Being in love with Pierce Scanlen was like being in an out-of-control car – but for three months. Not only did he put LSD in the executive drinking fountain, but he was caught playing ‘Spin the Quaaludes’ with the fans at the entry gate. The game, apparently, involved each player spinning the Quaalude bottle and then devouring an amount of Quaaludes corresponding to the number rolled on the dice. Anyone who didn’t overdose had to remove a garment. Two under-age Valley girls were down to their underwear – and up to their eyeballs – by the time Abe found them. Faced with having his pay docked, Pierce promised to go straight … while remaining as zonked as ever. I guess he thought he had us all bluffed, but you didn’t exactly have to be Einstein to work out what was really going on. I mean, one night he made the entire cast and crew listen to a Jimi Hendrix guitar solo, twenty-two times consecutively, between takes. Christmas came and went, as did New Year. He stood me up both nights. Oh, he apologised each time, smiling his bionic smile, and asking me if I was angry. Well, let’s face it, he might as well have asked me if he was lacking in sex appeal.
But it wasn’t just Pierce who was headed on a collision course with calamity. There was Tash. She was running round like a headless chook, trying to raise the money for C.J. Not only was she writing songs in the hope of doing a demo tape, but she’d sold our record collection, stolen thirteen car stereos and started playing her saxophone on street corners. I had to pass around the hat – wearing a T-shirt that read ‘Sax Appeal – Give Generously’. At nights she did seedy gigs downtown or in pukesville grease-pits in the Valley. I was desperate to help her raise the dosh. Not just for the sake of her little brother, but because it was proving catastrophic for my complexion. You see, Tash’s real addiction was sugar. While most rock singers are destroyed by drugs and alcohol, Natasha Kerlowski is the only rock ’n’ roller who will be destroyed by cake. No kidding. She would come off stage every night and order six profiteroles. No, correction. She’d come off stage and make me order six profiteroles. See, by not ordering any, she could then pretend that she hadn’t eaten any, which enabled her to pretend that she wasn’t a certified cake-aholic.
Tash was so desperate for cash that she was even trying to write one of those blockbuster Hollywood ‘shop ’n’ fuck’ novels. The only problem, she reckoned, was that she didn’t know enough about the shopping.
Then there were the men. Basically, Tash’s legs had been at a quarter to three for about the last four weeks. Besides the usual Andy/Sandy/Chuck/Hanks she was now also hitting the hay with an ad executive, another entire rock band and some married bloke called Brendon, from the Valley. She only saw him though, when he was coming downtown to take his car into the shop or to go to the dentist. Their entire relationship was based on tyres and teeth. Not that any of these blokes actually paid her in cold hard cash, but they did give her presents – which she cashed in coldly. She’d raised $2,263. Only $3,737 to go.
When I wasn’t worrying about Tash, I was worrying about work. Since I’d been accepted and signed up on to the show, things had just gone right down the gurgler. Think of the three things you hate doing the most. For me, it’s going for IUD fittings (the only time I ever want to see stirrups again is when I go horse riding), cleaning out the toilet bowl, and attending rello reunions. Add them together and then multiply by about six million, and that would still look like a good time compared to daily life at DINKS.
To make matters worse, Cosmo had been crook, on and off, for weeks. At first he just laughed it off: ‘Not a good idea dahling,’ he said to me after he’d spent the morning spewing his guts up, ‘to go on a vibrator bed after eating Häagen-Dazs ice cream.’ But I didn’t believe him. Nobody could go on that many vibrator beds. Cosmo was sick, daily. So, not only was my only ally away more and more often with weird illnesses, but the actors were still sabotaging every script.
Rondah’s technique for halting the show was to call for a stop-tape during my biggest scenes so that she could have her live sheep-cell injections. This was the latest in Swedish beauty treatment. When no one was around, Pierce and I put a bottle of mint sauce in her dressing room. I paid for it though. That week’s script called upon her character to slap my character across the face. Now, Rondah Rivers is what’s known in the trade, as a ‘one-take actor’. She gets it in the can first go. Well, twenty-five takes later, she just still couldn’t get her lines right.
All the delays had the network heavies panicking. Because they were being paid to be script advisers, these dorks felt they just had to advise on the scripts regardless. As far as I could make out, points were scored by the number of points you raised, no matter how pedantic or just plain bloody stupid.
But, just when I was contemplating a more fulfilling career as a foot-odour-tester, or a fork-lift operator or a monitor of continuous-flow goods, I was summoned to Abe Epstein’s mansion for a meeting.
Abe put his pudgy finger up to his thick lips, nodded towards the French windows and motioned for me to follow. He led me in silence down past the pool which nobody ever swam in, across the lush lawn to the dog kennels.
‘Abe, where are we go …’
‘Shhh.’ He gestured me through the gate, then let out a long, low whistle. Thirty pedigree poodles hurtled towards us from all directions. They orbited around his legs like furry, malfunctioning sputniks. ‘Now ve can tork,’ Abe bellowed above the yelping. He bent down to enable the dogs to lick and nuzzle his hands. ‘Vun can neva be too careful.’ His eyes darted from side to side. ‘Spies!’ he hissed conspiratorially.
‘Spies! Ze house could be bugged. Zis ease ze only safe place to tork. Zee uzer netvorks vould do any-sing to get to my brilliant ideas. Of which’ – he skewered me in his gaze – ‘you, Crocodile Dundette, are vun.’ A small, pink poodle chose this moment to start sniffing sociably at my crotch. ‘You like being on zee show, yes?’
It was a little like asking a turkey if it liked Christmas. ‘Oh yeah, yeah. It’s great.’
The dog, having dispensed with foreplay, was now endeavouring to consumate our new friendship. It was attacking my leg with a dribbling ferocity. Nodding intently to Abe, I tried to shake free my new admirer. Abe broke off what he was saying, bent down, detached the dog’s teeth from my inner thigh and scooped it up into his arms. ‘Zis vun likes you, no?’
I cringed away from its pointy little face. Don’t get me wrong. I like animals, but mainly in the past tense. Beef stroganoff and steak Diane in particular.
‘Modern society,’ Abe went on, ‘no longer haz any concept of love or honour or religion. Today, zee only sing which sets vun person above zee rest is zair degree of Fame. My point ease,’ he whistled again, sending the dogs into a louder and higher pitch of anxiety. ‘Eef your popularity keeps up, ve vill spin you off into your own series.’ He kissed the smelly pink blob on its snout. ‘You like eat, no? My poodle?’
I patted the animated powder puff in his arms with feigned affection. ‘Yeah,’ I lied, gutless wonder that I was. ‘Oh yeah. Lovely.’
Abe nodded approvingly as though I’d passed some secret test. ‘Wiz zee right assembling and marketing, ve vill make a fortune out of you.’ Abe Epstein called himself a Hit Factory, producing hit sitcoms like car parts. He prided himself on being able to pinpoint his audience, right down to the last pubescent pimple. He turned now to look at me. The glint in his eyes was like the blade of a knife. He ran a pink tongue around his salivating mouth, which seemed to have suddenly swollen with greed. ‘It vill be like play-ink Monopoly, except ve vill just keep go-ink round and round ze board, passing Go.’ His lips now looked like a couple of slugs copulating. ‘Ven ve do zee deal,’ said the slugs ‘zis dog vill be yours.’
‘Gee, um, thanks.’
Abe Epstein smiled, enraptured by his own magnanimity. The pink poodle suddenly strained forward in his arms and attempted to engaged me in a passionate tongue-kiss. Abe smacked it on the snout, before placing it in a separate pen. Next thing I knew, his arm was coiled around my bare shoulders. It seemed to suction on to my skin like a goldbraceleted tentacle. He whistled again, so that we could talk beneath the sound of thirty yapping poodles. Abe went on to explain the sophisticated secret of his success – something about making simplistic, heat ’n’ serve shlock that sticks to the telly screen like chewing gum.
How sophisticated could you get, I thought to myself.
‘I vill make you a star, Katrina, on vun condition.’ The slugs curled up, as though someone had zapped them with pesticide. ‘Stay avay from Pierce Scanlen. Zat boy ease a maniac.’
I almost laughed out loud. Staying away from Pierce would not be hard. The only time I ever copped an eyeful of him was when he needed to borrow money. When DINKS first started Pierce had signed the standard Hollywood contract with the standard Hollywood small print. So, even though the show was a smash hit, Pierce was still earning peanuts. His excuse for borrowing money was always for the monthly instalments on one or other of his cars. There seemed to be a monthly instalment due every day. Whenever I did fork out cash for him, he’d always promise lunch. But ‘lunch’ would invariably turn out to be a cup of cold coffee while he got his hair cut, or a warm ice cream while we waited for one of his cars to come out of the shop. Still, I couldn’t get too cheesed-off with him. The passenger window of his Ferrari still didn’t close properly. Tash was right. As far as I could figure, the only way he would ever find me attractive was if I had a muffler and a steering wheel surgically attached.
So, to tell you the truth, I would probably have agreed to Abe’s request, except just at that moment, the amorous pink poodle, thwarted in love, launched itself from the roof of its kennel. It sailed over the wire wall, straight at Abe, and sunk its fangs into his fleshy calf.
No sooner had word spread that Abe had been laid low for a day by a dog bite, than Pierce was organising get well cards – for the dog. By mid-afternoon of the next day, a substantial postbag had arrived at Abe’s house. The tally, according to Pierce, was four sympathy cards for the patient, and 362 for the pooch.
Needless to say, when Abe limped into work on the following morning, his mood was far from jovial. It wasn’t helped by Pierce’s greeting. ‘Hey Abe, what’s that foam around your lips?’
Abe shot Pierce a lethal look – the sort of look that killer aliens give earthlings in comic books. Pierce had been arriving at rehearsals later and later, armed with wilder and wilder excuses, only to fluff more and more of his lines and then talk through everybody else’s.
‘Can you lend me the cab fare home?’ Pierce addressed me, talking through Mimi’s lines.
‘Where’s the Ferrari?’ I whispered.
‘Sold it.’
I snagged hold of his sleeve. ‘You sold IT?’
Pierce flinched almost imperceptibly and shifted ever so slightly away from me. ‘You see, my girlfriend prefers the less ostentatious kinda car. She’s a minimalist.’
‘Your girlfriend?’ My stomach rode up and down my oesophagus like an elevator.
‘Yeah.’
‘You never mentioned that you had a …’
‘That’s ’cause there’s not much to mention. Like I said, she’s a minimalist. She’s really got it together, see. She, like, owns one poetry book, one pair of silk sheets, one painting, one pair of jeans, one dress – designer, of course – sparse furnishings, white surfaces. She’s a painter. Real artistic. A hell of an expressive face, you know?’
I hated this LA lady. She was obviously a minimalist because only a minimal amount of people liked her.
‘So, how’ bout it? Cab fare?’
Abe zapped Pierce with another invisible death-ray. Pierce lifted one buttock up off the couch, frowned in concentration, then let rip with an explosive blast of flatulence. Every eye in the room bulged in Pierce’s direction. ‘The ability to fart at will is a virtuoso skill,’ he explained. ‘It’s going to be included as a category in the Olympics.’
There was a reason Pierce had developed this Abe-proof force field. He’d been dropping hints about as subtle as Hiroshima that he was going to renege on his contract unless he got paid more moolah.
Pierce waited for the laughter to subside and the rehearsal to recommence, before taking me aside once more. ‘Well?’
‘God. Whadd’are you doing with all your money?’ I whispered back, ferreting in my bag for my purse. ‘Can’t you balance a chequebook?’
‘Money bores me,’ he yawned. ‘I’m bad at money.’
‘Pierce come on. It’s not as if I’m asking you to work out the circumference of the world.’
Abe clapped his hands to conclude the rehearsal and reminded the cast about the publicity photos the next day. ‘Eats important zat you are all on time. Vight?’ He fired off another killer look in Pierce’s direction.
‘Vong.’ Pierce retorted.
Abe shut his script crisply. ‘Vatch it Scanlen. Be zere, on time, or you vill be in zerious trouble.’
By the tone of his voice, he didn’t just mean trouble, trouble. He meant testicles-cut-off-with-a-pair-of-nail-scissors-type trouble. ‘On time. Do you read me?’
‘Sorry chief. I’m dyslexic.’ Pierce pushed up from the couch and slouched from the room, torpedoing off another fart before departing.
All night, I practised being minimal. All night, I only moved when I had a purpose and only spoke when I felt profound.
‘Wha-thuh hell’s godinna you, for Chrissake?’ Tash demanded, breaking off from her singing exercises. Her teacher had been on to her about her ‘intercostals’, whatever they were, and Tash had been practising like a mad woman for weeks now. At the same time as she trilled up and down the scales, she was busy concocting another of her weird culinary inventions: apple licorice turnover and cream because she just knew I was craving it. (I’d been trying to convince her lately that it wasn’t a criminal offence to be seen eating in public. That food was, in fact, an important part of a healthy diet. But the message obviously hadn’t gotten through.)
Lounging up against the counter, I told her the good and bad news. Pierce was not in love with something that had four wheels. He was in love with something that had two legs. ‘Still, at least she’s human,’ I muttered, ‘sort of.’
‘Jeeezus. Okay.’ Tash abandoned her arpeggios and thumped the spoon down on to the counter. ‘Let’s settle this once and for all.’ She unwound the apple skin from the vegetable peeler. ‘Turn around.’ She swivelled me towards the wall. ‘Now chuck this over ya shoulder.’
‘What?’
She handed me the long green spiral of peel. ‘Just do it. The shape of the letter it lands in is the first letter of the name of the man ya gonna fall in love with an’ marry.’ I gave her a ‘you’ve finally cracked’ look. ‘It’s true. Do it.’
Dutifully, I flung the apple peel over my shoulder. We both swung around and examined the shape on the linoleum floor. ‘It’s a J,’ she announced. ‘So ya can forget all about Pierce. It just ain’t in ya destiny.’
‘Tash, I can’t forget him.’
‘Look, if ya need somethin’ large and thick in your life, why doncha just go to bed with, I dunno, a phone book, for God’s sake. Now my turn.’ She catapulted the peel over her shoulder, then squatted down to examine the results. ‘It’s a B.’
‘B? How on earth do you figure …’
‘It is. Gee,’ she laughed, tracing the apple peel with her painted index finger. ‘Maybe it’s Bernard.’ Bernard was the married bloke from the Valley I told you about. Mr Tyres and Teeth. ‘I do like him an’ all.’ Her cooking apron was covered in pictures of cucumbers and jokes about their desirability ahead of men.
‘Maybe it’s a B for bullshit,’ I scoffed and went to my room to practise artistic facial expressions.
The next day we assembled for the publicity shoot, faking camaraderie for the cameras. Pierce was missing. Abe strutted the set, cursing and gesticulating, the veins on his face standing out like they do in cabbages. Finally the door whooshed open and Pierce strolled in. For the first time in weeks, he looked well-dressed, wide-awake, clear-eyed and perfectly normal – except for the fact that his hair and eyebrows were completely missing. No kidding. A bald-egg-on-legs, he sauntered towards us and took his place in the front row.
The audible intake of breath sounded like a pneumatic drill.
The publicity shot was cancelled.
I found Pierce later, in the make-up room, mowing any remaining stubble from his scalp. Rondah, Phoebe and Ping were there too, fussing over Cosmo, who’d been sick again. Cosmo was the only person the three actresses were ever nice to. This was mainly because of the fact that they knew that he knew more about them than anyone alive. Cosmo had seen them all exposed, meek, naked, immobilised in the make-up chair. He alone had a full inventory of every wrinkle, crinkle, dimple. He alone had the power to make them look like a dog’s breakfast.
‘So kid,’ Pierce said, as I approached him. ‘What profession d’you think I’d be good at? Astronaut? Postman? Hey, what about President? Actually I’ve always fancied running a helluva good Chinese restaurant.’
I tried to make my face look artistic and articulate. Every time he glanced at me, I would pop an eye, flare a nostril, or cock an eyebrow.
‘Yeah, it could be the rudest goddamned Chinese restaurant in the world,’ he enthused, razor buzzing. ‘All the meals could be called things like “Long Cock Soup”. Or “Hot Fuck Duck” … Hey, you couldn’t lend me your pay cheque till the end of the week could you? I’m like, totally tapped out.’ He switched off the motor on his razor. ‘Well?’
‘I … I can’t. I owe rent.’ Pierce shrugged and resumed shaving. ‘Are you really going to quit?’ I curled a lip provocatively, while looking up from beneath lowered lids.
‘You betcha. I’ve had enough of this shit hole. Christ,’ Pierce, glancing at my reflection in the mirror, asked nervously, ‘you’re not gonna barf again are ya? Your face has gone all kinda weird.’
‘Won’t you miss it?’ I asked, relaxing my facial muscles. ‘I mean the adoration, the fan mail.’
‘Jesus Chrrrrist. You’ve read my fan mail? It’s either from weirdo sex freaks or goddamned five-year-olds. The majority say, “I love you. I have two sisters and a cat and I live with my mom and dad.” Although, look what I got today.’ He extracted a condom from his pocket. Attached to it was a stamped, addressed envelope and a card reading ‘Pierce, please fill and return’. ‘Weird, huh?’
I felt my face warming up for its beetroot impersonation. ‘But everyone in America wants what you’ve got. Fame, fortune, fast cars. I mean, it’s the American religion. You’re like a High Priest. You’re like a –’
‘God. The Gospel according to Abe Epstein. Has he offered you a poodle yet? We’ve all got one of those four-legged tea cosies. I got mine four years ago when he promised me my own spin-off series. I keep the stupid mutt around to remind me never to believe anyone or anything in television.’
Cosmo, prising himself free of Rondah’s clutches, affectionately rubbed his hand over Pierce’s stubbly head. ‘You’ve been summoned,’ he said, his voice funereal.
‘Come with me,’ Pierce ordered.
‘No,’ I said – minimally.
Pierce seized my elbow and steered me towards Abe’s office. He barged right in.
Abe’s office was a shrine to quickly acquired wealth. Every square inch was crammed with ostentatious antiques. There were glass cabinets full of firearms (old Abe was forever going off to do courses entitled ‘Learn to Shoot for Protection and Sport’), plus his collection of miniature model sports cars, which just happened to ape his lifesize assortment. But today the office looked completely different. I counted twelve, drop-dead-gorgeous male specimens, slouched in a nonchalant row. They wore denim shirts. Just like Pierce. They wore sockless topsiders. Just like Pierce. Their hair hung over one eye and a small pigtail bunched at the back of each neck. Just like Pierce – when he had hair that is.
Abe sucked on his Cuban truncheon, letting the ash cascade to the floor. ‘Zere are plenty more vere you came from.’ He pushed a piece of paper across the table. It was Pierce’s contract. ‘I’ve added a clauze saying you vill undergo zum “image maintenance”.’ Pierce’s gaze passed slowly around the room, and finally came to rest on me.
‘Pierce, what about the rudest Chinese restaurant?’
Abe picked up the pen and unscrewed the gold-tipped top. ‘Besides, vot uzzer studio vill hire you vunce zey find out about your leetle problem, huh?’
Pierce looked from Abe to me and back again, snatched the pen, scrawled across the dotted line, turned on his heel and headed for the door.
‘Crocodile Dundette,’ Abe said sternly, as I made to follow. ‘Stay right vere you are.’ Recalling Abe’s kennel of four-legged tea-cosies, I kept walking. ‘Remember vot I said,’ his voice trailed after me. ‘Zere’s plenty more vere you came from too.’
I caught up with Pierce in the car park. He was already behind the wheel of his freshly-sprayed car, engine gunned. ‘What does he mean, your little problem?’
‘Nothin’.’
‘Pierce, let’s talk.’
‘Can’t.’
‘Well, what about tonight?’
‘What? Oh, Jesus. Look, I gotta see a pal, okay? He’s um, got this sick llama, see? It’s overheating.’ He turned and saw that I had my pay cheque extended towards him. ‘Llamas are very sensitive to stress and strain.’ He snatched the cheque, the engine flared and he left me there on the kerb choking on car exhaust. Personally I couldn’t see why he needed help maintaining his image. The thing about Pierce was that he was so reliable – always there when he needed you.