‘Olympia rarely comes here,’ Dimitri said dourly, when she mentioned it.
Lucky knew he did not approve of his daughter’s high-profile romance with a drugged-out English rock star. They were constantly making headlines. It infuriated Dimitri. ‘The girl is a fool,’ he had commented. ‘She’s married three fortune hunters. Now she’s living with this . . . this . . . degenerate.’
Lucky stifled a laugh. Sometimes Dimitri acted his age.
Not in bed. In bed he was a master. Sometimes too controlled and technically perfect. He knew everything there was to know, and used his skills accordingly.
She once asked him how many women he’d had. ‘Thousands,’ he’d replied, without a trace of embarrassment.
Thousands. Hmmm . . . No wonder he knew every move to make.
She wondered if Gino had had thousands.
Probably. The two shared much in common.
After lunch CeeCee appeared carrying Roberto. He looked like Lucky – dark haired and black eyed, with an infectious grin. He also looked like Gino. She knew she was being unfair keeping them apart.
Dimitri’s face lit up. They had been on the island with him for a week, and he never tired of spending time with his son. Usually he only saw him when he visited Lucky’s East Hampton house.
When CeeCee took the baby for his afternoon nap, Dimitri strode restlessly back and forth across the terrace. ‘Lucky,’ he said impatiently, cracking his knuckles irritatingly. ‘Enough is enough. My son has to have my name. Legally. I insist. We must marry.’
‘How romantic,’ she murmured.
‘For God’s sake. You know I adore you.’
Did he? They had been together on and off for a year and a half. During that time she knew he had seen Francesca Fern. She hadn’t questioned him. It was not her style to cling.
‘I don’t know . . .’ she began.
‘What can I do to persuade you?’
What could he do? She had been thinking about Atlantic City again. She missed the hotel business. The excitement, the power . . .
She had money of her own, but not nearly enough. As Mrs Dimitri Stanislopoulos she would be able to do whatever she wanted.
And Dimitri was right. Roberto deserved the protection of bearing his father’s name legally.
‘I want to build a hotel,’ she began slowly.
He nodded encouragingly. ‘Whatever you want, Lucky, you can have. Just tell me, and it will be yours.’
‘No,’ said Jess into the phone cradled next to her ear. ‘Lennie Golden is booked solid for months. There’s no way he can even read the script.’
‘Please,’ the person on the other end begged. ‘If he reads it, he’ll love it, and then he’ll want to do it.’
‘Sorry.’ She replaced the receiver and yelled out, ‘Vickie. Where the hell are you?’
Vickie teetered into the room on dangerously high stiletto heels. She wore them with black fish-net tights, spandex shorts, and a lurex boob tube. Her fine brown hair was teased to the limit, and her outstandingly ugly face was carefully made up. She looked like your friendly neighbourhood hooker, not a personal secretary, which is what she was supposed to be. Jess wanted to fire her, but Lennie wouldn’t hear of it.
‘Sorry, Jess,’ Vickie squeaked. ‘I was in the John. I got a little bathroom problem this week.’
‘You’ve always got a little bathroom problem,’ Jess complained and stood up from behind the old worn desk where she had been sitting. ‘I do not expect to have to answer phones. That’s what we pay
you
for.’
Vickie lowered two sets of false eyelashes. ‘Sorry, Jess.’
Where did Lennie find them? The last one he had hired looked like a man in drag, but at least she/he answered phones. This one was always in the bathroom.
‘I gotta go out,’ Jess said, reluctant to leave her in charge. ‘Can you hack it?’
Vickie grinned. She had never managed the money for a capping job, and her teeth were a mess. ‘Can I hack it? What a question!’
‘Take messages,’ Jess admonished sternly.
Vickie nodded.
Jess left the small office in an unassuming building on Sunset, and knew without a doubt they needed larger space and two
decent
secretaries. Lennie was becoming big business and they were running a penny ante operation. Okay for six months ago, but not now. Not with Lennie rising like a meteor.
Jess rode the elevator to the underground garage and collected her car – a used Datsun. She kept on meaning to trade it in for something better, but who had the time? So much had happened, so many good things. Thank God she had listened to Lennie and left Vegas for L.A. At first it had been awful. She had sat in the hotel room Lennie put her in and stared at television day and night. He had allowed her to do that for a few weeks, and then one day he had said, ‘Okay, kid. That’s it. You’re out on the road again.’ And from that moment on he hadn’t left her alone – he dragged her everywhere he went. She met all his friends – Suna, Shirlee, Joey Firello, Foxie and the statuesque Rainbow, Isaac and his pretty wife. They all accepted her immediately and went out of their way to rally round. The twins took her to the gym with them. Joey insisted she sit in on several tapings of his TV show. Rainbow escorted her to Frederick’s – an outrageous lingerie shop on Hollywood Boulevard, and encouraged her to buy a slit up the side purple satin nightgown. Isaac and his wife invited her to their house in the valley for Sunday Bar-B-Qs. And Foxie, whose rudeness was legendary, developed a fast crush – and whenever she was around spent his entire time regaling her with stories of his colourful life. Since he was now eighty-six years old, they never ran out of conversation.
Lennie, of course, was always there for her. Supportive and understanding. A true friend. Without him she knew she would have fallen to pieces. But he pulled her through it, and she owed him plenty.
Eventually the time had come for her to stop depending on other people. She was running out of money, and she had no intention of sponging off Lennie. But what to do? There was no way she was returning to Vegas, and jobs for croupiers were not exactly heavy on the ground in L.A. She turned to Foxie for advice.
He bit off the end of a stinking old stogie, spat on the floor, and suggested something she had never even thought of. ‘Go into personal management,’ he said. ‘You’re a smart little broad with a lotta moxy. Use it.’
‘Personal management of what?’
‘Lennie, of course.’
‘Lennie’s
got
an agent.’
‘Who’s talkin’ agenting?’ He waved his cigar wildly in the air.
‘If he has Isaac, why would he need a manager?’
Foxie shook his head in disbelief. ‘An’ I thought you was smart. For a girl grew up in Vegas you don’t know a lot.’
‘Sure I do,’ Jess bristled. ‘
Stars have
agents and managers. When they can afford them.’
‘An’ how do you think they got to be stars in the first place? You think some agent with thirty clients an’ a mortgage to pay got ’em there?’
‘I don’t know.’
Foxie nodded wisely. ‘Then listen.’ He talked fast, a jumble of words. And what he said made sense. Sure Lennie had an agent, and Isaac was okay, he had a stable of young comedians and did his best for all of them. But his best, split among all his clients, just wasn’t good enough. Foxie cited the
Merv Griffin Show
as an example. ‘Lennie walked on account of wanting to be with you at your kid’s funeral. You think Isaac’s bin back to ‘em with the name Lennie Golden? Naw. He’s shit scared . . . thinks it might affect his other clients an’
their
shots on the show. That’s an agent for you. Now, a personal manager would be in there hustlin’. Get the difference?’
She got it. And it made sense. She also heard for the first time that Lennie had given up his chance of appearing on the
Griffin Show
to be with her. She owed him more than she’d thought, and she was determined to pay him back.
‘How do you become a manager?’ she asked.
‘You understand deals. You believe in your client two hundred percent. An’ you go for it no holds barred. I coulda bin the best manager in the business if I’d wanted to. I coulda sold shit to a stable of horses with dysentery!’
Jess giggled. Old Foxie certainly knew how to turn a phrase. ‘Teach me,’ she begged.
‘You’re a natural,’ he replied. ‘An’ you got the right goods t’sell. Lennie’s gonna be big. I picked it when he first auditioned.’
Within a week she had re-booked Lennie on the
Griffin Show.
He was delighted. ‘How’d you do it, babe?’
She grinned. ‘Moxy and no mortgage.’
‘Huh?’
‘Forget it.’
And so his climb began. Jess was dedicated, and there was nothing else on her mind. She went for it, just as Foxie had taught her to do. And Lennie was good, so everything she got him paid off and led to other things.
Isaac was pissed at first, but he soon got used to it. Especially when Jess proved she knew what she was doing better than anyone else.
The
Griffin Show
first. A repeat performance two weeks later because Merv liked him. A third shot a month after that because audience reaction was strong. Two guest appearances on Joey Firello’s comedy hour. And then the offer of a weekly TV show in which he got to play a crazy doctor in charge of a health spa. The programme, called
The Springs
, was a cross between
Soap
, and
Hill Street Blues
. It started off with hardly any ratings at all, until gradually it built up a small cult following, then a large cult following, and suddenly it busted right to the top of the ratings and became a hit halfway through its second season. Lennie and the rest of the virtually unknown cast developed sensational TVQs overnight.
That had taken place six weeks ago. To say that Lennie was now hot was putting it mildly.
Jess steered the Datsun into the slow-moving afternoon traffic. There was so much going on, and hardly time to handle it all. She honked at an erratic driver who promptly gave her the V sign.
‘Shove it up your ass, sailor,’ she mouthed, and shot past him.
The first thing she had to do was get Lennie straight. Rumour had it he was drinking, although not in front of her. But then, since the success of the show, she had hardly seen him. He was either doing interviews, working, or socializing with a series of willowy blondes who passed through his life like a dose of salts.
That was all they needed. A drinking problem just when he was on the brink.
The erratic driver cut in front of her, forcing her to brake abruptly. She tried to control her temper but couldn’t resist a massive blast of the horn.
Stay calm
, she warned herself. She was on her way to lunch with Lennie and she didn’t want to arrive flustered. It was important to maintain a cool, collected exterior. All the better to find out what he had been up to.
* * *
The blonde had said she was nineteen but Lennie wasn’t betting on it. Seventeen more like. A sexually experienced seventeen-year-old whom he couldn’t wait to get rid of. One evening of lust was enough. He wished they didn’t always want to stay the night.
She was dressing. Slowly. White pants, a cutaway top, lace-up shoes, dozens of bangles.
‘Can you drop me in Westwood?’ she asked.
‘I’m not going that way. But I’ll call you a cab.’
‘I don’t have any cash.’
‘I’ll pay the driver.’
She tuned into a soap opera on television while he phoned the taxi company and told them to send someone over fast. He wanted her out of his apartment. Not that there was anything wrong with her. She was pretty, with a Californian body, and a pleasant enough personality. But she was his third blonde this week, and he was overdosing on available pussy, and not liking himself for it.
When the cab buzzed from downstairs he pressed twenty dollars into her hand, promised he would call soon, and shut the door behind her with a sigh of relief.
Immediately she was gone he stripped the sheets off the bed, dumped them on the floor, opened all the windows, and fixed himself a refreshing vodka and orange juice. It was eleven in the morning. Not too bad. His one day off and nothing to do until a one o’clock lunch with Jess at Scandia.
He had been working non-stop. Not only was he rewriting his dialogue on
The Springs
as well as performing on the show most days, but he was putting together some new material for his act, and also trying to work on a screenplay. Plus there was constant publicity to do, and a different party every night.
Well, why not? Didn’t he deserve it at long last?
The phone rang. It was his mother. Dear old Alice had re-entered his life with a vengeance. Amazing what a touch of fame could do.
‘Lennie, dear,’ she said.
He reached for the vodka and gave himself a refill. ‘Yes?’
‘I’ve been thinking.’
‘Yes?’
‘Why can’t you get me on the
Merv Griffin Show
?’
He was incredulous. ‘What?’
‘Don’t sound so surprised. I’d be marvellous.’