Flavor of the Month (107 page)

Jahne took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a bother.”

“Hey, no bother at all. Me and Dean
like
havin’ you. You’re like family. Why don’t you stay on with us instead of goin’ home? We can go in to work together.”

“Yeah! Why don’t you stay, Jahne? It would be great havin’ two sisters, even if I can’t have lunch with you no more. But, then, Sharleen can,” Dean said.

“Oh, could I? Just for a little while longer, until
Birth of a Star
opens? So I can weather that storm?”

“Well, of course you can!” Sharleen told her. “And who knows? Maybe it won’t be as bad as it seemed.” She smiled. “Anyway, nothin’ worse can happen to either of us!”

She was wrong.

The security phone rang, and Sharleen answered it. Both Jahne and Dean were out in the back, playing with the dogs.

“Security gate. There’s a visitor here without an appointment. Should I send him up?”

“No. I’ll speak to him.”

“Is Jahne Moore there?” a man’s voice asked.

“Who is this?” she asked.

“Tell her Sam Shields is outside.”

Sharleen bristled. “I don’t think she wants to see you,” Sharleen told him.

“Who is this?” he asked.

“A friend of Jahne’s. A true friend,” Sharleen said.

“Look, I’m in no mood for theatrics. Or moralizing. It took me a long time to track her down. I want to see her.”

“Look, yourself. I know how you treated Jahne, and I know the kind of man you are. Why, I’ve had men like you after me since I was eleven years old. Men who only cared about the outside, about how I looked, not who I was. You don’t deserve a girl like Jahne.”

“Look, she’s going to want to see me. Go ask her.”

Reluctantly, Sharleen put the phone down and went out to the yard. Jahne was running across the lawn, holding a rawhide bone, the three dogs chasing after her. Dean stood in the sunlight, laughing. “Jahne,” Sharleen called. “Jahne.” Her friend looked up. “There’s someone here to see you.”

Jahne squinted into the sun. She walked toward Sharleen. “Who is it?” she asked.

“It’s Sam.”

Jahne stopped. Sharleen looked deep into her eyes. Would she succumb? Would she fall again? Sharleen looked at her without saying a word. For a moment, the two of them stared at one another, silent. Then Jahne spoke.

“Tell him to go away,” she told her friend.

Later that night, Jahne wrote to Dr. Moore.

I can’t remember ever feeling as dependent as I do now. Not even on you, during that long, hard time in the hospital. Like Blanche DuBois, I am reduced to depending on the kindness of strangers. And I am afraid that even they and you will judge me harshly when you see that awful film I’ve made.

I know it’s a lot to ask, but if you could take some time off, could you come out for a visit? I’d come to N.Y. but I’m already in a lot of trouble on the set. I’ll understand if you refuse, but I’d love to see you.

It was only after she had finished the letter and sealed it that she remembered something odd Dean had said that evening when he welcomed her to stay: something about how it would be great to have two sisters.

Had he said “sisters”? she wondered as she turned off the lamp. How strange. And then she fell asleep.

Skin Flick Hits Big

DESPITE OR BECAUSE OF ITS GRAPHIC SEX, “BIRTH” REVIVAL BREAKS BOX OFFICE RECORDS.

In a stunning exception to the old Hollywood rule that “dirt doesn’t pay,” the Michael McLain-Jahne Moore remake of “Birth of a Star” has drawn not only critical praise but also hordes of ticket buyers. An unexpected audience of aging baby boomers, mixed with the teen and young-adult market hot for a romance flick with no holds barred, has exceeded all expectations…

—Daily Variety

Lila crumpled the trade bible and threw it across the room. Damn! She picked up the
L.A. Times
.

“
THE SEXIEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD
!” screamed the banner headline across the top of the entertainment section. There wasn’t even an interview to go along with pages of pictures of Jahne Moore, just the usual PR blather. The bitch was so smug she wasn’t even doing publicity!

Somehow, in her mind, the success of Jahne Moore in
Birth
completely negated Lila. It was like she was back to square one. Despite its rating as an adult picture, it had opened to record box office and was now number two, with a good chance at being number one. It had done thirteen million last weekend. Worse, everyone was talking about it. How it had broken nearly every taboo, yet was also commercial. It brought every jealousy crashing back down around Lila’s head. Just when she thought she had the Emmy in the little black velvet bag, tied up with gold braided tassel, this…this insult had to happen to
her
. It wasn’t fair.
Something
had to be done.

She looked at another crumpled bit of newspaper. There, buried on a back page, was the announcement that should have been at the front of the whole damn newspaper:

DIRECTOR AND STAR ANNOUNCE UPCOMING NUPTIALS

Jesus, against all her better judgment, just to keep up with Jahne’s newsworthiness, she’d told Marty yes, and
this
was the publicity it received? Aunt Robbie said he could guarantee great coverage. Well, buried on page 24 of the
L.A. Times
and getting a paragraph in
Milestones
was not coverage. It was a fucking insult. After all,
she
was Hollywood royalty. She was Kerry Kyle’s daughter. And the daughter of the Puppet Mistress, who, for all her faults, at least had been a star.

The phone rang. Lila rarely answered it, letting the service do her screening, but she was expecting Marty’s call. She lifted the receiver.

“Are you crazy?” the voice rasped. “Are you completely fucking crazy?”

Lila considered, for a moment, hanging up on her mother, but the power of the Puppet Mistress held her on the line. “Shut up,” she managed.

“I just read the
Times
. You can’t get away with this, Lila. You’ve gone too far.”

“Just shut up. I can do what I want. And when I need your opinion, I’ll send you a ballot.”

“Lila,
this
you can’t do. Marty DiGennaro isn’t Kevin. It will ruin us both.”

“Shut up! I gave you the goddamn show, didn’t I? It airs next week. Now, keep the fuck away from me. That was our deal. Leave me alone, or I swear I’ll get Marty to cancel the program.” Lila was almost spitting with rage. She wished she could kill Theresa, once and for all.

“Lila, listen to me. You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time…”

“Yeah, but I can’t fool Mom. Right? Well, fuck you, Mom. Fuck you and Aunt Robbie and Kevin and Candy and Skinny and Estrella and all of you. You didn’t worry about that twenty years ago, did you? Don’t bother to worry about it now. I warn you: leave me alone!” She slammed the phone down onto the receiver. It took less than a moment for it to ring again. Lila snorted and looked away. It would be a cold day in Malibu before she answered it again. She stood up, shaking with anger. First Marty nags her into saying yes, then Jahne’s movie is a hit, the season premiere is overshadowed, and her engagement gets no coverage. Now this!

She
had
to win that Emmy, and she had to show the Puppet Mistress once and for all that she, Lila Kyle, was not to be fucked with. She stood there, breathing hard, almost dizzy with rage, and considered her options. It was time for a no-holds-barred attack on all of them. She didn’t need anyone but Marty. And she would marry him. She would.

She looked down at her hands to find they were shaking. She felt murderous. And then she thought of the box. The “birthday present” peace offering that Robbie had brought. It still lay on the table, waiting for her. She smiled grimly, turned around, and went into the kitchen. She scrabbled through the utility drawers for a sharp knife. A very sharp knife.

Minos Paige couldn’t exactly say he was surprised at receiving another call from Lila Kyle. Very little surprised Minos, certainly not the insatiable need of the denizens of this town to one-up each other. But he was surprised at Lila’s carefully worded instructions. It was a good thing he hadn’t been taken by surprise, because, if he had, he never would have worked out the fee that he did, the fee which was exactly quadruple that which he had originally gotten from Lila. But, then, this piece of work was at least four times as valuable to Lila as his original work had been.
That
he was sure of.

Minos didn’t have to stop for a minute to think about how he was going to follow Lila’s instructions. Minos had his priorities straight, knew just who to call and in what order. As he dialed the phone, he smiled to himself. The last job Lila had given him was for peanuts, took him all over and more than two months to finish. This assignment, for the most part, would take minutes, and would be done mostly by phone. Ah, fate.

When I answered the phone in my office, it was to hear a monotone I knew too well. “Guess who this is with some very good news,” he said playfully to me, Laura Richie, a woman who very few men played with
.

“Kevin Costner, and you’re having my baby.”

“Laura, it’s
better
than that. And I swear, you are the first person I’m telling. I’m not doing this strictly for money, Laura. I’m doing this because you’ve been good to me in the past. So, get out a bunch of sharp pencils, and a long pad. All you gotta do is listen and write.”

The totally one-sided conversation with Minos took less than fifteen minutes. I have a tape of the whole thing. Every now and then, during his narrative, you can hear an uncharacteristic gasp come through the line from me, and once I say “Holy shit!,” but, other than that, he did all the talking. I do repeat “Her brother?,” parroting his words, but that’s it. I asked only one question when he was finished. “You got any paper on this, Minos?”

“It’ll be coming over your fax machine in exactly five minutes.”

“Pictures of the surgery?”

He laughed. “For that, you have to pay,” he said
.

“How much for an exclusive?” I asked
.

“More than you and Kitty Kelley combined could afford. No exclusives. I’m calling the
Enquirer,
the
Observer, Entertainment Weekly, People, and Time
in the next twenty minutes. But you are the first one to hear. Make hay while the sun shines.”

Before he hung up, he did have to get in a commercial. “Now, remember, Laura, you owe me. And you can’t use my name in publication.”

“If you got the paper, I don’t even want to
know
your name. But if I ain’t paying for this, who is?”

“John Beresford Tipton,” Minos laughed, and hung up
.

SHARLEEN SMITH IN INCEST NEST

The shocking story of the star who sleeps with her brother. Inside this issue of the National Observer

THE SEXIEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD? WHO IS THE REAL JAHNE MOORE?

PLASTIC TO THE MAX. THE FULL STORY OF JAHNE MOORE AND HER TOTAL FACIAL AND BODY SURGERY. A complete report by Laura Richie. IN THIS ISSUE OF ENTERTAINMENT WORLD. AVAILABLE AT NEWSSTANDS NOW.

The phone hadn’t stopped ringing. Sam felt as if he’d kill himself if he heard one more “b-b-b-r-r-i-i-i-n-g.” Every yellow journalist in the country wanted to interview Sam, wanted to know what it felt like to sleep with Jahne Moore. Yesterday, after lunch at Le Dôme, they shouted questions at him in the parking lot. “Did she feel the same as she had before the surgery?” “Did you do this as a publicity stunt?” “How do you think this will affect
Birth of a Star
box office?”

His secretary was going crazy. Sam had disconnected his home phone. He’d been reamed already by Bob LeVine, who couldn’t believe Sam had unknowingly cast a female Frankenstein in their sex film, and had threatened to sue. LeVine was ready to throw Sam off the lot. He’d heard from his agent, who couldn’t believe he hadn’t known all along, and who insisted Sam hire a PR firm for damage control. And now there was the inevitable phone call from April. He’d ducked two of them, but he knew he couldn’t put it off indefinitely. Oh, Jesus! What would she say? What would April try to do to him? He lifted up the receiver.

“Hello, April.” He tried to keep his voice calm, his tone matter-of-fact, but he himself could hear the quaver. “Sixteen million,” she said.

“What?”

“Sixteen million! We did sixteen million in box office this weekend. I just got the word. They had to run midnight shows of
Birth
to accommodate the crowds. Sixteen fucking million! It was a freak show.”

Sam, speechless, could only nod in agreement.

O’CONNOR ANNOUNCES TEN-CITY TOUR TO HEAL THE NATION; CALLS FOR FAMILY RESPONSE New York, NY . Yesterday, in his Sunday sermon at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Cardinal O’Connor, the Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, announced to his parishioners and the media reporters brought out by his press release that he denounced television and particularly Three for the Road as an example of what the worship of the golden calf of Hollywood had done to the country. After denouncing Murphy Brown, Cheers , and a host of other shows he went on to proclaim that his Christian Family Tour would heal the hurt caused the people of America by the charges of Sharleen Smith’s incest and the sexually explicit new film starring Jahne Moore that has rocked the nation. He asked the parish to join in his prayers for the costars of the popular program, then added that all three were guilty of “provoking lustful thoughts.” The Cardinal invoked St. Joseph, the Patron Saint of the Family, to intercede in the country beset by confusion over lack of family values. “What happened to Disney World?” the Cardinal asked in his heated oration. “To Mary Poppins? Instead, today we have Hollywood, and Jahne Moore and Sharleen Smith. Something is very wrong in a nation that ignores all that is holy and beautiful in the example of the Blessed Virgin and turns instead to idols with feet of clay ( CONT . ON PG . 6)