Flavor of the Month (48 page)

And what better position than a recumbent one? Michael’s policy was to bed the hottest Hollywood newcomer. If his first career was being a movie star, his second career was making love to, and headlines with, the most beautiful, wanted women on the planet. Nice work if you could get it, but work it was. Michael had schooled himself not only in his sexual techniques but also in those dozens of small wooing gestures and comments that made him irresistible and indispensable to the girls who became the Hollywood flavors of the month
.

And if, when the flavor lost its tang, he moved on, who could blame him? Everyone else did the same. That was the nature of a flavor of the month. After all, who wants a steady diet of Pecan-Walnut Fudge? Certainly not Americans. They want their Cherry Garcia to be followed by Cashew Rocky Road, and after an addiction to Rain Forest Crunch, a switch to French-Mocha Praline is not only pleasant but necessary. After all, he never promised them forever. In fact, Michael McLain was very careful: he never promised them
anything.

Michael now lay on the portable massage table that his therapist had set up for their weekly session. Clear plastic tubes lay on the table beside them. “Roll over,” Marcia told him. Each week, she administered a high colonic to Michael, as well as another two dozen stars and spouses of stars. Michael insisted on the clear tubing, to be sure that she flushed out enough material. “A clean colon is a healthy colon,” he always repeated. His crazy sister had turned him on to Marcia, and for once she made sense. The time he spent on the table was the time he used for thinking, and he found that, despite the discomfort of Marcia’s hose pushed up his butt, the satisfaction in watching those toxins flushed past his line of sight soothed him. He did his best thinking then.

Now he was considering how he might proceed. There was no doubt in his mind that he could win the bet with Sy and have all three of the girls from the new show. To accomplish it would not be easy. Still, Michael was a veteran of difficult campaigns and almost never took no for an answer. Plus, the prize was so alluring. Not the women—long ago, Michael had begun considering them more work than treats—but star billing over that little prick Ricky Dunn. The kid was as hot as Michael had been twenty years ago. Everything Ricky touched turned to box-office gold. If Michael could maintain star billing over Ricky and also get fresh exposure to that sixteen-to-twenty-one-year-old crowd, he knew that he could really score.

So how could he score with the three new TV pussies? He felt a sudden cramping in his gut as Marcia turned on the water. “Hey, watch it,” he told her sharply.

“Sorry, Michael.”

He shifted on his knees, his butt still raised high in the air. He felt the pressure as the water continued to press up into his intestine. “Ouch,” he cried, and looked toward the plastic to see if more than the usual feces was breaking away.

“Sorry, Michael. Have you been eating red meat?”

“No, goddamn it.” He was sick of being blamed for her incompetence. He hadn’t eaten red meat since 1981, for God’s sake. A lot of other therapists would die for the chance to do
his
colonics. “Watch it,” he told her, and tucked his knees tighter under his chest.

He considered the girls. He had seen that Sharleen, the blonde, would be no problem. He’d done some checking, and it seemed that she was living with some kid, but that didn’t trouble him much. After all, he didn’t want a
relationship
with her. With the right setup, it seemed like it wouldn’t take more than a couple of dates to be photographed together. Trash like that would probably be willing to do it in the limo. That would give him a witness for Sy Ortis, in case he needed one.

Jahne Moore, the dark-haired one, seemed a little more problematic. Word on the set was that she and Lila Kyle did not get along. Should he let her and Lila know that he was pursuing both of them? Let them do the work of pursuing
him?
If they didn’t like each other much, did they dislike one another enough to be jealous? Would they compete for him the way they competed on the set?

He grunted as the suction in his gut intensified. Nah, he didn’t think that approach would work. Jahne Moore was a New Yorker, playing at the serious-actor bit. Maybe he could work on that. After all, when he first came to Hollywood, he had made some arty-farty films. But had little Jahne Moore ever heard of them? They were two decades old now, probably older than she was.

Of the three, it was Lila Kyle who troubled him most. He doubted she could be easily impressed with the star razzmatazz. Of course, with only an unaired TV show to her credit, she was not a star yet. But she’d watched that game her whole life. He had heard not only about her bratty behavior but about how Marty DiGennaro had begun to cater to it. If so, Michael would have to come up with something even more attractive than copping all the close-ups on your television show. That was a tall order. Michael smiled. Maybe Lila would like the part of the female lead in the movie with Ricky Dunn. Of the three, Michael figured Lila was the only one worth pursuing into a relationship. Yes. If he made a film where Ricky got the girl, but
he
got her in real life…She would be striking in photographs, of course, but, more important, even if the TV show went down in flames, she was the newest generation of Hollywood royalty. Pictures of him with Lila would help him stay forever young. Michael smiled. More than twenty years ago, he had had a brief fling with Theresa O’Donnell—it was his older-woman phase. She’d been a maniac in bed. Like mother, like daughter, Michael thought.

The noise of the colonic device subsided. “All finished?” he asked.

“Clean as a whistle,” Marcia told him.

Sharleen heard the baseball bat as it connected with her father’s skull. Thunk. Thunk. She shut her eyes and turned away and heard a siren. No, it was a phone. She was dreaming that a telephone was ringing. The sound of the phone pushed through the haze of sleep, until she realized that she was awake, and the ringing telephone was the one on the floor next to their bed. She turned toward the sound, and saw the green illuminated dial of the clock: 8:53
P
.
M
. She and Dean were in bed by eight most nights. After all, she had to be up by five. The three puppies at the foot of the bed snuggled more deeply into the blanket. She moved Dean’s paint-splattered arm from across her waist and placed it gently by his side, then leaned over the side of the bed and picked up the phone in mid-ring. “Hello?” she muttered, then cleared her throat.

“Hi, is this Sharleen?”

“Yes,” she said, sleepily. Who was it? Only Sy Ortis, Mr. DiGennaro, and Lenny, her business manager, had her new, unlisted number. Oh, and Dobe, if he was picking up his mail. This voice wasn’t any of theirs, and Sharleen didn’t know anyone else that might call her. But the voice
was
familiar. She pushed her fuzzy brain to try and think.

“This is Michael McLain. Did I get you at a bad time?”

“Oh,
come on
.” Had one of the guys on the set gotten her number? Barry Tilden, the new assistant director, was always teasing her. “
Sure
it is,” she added, sarcastically. After all, she wasn’t a fool. Then she heard the laugh at the other end of the phone. Oh, Lord, it did
sound
like Michael McLain—just like in that scene in his movie
The Last Stranger
, where he’s challenged by the bad cop and, even though he knows he’s going to lose, he laughs.

“If I’m getting you at a bad time, please…” His voice trailed off.

“How did you get my number?” And, more to the point, why would Michael McLain—if it
was
Michael McLain—be calling me? she thought.

“Sy gave it to me. Sy Ortis. He’s my agent, too. I know it must be an intrusion,” he said, but it didn’t sound like he meant it. There was a slight pause; then he added, his voice lower, “Do you mind?”

“Are you
really
Michael McLain?” Sharleen asked. He laughed again. There was no mistaking it. Sharleen sat up, her back against the bare wall. Dean continued sleeping, unaware. “Mr. McLain, why, no, I don’t mind. But are you sure you got the right person?”

“If you’re the Sharleen Smith that’s the star of Marty DiGennaro’s new TV show, I do.” Then that laugh again.

“Costar,” she corrected. She wanted to be fair. “There is no star.” Dean stirred in his sleep next to her in the bed. He was exhausted from painting their new house all day, he had collapsed into bed before eight, too tired to eat anything more than the Big Mac she’d brought home for him. And Sharleen was happy to join him. She was tuckered out each night, too. She’d finished six straight days of shooting, but thank the Lord tomorrow was her day off. “Mr. McLain, could you hold on a minute?”

“Sure,” he said.

Sharleen laid the receiver down and slipped out of bed. They were so rich now, she had a phone in the living room, the kitchen, and even the bathroom. Turning around, she pulled the sheet up over Dean’s back, then tiptoed over the plastic throw-cloths scattered around, hoping the crackling sound wouldn’t wake him. She walked into the bare living room, closed the bedroom door behind her, snapped on the wall switch, wincing as the six bare bulbs in the light fixture hanging from the ceiling cast a harsh light, and sat cross-legged on the floor next to the extension phone, her shorty pajamas leaving her behind bare against the cold floor. Was Michael McLain really on the phone, or was this a joke or even a dream? She rapped her knuckles sharply on the phone. Her knuckles hurt. It was no dream. Picking up the receiver, she said, “Thanks for waiting, Mr. McLain. I just needed to get comfortable.” She put her sore knuckles in her mouth.

“Michael, please. Are you alone?”

Sharleen looked around the large, empty room. “As a matter of fact, I am,” she said. Well, Dean
was
sleeping in the bedroom, wasn’t he? He wasn’t there, so she was alone, she told herself. Anyway, this must be business.

“Good. Then how about having dinner with me?”

“Dinner?
You
want to have dinner with
me?
” If this
was
Barry Tilden with another one of his gags, boy, she’d sure look foolish. “I mean, sure. When?”

“How about tonight?”

Sharleen looked down at her shorty pajamas. “But I already ate,” she said. Anyway, it was nine o’clock. Normal people ate at five or six. She didn’t mean to turn Mr. McLain down or be rude. Could she go out and leave Dean? But could she say no to Michael McLain, if it really
was
him? Well, she had said no, she realized, and sighed.

“Okay, how about a drink, then?”

“I don’t drink, neither.” Sharleen paused. “But, if you like, maybe we could have some coffee.”

“Great idea,” Michael said. “I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes. You’re over in the Valley, right?”

“Yes. But maybe you should make it thirty minutes, if you don’t mind,” Sharleen said. “I need to change what I’m wearing.”

Sharleen hung up, then sat motionless for a moment, her hand still on the receiver. This couldn’t be happening to me, she thought. Michael McLain just doesn’t call up strange girls out of the blue and ask them out. But this was Hollywood, and she was going to be a television star once the series came out, she reminded herself again. And
nothing
can be stranger than that. She jumped up quickly and ran across the shiny wood floor to the bedroom. She wasn’t so careful not to make noise now; she had to find something to wear. She pulled the plastic off the floor lamp, and turned it on. Looking around the room at the boxes and suitcases through the opaque covering, she decided to start with the big brown suitcase she had bought on a shopping trip with Dean, and filled the same day. She pulled it out and began to go through the mass of new clothes, finally settling on a powder-blue silk shirt and a pair of white jeans.

Sharleen dressed quickly, then went into the bathroom and washed her face. She applied the liquid-base makeup the way Marcel on the set had shown her. Then the smallest amount of blusher, right above her cheekbone. She brushed her hair quickly, pulled it back in a pony tail, and tied it with a blue scarf.

As she walked through the bedroom again, Dean just barely raised his head. “What are you doing up, Sharleen?” His voice was groggy with sleep.

“Go back to sleep, honey. I have to go out for a while. It’s business.”

“You work too much,” Dean mumbled, and his head dropped back onto the pillow. She stroked his back, then, seeing that he was breathing deeply again, walked quietly out of the room, switched off the light, and closed the door. In the living room, she put on the strappy sandals she’d held dangling from her hand, and left the house. She’d wait out in front for Michael, to avoid having Dean disturbed by the car’s engine or a honk. It reminded her of those nights she’d waited for Boyd Jamison. Standing there in the dark California-soft night, Sharleen felt a momentary thrill. This was their property now, a nice house of their own, with a garden and a pool. And, Momma, she thought to herself, I even got a date with your favorite movie star.

Sharleen sat on a chair just inside the wrought-iron gate that looked out onto the curving driveway. Lenny had found them the house, and it was real nice, plus Dean loved the yard. She waved at Bert, the security guard in the development, but kept herself from blurting out that she was waiting for Michael McLain. Glaring headlights caused her to close her eyes for a moment; when she opened them, she saw the most beautiful limousine pulling up at the front door, black and shiny with chrome that shone like silver. It wasn’t a regular limo—it was some kind of English car or something. Maybe it
was
silver, she thought. For a moment, she wished Dean were here to see it. But, she reminded herself, that could lead to trouble.

She saw Bert approach the car and lean into the driver’s door even before it hardly stopped, taking off his cap as he did. Meanwhile, from the back, a man got out and turned toward the front door, and Sharleen felt her hands get cold. Michael McLain. It really was him. Then he was standing in front of her, smiling. Sharleen finally spoke. “You
are
Michael McLain,” she said.