Show Business Kills by Iris Rainer Dart Read Free Book Online Page B

remarried.”
    Ellen sighed, thinking how ready she was for Friday night. Jan, who was always so elegant on “My Brightest Day,” with her
     great red hair and her green eyes and those gorgeous high cheekbones, would be the first one to holler, “Let’s get naked,”
     drop her clothes, and head for the hot tub.
    Then she’d probably have some new stories about all the shit she took from the people who worked on her show, the backstage
     plots, all of which were tons more interesting than the ones on that dopey daytime show. And Marly would have the latest chapter
     on her ex-husband Billy’s awesome ego, and Rosie would be half there and the other half of her brain would be in her current
     screenplay. They’d sit naked in the hot tub, where their aging bodies felt healed and light, and so did their world-weary
     souls.
    Christ, they’d been close for so long, they each knew who had taken the others’ virginity and the stories that accompanied
     the deflowering. They each knew what the other wore or didn’t wear to sleep, and what each of their bodies looked like when
     they were young and effortlessly hard, before gravity took its toll, in spite of the Stairmasters they’d allclimbed so ferverently that if they were really ascending, by now they’d all be in heaven.
    Ellen even knew their scents by heart, probably because it was their custom every year to exchange cologne, soap, body lotion,
     some product of their favorite scent for Christmas. Marly wore Joy, she had since the sixties. Rose liked Opium, Jan still
     loved sultry Jungle Gardenia, and every year each of them gave Ellen some product from her own favorite scent, Norell. Last
     year she announced at their private Christmas dinner that maybe it was time to switch to another kind of gift, since she had
     enough Norell to last until she was a hundred.
    Tonight Ellen hurried across the quiet lot to make a quick stop at her own bungalow office, just to see if there were any
     last-minute calls she needed to return from her car while she was on her way to meet Roger.
    “Greens?”
    “In here,” her secretary called. Ellen walked through her own spacious, high-ceilinged office, furnished with chrome and glass,
     and into the pretty Italian-tiled bathroom, where Greenie was washing out coffee cups.
    “You’re out of Dodge already?” he asked. Greenie never left the building until Ellen did, even though she told him that once
     she went into a meeting, only “the deal gods” knew when she’d come out. He was loyal and true and he used the quiet time while
     Ellen was in meetings to cover each script she’d be taking home with a typed-up synopsis, which was always astute and thoughtful.
    “It’s Roger’s birthday,” she told him. She was still smarting from Bibberman’s treatment of her, and she knew if she mentioned
     it to Greenie, he’d get on that kick again about how that shithead Bibberman wanted her out of there, andnow the jealous little mongrel was going to try anything he could to get her to quit, so the studio wouldn’t have to pay her
     off. He’d also remind her that the way Bibberman treated her in meetings was nothing compared to the things he said about
     her behind her back.
    Ronald Greenberg was gay and as gorgeous as a runway model, and this was the third studio to which he’d followed Ellen. He
     was, Ellen always told close friends, her “secret weapon.” He had no desire to be an executive himself because, he said, he
     didn’t want the pressure, but he was Hollywood wise, understood the politics, and somehow managed to know where every body
     in the industry was buried.
    “Want me to walk you to the car?” he asked Ellen now, taking her briefcase out of her hand, removing obsolete drafts of scripts
     and changing them for the current ones with his notes clipped to them, then handing the case back to her.
    “Nahh,” she said. “I’ll be okay. I can’t imagine any mugger who could want to hurt me worse then