Et Tu, Brute?…
ET TU, brUTE?…
The saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from your enemies.
—BEANIE ROSEN, WHO HEARD IT FROM A FRIEND
1993–1994
“Listen, we’ve been friends for a long time, so I hope you don’t mind me stopping by,” Mercedes Khan said, standing at the door to Beanie’s office.
Beanie, rarely at a loss for words, just sat staring at the petite woman poised in her doorway.
“May I come in?” she asked, presuming both a friendship and an intimacy that belied their relationship.
Beanie was speechless and simply nodded as the wife of the president of the Sylvan Light Agency, dressed head to toe in a black-and-pink-tweed Chanel suit, walked into her office and closed the door for privacy.
At forty-three, Mercedes, still youthful and fit at one hundred and two pounds, had the same short hairstyle, perhaps a shade darker than it used to be, with flawless skin and dewy makeup, and while she was ten years Beanie’s senior, she looked like she was her contemporary. Manicured, polished, and stiff, Queen Khan assumed a mannered and authoritative stance. After all, she was the wife of the agency president, legally finding her way to the title she had zeroed in on a decade earlier like an assassin with a single bullet. And though she was asking permission to enter, Beanie had the funny feeling that she was the guest in Mercedes’s office.
Mercedes sat gingerly on the chintz chair, balancing a thick P&C envelope on her lap. “I don’t want to keep you,” she said, “but I have something very important that I’d like to discuss.”
Beanie, half expecting a drum roll, smiled, and waited.
“It would mean a great deal to Mr. Khan,” she said, “and to me, Beanie,” she added, without a hint of irony, “if you would sign a three-year contract with the Light Agency.” She reminded Beanie that only the most important agents were given contracts, and Beanie was someone that Mr. Khan personally took pride in.
“You’re homegrown,” she said, as if either she or Khan had anything to do with watering her. She held out the thick envelope. “There’s a mutual option for three additional years,” she told her, explaining that the total compensation was more than seven million dollars, and that was just in base salary.
Beanie understood that Mercedes wasn’t going to leave until she at least had an indication that Beanie would consider the highly unusual request. Much like the Morris office, historically Sylvan Light only gave contracts to key players, which signaled to Beanie that, in their eyes at least and at last, she mattered. While she already knew it, of course—by her client list, by the way people treated her around town, by the deference shown from parking attendants to studio executives—it meant something to her that they knew it, too.
They were finally acknowledging her worth. They couldn’t afford to lose her.
By attrition, by resilience, and by sheer determination, Beanie Rosen had risen to become one of the most important and most powerful agents not only at Sylvan Light, but in the industry, representing superstars like Scott Westman, Kevin Costner, Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Michael Douglas, Kevin Kline, Kathleen Turner, Adrienne Seabergh, and Matt Dillon, to name a few. The only people more powerful were Matthew Stieglitz and David Shipp, both at Alliance. But Beanie Rosen was on their tail.
It had happened, quite literally, overnight. Once Moze left, and then on his heels Ella, Howie, and Barry, it had put the office and the industry on notice, and a spotlight on Beanie.
“What would Beanie do?” people asked. There were rumors she would join Ella at King’s Road, or perhaps join Moze at the newly formed Goff Partners, or even align with another agency, like Morris, or Alliance, or ICM.
“You can’t leave,” Sheila had told her, coming into her office seconds after Ella, Howie, and Barry had left. After Moze had exited a week earlier, Sheila had been penalized, marginalized, and ostracized, and with the latest departures, she was now fighting for her life instead of the board seat. This would not be her legacy. She would not allow it.
Ella, in wanting to wound Sheila Day, had not only obliterated her target, but had also blindsided Beanie.
“Why did you do it?” Beanie asked, still reeling from Moze’s betrayal a week earlier. She had called Ella over to her apartment to confront her. “You used information I told you about Sheila to hurt her.”
“No,” Ella said, “I used it to kill her.”
They were sitting on her balcony a few hours after Ella and Howie and Barry had informed the agency that they were leaving. Silently sharing a cigarette, the two partners considered all that had happened, all that would happen.
Beanie hadn’t had time to prepare herself or the clients.
“I’ve spoken to all of them,” Ella told her, referring to the clients Beanie would now singularly represent. “It’s all good,” she said, adding that they should call them together tomorrow.
Beanie nodded, trying to get her head around the reality that Ella was no longer down the hall. She was out of sorts.
“It’s not just about us, is it?” Ella asked.
Beanie shook her head. “I feel bad that I never called Moze after he left,” she confessed. “He tried to reach out to me—I mean, after he resigned, he called me, sent me a few emails. But I deleted them,” she said, deeply regretting that she hadn’t even given him the chance to explain. After all, he had a right to leave, and maybe there was a reason he hadn’t confided in her. “Maybe he didn’t want to put me in a bad position,” she told Ella. “We had just reconnected, and it was good. We could still be friends,” she said, “and who knows, maybe we’ll work together again.”
Ella looked at her. “You think you can still be friends working at competing agencies?”
Beanie shrugged. “Maybe. Sure. Why not? I mean, it’s not like I’m going after his clients,” she reasoned. “Or he’d go after mine.” And that’s when Beanie noticed a strange kind of look on Ella’s face.
“What?” she asked, confused and slightly annoyed.
Ella took a deep breath then slowly let it out, explaining that her phone had literally been ringing off the hook as soon as the news had become public. Everyone was hoping to get meetings with her clients.
Beanie nodded. “Okay,” she said. After all, that made sense.
She had known that Ella would bring a few clients to other places just to spread the wealth. But she also knew Ella would protect her with Westman, Costner, Quaid, Turner, and a few others. “So, your point is?” she asked, watching Ella pour herself a glass of Pinot from a bottle she had brought outside.
“Moze was one of them,” Ella said.
Beanie took a shallow breath. “Maybe he wasn’t calling about the stars,” she said, hanging on to a semblance of hope.
But Ella shook her head. “No,” she said softly. “He called me about Scott Westman.”
Beanie steadied herself and turned away.
Ella frowned. “I don’t want to hurt you, Bean, but I also can’t let you make a fool of yourself.”
Beanie nodded, taking it in. Ella didn’t want to hurt Beanie’s feelings, but she needed her to know who this guy was. “And electronic mails aside, he is not your friend,” she told her.
“Okay,” was all Beanie could muster as she sat down next to the howling coyote.
“Not okay,” Ella said, walking over and putting her arm around her friend.
Beanie turned her face away, trying to hide the tears stinging the corners of her eyes. “I would never do that to him,” she whispered.
Ella, comforting her, said, “Of course you wouldn’t, which is why you’re you.”
Beanie shook it off, standing, gathering her wits. “He must have thought I was a big fat idiot,” she said, tears streaming freely down her face. “Sitting out on his ridiculous terrace with his ridiculous houseman, spilling my secrets while he kept his own.”
“He’s just ambitious,” Ella told her.
“He’s just stupid,” Beanie corrected her. “He doesn’t know how good I am,” she said with a vengeance and resolve that made Ella sit straighter. “But I’ll show him. I’ll show everyone.”
Ella sighed. She hadn’t meant to work Beanie up. She just wanted to warn her. “For what it’s worth,” she said, softening, “he was very clear that he didn’t want to take anyone from you. He just said that if Westman was ever unhappy…”
“Spare me,” Beanie said, putting the cigarette out on the standing ashtray shaped like a cactus. “It’s a passive-aggressive way of saying if Beanie blinks, I’m in the wings. But I’m not blinking. And his fucking wings are clipped.” Then she turned to Ella, and with a renewed enthusiasm that took her by surprise, said, “Let’s call the clients.”
“Slow down,” Ella told her, “I just need your word on something.”
“What?” Beanie asked, anxious to get her show on the road.
“Sheila Day never gets near them.”
Beanie sighed and nodded. God, this is getting old, she thought . Ella’s hatred was profound and had not diminished despite the fact that she’d severely crippled Sheila with her early departure. But this wasn’t a time to argue.
“I swear,” she promised, reiterating that she would never commingle anyone that Ella worked with, with Sheila. Ever.
Ella smiled, hugged her, and they began calling clients, securing the representation of superstars.
And with that, Beanie Rosen became a powerhouse beyond not just her wildest dreams, but beyond the reach of any woman who’d ever come before her.
Including Sheila Day.
Which was why, six months later, Mercedes Khan was sitting across from her, offering on the board’s behalf, on her husband’s behalf, on behalf of their long-standing “friendship,” a three-year contract, with an option for three additional years, worth an excess of seven million dollars. The Sylvan Light Agency was banking on Beanie Rosen to take them into the millennium.
And for some reason they thought their best shot to get it done was Mercedes Khan.
“Let’s have lunch sometime,” Mercedes said, inviting Beanie to come up to Stone Canyon, referencing the mansion she now called home.
Beanie smiled and nodded and told her how lovely that sounded, knowing she’d never take her up on the invitation. That was the house that Grace Khan had built, the one where she’d raised her children who no longer served a purpose for Mercedes, the home where Harvey Khan now sat, perhaps in his garden, wondering what the fuck had happened to his life.
In June 1993, eight months after Moze and Ella and the others had left, Beanie signed the contract Mercedes had hand-delivered, and the board, relieved, rewarded her with a five-hundred-thousand-dollar signing bonus, and the title of Head of the Motion Picture Talent Department.
“It’s our way of saying thank you,” Stu Lonshien told her since Harvey Khan was rarely in and only communicated by memos delivered by his wife.
They had essentially put Beanie Rosen in control of the future of the company, at least in terms of who she hired, and she’d felt empowered and emboldened to bring more women into the mailroom, as well as more people of color.
While she still answered to Sheila, at least on paper, Sheila nevertheless supported her on every request, including Beanie’s desire to promote Hawkeye to agent, seconding Beanie on many of her most important clients who had come to love and respect Hawkeye almost as much as they did Beanie.
If Ella and Beanie had been a good team, Hawkeye and Beanie were a better one. Though Gil Amati had wanted to second Beanie on some of the bigger stars, Hawkeye was their choice, and she became the second on Westman, Costner, Adrienne Seabergh, and Michael Douglas—who no longer worked with Gil at all. And when Hawkeye heard that Moze Goff was going after Disclosure, Michael Crichton’s new book about reverse sexual harassment in the workplace, with his client Harrison Ford in mind to star, she brought the book to Douglas—and with Beanie’s help, took it off the market.
“Let’s start finding material we can send to Ford,” said Hawkeye, who was, Beanie thought, better than she had ever been.
Beanie Rosen was now a very wealthy woman flying in a stratosphere that her mother could only dream of. Still zaftig, she had her clothes personally designed by Norma Kamali to amplify and camouflage. Beanie dressed impeccably, always matching her shoes to her bag, and rotating chunky jewelry. Her hair, which she wore shoulder length and straight, much like Sheila’s, was blown out three times a week, and cut once a month at home.
She had moved out of the Sierra Towers, paying back Dr. Spitz for the loan he’d given her a few years earlier, and into a four-thousand-square-foot Frank Lloyd Wright home off Nichols Canyon. It had a pool she never swam in, views she rarely noticed, and a houseman she barely spoke to… but who always served fresh lemonade.