Chapter 5
FIVE
So far, I hadn’t had to get anyone anything. I went out and walked down to the Cagney room. I knocked and heard Marc say, “Come in.”
I went in as Grace was asking, “What’s your price point?” She stared at herself in the mirror adding mascara to her already mascaraed eyelashes.
“Around three hundred thousand.”
Grace’s mouth dropped open. “Oh, you poor thing! Well, you won’t have a pool. Or a view. Or very many rooms. But I’m sure your agent will find you something. Definitely in the flats, but with good bones, as they say. Although sometimes that just means it’s unlikely to fall down.”
“I think what you do is fascinating,” Marc said.
“I love it! You know, I worked with this agent from William Morris. Sold him a cute little bungalow halfway up a hill in the Cahuenga Pass. Anyway, he told me the next big thing is going to be reality TV, like Real World except different. All these new cable channels need cheap programming. And so… I started to have this idea. And I’m thinking about it and thinking about it… And when I was selling Finn’s last house and buying his new one—up near Mulholland—anyway, I pitched Finn my idea. He does have a production company, after all. Anyway, it was about a high-end real estate agent—me, in case you can’t figure that out—selling properties in Beverly Hills. Basically, just having a camera follow me around.”
I had no idea why that would be interesting, but Marc said, “Oh my God, I’d so watch that.”
“Well, apparently, you’re the only one. Finn said it was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. Really hurt my feelings. Very unkind. I mean, no one wants to be told their life is too boring for TV. Especially given some of the things they put on.”
“Exactly.”
I thought I’d better ask my question and not just stand there listening. “Do you guys want coffee or a pop?”
“Coffee, please!” Marc said. “By the gallon.”
“Cream and sugar?”
“Tons.”
“Do you have nonfat milk?” Grace asked.
“No. It’s real cream.”
“Real cream? Are you trying to kill us?”
“Um… no.”
“I’ll play it safe with a Diet Coke.”
“Coming right up,” I said, leaving the room. I supposed I could have moved on and gotten more orders, but I was right there, so I popped back into the craft services room and made Marc’s super sweet coffee and grabbed Grace’s diet pop. I did use the tray, because I also brought her a cup of ice.
Back in their dressing room, Grace was saying, “Yes, I’ve bought and sold several houses for Finn, and I even handled a sale for Kathleen. Now, if you talk to either of them, I wouldn’t mention the other. There’s still a lot of bad blood.”
“So, they really were dating toward the end of the show?” Marc asked.
“The end? No. All along. You don’t remember?”
“I was a fourteen-year-old closet case. I was paying attention to other things.”
“Like Melvin, as I recall.”
“Nothing happened between us.”
“So you say.”
“He used to give me cigarettes. That’s it.”
“Anyway, I was paying attention and, yes, Finn and Kathleen were hot and heavy. I was shocked when she married Reverend True just months after the show ended… basically on the rebound. I had no idea she was religious. I suppose we should have known though… She’s the one who had Melvin fired. For being a bad influence on you.”
“Really? I thought it was my parents.”
“Even if it was your parents, she was still behind it. She was a nightmare long before she got on Christian TV. She was just more subtle about it.”
As I set their drinks down on the makeup table, Marc said, “Maybe it wasn’t love with the good reverend. Maybe it was just good casting.”
Grace squealed. “You’re terrible! I love it!”
Unfortunately, I couldn’t just stand there listening to their conversation. Marc would have to fill me in later. I left the dressing room and went on to the next one, the Barrymore room. The door was open, but I tapped on it anyway. Meg and Keely were intent on their make-up, not saying anything.
“Can I get either of you coffee or a pop?”
“Coffee. Black,” Meg said. Then she glanced at Keely and looked embarrassed.
Keely noticed and shook her head, as she said, “Nothing for me, thanks.”
I popped down to the Arbuckle room and knocked. The door opened a crack, and I was looking at Heston True’s blue eyes through clumpy eyelashes. “Yeah?”
“Would you or your mom like coffee or pop?”
“I’ll have coffee. Cream and sugar.”
“No, he won’t,” Kathleen said from deeper into the room. I could only see a sliver of her at the makeup table. She’d put on a giant wig, which must have been what was in the hat box. It was almost lavender and looked more like something a drag queen would wear than a supposedly devout woman. “We’ll have soda. Do you have anything without caffeine?”
“I think there’s 7-Up.”
“We’ll have two of those, thank you.”
“7-Up isn’t going to keep me awake,” Heston said.
“You can take a nap. You’re not going to be on camera. Not looking like that, at least.”
“I’m not sleeping on that sofa, Kathleen, it’s gross,” Heston said, as he shut the door in my face.
Through the door I heard her saying loudly, “Don’t call me by my first name. I’m your mother. You’re supposed to call me Mom.”
I didn’t hear him say anything. I did hear the beeping and popping of his Gameboy so he must have just ignored her.
I went to get their drinks. In the craft room, I filled a couple of cups with ice. As I did, I heard noises coming from the Guessmate? set. I could definitely hear Wendy’s voice, though not much more than the occasional “Donald!” Apparently, the soundstage itself was soundproofed against the outside world, but the interior walls were paper thin. I wondered if that explained why people thought they sometimes heard Zola Emery practicing her lines? I could also hear music—which didn’t make much sense. Had someone turned on a radio?
I filled a cup with black coffee for Meg and put everything on a tray, then walked back out into the hallway. Something moved and I looked down the hallway to see Ricky walking away from me. I was pretty sure I’d noticed bathrooms down that way. He must be going to the restroom. He really should have put a shirt on.
Marc and Grace were still chatting away as I walked by. The door to the Barrymore room was open, so I walked in and set Meg’s coffee on the makeup table.
“So, who are you?” she asked.
“I’m a friend of Marc and Louis. I live in their building.”
“And Louis is Marc’s boyfriend?”
“He’s doing the craft table.”
“Don’t let Kathleen know about them. She says terrible things about the gays on her show. That they’re immoral, disease-ridden, AIDS-infected, devil-worship?—”
“I’m aware. Thanks.”
“She’s probably still a racist, too,” Keely said. “Though I’ll bet she doesn’t have the nerve to say anything against Black folk on TV.”
Smiling, I said, “Well, I have to bring the racist a pop now.”
That made them both giggle, which they quickly stopped when they realized the other found it funny. I left their dressing room and tapped on the door of the Arbuckle room again.
Heston opened it. This time he stepped back to allow me access. This dressing room was larger than the others, and it had its own private bathroom through a door to the left. My guess was the Emery room, which Finn was in, also had a private bathroom. Finn and Kathleen were both being given the star treatment.
Still, on closer inspection, the brown tweedy sofa looked filthy. I could see why Heston didn’t want to sleep on it. But that didn’t stop him from flopping onto it and going back to his Gameboy. The gigantic floral arrangement had been relegated to a spot on the floor, since Kathleen needed the space for her makeup case filled with massive amounts of makeup and hair products to style her wig.
As I set the pops down on the makeup counter, I couldn’t help but look up at the ceiling. There were no pipes or beams. Nothing to hang yourself from. I wanted to take a peek into the bathroom. Did it have a shower? Could you hang yourself from a showerhead? Were things different in the Emory room? How had Zola Emery killed herself?
“Uh-hum,” Kathleen cleared her throat. “I asked you a question.”
“Oh. Sorry. What was it?”
“How does Finn look? Does he look… high?”
“Someone else brought him a pop, so I wouldn’t know.”
“Hmmmm…” she said, as though that meant something. “Supposedly, he’s been to rehab and he’s sober. But then, Finn has never been particularly honest. If you think he’s still using, you will come and tell me.”
It wasn’t a question or a request, it was a command. The simplest way to get out of the room was to say, “Sure thing.”
As I came out of the Arbuckle room shutting the door behind me, I was about to turn to go out to the stage, but Marc was suddenly there. In his hand was an etched silver cigarette case, probably antique. He held it out, saying, “Look what I found in the drawer of my makeup table.”
“Do you think it belonged to Jimmy Cagney?”
“No. It’s mine.”
“Finders keepers.”
“No, it really is mine. From when I was fourteen.”
“Wait. You smoked when you were fourteen?”
“Not the point. I lost this case when I was fourteen.”
“Sorry, I’m still—you were a fourteen-old-smoker who used a cigarette case?”
“Still not the point. The point is someone’s had it all this time. They left it there for me to find.”
“Why not just give it to you?”
“I don’t know. It’s very weird. And a little creepy, don’t you think?” He was staring at the case as if he expected it to provide the answer.
“Maybe they stole it from you and wanted to return it.”
“Why would someone steal a cigarette case?”
“Because you shouldn’t have been smoking? I mean, it wasn’t legal, was it?”
“It was the seventies. No one cared.”
“Are you going to use it?”
“Oh no. I don’t smoke regulars anymore. I only smoke hundreds. Sadly, they wouldn’t fit.”
I lowered my voice and said, “Maybe it was Grace. I mean, if you looked away for second.”
Before he could answer, I was pushed up against the wall and Ricky was in my face saying, “What the fuck man?”
“Excuse me?” I said—or rather would have said if I had been able to take a breath.
Marc pulled him off me, saying, “Ricky, stop it. He didn’t do anything to you.”
“I told you I was okay with faggots. Didn’t you hear me?”
“Oh my God! Ricky!” Marc said. “Did you say it that way? Did you really say you’re okay with faggots?”
“Well, I am. And I meant it.”
“Yeah, well, if you said, ‘I’m okay with gay guys,’ that sounds like you might be okay with gay guys,” Marc explained. Much more patiently than I could have. “But when you say, ‘I’m okay with faggots,’ that does not sound like you’re okay with gay guys!”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
Ricky seemed to be thinking about that—something of a struggle—but then said, “That doesn’t make what he wrote on my mirror okay.”
“Someone…” I was having a little trouble catching my breath. “Someone… wrote… on your… mirror?”
“Don’t even try! You’re the only one who could have done it.”
“But I was down at this end of the hallway serving drinks.”
“And having a conversation with me,” Marc added.
I tried to think: Could someone have slipped into or out of the Durante room while Marc and I were talking? Could we have not noticed? They’d have had to come into the hallway after Ricky went to the bathroom and then done whatever they did, and then gone back the way they came.
Finn could have done it. Or his manager. But I couldn’t see why they would.
“What does it say?” I asked.
Ricky turned and walked down the hallway. We followed him. Standing in the doorway, we could see that someone had written a single word on the mirror in bronzer.
COCKSUCKER