The Sweet’n Low High
THE SWEET’N LOW HIGH
At first, it burned…
—BEANIE ROSEN
March—April 1984
Mike Barron took Beanie into his arms and kissed her deeply, putting his tongue in her mouth, and wrapping it around hers. He pressed himself against her, and she could feel how hard he was.
She hadn’t had time to react, it had happened so fast. She had gone into his office the Monday after the fateful meeting and told him that she had spent the weekend with Nicolas and Adrienne, dropping tidbits about the Formosa Café, the El Royale, the spiders, Louise, providing enough detail and authenticity to fill in the blanks she’d previously left opened.
“He’s coming into the office to meet you, Thursday,” she told him casually. “Four o’clock. I’ll reserve the second-floor conference room.”
Mike, feeling overwhelmed and grateful, decided he’d fuck her. It was the greatest gift he believed he could give. Nothing excited him more than when someone loved him as much as he loved himself. And Beanie, he thought, not only loved him but could help him. None of his other secretaries had meant anything. Not in the long run. They were decorations, toys who always seemed willing and then, in the end, complained. “They couldn’t take dictation or a joke,” Mike would say to Personnel in answer to the inevitable summons that would come about the way he treated “his girls.”
But Beanie could, he thought. She might be the key to his success, helping him break away from the pack, the Randall Finks, the Stewie Wolfs, the agents he considered competition rather than teammates. He hated them all. “There’s no ‘Mike’ in ‘team,’” his colleagues would whisper. But there wouldn’t have to be if he brought in Cage. A signing like that could push him ahead, maybe he’d even become one of Lesser’s boys. Barron knew Lesser didn’t like him and had been forced to watch as the senior agent bestowed his time and his clients on other agents, most recently Garry Fucking Sampson. All the people Mike hated shared the same middle name; Jamie Fucking Garland, Randy Fucking Fink, and now Garry Fucking Sampson. Garry had been an agent for five minutes and already had more A-list clients than he did. But something like this could turn it around for him. Sam Lesser’s approval was very important to Mike, just as Mike Barron’s approval was very important to Beanie.
“I want to fuck you,” he said, his voice thick with lust.
And though she’d never admit it, not to Ella nor anyone, she momentarily considered fucking him right there on the floor of his office. She pressed against him, giving over to the feel of what she had elicited, and momentarily considered showing how great she was with her mouth, how fun she could be as both co-conspirator and lover. Maybe it was the fact that she wanted to be like the girls he’d chosen, the spinners, the pretty ones who’d made him look sexy just by being there. Regardless, she savored the truth that Mike Barron was hard because of her. And that gave her power.
It also gave her pause. If she fucked him, she’d be like everyone else, only thicker in places and more self-conscious in others. It would give him something to make fun of, to demean when the Nicolas Cage meeting had run its course. Her strength, she knew, would be in the wanting, not in the doing. And so, instead, she pulled away.
“Let’s get ready for Nicolas,” she told him, suggesting they call a meeting of high-powered agents to prepare.
“First, we’re going to need a little help,” he said, smiling, and locking the door.
She was confused as he guided her to his desk chair, sat her down, and opened the thin middle drawer at the top of the desk, revealing a mirror, a tightly wound bill of some denomination, and remnants of white powder.
“You know what that is?” he asked.
“Sweet’N Low?” she said.
“Sweet and high,” he corrected. Laughing, he took a razor blade from a box of paper clips and gathered the Sweet’N Low into a small pile. Dipping his index finger into the powder, he brought it to her lips. “Open,” he commanded quietly, and she obeyed.
With his hard cock pressed against the back of her head, she parted her lips, allowing him to rub his finger across her gums. “Like it?” he said, as he repeated the action on himself.
She could feel a tingle, reminiscent of her trips to the dentist, sans cock, and rubbed her tongue across her gums, trying to decide whether she was actually enjoying the sensation. Before she could answer, he produced a small vial from his pocket and tapped a good amount of the white powder onto the mirror, using the razor blade again, but this time to form six thick white lines. When she looked up at him, he smiled. “You’re going to love it,” he promised as he put his hand where his cock had been and gently pushed her head down toward the mirror until she was inches from the lines. “Inhale,” he commanded, taking the rolled-up bill with his other hand and placing it under her nostril.
There was something base about this, and wrong, and part of her wanted to run. She didn’t want to take drugs. She never had. Even when Fish had wanted to get high, she had pretended to inhale but never did. The idea of control was too important, and nothing appealed to her about ceding it.
But sitting at Mike’s desk, with his hand firmly on her head, she began to yield. There was a divine complicity; a sexually charged understanding of submission and dominance that felt both intimate and forbidden. She steadied the money straw and inhaled the thick powder. It burned at first and was uncomfortable. She sniffled, trying to clear her nose, moving it around, and then seconds later, almost instantly, felt a kind of euphoria.
“Again,” he whispered, positioning the bill in front of the other nostril.
She repeated the action, inhaling deeply, anticipating the burn, then, seconds later, heaven.
Now it was Mike’s turn. He leaned down, his face inches from hers, and expertly inhaled his lines. “More?” he said, offering her the money straw.
“Fuck yeah,” she said, “that’s a Sweet’N Low high,” and he laughed.
They finished the vial in a few hours. No longer needing assistance, she waited her turn with the anticipation of a child at an amusement park going on the same ride over and over.
She was flying, invigorated, empowered. “You feel the drip at the back of the throat?” he asked. She nodded. “That’s my favorite part,” he told her.
But for Beanie it was impossible to choose. She loved everything about it. The insidious vial kept hidden yet readily available for a little bump, the preparation, the anticipation, the complicity. It was like an invisible door had opened to another world, and she never wanted to leave.
What was interesting about cocaine and what surprised her most was that she never felt out of control; in fact, she felt more focused, more invigorated, and more alive than she’d ever been before.
“We can go all night with this,” he told her.
And they did, sharing stories about the things that drove them, and drove them crazy: his father, her mother, his plans to run a studio, and hers to be an agent. He told her that being an agent was a waste of time. He hated chasing after 10 percent of someone else’s salary and saw Sylvan Light as a mere way station, a jumping-off point. Barron wanted to be the guy the agents courted, the buyer, the boss, the money who pushed the button, who made the light green and the cash flow.
But Beanie wanted to be an agent, she said. It was what she was born to do.
He promised he’d help her get promoted, and once she tired of it, she could be his right hand at the studio. “We’ll do it together,” he told her, as they worshiped at the altar of the almost empty vial.
Beanie Rosen was great on a normal day, but on a cocaine-infused binge, she was a goddess. Or at least she felt like one. No longer looking at this as a one-off to pacify the beast she’d created, she now wanted Barron to sign Cage, believing that this was only the beginning for the two of them. All week long she and Barron strategized by day and Sweet’N Low’d by night.
They were on fire.
She just had to make sure the right people knew that she was the conduit to Cage—specifically Jamie Garland, Sam Lesser, and Gil Amati. If Barron, who was head of the training program, sanctioned it along with the three of them, she could move from secretary to trainee. That’s all she needed.
Fearing that in some way it might diminish his power, Mike, at first, hesitated with the idea of telling anyone that his secretary had arranged the meeting. But Beanie wisely pointed out that Nicolas might mention her in the meeting, and she didn’t want the fact that Barron hadn’t to reflect badly upon him.
Besides, it wasn’t that she wanted or needed the world to know what she’d done—she needed the people who ran the agency to know. What Beanie was attempting to do was controversial. After all, if one secretary became a trainee, what’s to stop the rest of them from trying? And then the system of mailroom to Dispatch to desk would be circumnavigated by some “ambitious female,” as Mike called them, referring to Beanie or Jamie or any woman who thought she could do better.
But if Beanie found a loophole, she could make certain the other trainees wouldn’t resent her for it. She had to convince them that she was the exception, not the rule. Sure, there’d been female agents, and yes, there had been the occasional female trainee, but never had a secretary crossed over.
Until me, she thought.
Thursday, March 23, 1984, Hawkeye called up to Beanie to tell her that Nicolas Cage was on his way to the second-floor conference room to meet with Mike Barron. It had been decided that a few senior agents would stop by to say hello, and that after the meeting Barron would personally bring Cage down to Sam Lesser’s office for a private meeting. The group had rehearsed their parts, and even prepared, thanks to Beanie, an audio-visual presentation of where they projected Cage’s career could go in the next five years. While citing the major stars and filmmakers they currently represented, they differentiated themselves by showing the actor how little direct competition he’d have at Sylvan Light, versus how much he’d have elsewhere.
The agents were proactive rather than defensive, smart, self-effacing, and generous, gifting Cage a small Basquiat.
“Token of our esteem,” Mike said proudly. The practice of giving gifts to lure or to keep clients was new to the agency, but ever since the Alliance Group began upping the stakes, Sylvan Light felt they needed to keep pace. And since Adrienne had told Beanie that in addition to rare centipedes, Nicolas favored neo-expressionist art, Mike had lobbied the board to let him purchase the small painting. “It will remind him of us,” he’d said, doubling down with the assurance that signing Nicolas could be a watershed for the agency, opening up the possibility of attracting stars like Matt Dillon, Timothy Hutton, or Debra Winger, none of whom they represented. Cage was a get, and certainly worth the price of a Basquiat.
While the meeting had been inconclusive, it had buoyed Barron both in the eyes of his colleagues and his potential client. Nicolas assured Mike, and more importantly Sam Lesser, that he would revisit the discussions after shooting his next film.
For Mike, it was a win. For Beanie, a triumph. He had kept his word and told Lesser and Garland and Amati that he’d met Cage through his secretary, and that she very much wanted to be a trainee.
“Give it a few months,” he told Beanie. “Let them get their head around the idea of a secretary moving into the trainee pool.”
She agreed, of course. This would be precedential, and it had to be carefully done. But she wanted that trainee position more than she’d wanted anything else. If she could break through, it might reinforce her worth and silence the noise, the doubt, and the endless screaming about rich relations who lived south of the Boulevard. Beanie would be good enough. Getting the yes. Getting the approval. Getting the client. It was all about getting the love. Until it faded. Then she’d find another wave to swim through, another mountain to move to prove herself worthy.
Amati was the first to seek her out. “Good work, kiddo,” he said, adding that they were all impressed. He sidled up and whispered that if she had any relationship with Sean Penn, he was a big fan. Beanie nodded, hoping to give the impression that she was connected to all of young Hollywood. Jamie Garland, with whom she’d had limited interaction since losing her desk, went out of her way to say how impressed she’d been. “We’re going to be discussing your future, young lady,” she told Beanie, smiling. And Moze made certain that Sam Lesser knew it was Mike Barron’s secretary who had secured the Nicolas Cage meeting.
Now it was just a matter of time.