by Susan Lewis
‘Shit!’ Ellen muttered. ‘Bob, I’ll get back to you,’ she said into the phone and hung up. ‘Get the Madness producer on the line and let’s find out what’s going on,’ she instructed Felicia. ‘Or no, you speak to him, ask him how many more times he’s going to change the god-damned schedule and can he afford it? Did the money drop yet for John Gallin’s movie? The bank was supposed to release today.’
‘I’ll find out,’ Felicia responded. ‘Check your E-mail, I think Ted Forgon wants to see you at the end of the day and Rosa said to cancel whatever …’
‘… you’re doing for lunch,’ Rosa picked up, sailing in through the door behind her, all blonde corkscrew curls and micro-mini couture, ‘because I’m taking you to Kate’s. Extravagance is gone into turnaround I hear?’
‘News travels fast,’ Ellen remarked, dashing a hand through her already dishevelled hair. ‘I can’t make lunch, Rosa,’ she said, ‘I’ve got too much to do here. Are you going down to the Batman set? Could you take Vinny Costello with you? He’s coming here at two. His call’s for four, so there’s plenty of time. Felicia,’ she called, remembering the girl’s name as she started to walk away. ‘How are you doing with those contracts? They’ve got to be finished before tonight.’
‘No problem,’ Felicia called back.
‘She’s a real find,’ Ellen said, as Rosa took a screenplay from her desk and started flicking through. ‘Why don’t they stay more than six weeks is what I want to know?’
‘Because they find other jobs – acting,’ Rosa reminded her. ‘What did you think of this?’ she asked, meaning the screenplay.
‘In a word, brilliant,’ Ellen replied, going back to her computer. ‘It’s the fourth draft. Sam Coates took it over, apparently.’
‘That’s why it’s brilliant,’ Rosa declared, sauntering over to the window and looking down at the busy street below. ‘I made some calls for you,’ she went on, ‘come see me when you get time and I’ll go through who everyone is and what they do over there in good old London town. Boy, do I envy you. Are you flying first class?’
‘I think so,’ Ellen answered, tensing badly as Rosa returned to the pile of screenplays and made like she was going to start looking through. Please God, don’t let her pick up any more, Ellen silently prayed.
‘Let me know which hotel you’re in, I’ll tell you if it’s any good,’ Rosa said. ‘You’re going to love London, it’s like New York but older and chicer.’
As she turned for the door, leaving the screenplays in place, Ellen breathed a sigh of relief and reached out for the phone as it rang.
It was a producer she was in negotiation with. She was trying desperately to tie up the deal before she left the office that day, but the man was stubborn and clearly had a problem with women. The call lasted for over ten minutes as they haggled and compromised, added clauses and disagreed over credits. It ended with him saying he’d get back to her and the minute she hung up the phone rang again.
‘Your cousin, Matty,’ Felicia announced. ‘Shall I put her on?’
‘Definitely,’ Ellen cried.
There was a click on the line and Matty’s voice came through.
‘Ellen, you’ve got to do something about this fucking bitch!’ Matty shouted. ‘She’s humiliating me every chance she gets, she’s getting my lines cut, she’s stealing my shots and the director’s not doing a god-damned thing about it. Can you get down here?’
‘Matty, I don’t have time,’ Ellen groaned. ‘If you can get the director to call me I’ll speak to him. Who is it?’
‘Bob Wolf. He won’t call, he doesn’t have time. You’re her agent too, speak to her.’
‘And you’re my cousin, so she’ll think I’m taking sides.’
‘It’s why I asked you to come down here. You can see for yourself what’s going on, then you can appear for the defence when I get cited for murder.’
‘I’m going to London tomorrow,’ Ellen reminded her, ‘and I’ve got a million things to finish up before I leave. Can you come over tonight? Matty, I really need to talk. Please don’t say no.’
There was a pause at the other end and Ellen felt her chest starting to tighten as she realized Matty was going to let her down. ‘Gee, Ellen, I’m sorry,’ Matty said softly. ‘I got so carried away with what was happening here … I saw it, honey, in the Globe this morning. Oh, Christ, I’m sorry. Sure I’ll come over. What time?’
‘I’ve got to see Forgon before I leave,’ Ellen answered, swallowing hard. ‘Come around eight?’
‘I’ll be there. How are you holding up?’
‘OK. I’m real busy right now, which helps. I could do without this trip, though.’
‘It could be a blessing,’ Matty told her. ‘Did you speak to Clay?’
‘No.’
‘What about Karen Delphi? Did you ever meet her?’
‘No,’ Ellen answered, pulling a copy of the Globe out from between the pile of screenplays. Emblazoned across the cover was a full-colour shot of Clay Ingall and the latest Baywatch babe, Karen Delphi. They were coming out of the Viper Room and Delphi, in a black diaphanous top that hugged her enormous breasts like a second skin and left nothing to the imagination, was gazing up into Clay’s eyes under the headline, INGALL’S NEW ROMANCE REVEALED.
‘They’ve been seeing each other in secret for the past four months,’ Ellen said flatly. ‘Or so it says here.’
‘Honey, listen, I’ve got to go,’ Matty said, ‘but I’ll be there tonight, I promise. Are you going to call him?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ellen answered. ‘I thought he might call me.’
‘Maybe he will,’ Matty said. ‘Eight o’clock, OK? Hang on in there,’ and the line went dead.
There was no respite for the next call came seconds later, from a First Assistant Director, complaining he had a ‘corpse’ who was only in one scene, for fuck’s sake, and already they’d done twenty-four takes, because the sonofabitch wasn’t happy with his performance.
‘What do you want me to do?’ Ellen asked, poring over the contract in front of her while silently cursing Yardley Aymiss for being such a pain in the butt.
‘Get over here and sort it, or we’re going to bury the schmuck right now,’ the AD replied. ‘Literally.’
‘I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ Ellen responded and rang off. Quickly she dialled Rosa, whose office was just a couple of doors along, and fixed it with Rosa for her to go sort out Aymiss while she carried on with the problems that were piling up on her desk like wannabes at a public audition.
The relentless pace and pressure continued on throughout the day, as Felicia brought her tea and granola bars, fielded as many calls as she could, blocked idle gossipers and made herself so genuinely indispensable that in the brief pauses Ellen had time to, she wondered how she’d ever managed without her.
But despite how busy she was the struggle to keep her mind on the task in front of her, or to register the figures being yelled down the phone by some irate producer who was too mean to cough up but knew he had to, was getting harder all the time. But she kept on going. That morning’s breakdowns were strewn across a table over by the window, listing all the new parts coming up for casting, and the journey back and forth between it and her desk was almost ceaseless. She was trying desperately to care, the way she always had before this nightmare had started, but as the days since her meeting with Forgon crept into weeks and McCann consistently refused to speak to her, her fear of what Forgon was going to do with the photographs was fast reaching the point of panic. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, she had to find out now, through the god-damned Globe of all rags, that Clay, whose divorce had gone through three days ago, had been cheating on her for months with a pair of silicone implants that were happily exposed to man or lens at the mere drop of a publicity promise.
Of course, that was right up Clay’s street, for few knew better than Ellen how he got off on treating the world to uncensored views of his women. Even Nola, his now ex-wife, had been a soft-
porn actress before he’d married her, a fact Ellen hadn’t known until a couple of months into their relationship when he’d invited her to watch one of Nola’s movies. And like a fool, she had sat there, watching his wife cavort around the screen with a bunch of half-naked Germans in a beer house, because she adored him so much she was willing to do almost anything to please him.
And look where it had got her. Into the kind of position she had never, even in her worst nightmares, imagined she would ever find herself, for she simply wasn’t like the Nolas or Karens of this world. To her the idea of displaying herself, even half-undressed, in public was so horrible it was torture even to think about it. It wasn’t that she was a prude, for there was no question that the idea of it had turned her on – the reality, however, was nothing short of hell. So too was the fact that Clay had deceived her the way he had and made such a fool out of her that she was finding it hard to face herself in the mirror.
It didn’t matter that no one else knew, except Forgon and Matty, of course, what mattered was that she had been so blind and so god-damned stupid. And now Forgon had shots of her walking nude in Clay’s garden, and making love with him in the back of a car. But that wasn’t all, because in the envelope he’d so casually tossed across the table that morning, were polaroid shots that Clay himself had taken, which made the others Forgon had look about as explicit as a Victorian postcard. She didn’t want to think about how Forgon had managed to get hold of the polaroids; she hadn’t even known they were missing until they’d turned up in the envelope and now the very idea that Forgon had seen her that way was even worse than the fact that Clay had been turned on by it when she’d told him.
It was that, probably more than anything else, that had finally made her see how deeply into humiliation Clay was, which obviously made her some kind of masochist, because even knowing what she did about him, she had carried on seeing him and allowing him to treat her like a whore, while telling herself that all the things he wanted to do turned her on too. And now, just like she didn’t even exist, he had got his divorce and come straight out in the open with Delphi.
By the time six thirty came round she was pretty much ready to leave. She’d have given anything to be able to go straight home, exhausted by her efforts to keep her mind off Clay. She took out a compact and seeing how pale she looked only made her feel worse. It was easy enough to put some colour back in her cheeks, but rekindling the sparkle in her eyes and the warmth in her smile was too much to ask. Nevertheless, she was going to try, for the last thing she wanted was Forgon to know that she was buckling under the pressure. She had to go in there now and try somehow to instil confidence in him that she would return from London with what he wanted, for if he thought her enthusiasm was flagging he’d no doubt take great pleasure in reminding her exactly why she needed to succeed.
The cacophony of phones and last-minute deals going down reverberated through the corridors as, dressed in a loose white shirt buttoned to the neck and an ankle-length woollen skirt, she carried her heavy briefcase to the elevator and rode up two floors of the Wilshire Boulevard office block to Forgon’s penthouse suite. The fear that he might use the photographs to get her to perform personal favours for him was alive in her heart, dragging her spirits down. Other people had survived a lot worse, she knew that, but she just hated the fact that it was all because of her passion for a man who had never loved nor respected her, who wanted only to humiliate and fuck her.
‘Ah, Ellen, come in,’ Forgon said, as she pushed open the door and looked across to his desk. His secretary had already gone home and he was sitting in his huge, cowhide executive chair, feet up on the desk as he browsed through the Hollywood Reporter. ‘Can I fix you a drink?’ he offered, putting the magazine down and going over to the wet bar.
‘No, thanks,’ Ellen answered. Surrounded by windows as they were, she was feeling very much as a reporter had once described her, like an angelfish in a tank full of sharks. In this case just one shark, but it was the one from which she had the most to fear.
‘Take a Martini,’ Forgon instructed. ‘It’s the end of the day, you could probably use it.’
It was true, she could, so she didn’t object.
As he poured she continued to stand in the middle of the room, clasping her briefcase in front of her as though to shield herself from his eyes, while looking at the numerous publicity shots of him with just about every major movie star of the past forty years. She’d seen them all before, but she’d rather study them now than look at Forgon and know what he was seeing as he looked back, through her briefcase, through her clothes, to the most private parts of her body.
‘Here,’ he said, waving her to one of the plush, tan leather couches and placing her Martini on the marble table in front of it. ‘Cheers,’ he said, saluting her with his own Martini as he sat on the couch opposite and rested an ankle on his knee.
‘Cheers,’ she said, picking up her glass and taking a sip. It must have been seven-eighths vodka, but it was good and feeling it revive her slightly she took another sip.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked, his pale blue eyes peering at her quizzically.
‘Mmm, sure,’ she nodded, fixing on his ludicrous wavy brown hair which usually helped her to smile. ‘Looking forward to London. I’ve never been out of the States before.’
‘You look tired,’ he told her frankly, ‘so I’m not going to keep you long. I just want to tell you that I’m sorry about what you learned from the Globe today. I know it must have hurt to find out that way, but the man’s an asshole, Ellen, and take it from me, you’re well shot of him.’
Ellen lowered her eyes to her drink.
‘Georgie Henniker,’ he said, naming the lead vocalist of the band Clay was currently working with. ‘He gave me the polaroids. The sonofabitch thought I might like to take a look at one of my staff the way I wouldn’t normally see her.’
Ellen’s cheeks were burning. All she could think of now was how her stupidity was reaching new heights all the time, for it had never occurred to her that Clay would have shown those shots to anyone, never mind pass them round the band.
‘They’re yours now,’ Forgon told her. ‘I hope you destroyed them.’
‘Would it do me any good if I did?’ Ellen asked. ‘You’ve probably got copies.’
‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I don’t imagine Ingall or the band do either. Now, I’ve rooted out some contacts of mine in London,’ he continued with an abrupt change of subject as he got up and walked over to his desk, ‘and I hear Rosa Kleinberg’s done the same, so you’re not going to be short of company while you’re over there. They’ll make you welcome, show you around, catch a few of the sights, a couple of shows, eat well, they’ve got some great restaurants, but don’t forget why you’re there. Did you fix yourself a meeting with him yet?’
Ellen shook her head. ‘He’s still refusing to take my calls and he hasn’t answered any of the faxes.’
‘Sonofabitch,’ Forgon muttered. ‘But you’ll get him, I know you will.’ He dropped a sheet of contacts on the table in front of her. ‘Call up some of these guys. If they don’t already know him, they’ll know someone who does. Corner him in the john if you have to, but see him. Speak to him, make him an offer he can’t refuse.’
Ellen flinched, but quickly realized that it was only she who had caught the double meaning of that last remark. It was something she was doing a lot lately, imagining hidden agendas or lewd connotations in all kinds of otherwise innocent statements and she hated herself for it.
‘It’s like I’m possessed by some ugly little demon,’ she said to Matty later that evening as they picked at popcorn in her bedroom while she packed. ‘I can’t seem to trust anything anyone says. I think everyone knows and is imagining me the way I am in those polaroids. I’m getting to the point where I can’t even bear to see myself in the nude, because it just reminds me and makes me feel like such a slut I want to tear out my hair and slash up my body. Oh God, Matty,’ she groaned, sinking o
n to the edge of the bed and burying her face in her hands, ‘why did I ever do it?’
‘Hey, come on,’ Matty said, going to kneel in front of her, ‘plenty of women have gone a lot further than that for men they’re crazy about. A lot further.’
‘I know,’ Ellen said, ‘but this is a really big deal to me, Matty. I mean, if Mom or Dad …’ She stopped to catch her breath. ‘It would kill him, Matty. The shame, he just couldn’t live with it, and he might die without me ever speaking to him again and I just couldn’t bear it.’
‘Hey, it’s not going to come to that,’ Matty assured her. ‘Forgon’s not going to publish those pictures, not any of them, I promise you.’
Ellen laughed bitterly. ‘You don’t know him,’ she retorted. ‘The man sits there calling Clay an asshole for showing around those polaroids, when all the time he’s got other shots of me, publishable shots, not like the polaroids, stashed away as his security. So tell me, what kind of asshole does that make him?’
‘About as big a one as most of the executives in this town,’ Matty conceded. ‘But look at the package he’s put together for McCann, then ask yourself is any man in his right mind going to turn down an offer like that? Of course he’s not and Forgon knows it. So, believe me when I tell you he’s got no intention of doing anything with those photographs, they’re just providing him with an excuse for not firing you if McCann does refuse. He’ll just humiliate you instead. But it won’t come to that,’ she rushed on as Ellen started to speak. ‘I mean, look at it sensibly. What the hell does Forgon have to gain by publishing those shots? Nothing. Not a solitary sou, not a dime, not a dollar. And he’s just not the kind of guy to do anything unless he personally is going to gain from it.’
Ellen swallowed hard. Then, forcing a smile she gazed into Matty’s beloved brown eyes and said, ‘Why aren’t you coming with me tomorrow?’
