Leopards and Barrons
LEOPARDS AND BARRONS
When someone shows you who they are, believe them.
—MAYA ANGELOU
July—September 1984
“So, what the hell is going on with your promotion?” Ella asked in July.
It had been nearly four months since Nicolas had come into the office, and the world had reset, people had moved on, and Cage wasn’t returning Barron’s phone calls.
Ella was concerned. She’d heard Mike Barron from down the hall scream at Beanie, calling her “a fucking moron.”
“How do you let him treat you that way?” Ella asked.
Beanie just shrugged. “I poked the Barron,” she joked. That’s what they used to say in Personnel when he’d spew his bile. She knew that Mike didn’t mean it. “It’s just his way of blowing off steam.” What she didn’t tell Ella, or anyone, was that after that outburst, he’d brought her into his office, sat her down, shoved his cock against her head, and gave her a bump, or seven.
He felt guilty and it was his way of saying “I’m sorry” without saying “I’m sorry.” And it was then, between lines of blow, that he’d offered a status report on her promotion, telling her that it was a bit trickier than they’d anticipated but it was going to happen. In confidence, he shared that while the committee liked her, there had been complaints lodged.
“About me?” she said, sobering up.
He swore her to secrecy, then confided that there were legitimate concerns, primarily from trainees, but also a few agents who didn’t want to change a system that had been in place for years. If you could become an agent by being a secretary, then who the hell needed to go to the mailroom, or Dispatch?
Beanie volunteered that she’d go into the mailroom if they’d let her. She’d do whatever she had to do, she told him, rubbing the remnants onto her gums. But again, he assured her that that wasn’t necessary.
“Relax,” he told her. “It just needs to be finessed.”
She just had to trust him and promise that she wouldn’t discuss it with anyone, including her leggy friend who worked for Garry Fucking Sampson.
Mike Barron could feel that Ella Gaddy didn’t like him and was wary of her friendship with Beanie. They fucking lived together, for Christ’s sakes. It was all too incestuous for him. Calling her Sampson’s white-trash hookup, Barron mocked Ella often and loudly.
Extracting a promise that Beanie wouldn’t discuss any of this with Ella or anyone, he reassured her again that it would all happen in time. He did say it wouldn’t hurt if she could help him in bringing in a few other people.
So, over the next few months Beanie got him a number on Eric Stoltz, who’d just been cast as the lead opposite Cher in Mask, and Lea Thompson, who had just come out in the sequel to Fast Times at Ridgemont High called The Wild Life, and was set to star in a new time-travel film called Back to the Future. Beanie didn’t bring her promotion up again, lest he get annoyed, but in September Barron brought it up to Beanie one Saturday when they were at his house in Malibu.
“Fucking Jamie Garland,” he volunteered apropos of nothing. “She’s on the fence about making you a trainee.” He was straightening the lines of cocaine on his mirrored coffee table and had said it so nonchalantly Beanie barely had time to process.
“I thought the delay was because of protocol, or politics or some trainee lodging a complaint?” she said. “I didn’t realize it was one of the four members of the committee who were hesitating.”
He inhaled a line and shook his head. “She’s the one dragging her feet, but that’s confidential,” he said, enjoying the high of the first bump.
“But, why?” she asked, honestly baffled. It had been six months since the Cage meeting, and Mike, as frustrated as Beanie, held up his hands.
“I wish I could tell you, Hoover,” he said, jokingly using the moniker he had bestowed upon her as a term of endearment and a reference to her love of the powder. He speculated that maybe Garland was just being cautious in her new job, maybe she didn’t want to ruffle feathers. “I don’t fucking know,” he said, offering Beanie the money straw and encouraging her to take a hit.
Beanie and Barron had become inseparable, working late every night, and usually at his house in Malibu on weekends where they would do blow, watch porn cassettes, his entertainment of choice, and talk about who else they could sign. “This could drag into next year,” he told Beanie, saying that Jamie Fucking Garland was a pussy, but he would work on her.
She nodded, trying to be stoic, and turned her attention to The Dildo Nurses of Santa Fe, which he had just put into his VHS machine.
The following week Beanie was at the bathroom sink during lunch when Jamie Fucking Garland walked in and smiled at her.
“Hi, Beanie,” she said, turning on the tap to the sink adjacent and dabbing a spot on her pale pink Christian Dior blouse.
Beanie had seen Jamie a handful of times in the hall, in the garage, on the street, but other than a hello or a nod, Beanie always looked down or away, never engaging. She’d been told not to ask any questions, and since she knew Jamie had been heading the committee to decide her fate, didn’t want to do anything to upset the applecart.
“How are you doing?” Jamie asked.
“Good. I’m good,” Beanie said, and then, before she could stop herself, added, “and anxious.”
Jamie stopped with the blouse and looked at Beanie, confused. “Anxious about…?”
Beanie looked at her, surprised. Was she kidding? How could she not know why Beanie was anxious?
“My promotion,” Beanie said. “Into the training program. I mean it’s been six months, so I’m just wondering if you think you’re going to decide this year.” Beanie searched Jamie’s face for an answer, or compassion, or at least an indication as to when this torture would end. It wasn’t fair what they were doing to her, keeping her on tenterhooks.
And Jamie technically had done it twice.
She owed her.
“I mean, is there something more I can do?” Beanie asked, frustration creeping in.
Jamie seemed surprised. “I thought you knew,” she said, genuinely confused.
“Knew what?” Beanie asked, trying to quell the rising panic.
Jamie, noticeably uncomfortable, explained to Beanie that while they appreciated everything she had done, the decision to promote her hadn’t been unanimous, and, unfortunately, without unanimity they weren’t able to move forward in getting her into the training program.
Beanie shook her head. “Wait. It was decided?”
Jamie nodded. “Back in March. I thought you knew,” she said again.
Beanie shook her head again, trying to clear it more than give an answer. None of it made sense. How was this possible? She knew she had Barron’s vote, and Amati had told her he thought she’d make a better agent than half the agents there. Moze had assured her that Lesser was in, so it could only mean one thing. Jamie had dissented.
Her eyes welled up. “What did I ever do to you?” she asked loudly, her voice echoing. People, curious about the commotion, began to gather, coming out of stalls. Beanie didn’t care. She was raw. Tears were falling over her purple Anne Klein suit, which due to her seventeen-pound cocaine-induced weight loss, hung on her much thinner frame. After all she’d done, and all she’d been through, to come once again this close and get the fucking door slammed in her face, it was all too much to bear.
Jamie tried to calm Beanie, who was crying now, broken, but Beanie rejected the gesture. She was mad and didn’t want to be placated, nor let Jamie off the hook.
“Women helping women was all bullshit,” she said, hating the fact that she’d ever trusted Jamie Garland in the first place.
Finally, Jamie understood that Beanie wasn’t just distraught by the situation. Beanie was blaming her. And that was unacceptable.
“It wasn’t me,” Jamie said, truthfully. “It was Mike.”
Beanie heard the words, but they didn’t land. Not at first.
“We all said yes,” Jamie continued, “immediately, as I recall, but Mike dissented. He didn’t feel you were ready. He was adamant that he would tell you himself. I had no idea that he hadn’t…” Jamie said, flummoxed.
See, the thing about truth is that when you hear it, it crystallizes in a way that leaves no doubt. And that’s how it was for Beanie. The world wasn’t against her, Mike Barron was. Sadly, it all suddenly made sense. He had knowingly, selfishly, and sadistically strung her along, making her believe that a promotion was possible when, in fact, it was he who had prevented it. In some twisted scenario, he probably resented that she’d wanted to leave him, and feared that with autonomy she could gain power, and, given what she knew about him, she had the potential to become a threat. Mike Barron was using her for everything she was worth and then would toss her out like so many others.
don’t change their spots, she realized soberly.