Show Business Kills (47 page)

“I want to finish the scene,” she said, and the audience exploded with laughter. They were right. She
was
a shill, and this was another funny stunt, like the one with the Indians. “I’m not kidding,” Betty said, her eyes wild with
anger at their laughter. “I’ll kill anyone, everyone,” she said, but the audience thought that was funny, too.

Rose and Marly held on to one another, and then they heard Ellen’s voice over the PA.

“Betty, it’s okay. Everything is okay. This is Ellen Bass.”

Betty looked around nervously; then up at the booth.

“Who?” she asked, squinting in the direction of the voice.

“Ellen Feinberg. Remember me?”

Betty’s eyes were wide. “Is it really?” she asked. She was trembling.

“I work here, Betty, at this studio. I think you went past my office a little while ago.”

“I know you work here. I’ve been following your career from day one! My plan was to get off the tram and try to find your
office in that big glass building, but when I stood up the guy said we couldn’t get off the tram there. They wouldn’t even
put my calls through to you. Who do you think you are, Ellen, treating people so badly? I sent you a tape and you never even
watched it.”

“I did watch your tape. I’ve been very busy but I managed to watch your tape just recently, and you were sensational in it,”
Ellen said in a voice Rose knew was phony, and that Ellen probably used fifty times a day with actors and directors and writers
she had to brush off nicely. Betty pouted grudgingly, holding the gun on the audience in general.

Rose heard someone in the audience whisper, “What in the hell’s going on here?”

“I even called your house to make you an offer,” Ellen said.

“What kind of offer?”

“A part in a movie I’m going to make.”

“Like shit,” Betty said, her doubting eyes angry with a look that said they’d been disappointed too often to fall for this.

“I did. I talked to your daughter.”

“You’re lying. My daughter doesn’t even live at my house.”

“I know, but she was there, looking for you. She was worried because you’d been gone for a few days and nobody knew where
to find you,” Ellen said.

“Yeah? What’s my daughter’s name?”

“Her name is Polly,” Ellen said. “Betty, I know she must be proud of your talent. So am I, Betty. I still want to offer you
a role in a film I’m making.”

“You’re a fucking liar. Everyone in show business is a liar. Phony, lying assholes. No-talents who think their money makes
them hot shit.”

Rose squeezed Marly’s arm, and then she whispered, “You’ve got to admit, she is right about that.”

“It’s a great part, Betty, and you won’t even have to test for it, because I already have your tape. So put the gun down now,
and come up to the booth.”

Betty looked confused, and very afraid. “Ellen,” she asked in a voice filled with worry, “do you think I look old?” Marly
emitted an audible pained sound. It was the question the close friends often asked one another, and the loving answer was
always, “You look sensational.”

“Betty,” came the reply from the booth, and Rose heard the emotion in Ellen’s voice, “I think you look sensational.”

Betty harumphed as if she didn’t believe that lie, either. “Jan said I looked good, too,” she said. “And I thought she looked
wonderful. I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t want to.”

“Betty,” Ellen said, “wait till you see me. My belly’s so round these days, I have to buy my control-top panty hose in industrial
strength.”

A big laugh swept through the audience. Rose was terrified
that the laughter would make Betty shoot the gun, but instead Betty laughed, too. “So do I,” she said, but she didn’t drop
the gun. “Tell me about the part in the movie,” she said, very serious now, and turning suddenly to hold the gun on a woman
who had dropped something noisily in the front row. The audience gasped. They were getting to the point where they weren’t
sure what to make of this whole scene.

“It’s called…
Good-bye, My Baby
. And the woman is a mature, womanly adult who… has a dying husband,” Ellen improvised.

“Yeah… and what happens?”

“We’re trying to get Kevin Costner to play your husband,” Ellen said.

Betty lit up. “Swear to God? I love Kevin Costner,” she said, and that was when she dropped her arm for an instant, and the
burly guard who was standing at the door tackled her and another one grabbed the gun. The audience on the sound stage loved
it, and they all burst into wild applause.

“Oh, God. I didn’t mean it,” Betty said. “Don’t hurt me. I didn’t mean to kill her. I only wanted to get into the business…”

Rose put her face on Marly’s shoulder. She couldn’t bear to watch Betty’s struggle as they carried her away, through the door
of the sound stage.

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” they heard Ken’s voice saying over the PA as the lights came up. “Next show in ten minutes.”

“He never even played the film back,” Rose heard someone say in the line as the people filed out of the sound stage, and she
and Marly went up to the booth to find Ellen.

  
36
  

W
hen they arrived at the hospital that night, they were asked to wait because the doctor was still in with Jan. While they
stood at the nurses’ desk, Ellen noticed that the cubicle where she’d visited with Fred Zavitz was empty. A young frizzy-haired
nurse she hadn’t seen before sat at a computer keyboard, typing.

“I guess Freddy Zavitz made it out of here,” Ellen said to the nurse, who looked up distractedly, then focused on what Ellen
had just said.

“Oh, they took Mr. Zavitz away a few hours ago. He died of cardiac arrest.”

Ellen leaned sorrowfully against the nurses’ counter and listened to the plunking of the computer keys. A nurse came out of
Jan’s cubicle, and a few seconds later she was followed by the neurosurgeon. He stopped when he saw Rose and Ellen.

“You can go in and talk to her now,” was all he said.

Ellen walked slowly past him and into the room and over to the bed, seeing Jan’s face without a tube in it for the first time
since the shooting. Her cheeks were gaunt, but her skin was luminous, and her expression was peaceful.

“Janny,” Ellen said, standing close to the bed. “Betty
Norell is in police custody. She was arrested this afternoon. She won’t hurt anyone else. I can’t imagine how she could ever
hurt you. She was at the studio looking for the rest of us when we caught her.” Rose stood back as if waiting in line for
her turn as Ellen went on.

“I wanted you to know that so you wouldn’t worry. I also want to thank you for all the joy you’ve brought to my life from
the day you borrowed my red crepe evening dress and left it in some fraternity boy’s room, and could not only not remember
which guy, but which fraternity…” She laughed a tiny shrill laugh at what she’d just said.

Rose watched her through wet eyes, seeing all the bravado and savvy of Hollywood honcho stripped away leaving Ellen Feinberg,
the girl whose room had been next door to hers in the dorm. The girl who got the munchies before she smoked the dope. The
funny, vulnerable way she was before the divorce and single-motherhood and before she dated or made a deal with what she liked
to call “every asshole in Hollywood,” and became so toughened up by it all.

“I want you to know I’ll always keep the promise I made to you at Joey’s adoption ceremony when I said I’d help to be responsible
for his welfare forever,” Ellen said. “And I had a little boy once, and he turned out damn good, so you know I know what to
do,” and then the runaway emotion made her have to turn from the bed and lean on Rose. Her thick auburn hair covered her face
as she held Rose tightly and trembled but couldn’t say a word.

After a little while she moved to a chair, and Rose walked to the bed and put her hand on Jan’s arm, above the plastic hospital
bracelet. The IV tubes had been removed too, and she was able to take Jan’s slender hand in her own. “Janny, the other
day Julie and Marly talked on the phone for a long, serious time, and they came to the conclusion that because of Julie’s
life being up in the air at the moment, and because Marly and Billy are going back together, that Joey would be better off
living with Marly and Billy. Ellen and I think so, too. Marly jokes that she’s semiretired anyway so she’ll have a lot of
time to devote to him, and she loves him and the twins do, too.”

“We all thought that would be okay with you, and Julie said she’ll come out and visit and be with him as often as she can,”
Ellen lied, moving back to the bed.

Both of them looked up when they heard the sound of the pocket door sliding open and waved a little wave to Marly. Each of
them choked back the kick of emotion they felt when they saw that she was holding Joey. It had been one thing to plan his
visit to say good-bye to his mother. To talk about the theories of whether or not it was good for him. But another to see
him there, her love, her life, this angelic child who had already suffered so much. His blond hair was askew and his big blue
eyes were wide as he looked down at the bed, and then buried his face in Marly’s shoulder.

Last night, when they discussed the idea of his coming to the hospital, Ellen had voted against it, afraid it would traumatize
the little boy forever. Rose, who at age seven had kissed her own mother good-bye in the coffin, insisted on it. Marly thought
the child needed this moment because the last time he saw Jan she was being taken away bleeding into an ambulance. So she
called a child psychologist who specialized in children and death. “With adequate preparation and the right to say no to the
visit at any point, I think it’s essential for him,” the doctor told her.

Now Marly rubbed his back and held him tightly. The others
could see that Maria was behind Marly, and Joey was looking out the door at her.

Marly spoke softly to the child. “Remember when I told you that Mommy won’t be able to talk to you, but she can hear you?”
After a moment his little head nodded in her neck. “And remember we talked about how you’re allowed to touch her, though she
can’t touch you back?” He nodded again. “So before she goes away, maybe we can go over to the bed together and say good-bye.
But only if you want to do that. It’s okay if you don’t. If you say you don’t want to do that, Maria is standing right there
and she can take you for a walk, or back to play with Jennifer and Sarah. And honey, it really is okay with all of us and
with Mommy if you don’t want to get any closer.”

There was an eternity of silence while they waited for the little boy’s reply. This brief window of time that the doctor warned
them might be a matter of just a few hours was the only moment when this could take place. The frightening, noisy respirator
was gone, there was no jumble of wires from hanging IV tubes, just Jan going quietly to her rest. And if the nurses’ theories
were true, Jan was able to hear their words.

Joey turned slowly back to look at the bed, then wiggled his way out of Marly’s arms and stood on the floor, his little face
just about level with the hospital bed. Slowly he walked nearer to the bed to look more closely at his dying mother. He was
so tiny that the shorts he wore were wide around his skinny little legs. His T-shirt said
LITTLE SLUGGER
across the front. Rose and Ellen had their arms around one another’s waists. Marly moved with him, and Maria stepped into
the room, bowing her head sadly when she saw Jan.

He took another step, and then another, never taking his
eyes from Jan, until his body leaned against the metal rail of the bed. After a minute he lifted his arm, touched Jan’s hand
and patted it gently and consolingly, the way the others had seen him reassure her before. His soft dimpled little-boy fingers
touching her repeatedly the way he would a baby animal as he said, “It’s okay, Mommy. It’s okay.”

Then he moved from the bed, walked to the doorway, and threw his arms around the legs of Maria, who walked him out into the
hall. She was going to take him back to Marly’s, and the friends would stay at the hospital with Jan.