Show Business Kills (35 page)

“You know what?” he said. “It’s too late in the day for soup. I think maybe I’ll just have a bagel and some iced tea.”

I had a speech rehearsed, and I was going to make it as soon as the Ventura Boulevard bus went by, but I never got to say
anything but, “Manny…”

“Maidelah,” Manny interrupted, but he didn’t look at me, he looked at the pickles. “The business is changing. It’s not what
it used to be, and younger people are taking over who have ideas I don’t understand. So if you want to know what I think,
I think you should grab that job, because you’ll be wonderful for the show. And the show will be wonderful for you.”

“What did you do?” Ellen asked her as Rose leaned back now in the hard hospital chair.

“I took the job. Somehow I rationalized that I could do it without him, though I knew I wouldn’t be brilliant at it, or even
good, but adequate. Which is what I was, and the show was canceled a few months later. Probably because they were too stupid
to hire the writer who could have saved it.”

“And Manny? What happened to him?”

“He died a few years ago. In fact, the funeral was in Cleveland because he wanted to be buried near the rest of his family.
My Dad went to it, and afterward he and some of the old friends went back to pay their respects at the home of some of Manny’s
cousins. My father called me later, and he was stunned.

“He said Manny died broke, but worse than that he died brokenhearted. He hadn’t written a word in years, he had a will, but
all that was in it was his old Olivetti typewriter and some manuscripts he was donating to the UCLA archives. And some instructions
for his funeral and burial. On his tombstone he wanted it to say three words, ‘But seriously, folks…’”

“This business…” Ellen said sadly. “This fucking killer business.”

  
26
  

S
ome of the people in the crowd outside the hospital saw her coming out the door, and one of them, a woman in a quilted parka
with the hood up, said, “Hey, don’t feel bad None of us could get in, either
.”

She was amazed when she looked around at the ranks of fans that they had camp stools and coolers and warm clothes, as if they
were prepared for the Rose Bowl parade or something. It made her think they must have done this kind of thing before
.

That fat guy even had a Watchman, one of those little portable TVs that work on batteries, and he was tuned in to some newsbreak
and then announcing what he heard to the other people. All of them were standing the vigil for Maggie Flynn. Not Jan O’Malley.
Not one of them even mentioned the name Jan O’Malley. They were all talking about Maggie Flynn
.

“
They think they got the guy who shot Maggie,” the fat guy said, and several of the others moved in closer to him. “They just
said he’s been arrested for questioning. Some nut who broke onto the set the other day looking for her
.”

Hah, she thought. As if this guy wasn’t a nut himself
,
standing in the damp night, outside a hospital holding a candle because he was worried about some fictional character
.

“
I can tell you one thing for sure,” the fat guy said. “That man is lucky it was the cops that found him and not me, ‘cause
I’da killed him with my bare hands, no questions asked. Anyone who hurts Maggie deserves to be dead
.”

She could hear on his television that the network had now cut away from the newsbreak, and back to some sit-com where the
audience was laughing that fake canned laughter every few seconds. The blue shadow of the TV cast a flickering light on the
fat guy’s big, round, double-chinned face
.

Two women who looked as if they were probably a mother and daughter, both with big dark circles under their eyes, stood with
their arms around one another’s waists. They were both holding those big, thick, twenty-four-hour candles and looking forlornly
up at the towering hospital building. “I think they owe it to us to come out and tell us if Maggie’s okay,” the younger one
said in a choked-up voice
.

“
Are you nuts? They don’t care about us,” the fat guy said, with a sneer of disdain at the girl’s naïveté. “Pretty soon they’ll
send a cop out here to bust us for trespassing or loitering or some shit like that. You watch. I’m at all these things. That’s
what they did to us when we went up on Sunset to that shrine for River Phoenix
.”

“
Maggie deserves to die,” a bony woman with glasses said. “She’s been stepping out on Aubrey, and if this guy didn’t shoot
her, I’ll bet Lydia would have killed her anyway. Everyone knows Maggie was having sexual relations right at Flynn Laboratories
with Phillip Jenkins
.”

“
Shut up, Lois,” a man who was apparently the woman’s
husband said, poking her in the side. “She’s not dying. She’s going to be okay
.”

These people were too strange. They actually thought the person who was in the hospital was Maggie Flynn. Didn’t they know
it was Jan, her friend from college? They were insane to talk about the people on the show as if they were real
.

“
What if she dies, Mom?” the girl with the raccoon eyes asked
.

“
Oh, it’ll be okay. Remember what happened to Aubrey? If she dies, she’ll probably show up in the Caribbean or someplace like
that
.”

Why was she standing out here? She wasn’t one of these little weirdo fans. She told Jan that, too. She was a better actress
than Jan had ever been. And those letters she sent to Jan in care of the show got shoved into the same bag as the letters
these kooks wrote to her. She was Jan’s old friend, and they wouldn’t even let her go up to see who else was visiting her.
They let Jack Solomon go up. Probably right now he was chatting away with Ellen Bass, that cunt, who never wrote a note back
to say she got the audition tape. She wished now that she’d shot that bitch, too
.

“
You know sometimes they die on those shows, and they come back, and sometimes they’re gone forever. My guess is, they’ll just
find someone else to be Maggie
.”

For an instant the idea slammed through her that if Jan died, the show would be needing to recast the part of Maggie, and
she could play it. But then she knew that was absurd. I’m not glamorous enough, she thought. And the old feelings of envy
were like hot lava in her chest. Even in critical condition in a hospital, Jan O’Malley was bigger than
she’d ever be. She was nobody, just like the rest of these people on the sidewalk
.

“
What did I tell you?” the fat guy said as a police car driving down the street pulled up beside the curb just where they were
gathered, and two officers got out
.

“
Time to go home now, folks. This is hospital property and they don’t want you out here disturbing the peace,” the tall bulky
one said, in a patronizing voice that sounded like he was talking to a bunch of dogs. The crowd was dispersing. People were
blowing out their candles and moving off down the street
.

Wouldn’t they all be shocked, the fans and the cops, too, if she suddenly put her arms out and said, “Cuff me, copper. I’m
the one who shot her. Take me in and throw me in jail!” That would get their attention. But she didn’t say that. Instead she
turned quietly and walked away into the night, down the street to the parking lot to find her beat-up old car
.

  
27
  

J
anny, I know your spirit is strong in there, and you’re longing to talk to us. If you can hear me, and I know you can… squeeze
my hand!” Marly had tried those words on Jan repeatedly over the last hours, but Jan was unresponsive. Ellen stopped herself
from saying, “Give it up, goddamnit. If she could talk to us, she would.” She was glad when Marly finally moved to the floor,
where she sat in a lotus position, her back against the glass wall of the ICU cubicle.

Each of them felt the lateness of the hour in her chilled, exhausted body. Rose and Ellen sat on either side of Jan’s bed.
Ellen had pulled over Marly’s unused chair to prop up her legs, and her body was slumped down in her own seat to make a makeshift
bed. Rose tugged at the sweater that was sticking to her body and gazed down at the steno pad on her lap, the one she always
carried in her purse so every now and then she could jot down an idea for one of her projects.

They were talked out. For hours they’d gabbed nonstop, and just the way the nurses had advised, they’d included Jan in the
conversation, remembering the stories, rehashing their mutual past, retelling old jokes. Now there was no sound but the steady
breathing in and out of the ventilator.

Ellen yawned and looked at her Rolex. “My God, it’s nearly eleven-fifteen. There’s a TV in here. Maybe we should watch the
end of the news.”

“Do you think it’s okay?” Rose asked, looking anxiously over at Jan, worried that the TV news might be too harsh for her.
“I mean the news is always unsettling under the best of circumstances. Maybe Janny shouldn’t…”

“I think it’s just part of carrying on as if all is well,” Marly said. “Why don’t you go out and see if it’s okay with the
nurses?”

Rose went out to the nurses’ station to get a remote control to operate the television, and in a minute she was back with
one. She pushed a button, the TV buzzed on, and she clicked around until she found the local news, then turned the volume
to soft. They listened to stories about a robbery in Van Nuys and a fire in Malibu, and then there was a commercial for Yoplait
yogurt and another commercial for Nike.

Then, almost startlingly, there was a full-screen shot of Jan looking back at them. It was a publicity photograph Jan particularly
loved. It was well lit, she wore a pretty, open-mouthed smile, and her eyes were dancing. Marly emitted an audible moan of
sadness. The voice they heard over the shot was Kelly Lange’s. She was the anchorwoman on NBC.

“Earlier this evening, police officers dispersed a large group of fans who stood outside of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in
West Hollywood. The group, which numbered in the hundreds, was waiting for some word on the welfare of actress Jan O’Malley,
who plays the part of Maggie Flynn on the daytime drama ‘My Brightest Day.’ ”