Holy Moze
HOLY MOZE
I have been deceived.
—ELTON JOHN
September 1983
Ella wanted Beanie to win in every way. So when she learned about Moze—or the potential of Moze—she was all in.
“Do you like him?” Ella asked, and Beanie, shrugging, gave a small smile. Moze Goff was someone Beanie could like. Really like. There hadn’t been anyone since Fish. Even Barry was a drive-by.
But Moze had sought her out. He’d thought about her for years, remembering her story, wanting her to know that love wasn’t a lie.
“I’m going to call Garry and tell him I’m going to stay with him for the week,” Ella told Beanie as she headed for the blue phone with a cord long enough to wrap around Beanie’s trepidation.
“You don’t have to do that,” Beanie told her. “Moze can stay in the spare room, and we can stay in ours.”
But Ella was already dialing. “I wanna give you guys some time to get to know each other,” she said, winking, “and some space.”
Beanie smiled. She loved watching Ella float through life, casually calling the most powerful trainee, not just at Light, but in the industry, and telling him, not asking, that she was coming over. Beanie guessed that Garry Sampson would be thrilled. She knew that Garry wanted more, but Ella didn’t. Which no one, least of all Beanie, understood.
Garry Sampson, as Sam Lesser’s trainee, had power by proximity, a guaranteed future as an agent, and people killing just to get him to return their calls, never mind Lesser.
But Ella had him so turned around that he’d drop whatever he was doing just to be with her.
“Thanks, El,” Beanie said, as Ella, heading out the door, reminded, “Anyone would be lucky to get you, Bean.”
Moze and Beanie ordered in Chinese from the Kung Pao Palace and had a carpet picnic on the fur rug in front of the fake fireplace where he informed her that he had been born Jacob Goffenburg, and he went by Jack until he was seven when his father Americanized their last name to Goff.
“That’s when the teasing began,” he said.
“Jack Goff,” Beanie said, then covered her mouth.
“Funny, right?” he said, not laughing. So, he took his middle name, Moses.
She asked, “You’re going to lead us all to the promised land?”
“I’d rather follow you,” he said, smiling. And she melted.
She spoke about her parents’ divorce and the new life her mother had made with Dr. Spitz, pushing him to first become a plastic surgeon and then to take a loan and move his offices from Sherman Oaks to Beverly Hills. “Poor guy,” she said. “He thought all he needed to give her was a house south of the Boulevard.”
He laughed. And she felt relieved.
They were lying on what once was Mercedes’s pink couch, both wanting each other, but enjoying the divine complicity in not acknowledging it.
“You know what I think?” Beanie whispered. He shook his head, brushing the hair from her cheek. “I think you should get into the mailroom at Sylvan Light,” she told him. “Even if you don’t want to be an agent,” she explained, “you could meet studio heads and producers and network executives. And that way,” she said, pressing into his hard cock, “we can work together.”
He smiled, enjoying the tease, then brought her back to reality by reminding her that he never actually graduated CCNY, and a college degree was necessary for a mailroom guy. “So, say you did,” she told him nonchalantly. “I mean, they check, but not rigorously. Not like they used to.”
He stood up, breaking the spell of the moment. “I don’t lie,” he told her, walking toward the kitchen.
Beanie, confused, followed him. “What if I do it?” she said.
He turned to look at her. What didn’t she understand? “I don’t want anyone to lie for me,” he said.
“It’s not a lie,” she said, “it’s a Zamboni.”
He looked at her blankly as she tried to explain the difference. “You’re what, a couple credits shy of graduation?” He nodded. “My mother changed our zip code for less.”
He smiled, but still shook his head.
“Everyone Zambonies,” she reasoned. “Actors do it on their résumés, executives do it on their tax returns, when you tell someone their baby’s cute, and it really looks like a Potato Head. That’s a Zamboni. It’s not a lie,” she said, “if it’s almost the truth.”
“Almost-truth isn’t truth,” he told her, sticking to his moronic moral guns.
Beanie stood her ground. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but you’re wrong. Almost-truth can be nudged to truth, polished. Like a Zamboni machine on the ice.”
“You really believe that?” he asked.
She did, she told him. Completely.
“There is truth,” she argued. “‘Two plus two is four.’ There is a lie. ‘I did not kill your cat,’ as the cat lay underneath the car you were driving. And there is the Zamboni. ‘I graduated college.’ You’ve got to see the difference,” she pleaded.
He scratched his head and smiled just enough for her to worm her way in.
Get the yes. Get the yes.
“I mean, we’re talking, what, six credits shy?”
“Four,” he told her.
“And you’re going to let that stop you from a job you might love? A job that can change the course of your life? Four. Measly. Credits. You know what I say?” He shook his head. “I say, that’s worth a Zamboni.” He laughed hard, and as he did, his whole body relaxed.
“You’re impossible to resist,” he told her.
“Then don’t,” she smiled, knowing she had won.
She wrapped Moze Goff around her vision, urging him to see a future by her design. He would sail through the trainee program, she decided, and she, as Jamie Garland’s secretary and perhaps someday a trainee herself, would sail beside him.
“Please, please let me help,” she begged, explaining that this would be absolutely no problem. She didn’t wait for his answer, instead describing the process of working in the mailroom, then going to Dispatch, then hopefully getting a morning desk, then a real desk, and then becoming an agent.
“You’re something,” he said softly.
“You are,” she whispered back.
He leaned over and finally gave her a long, deep French kiss that sent shivers down her spine, and left her wanting more.
The old Beanie would have mounted and dry humped him like a dog in heat, as Fish once jokingly said. But something inside gave her the foresight and wisdom to pull back.
“We have time,” she whispered, taking control of their narrative, because it was one she hoped would last forever.