The Shit
THE SHIT
Rule number one: Never be number two.
—THE NARCISSIST’S GUIDE TO A HAPPY LIFE
1989
Beanie Rosen was the shit. And not in a good way. While she was the agent for Scott Westman and Kevin Costner, she wasn’t the agent that the heavyweights called. She was the number two; the shit, the agent who did the work for the agents the heavyweights called. They were the ones who got the notoriety and the praise and the year-end bonuses with lots of zeros. They were the number ones.
Still, Beanie rationalized, she was thrilled to be an agent. It was all she ever wanted. And while Sylvan Light didn’t give her a car like they did Ella, who got a new Rabbit Cabriolet convertible, or Moze’s Alfa Romeo, she was, thanks to Sheila, making $75,000 a year, with an expense account and gas allowance.
She didn’t expect a car. Besides, Scott Westman had once told her that the Swinger made her cool. You don’t trade in cool for a set of wheels that belongs to someone else. At least that was the lie she told herself to insulate against the harsh truth that Beanie had gotten in on a pass. The girl from Pacoima who was told to say Arleta, who’d moved to Sepulveda but admitted to Northridge and then wiped them all away for a life south of the Boulevard, had always had to finagle her way in. This wasn’t new. She’d never felt good enough, or pretty enough, or thin enough, so, this promotion hadn’t been the exception, it had been the rule. Known as the girl behind the girl who signed Westman and Costner, Beanie felt both anonymous and codependent, and though she was grateful to Ella for all she had done, she would sometimes complain about not being recognized or singled out.
And that made Ella resentful. She had done everything she could, and if it weren’t for her, Beanie would still be a departmental trainee. Beanie knew that, of course, and it wasn’t that she didn’t feel grateful, it was that she didn’t feel seen.
“Like if you weren’t here, they wouldn’t want me,” Beanie said to Ella six months after they’d been promoted. They had just gotten out of a motion picture meeting where everyone had been congratulating Ella for a deal she’d made based on an idea of Beanie’s. It was a Vanity Fair article that Beanie had shown to a writer who had come up with a take for Westman. He liked the pitch, and TriStar had optioned the piece and put it into development.
“I said it was your idea,” Ella told her, annoyed at the agents for ignoring Beanie’s role, and annoyed at Beanie for this constant need to be recognized. “They know we’re a team,” she reiterated as they arrived at Ella’s office where she sat on what was once Garry Sampson’s couch. “No one knows what I can do on my own,” Beanie said.
“Then fucking show them,” Ella replied, sick to death of the constant complaints. “Go out and sign someone,” she said, as her secretary informed her that Gil Amati was waiting downstairs.
Beanie, clocking Ella’s tone, retreated into work mode. Standing up to leave, she suggested two scripts she’d read and liked for Westman, and an article she thought they should explore for Costner.
“Bean,” Ella said, softening, “don’t go.”
“Amati’s waiting for you,” Beanie said, hurt by Ella’s lack of empathy and embarrassed by her own neediness.
“I’m sorry,” Ella told her. “We can talk about it later tonight. Okay?”
Beanie smiled, nodded, and walked away, knowing they wouldn’t.
Though she still paid half the rent, Ella spent most of her time with Scott Westman, leaving Beanie alone in the large two-bedroom with views of the MGM lion and five years of memories. Ella was clearly making her own way. Maybe it was time for Beanie to stop bitching about being seen and step out of Ella’s shadow so people could see her.
“I think I want to buy my own place,” Beanie told Dr. Spitz and Miriam shortly after her conversation with Ella. They were having dinner at Chasens, and Miriam for once was counting chits instead of calories, measuring how important her daughter was, at least compared to others.
“Mrs. Koppelman’s son is an agent at Gersh,” she told Beanie, Dr. Spitz, and the skinny twins, both of whom had joined them. “But he’s a pisher,” she said, “not like our girl who represents Scott Westman.”
Beanie smiled and nodded, reminding her mother that it was both her and Ella who represented Westman, and Costner, and anyone else of value.
But Miriam, good at reworking truth, had Zambonied Ella out of her narrative. Her daughter, though fat and single, was successful. And that trumped Mrs. Koppelman and her loser son.
“You should get your own place,” Dr. Spitz said, and offered to help with a down payment. “You’re a Maher now,” he said proudly.
Beanie, embarrassed, dismissed him, but Miriam agreed, hugging her daughter while slipping diet pills into her purse.
“When you run out,” she whispered, “I’ll have Lennie get you more.”
Two months later, Beanie said goodbye to her Culver City apartment with the distant view of a roaring lion and put an offer on a chic two-bedroom, two-bathroom west-facing apartment at the Sierra Towers, which ironically was Beverly Hills adjacent. Hiring the decorator who had done her office, she leaned into a Santa Fe style, complete with Navajo tapestries, a four-poster bleached wood bed, and a howling coyote in the corner.
“Beautiful,” her mother said as she took in the décor, the view, and then her daughter. She had hoped that Beanie’s promotion or at least the diet pills would cut away the fat, but a discerning up and down on her ever-expanding daughter in her Pucci dress that amplified rather than camouflaged her girth, dashed all hope.
Beanie noted Miriam’s nonverbal disappointment.
Fuck her, she thought, as she led Miriam and Dr. Spitz out to the terrace, pre-set with terra cotta dishes, and surrounded by large potted cacti and various reptiles strategically placed to give the illusion of a desert landscape.
Knowing that Dr. Spitz loved soul food, Beanie had ordered a spread from Georgia Ray’s Kitchen including fried chicken, mashed potatoes, collard greens, corn on the cob, biscuits with gravy, and apple pie.
As Beanie helped herself to a spoonful of potatoes, she saw Miriam give Dr. Spitz that look. She knew that look. It was the look that said She’s out of control. Beanie had seen that look her whole life, and while she told herself she didn’t care, she did, of course.
Her mother’s voice, her mother’s approval, her mother’s disappointment, they all swirled around in her head creating a noise she could only quiet with food. Add to that the fact that her parents had just spent the afternoon with one of the skinny twins who’d announced her engagement to the son of one of Dr. Spitz’s rich facelifts, and she took a second helping.
Her mother watched disapprovingly from the other side of the table. It was a chess match. The more Miriam judged, the more Beanie ate, and the more Beanie ate, the more Miriam probed, which would, of course, only make her eat more.
“Whatever happened to Moses?” Miriam asked, nibbling one kernel of corn at a time.
“He led his people to the promised land,” Beanie said. Dr. Spitz laughed.
Miriam didn’t. Instead, she watched Beanie pour a healthy dollop of gravy over a second helping of potatoes.
“I’m serious,” Miriam said.
Beanie, mouth full, told her that he now ran the literary department in New York and the last she’d heard he was living in Greenwich Village and dating an actress or an actor. “He’s tricky that way,” she said flippantly, trying to show how little it bothered her, which of course had the opposite effect.
It suddenly occurred to Miriam that perhaps Moses had broken her daughter’s heart. Perhaps he had left due to her weight gain, or worse, she was filling herself up because he’d left. Miriam softened. The thought of Beanie having to substitute food for love was crushing, yet the idea that she had withheld love and might have been a contributing factor eluded her entirely. She wanted to comfort her daughter, to lead by example, to share clothing, secrets, and lives. She yearned for the kind of relationship where they could talk to each other, not shoot barbs across a table filled with carbohydrates, but she was just so frustrated that Beanie had let herself go again that she could not hide her disappointment. It absolutely galled her that she had a fat daughter, and while Beanie wasn’t obese, it was a hop, skip, and a side of fries before she’d be shopping at Lane Bryant, the store where fat women went for polyester stretch pants and flowery blouses with big bows to distract from big personalities.
How could Miss Rockaway have a daughter who shopped at Lane Bryant? It just didn’t make sense to her.
Dr. Spitz, bless him, tried to change the subject, but Miriam, on a roll, went in for the kill. “Someone told me they saw your father a few weeks ago,” she said casually, though there was nothing casual about it. “Apparently,” she whispered, “he’s gotten very big.” She mouthed the word “big” silently, like you would “cancer.”
Even the cactus pricks shivered.
“How big?” Dr. Spitz asked, ignorant as to Miriam’s true motive, which was, Beanie guessed, to frighten her into starvation.
Miriam shook her head and told him she didn’t know but that people were shocked. “And have you seen the wife?” she said to Dr. Spitz, raising her eyebrows to imply more than words. It was a mean-girl tactic that Beanie had seen her do her whole life:
“Did you see that muumuu Fritzi wore?”
“Did you hear what happened with the Carlisles?”
“Did you notice Stephanie’s bruises?”
She’d ask open-ended questions, then raise her eyebrows and let you fill in the rest. But Beanie knew all about Janice Fleishman, her father’s new wife.
She was fat, too.
Suddenly feeling protective of her sweet father, his new wife, and their fat lives, Beanie told her mother that she saw them both a few weeks earlier and that they seemed really happy. Miriam might have considered Janice Fleishman to be some kind of sideshow freak, but she was quite an accomplished party planner-slash-caterer in Pasadena.
“Her business is on fire,” Beanie told them. “In fact, I’ve recommended Good Eats for the company Christmas party,” she said, explaining that that was the name of Janice’s catering business.
Miriam’s eyes opened wide. “Good? Eats?” she asked, punctuating each word so the irony could not possibly be lost.
But Beanie, refusing to take the bait, smiled, nodded, and explained that Janice’s business was so hot that if you didn’t know someone inside, you’d have to book a year in advance. Then she shoveled macaroni in her mouth to drive her point home.
Later, alone on the terrace, she thought of her mother and Dr. Spitz, her father and Janice Fleishman, Ella and Scott, Barry and Moze, and even Mercedes and Harvey Khan. They’d all found their way to some semblance of happiness without her. Moze was floating somewhere between men and women, fame and infamy, and Barry was dating Morgan Fairchild, she’d heard. But Beanie couldn’t be sure if that wasn’t just another rumor he’d started. Either way, they were all moving forward, and she was stalled, less because she didn’t have a partner and more because she didn’t have an identity. And she was tired of complaining about it.
She took a deep breath and looked around, taking stock of her life, her home, and her gut. She was fat. Again. Fuck. Fuck, she thought, angry at Miriam for pointing it out, angry at herself for gaining the weight, angry at the Light Agency for not recognizing her brilliance except by association, and angry at Moze and Ella and Barry for all finding their way without her.
Miriam was right. In a business where you needed to be sharp and precise, where you needed an edge, being fat made you round and soft and sloppy. She thought for a minute about doing coke or diet pills as a sort of jumpstart to take the weight off quickly, but she hated not sleeping. I’ll join the Jane Fonda class downstairs, she decided as she lit another cigarette, and took a second helping of pie à la mode.
Working the tumblers in her head, Beanie tried to figure out a way to be seen. If she could sign a client without Ella’s help—be number one for a change—then maybe the agency, the industry, even her mother might value Beanie enough that she wouldn’t need to Zamboni Ella out of her narrative when talking about her daughter’s success.
But how do I get to them? was the question rattling around in her brain.
Suddenly she remembered something Sheila Day had told her months earlier when Sheila was trying to sign Sean Connery. “Honeeeey,” she’d said, “sign the spouse. And if they’re not married, sign the person they’re fucking, or want to fuck.”
It was a lesson that played out in real time for Beanie, who, at Sheila’s insistence, became her emissary with Micheline Connery at a dinner she and Ella were giving for Kevin Costner and his Untouchable costars.
Sheila, who had naturally not been invited, told Beanie to send her regrets to Micheline regardless, and to try to get a number where she was staying. Sheila and Micheline had met in Cannes the year before and had struck up a friendship. Each time they socialized, Sheila was careful only to mention Sean in passing, concentrating instead on his wife, her photography, philanthropies, and their mutual friends. While she wanted Sean, she targeted Micheline.
“They’re staying privately,” Sheila said. “But let her know I’d love to throw a dinner for her.”
While Beanie was doubtful, Sheila was certain. And as it turned out, Sheila was right. Micheline gave Beanie the number and Sheila threw Micheline a “girls’” dinner. Sean was not in attendance. With Beanie’s help, Sheila courted and signed the wife of the man she wanted to represent. Four months later, she signed the man.
It was all about getting close to the people who were close to the people.
Beanie had been looking at it all wrong.
The answer, dear Brutus, she thought to herself as she thumbed through People magazine, is not in the stars.
It’s in the people behind them.