ralston?”

  “Who?”

  All I’d done was introduce myself and already he hated me. But I was already in the dentist’s chair and the drilling had started and I just couldn’t get out.

  “What can I do for you?” said Irv Shatz.

  Did he not know why I was calling? Was he not aware we were about to start negotiations for Ron Ralston, an actor with a pleasant face who looked like he was very nice to his mother?

  “Um,” I said.

  “I made the offer when I spoke to the other girl. Last week,” he said.

  “Well, I’m the girl making the deal?” I said, trying to find my inner Swifty Lazar. I leaned back on my swivel chair but slid out and had to shimmy back so as not to slam into the window.

  “I’ll say it again: eight hundred a week, eight weeks. I told the girl I wasn’t gonna budge. This is my best and final. He’s got better things to do? I’ll get someone else.”

  I was losing Irv Shatz and I was losing the job. It was so precarious holding someone’s career in my hand; I was now a surgeon massaging a heart. One wrong move and he remains unemployed. I needed to put on my we’re gonna make a lot of ­people a lot of money voice. If I did this, I’d have seniority over SuperAssistant. I’d be able to give her dirty looks and maybe even brush past her smart slacks on my way to an agents’ meeting. Opportunity. It only knocks once.

  I thought of my high school boyfriend, who’d had his life mapped out in his mind from the age of six. He’d planned what college he’d attend and the entire career path he’d follow. He was the only person I’d ever met who actually set out what he wanted to do and succeeded at every checkpoint along the way. I recalled a phone call we’d had when I’d started on this road to SuperAgenting.

  “You know you’re going to hate that, right?” he said. “That’s not the career for you.” I remember hanging up and calling him a tool in my head. What did he know? I could eat PowerBars and lunch with Marty if I wanted. Good luck living out your planned life, overachiever, you know what they say about life and plans. (I don’t care for footnotes, so let me note right here that high school boyfriend is now a multimillion-dollar-making film director. Pfffft. Whatever.)

  “Eight hundred a week,” Irv Shatz said, again. “Best and goddamn final.”

  This was it. Curtain up. Light the lights. Just follow your cue, like Sponge and Spiker said. He says eight hundred and you breeze in with two grand and the Perrier. They’re just words. Go. I took a breath and fixed my posture. And then, in the meekest voice I had in my repertoire, a voice so quiet I wasn’t even sure I heard me, I kicked off my real live show-business career and said, “Okay.”

  “Good,” said Irv Shatz. “I’ll have the girl send over the paperwork.”

  I put the receiver on the cradle, then swiveled my chair to look out the window. I didn’t make anyone a lot of money or have any fun doing it. I actually screwed up someone’s chance to make more money and drink fizzy water out of small green bottles whenever they were thirsty in the privacy of their nonshared dressing room, maybe even to go to Broadway. Unsure of how to admit to the mess-up, I lied to Sponge and Spiker and told them Irv Shatz just wouldn’t budge. I don’t think they believed me, because Sponge ended up calling him back, probably saying I was mentally challenged, and she was able to go back in and negotiate properly, with skill and confidence, with guts.

  Ron Ralston went to Florida with a better bankroll and no shortage of beverages. I, in a move still beyond my comprehension, got franchised and would now be considered a junior agent, while still playing the role of SuperAssistant. Why anyone agreed to this, I’ll never know. I was terrible at my job and a nuisance in the office. This promotion would allow/force me to start finding my own clients to represent, sending me out to church basements and dank theaters all over town in the hopes of lassoing some talent. I felt guilty for not telling the truth about my negotiation but realized maybe they found this trait appealing and agenty. If, my first time out, I was able to lie (albeit to the wrong person), maybe I wasn’t such a loser after all. Maybe that’s why they patched me through to the next level.

  A week after the negotiation, I sat in front of SuperAgent Two and gave my notice. He nibbled on a PowerBar, storing little pieces in his cheeks so he could say goodbye.

  • • •

  After eight years in this racket, I finally decided to break up with show business. One of the number-one rules in show business is Don’t work with kids or animals, and so, just to spite the entire industry, I decided to become a dog walker. Maybe what I needed was an alternative lifestyle. I had visions of myself communing with nature, considering perhaps that what I had to offer couldn’t be contained indoors. Not everyone was cut out for office life, right? It was time to take my talents elsewhere.

  I kicked off my new career by walking my friend’s mutt, Dixie. I didn’t have to sit down and hear about the phone answering and filing I’d have to do. There were no contracts to keep up or deals to make when walking an animal, just a leash and a plastic bag. And, who knew? Maybe I’d find the Murray and Ted Baxter of dog walking out in the park. My business multiplied rapidly, and in a matter of weeks I had a few clients, all from the same building. A Havanese named Baxter. A white fluffy thing called Norm. And when word got out about me, a short businessman put me on retainer. His foxlike dog, Duke, needed
to be walked once in the morning and again later in the afternoon. He didn’t even care what time I showed up.

  Every morning, I’d strap on my overalls and headphones blasting AM talk radio and head out to pick up one of my clients, then take him to the park. Together we’d go for long walks. He’d sniff around and I’d imagine all the books I could be writing if I didn’t have to spend so much goddamn time walking these dumb dogs, who, if we’re being honest, were beginning to get on my nerves.

  Instead of going to the park, I started watching TV in the dogs’ apartments. Eventually I’d drag them outside to pee, where’d I’d sit on a bench and give the animals dirty looks. Seemed as though dog walking, like show business, was just not all it was cracked up to be. At least it didn’t take me eight years to figure it out. Norm’s mother was the first to fire me. She didn’t think I was serious enough because I didn’t leave notes on her kitchen counter with recaps of what Norm did on our walks and how many times he did his business. My friend kept me on, as did the short business fellow. I took their faith in me as a sign to just keep moving. I stayed with the dogs for seven months even though we hated each other.

  I never did get discovered. Not on the city bus, not in the cookie aisle at D’Agostino’s, not in the business of show. I did, however, make a discovery: I was bad at jobs. I realized that Tom Brokaw was wrong—not everyone could make a buck. I don’t even want to talk about making a difference.

  This Is Our Story?