The baby snored. A tape that had been spinning in the VCR without playing hit the end of the reel and made a thunk. Susan tried to change her tone. «Having said that, Randy, tell me, what's the big lie of the day?»
Randy chuckled. «Whitney Houston.»
«Oh dear .»
«It's true.»
«About her left foot.»
«What about her left foot?» Susan played along.
«You haven't heard?»
«Break it to me.»
«It's pretty weird.»
«Just tell me!»
«Cloven hoof.»
«Oh Randy .»
Chapter Twenty-eight
After shooting her Japanese TV commercial in Guam («Hey team — let's Pocari!»), Susan arrived back in Los Angeles fresh with the knowledge that the network had decided not to renew Meet the Blooms . Larry was in Europe, and he spent hours on the phone with Susan, reassuring her that her promising career had barely yet begun.
She threw a duty-free bag filled with folded Japanese paper cranes into a cupboard. She waited three weeks to unpack her luggage from the trip. She took long baths and spoke only to Larry until she visited her First Interstate branch and learned that her long-term savings account, into which she'd been regularly depositing good sums for years, was empty.
Her lawyer was in an AIDS rehab hospice and unable to help her, and her accountant had recently left town in the wake of savings and loan scandals, so Larry hired new and expensive lawyers and accountants. They did a forensic audit of Susan's life, and after months of document wrangling, playing peekaboo with receptionists and marathon phone tag, Susan learned that Marilyn had, quite legally, soaked up and then dissipated Susan's earnings — Marilyn who had been little more than a duty visit once a month up in Encino.
«One of my numerology clients was a child star,» said Dreama, then living on her own in North Hollywood. «He got fleeced, too. The government has the what — the Coogan Law now, don't they? I thought the system was rigged so that parents couldn't swindle the kids' loot anymore.»
Susan, heavily sedated, called Dreama frequently during this period. She murmured, «Dreama, Dreama,Dreama — all you have to do is come home late from a shoot wired with about three hundred Dexatrims, sign one or two documents buried within a pile of documents, and you've signed it all away.»
«You two must have talked …»
«Battled.»
«What does she say? I mean …»
«She says I owed it to her. She says I'd have been nothing without her. And you know what she told me when it became clear that she'd swiped everything I had? She said to me, ‘That's the price you pay for being a piece of Tinseltown trash.' »
Dreama, not a shrieker, shrieked.«Tinseltown?»
Larry continued paying the rent on Kelton Street, but he told Susan his accountant would only let him do it for one more year or until Susan had her own income again, if that came sooner. Jobs were hard to come by. Casting agents knew she wasn't a skilled actress and didn't think her marquee value canceled out her bad acting. Lessons did nothing to improve her skills, and the fact she was even taking lessons made her a subject of snide whispers in class. Larry seemed to be giving her far less attention, too, not because of her unbankability but because he knew that Jenna was the root of the problem.
By the end of the Blooms run, Susan overheard Kenny the director say that if Susan ever got a role even as a tree in the background of a high school production of Bye Bye Birdie, it would be as an act of pity. The taping of the final two-hour episode was a bad dream to which Susan returned over and over.
«Susan, dear, you've just learned your father has prostate cancer. Your face looks like you're trying to choose between regular or extracrispy chicken. Let's do a little wakey-wakey because we're close to union overtime, okay?»
The cameras rolled: «Dad, why didn't you tell me before? Why all the others but not me?»
«Cut! Susan, you're not asking him “Where is the TV Guide ?” You're asking him why he didn't share with you the most important secret of his life.»
The cameras rolled: «Dad, why didn't you tell me before? Why all the others but not me?»
«Cut!»
Susan stopped again.
«Susan, less TV Guide and more cancer.»
«Kenny, can I use some fake tears or something? This is a hard line.»
«No, you may not use fake tears, and no, this is not a hard line. Roger? Give me my cell phone.» A bored P.A. handed him a phone. «Susan, here's a phone — would you like me to give you a number and you can simply phone this line in? Or would you like to do it for the camera, for which you're being paid?»
«Don't be such a prick, Kenny.»
The cameras rolled: «Dad, why didn't you tell me before? Why all the others but not me?»
«Cut! Roger? Please bring Miss American Robot here some fake tears.»
Soon Susan began going to parties each night, not because she was a party hound but because her celebrity status entitled her to as many free drugs as she wanted, as long as she tolerated being fawned over or mocked by the substance suppliers.
* I can't believe Susan Colgate's here at this party.
* Basically, for a gram she'll go anywhere in L.A. County. For an ounce she'll be the pony that takes you there.
As time went on, she learned not to stand outside the kitchens, where the acoustics were better and where she was more likely to hear the worst about herself. She had far too much free time on her hands, and with it she began to obsess about Larry. One early evening when Susan was feeling particularly alone and the phone hadn't rung all day, she decided she was sick of being iced out of his life, and went to his house. Larry had mentioned that Jenna would be away that night at her mother's birthday in Carson City. Susan knew that if she tried to use the intercom at the gate, or open the front door, she'd be frostily ignored. She cut through the next-door neighbor's yard, once home to a prized Empress Keiko persimmon tree, and approached the house from the back patio.
She was shortcutting through the yard when suddenly the place flared up like Stalag 17. Five Dobermans with saliva meringues drooling down their fangs formed a pentagram around her, and what seemed like a dozen Iranian guys with Marlboro Man mustaches circled the dogs, handguns drawn. She saw Larry amble out onto his veranda next door wearing his postcoital silk robe, the one he'd stolen from the New Otani back when he'd been negotiating the Japanese TV commercial deal. A naked little fawn named Amber Van Witten from the TV series Home Life scampered out after him, eating a peach.
Larry yelled to the Iranians, «Hakim, it's okay — she's one of mine,» and the Iranians, gaping at Amber, called off the dogs who, happy as lambs, bounded toward Susan to smell the urine puddle at her feet.
Larry beckoned Susan into the house. She followed him into his den, where he made Susan sit on a towel he placed on the fireplace's flagstones, making her burn with humiliation.
«Susan, it's over.»
She started to say, «But Larry,» but her pants chafed, the urine had gone cold, and Amber poked her head in through the walnut wood doors. («Oh,hi Susan.») Susan stopped speaking.
Larry said that he still wanted to be friends — and then Susan really did realize it was over. Larry said he had an idea, and that he could use Susan's help if she was willing to go along with it. He'd begun managing a new band out of England called Steel Mountain — «head-banger stuff for mall rats.» There had been a screw-up at the Department of Immigration and Naturalization, and the band's lead singer, Chris Thraice, needed a green card or an H-1 visa. If Susan agreed to marry him in order to get him into the country, she could earn 10K a month, live at Chris's house — no more Kelton Street — and have access to the social scene as something other than unbankable former child star Susan Colgate. So she asked him what the catch was, and he said that there wasn't a catch, that Chris was a closeted gay, so she wouldn't even have to deal with sex.