George rejoined her with her request and sat down next to her in Shelley's lawn chair. He was in costume, and made-up to look much older than he'd looked the previous day. Actually, he was made-up less, to look his real age. He wore graying muttonchop whiskers, a very realistic mustache, and a stiff-collared, turn-of-the-century suit. He must not have been wearing the punishing underwear because he had a bit of a paunch today. He looked like a prosperous Victorian banker. He sat down very carefully to avoid wrinkling the suit and set his hat down on the grass beside the chair.
“I hear you're a very successful scriptwriter," he said bluntly. "I just wanted to ask you to keep me in mind for a role. I know the writer doesn't always have any say-so in casting, but suggestions that a role was created with a certain actor in mind can't hurt.”
Jane liked this approach much better than Angela's oblique obsequiousness. "What kind of a role are you interested in?" she asked, feeling utterly at sea. If she were a famous writer — a fabulous leap of imagination — would this be a logical question or was she blowing her cover?
“Anything. Anything at all to pay the taxes and mortgage," he said cheerfully.
“You can't mean that. Even a villain?"
“I'd be a hunchback child molester if the money was right," he said, then laughed at her surprised expression. "I don't know how many actors you know well, Mrs. Jeffry, but I'm the plumber kind."
“What does that mean?"
“Look, if I were a plumber, would I set myself up to only work on houses I felt were beautiful or had a sensible floor plan? Or worth more than X number of dollars? No. I'd work wherever I'd get paid. Same if I worked in a department store. I wouldn't say to a customer in the suit department that I didn't think his shape would do the reputation of my line of men's wear any good. I'd sell him the damned suit if he wanted it. Same with acting,in my mind. I'm an actor; that means I act. And if it means acting the part of a bartender with a facial tic, or a leading man, it's all the same to me."
“Well, that's a refreshing attitude."
“Not really. I think most people in the business feel that way, they just don't admit it. They dress it up in artistic crapola — you know, 'The role was small, but it gave me insights into the mind and soul of a waitress.' " He said this in a mocking voice surprisingly like Lynette Harwell's. "That's bullshit. Nobody can understand anybody else's soul. You just have to learn the lines and say them the way the director tells you to."
“What if you've got a lousy director?”
He shrugged. "Then you get a lousy movie. There's lots of those. But lousy or not, I've paid my kids' school fees, so what do I care? You'd be amazed how many rich actors there are that you've never heard of. Sometimes the really bad roles pay the best."
“You've got kids?" Jane asked, surprised. She'd never thought about any of these people being parents. Or going to the bathroom or doing anything else ordinary and human.
“Sure. I've even got a grandchild. A gorgeous little girl named Georgina, for me. Wish I had a picture along to show you. She's a doll."
“I'm confused," Jane said. "These aren't Lynette Harwell's children, are they?"
“Lynette? Have a baby?" He laughed. "No. Lynette wouldn't ever share a spotlight with a child, much less risk getting stretch marks. She'd have been the kind of mother who would make Joan Crawford look like Mother Teresa.”
He shifted around getting more comfortable, apparently happy to settle in for a long chat. "No, these children are from my first marriage. My wife was a dress extra and I was playing one of sixteen thousand Roman legionnaires in an old epic. Just a couple dumb kids, although she wasn't half as dumb as I was. Now Ronnie's a fat granny married to a retired dentist in Encino. He was an orthodontist to stars' kids and made a bundle. Ronnie still keeps a hand in the business, but not as an actress."
“But you were married to Miss Harwell, weren't you?"
“For about a minute and a half. We weren't together long enough to even use up the leftover wedding cake in the freezer before she'd gotten her claws into Roberto. And he didn't last much longer."
“Isn't it awkward working with them?”
Someone walking by him tripped and sloshed some coffee. George quickly picked up the costume hat he'd set down next to the chair and checked it for spots. Satisfied it was unharmed, he said, "Not for me. Roberto's unhappy with it, but that's his problem. He hates me. I think he feels that I deliberately unloaded shoddy goods on him. It wasn't deliberate, but she sure is shoddy."
“You really dislike her?"
“Mrs. Jeffry—"
“Jane. Please."
“Jane, in a business that attracts and creates gigantic egos, hers towers over everyone else's.
She's truly the only totally self-absorbed person I've ever known. To the point of psychosis, I believe. If you asked her what a mailman does for a living, she'd say he brings her mail. It would never cross her mind, such as it is, to imagine that anyone else gets mail, except those few she might write to. I honestly believe she'd have trouble understanding the truth if you told her. She must know there are millions of people in the world, but to her they're divided into fans of hers and those half dozen pseudo-people who aren't. I blame Olive as much as anybody."
“Olive? The older woman who's always with her?"
“Yes. Poor old Olive is both the perpetrator and the victim of the Ego That Ate the World. Lynette treats her like shit, but Olive seems to thrive on it. Do you know, when Lynette and I were first married, Olive actually expected to sleep in the room with us?"
“You're kidding!"
“I'm not kidding. And it gets worse! Lynette couldn't quite grasp why I objected," he said, shaking his head in wonderment. "I got Olive out of the bedroom, but I always suspected she was sleeping across the doorway in the hall, like a medieval serf. She was an actress herself once. Not a very good one, I'd guess."
“I can't imagine that."
“Lynette told me she was, but it is hard to picture. If I'm remembering right, she was one of those 'born in a trunk' kids. Too late for vaudeville, of course, but the parents were in some kind of touring company — a country and western road show maybe — and dragged her around, sticking her in their act, until she was a teenager, then she got away from them by becoming a nanny to Lynette's family. Lynette's mother was one of those real remote high-society types who only wanted to see the kids all spilled up for five minutes before dinner and it was Olive who filled Lynette's mind with the idea of acting. Olive found the teachers, took her to dancing lessons, made sure she got braces on her teeth, harassed the booking agents, set up her retirement fund for all I know. And created an egomaniac. Oh, well. To each his own, I guess.”
Interesting as this might be, it wasn't shedding light on the immediate problem. "So, you've played all kinds of roles then?" Jane asked.
“Just about anything you could imagine," George answered easily. "College profs, garbage collectors, sheriffs—"
“What about porn movies?" Jane asked quickly before her nerve failed.
George's head snapped around and he stared at her for a long minute before saying, with a laugh, "So the lurker's been gossiping to you!"
“Lurker?"
“Yeah, whoever was eavesdropping on Jake and me told the police and I guess is spreading the word far and wide.”
Jane prayed her face wasn't as red as it felt. "Oh, surely not," she said.
“Don't be embarrassed about knowing," Georgesaid in a kindly manner that made Jane feel even worse. "It's not something I take out billboards about, but it's not such a deep secret. Sure, I did a couple porn movies way back when. My wife had some kind of expensive female troubles after our second kid was born and we were on the brink of welfare. It was a job. And my wife approved. She even vetted the contracts. She was always good with stuff like that.”