Meanwhile in the World where Kennedy Survived Page 6

  Chapter Six

  Summer, 1965

  Instead of returning home to New York after recovering, Jacy headed out west to let her mother take care of her as she healed. She wanted to rest, just do nothing. Eight grueling weeks of shooting, one more in a decompression chamber and the final days of her stay in hospital bed had left her drained, muddled. Yet when she arrived at the front door her normally unflappable mother rushed up to her, voice strained and eyes hollow and panicked. She held a stack of small bits of paper in one hand. “These are messages for you darling. The networks. Your agent. Lawyers. They just keep calling, and calling and calling, I can’t keep any of them straight. Here.”

  A couple of hours later, after organizing her luggage and doing some unpacking, she picked up the phone and called Jake. When he heard her voice he immediately sprang to action, speaking rapidly and excitedly, as if he had sat at his desk by the phone for days waiting to hear from her. He said “We’re going to need you at a hearing next week, but before then, we gotta talk one to one.”

  She met him the next day at a Chinese restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard. He had a bad habit of talking with his mouth full, so Jacy had to watch pieces of Lichee Duck tumble around while he pattered on, stabbing at forkfuls of his dinner. “We got them over a barrel,” he said. “We can renegotiate your take of the gross. Five per cent.”

  Jacy had always been bad with numbers, but she knew that the Steven Blade movies played in theaters all over the world, usually for long runs. “That sounds like a lot,” she said. “I kind of feel funny, though for taking them for that much. It wasn’t exactly their fault that I pulled the wrong cord and shot up for the surface like a torpedo.” The doctors told her that her rapid ascent had caused air to expand in her lungs and joints, forming bubbles. During World War II they had called it ‘the bends.’

  Jake paused, and then placed his fork down in an exaggeratedly delicate way. He swallowed a mouthful, and then leaned in to look deeply into her eyes. “Sweetheart, you were almost killed. Levin is liable, and he knows it. The bugaboo about all of this is going to win him all kinds of free publicity. He owes you.”

  Jacy sighed. “Everybody’s been wrecked by what happened on April 5. Why kick them when they’re down?”

  Jake waved a hand at her, dismissively. “Listen, you don’t want to fuck...I mean, mess around with their pinhead shysters and bean counters. They’ll drag it on for months and months. You want to get on with your career, don’t you?”

  “Sure. A girl’s got to work.”

  Jake smirked, snarling his lip into a crooked grin. “Honey, if I pull this one off for you, you could afford to lay off for awhile, years even. Pick and choose.” He returned to his slashing assault on the greasy duck.

  “I’m afraid people are going to get mad.”

  “Who put that idea into your head? Your pop?”

  “Yes. And it’s not an idea, it’s an example.”

  Jake smirked., which caused a flash of anger in her. “Trust me,” he went on. “He doesn’t know anything how this business works. He’s a gear brain, for Christ’s sake. Frustrated quarterback. You’re not his little girl any more.”

  She inhaled, and then held her breath for several moments before responding. “You may want to think for a little longer the next time you want to say something like that about him. He’s very successful with his firm and he got to play for the Cleveland Rams for two whole years. Most men only dream of doing that.”

  Jake shrugged. “You love him. That’s admirable. But you’re over thirty now. Time to leave the nest. I get you this deal, you won’t have to look back.”

  Jacy sighed. At home that night she watched television in the den with her whole family. Her father had put on his reading glasses and was casually scanning a newspaper while everyone else laughed at the Munsters. She had wanted to discuss what Jake had told her that afternoon but decided against possibly ruining the tranquil evening.

  A couple of days later, at Jake’s office on Vine Street, she signed a draft proposal of the renegotiated contract for her involvement in Red Tide. He assured her that he and another partner, Reese would appear at the producer’s office along with Levin. “Shouldn’t I be there, too?” Jacy asked. “They would want to know what happened, wouldn’t they?”

  “I’ve got news for you, girl,” he said, piling the papers and sorting them. “They already know. Better than you. Remember, you were unconscious for part of it. Besides, it might make you too nervous. This is high pressure. Could get kind of ugly.”

  “Okay.”

  Jake was true to his word. Red Tide became the most popular Steven Blade picture ever, and the deal they’d negotiated for her brought her more money than she imagined was possible. She bought a penthouse in a brownstone apartment building in Manhattan. Less work, however left lots of time for her to frequent the New York Public Library and lose herself in the paintings at the Metropolitan.

  Still, through sheer craftiness and from knowing just about everybody on both coasts, Jake was able to find her sporadic things: commercials, guest spots, slots on idiotic game shows. Dick Cavett interviewed her twice over a six-month span.

  Robert junior came to stay with her just before Christmas, 1965. The country was still in a state of shock, and while the city had rolled out all the lovely lights and decorations, people went about their business somberly, as if the steam had been squeezed out of them. For months after 4/5/65, what the news had referred to as “America’s Holocaust,” everyone worried that our young men would wind up in Russia, fighting. Instead, the United States launched a missile at the Kremlin on September 11, 1965. The United Nations intervened, and in peace talks in late October, the Soviets surrendered.

  Jacy’s brother admitted that he was relieved. He was working as a chemical engineer in New Jersey and had caught the train from there. During the daytime they would walk through Central Park, bundled up against the chilly weather, to feed pigeons. It was becoming an odd and dangerous place. Jacy would hold her breath when they would pass a bewhiskered, red-faced man dressed in rags. At another point they saw a strange solo performer: he wore tight-fitting striped pants and a green plaid top and he had attached little bells all over his clothes. He lowered down to the ground near a dale on the other side and lay completely down on the dead grass. To their amazement he started rolling, all of the bells producing a tinkling cacophony.

  They headed for home before the winter sun set. Back at the penthouse, Jacy was putting together the final touches of a veal Parmigianino dinner when the phone rang.

  “Jacy!” an excited male voice exclaimed from the other end of the line. “You are one tough lady to get a hold of. This is Ted Martin with Spaceway.”

  “Journey Galaxian!” Ted trumpeted jubilantly. Traversing wild and dangerous near frontiers. Reaching out to new life, new civilizations.”

  Jacy paused, repeating “Journey Galaxian?”

  Robert heard her from across the room. “Journey Galaxian? Based on the Andre Norton novels?” He edged over more closely to the Queen Anne table where she stood.

  Ted went on “A mutual friend of ours told us you might be available for a new character we’re thinking of. Ruler of an entire planet. Why don’t you fly out and audition? How’s this Wednesday for you?”

  Jacy had lumped the quirky little space show with a whole new batch of mindless little weekly vignettes making their way onto the small screen. There was a genie cozying up with a Florida astronaut, a suburban witch and her narrow-minded, controlling husband, and an unlikely crew of seven castaways stranded on a desert island in the middle of the Pacific. And then there was Journey Galaxian. She knew little about it other than that it revolved around a small crew of men and a couple of young women acting as ornamental tagalongs. They traipsed along in a spaceship that looked like a dinner plate with two exhaust pipes connected to it. “Well gee, Ted, my brother is in town this week.”

  “They really want you,” he pressed.

  Jacy felt
her lips forming a snarl of disbelief.

  “It’s a shoo in,” he went on. “The audition would be a formality. What do you say?”

  “Journey Galaxian?” Robert said from over her shoulder. When she turned to look at him she saw the gleeful spark in his eyes that he often had shown as a grade schooler.

  “That’s the coolest show. They want you to audition for that? Do it! It would be so cool! They probably want you to wear one of those mini skirts with the pointy gold “G” up here.”

  He pointed to a spot on the high right side of his chest.

  “They want me to be some kind of a planetary goddess,” she said, failing to cover the mouthpiece completely.

  Ted laughed, causing her to groan inside. It was just the kind of thing she was trying to avoid. Her first inkling was that if she went within a thousand miles of the part, she could kiss any future dramatic roles good bye. Behind her, Robert had grabbed her arm and was starting to jump up and down. “Do it! Whatever it is, do it! God, the guys at work are really going to flip out when I tell them this one.”

  “Bobby,” she said, once again trying to cover the mouthpiece (and not quite succeeding) “It’s just an audition for god’s sake. They’re probably going to give it to someone younger. And shorter.”

  “No Jacy,” Ted said, more forcefully. “We want you.”

  She suddenly had a vision of the Uncle Sam poster, finger pointing beseechingly at the viewer. There was a pause, while Robert gazed at her eagerly and Ted remained silent, at the other side of the continent. “Okay,” she said.

  Scarcely more than two days later, she was at her mother and father’s house, yet again. She napped in the same bedroom from her school days. Upon awakening and turning on a light, she lay still, amazed at her mother had preserved it. Her poster of Einstein was still attached to the wall, and he looked down at her, all tousle-haired, eyes like a terrier. She allowed herself to slip into the same fantasy she had as a nine-year old: riding a beam of light as if she were saddling a horse and blazing onward to the farthest reaches of the universe or differing eras of time.

  Late the next morning she arrived at the audition at Screen Gems. At least it wasn’t a cattle call, she thought as she entered the office suite, smartly dressed in a skirted suit. Behind a hazy glass door that read “Production and Scheduling” she met the producer Jerry Rohrstag, and the casting director Mitch Phillips. She had been warned about the legendary producer’s cool reserve but Mitch in casting proved different. He leaned in to her, studying her with imp like green eyes and seemed like a wide-eyed adolescent looking at a pin-up rather than a major contributor on a network show. “We’re really excited to have you here,” he said.

  Jerry tugged a copy of a script from a binder and in a monotone said “We’d like to hear you read.” He handed the stack of paper to her. They all sat in three stuffed, wheeled office chairs arranged in a circle. “Mitch is going to read the other part.” The boyish, sandy-haired man had pulled his script copy from atop a bookshelf beside his elbow.

  “Now this is a key confrontational scene,” he said with the same wide-eyed smile, sweeping his free hand through the air. “I’m going to read Admiral Vantage. As you may know, he’s the head honcho of the Galaxian. He’s coming to tell you to ask for your cooperation in a mining treaty. Now if you can, just try to show us the right kind of hostility. Taunt me. You’ve got him over the barrel. Take him for everything you can.”

  He straightened, raising his eyebrows, inhaling to prepare himself. Jacy interrupted him. “Shouldn’t we be standing or something?” she said. “Don’t you want to see how I move when I’m doing the lines?”

  “No. Just read.” His voice instantly dropped an octave as his words boomed in the confined space. “I know we’ve had our differences in the past, but can we start anew? If we work together we can solidify as a force against the union.”

  “How dare you come to me with your hat in your hand and talk as if raping my planet will fortify us against Neumaurea? Have you forgotten the siege on Rangoranan? Your men stormed a domestic installation as if they were attacking a wild herd of Otranti. Bodies of innocent women and children strewn everywhere. No, Mr. Vantage, if you’re short of fuel, you’re going to have to hitch a ride on a carrier and leech it off someone who cares.”

  “Empress that was a grave misunderstanding! Three of our scooters had just been blown out of your atmosphere. We beamed down for the origin and found it in that commune. If you want to protect your young, then don’t fire from their habitations.”

  “My word is final,” Jacy said. She looked up for a moment to see if she could gauge their reactions but both men were looking at the script. “Consider yourself lucky you still have your head! You and Korg. Now get out of my sight before I make you regret the day you were born.” Gerry raised a hand to motion her to stop. When she looked up from her script she saw Mitchell smiling broadly.

  “That’s fine,” Rohrig said.

  Jacy glanced back at the words she’d just read. “I have one question,” she said. “What the hell is an Otranti?”

  “It’s a wild creature on Zoran,” Mitchell said, taking the tone of a biology teacher rather than a Hollywood casting director. “If you can imagine a cross between a camel and a rhinoceros, then you’ll have it. They roam around on some of her planet’s unsettled areas.”

  She flipped forward a few pages on the script. “So are we going to read more?”

  Rohrig shook his head, and then broke into an unexpected, slight smile. “No. We’ll be sending the contracts to Whitehead in the morning. Welcome aboard baby.”

  “Oh,” she said. He extended a hand to her and she shook it, weakly.

  Mitchell also extended his hand and when she reached out to shake it, he grasped it in both of his hands and said “We’re very excited to have you.”

  It all became real to her that night when she met Gerry, Mitchell and all her new co-cast members at a back lot bar called Wild Billy’s. There was David Warberg, an actor with a high forehead and dark, arresting eyes who played Admiral Vantage and Neil Neiman, who looked different from the pictures in the publicity stills Jacy had seen. She realized that they must put light contacts on his eyes to go with the strange knoblike protrusions on both temples and pale makeup he wore as Korg. In the light of the bar she could see that he actually had rather tanned skin and warm blue eyes to go with his wheat colored hair. David said “We’re so glad they went after you. I was afraid we were going to end up with some dumb blond shiksa.”

  Jacy backed away from him and paused for a moment to think before reacting to his comment. She was half Jewish and completely offended by his backhanded compliment. Neil distracted her by curling a friendly arm around her back while he led her around to a few of the other tables and stools to introduce her to her new colleagues. She met Diahann Carroll, a beautiful black woman about her own age, with honey-colored flawless skin and slanting eyes. She portrayed communications officer Shakhti. A few stagehands in t-shirts and black satin baseball style jackets embroidered with “Galaxia” surrounded other members of the cast including Rex Hashimoto, a grinning slim oriental who played Lieutenant Moriyama and Tom Culpepper, who was the Australian computer expert Reg Albright. Jacy had heard his down-under accent in the one show she’d managed to watch before flying in for the audition. She was surprised to learn that he was actually from Nebraska and had broken into Hollywood after lighting up the Midwestern collegiate theatrical world. “We’re onto something special here,” Tom said softly, leaning in to her. “This is going to be a classic. The show’s light years ahead of its time.”

  Jacy tried to meet everyone connected with the new world she would occupy, but like a hornet at a picnic, David Warberg kept coming back to her. They were the same height. When he would look across at her, one eye would loom larger than the other. He would also squint. Both of these characteristics caused him to look older than his years. As he spoke he gestured with his hands and the edge of his cocktail glass. Tw
ice Jacy had to jump out of the way of sloshing liquid. She was wearing a designer navy velvet dress and wanted to keep whiskey and sticky soda off of it.

  “Hey you,” Warberg said, gesturing wildly to a pair of bar stools “What say we try to get to know each other.”

  “Yeah, I think you’d better sit down,” Jacy said, tugging him by the elbow toward a stool. When they were seated near the bar, Warburg looked at her with a goofy grin.

  “What are you drinking, my lady?”

  “Cranberry juice if they have it. Club soda and a twist of lime if they don’t.”

  He backed away from her, giving a look of exaggerated disbelief. “On the wagon are we?” He looked down at her waist. “You get any smaller in the middle and you’ll break in half when you bend over.”

  “Ha, ha,” she said. “I’d just prefer not to have a drink right now.” At that moment, someone switched Buddy Holly on at the jukebox.

  The next time Warberg spoke he had to shout. “Rayner. Jacy Rayner. Is that a real name? Can’t be, in this town. My last name’s not real, either. I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours. Deal?”

  She shrugged. “Okay.”

  “Moskowicz,” he blurted out.

  “Rayner,” Jacy said.

  Warberg’s features twisted into a grimace of disgust. “What? Nobody who’s anybody uses their real name. Didn’t your agent try to get you to change it?”

  “He said it sounded fine.”

  Warberg shrugged. He paused to groove to the music for a moment then continued. “So, you married?”

  “No.” She had assumed it was common knowledge and wondered if her face showed how annoyed she was. Years of working with directors, producers and lawyers made her dislike the habit of people asking questions when they already knew the answers.

  “Ever been?”

  “No.”

  Warberg back away again, giving a look of confused bewilderment. Jacy decided that at some point in his career he must have been a stage clown or done opera. “No? Well how old are you?”

  She couldn’t contain it any longer: “How many times have you had the clap? What are we getting at here?”

  “Ooooh. Touchy. Just asking. Well, you were in ‘Pretty Maids in a Row,’ right? Looked like you were nineteen or twenty. That was what, twelve years ago?”

  “Yeah. And?”

  “Thirty one or two and never been married? Someone who looks like you? Something wrong with that picture.” As if on cue, a waitress brought a tray filled with drinks to them. She lowered down to offer the club soda and lime twist to her. Jacy accepted it and looked down at Warberg who was giving her a knowing, sidelong look.

  “Something you want to say?”

  Warberg shrugged. “Maybe you don’t like us? Men?”

  Jacy could feel her shoulders tense up. He was getting into a strange area.

  “Oh, it’s okay,” Warberg said, raising his hands in a faked, overdone gesture of cowering. “There’s more than just a few women like that in this town. Your secret would be safe with me.”

  Jacy suddenly had an epiphany. “Ok, sir,” she said, stressing the salutation, making it sound derogatory. “Are you trying to get me pissed off so our scenes together will be fierier? That’s an old, tired ploy.”

  “What?”

  She examined his face, to see if he was just playing dumb or if he was truly having trouble comprehending her. His eyes were blinking rapidly and his head wavered back and forth slightly. He was, she decided, first class fodder for some mental toying. She saw an ashtray with disgusting crushed cigarettes in it beside his elbow. “Say, I’ve got an idea,” she said. “Let’s play a word game.”

  Warberg’s eyes had narrowed and then he nodded slightly.

  “Think of a language we both share, or our parents shared. Well, my mother’s parents and your parents actually. Now, there are some objects on this table, and the word for them rhymes with a word in that language. Can you guess which word I’m thinking of?”

  Warberg pushed away from the bar and glanced around. “What, glasses?”

  “No.”

  “Coasters?”

  “No.”

  “Ashtray?”

  “No.”

  “Well what then? I give up.”

  “The object I’m thinking of is inside of a larger object.”

  Warberg looked at the ash tray again. “What, cigarettes?”

  Jacy circled her finger in the air and widened her eyes, to show him he was getting warmer, drawing the answer out of him. “Shorter,” she said.

  “What, butts?”

  Jacy tried to smile exaggeratedly for him.

  “Butts, butts, buttsputzhey, are you calling me a putz?”

  She lifted herself off the stool, swirled around and started to walk away. Over her shoulder, she said “If the shoe fits...”