The Final Zamboni
THE FINAL ZAMBONI
After the game, the pawn and the king go into the same box.
—ITALIAN PROVERB
Not if I can help it.
—MIRIAM SPITZ
1995
“They owe her,” Miriam Spitz said, referring to the stars and the studio heads past and present who came one by one, in pairs, in packs, in Escalades and stretch limos to pay homage at the funeral of the woman many described as the most powerful female agent in Hollywood.
“Write ‘the most powerful agent of all time,’” Miriam advised Army Archerd, who’d been invited, and Liz Smith, who’d flown in. And while it could be argued that there had been agents who perhaps were more powerful, no one was going to split hairs with Miriam Spitz, who was playing the mother-in-mourning role to the hilt. Whether or not it was true to life, it was true to Miriam, and once in print it would become the bedrock of her daughter’s epitaph. Zambonied.
Moze Goff, who many were surprised had been invited, stood quietly in the back, nodding to Sheila Day with a small gesture Sheila chose to ignore.
“Eat a dick,” Sheila said aloud to Jamie Garland, who turned to see the ire of Sheila’s angst.
Dressed impeccably in Chanel suits with pearls and heels high enough to make sure they were seen, the two women scanned the room for others, keeping track, keeping score. Were she alive, they were confident that Beanie would’ve sat alongside them; past, present, future, an unstoppable trio of sheer will, each existing because the other had made room.
Jamie nudged Sheila as Ella Gaddy arrived, cutting a wide berth around both women.
“Taaacky,” Sheila said loud enough for others to hear, referring to Ella’s ruffled off-brand dress with black stockings and open-toed sandals. Anyone on the inside—and everyone was—knew that the two women so detested each other that Miriam Spitz had to personally call Ella Gaddy and assure her that she would not have Sheila Day speak on Beanie’s behalf—which was a slap in Sheila’s face. An insult. Everyone knew it. Sheila was a living legend who had, at least in her mind, promoted and supported Beanie Rosen, mentoring her, shepherding her, protecting her. “Without me, she’d be some pisher from Pacoima in trundle skirts with bow ties,” she told her loyalists who advised her not to attend.
It was a conundrum. To snub Sheila Day so publicly without giving her a place of honor or honorable mention was a statement in and of itself, but Sheila wouldn’t give Ella Gaddy the satisfaction of missing Beanie’s funeral. Instead, she sat in the pews reserved for the superstars, wanting to ensure that proper respect was paid, and she didn’t mean to the deceased.
Amongst all the people whose shoulders Beanie Rosen had stood upon, whose bodies she’d crawled over, whose careers she’d invented during her meteoric rise from file clerk to superstar at the Sylvan Light Agency, there was a rewriting of truth as Mercedes Baxter Khan, one of Beanie’s “oldest and dearest friends,” gave the eulogy.
If Hawkeye, who had been the first person to see Beanie when she came to the Light Agency looking for a job, and the last person to speak to her before she’d died, had been asked to speak, she would have said that Beanie Rosen had taken on the boys’ club, beating them at their own game, and perhaps, in the end, becoming just like them. She wasn’t looking to smash ceilings, glass or otherwise, unless they were blocking her way.
She. Just. Wanted. In.
And she got in, surpassing all who doubted, blocked, and tried to derail.
Hard to explain unless you were there: Sylvan Light in the 1980s, where people put their fingers in their mouths to see which way the wind was blowing.
Beanie Rosen knew how to blow.