“Chief, the phone’s for y’all!” It was Marissa LaTerre, the black drag queen from two doors down. “Come on, y’ole redskin, you. Man on the phone got me all wet with that sexy voice a his.”
“Wet!” Harry said. “What, he make you piss your pants?”
Harry, long used to being called “chief,” pulled the door open to behold the slender, 6'4” man with dark coffee skin and features as delicate as a first kiss. Without her makeup, lamé outfits, and wig, Marissa was just plain old Morris Terry, formerly of Camden, New Jersey and myriad points in between.
“He says it’s about a part, chief,” Morris cooed like a teenage girl, but it simply didn’t work without the feminine accoutrements. Frankly, delicate features notwithstanding, his golf ball — ball Adam’s apple and towering stature made it a tough sell to begin with. “Y’all think if I do him, there’ll be a part in it for Marissa?”
Harry didn’t answer, pushing his way past Morris-Marissa and to the pay phone, its receiver dangling in midair.
“Yeah,” he barked. “Who is this?”
“Harry Garson, is that you?”
“Last time I checked. Who is this?”
“Dylan Rothenberg, Irv’s kid.”
“Irv’s kid?” Harry was drawing a blank.
“Your old agent, I’m his youngest boy. Remember me? You used to come to my birthday parties when I was little. I’ve got home movies. You gave me my first cigarette and first sip of scotch.”
“Sure. Sure. I remember you. You were the blond-haired kid with the blue eyes. You looked like your shiksa-goddess mother. What was her name... Kitt, right? Kitt was her name. Christ, she was hot.”
“And you’re still the picture of tact and diplomacy, I see.”
“Sorry, kid.”
“No worries, Harry. She still speaks fondly of you as well.”
Harry wisely shifted gears, remembering he’d once nailed Kitt Rothenberg after a movie premier Irv was too sick to attend. “So what’s this about a part? You following in your old man’s footsteps?”
“God no, I teach physics at Hofstra University on Long Island. Someone tracked me down because of my dad having been your agent. I still have some friends and contacts back home who found you for me.”
“So you found me, kid. Now what?”
“You got a pen and a piece of paper?”
He knew he didn’t, but Harry unconsciously patted his pockets.
“Here, honey, you looking for these?” It was Morris, who’d been watching the whole time, handing Harry a little yellow note pad and a pencil. “You can thank me later.” Morris blew Harry a kiss.
They made quite the couple, strolling down Sunset: Harry, stoop-shouldered in his pink Salvation Army leisure suit and the now 6’7” Marissa in her heels, khaki miniskirt, fishnets, and green chiffon blouse. Harry didn’t like acknowledging it, but age and too many Maker’s Marks had rendered his once steel-trap memory rusty and full of holes. Lines, no problem. He could remember reams of dialogue like when he played Geronimo in Mission Apache or the rebel brave Eyes Like Knife in the cult favorite Hunting Ground. He tested himself, running lines with his ersatz escort before they left for the audition.
Harry’s trouble was with figures and his sense of direction. His navigation system was shot and he couldn’t recall phone numbers for shit, not that he’d been in need of that facility any time recently. What Harry needed was someone’s help getting him to the address on Sunset, and it wasn’t like he had thousands of eager candidates from which to choose. He supposed he might’ve gone stag and taken a taxi, but that meant he’d have to pay cab fare in both directions. In turn, that meant he would have to sacrifice a few meals this week. He’d had to do that a lot lately. When he’d weighed the unlikely prospect of getting the part and a paycheck versus lost Big Macs, Whoppers, and Potato World cheese fries — his favorites — Harry decided Marissa’s company and help was worth the four bus fares.
“Will you slow up, goddamnit!” he growled at Marrisa. “You take longer strides than a fucking giraffe!”
“I didn’t know giraffes took long strides when they were fucking, chief.”
“Funny lady.”
“Streisand already got that part.”
“You’re so tall, they could have made a disaster movie about you in the ’70s: Towering Transvestite.”
“Steve McQueen and Paul Neuman can climb all over me whenever they want. Here we are,” Marissa said, looking up at the nondescript building wedged between a dry cleaner and an abandoned music store.
The interior of the building was even less impressive than its exterior. Harry had seen furrier putting greens than the threadbare carpet that lined the lobby floor. Come to think of it, he’d seen cleaner putting greens, and putting greens were half dirt. It wasn’t encouraging and all he could think about as he and Marissa rode the creaking elevator up to the fourth floor were the burgers and cheese fries he’d sacrificed to cover the public transportation. Still, when the elevator jerked to a stop at four, Harry took his traditional deep breaths and mentally flicked up his on switch. Irv Rothenberg had always said that no one auditioned like Harry.
“I got stars in my stable, sure,” Irv once told a junior associate, “but Harry Garson is the guy who bought my house and paid for my first son’s bar mitzvah. He’s automatic, like a given in geometry. He gets the audition, he gets the part.” Problem was that after Crazy Cavalry, Harry couldn’t get many auditions. Charm is less charming on a typecast actor with a bad off-screen rep and too many years on his bones.
“This is the place,” Marissa said, reading Harry’s chicken scratch off the sheet of yellow paper. “The Rights Agency.”
Now this was better, Harry thought. The carpeting in the fourth-floor hallway was clean, and while the pile didn’t exactly tickle your shins, it was at least soft under your shoes. And he liked that the company name was painted in gold and black on the door the way people with class did it in the old days. No cheap plastic piece-of-shit sign or gold-plated tin placard. Class. Harry appreciated class.
“You going to wait for me here or downstairs?” he asked.
“No way, chief, nuh uh. I didn’t take y’all to the church just to get jilted at the altar.”
Harry thought about arguing the point, but he knew better than to use up his limited energy on futile arguments. He knocked, turned the knob, and strode in, his escort looming behind him. The eyes on the two well-dressed men inside the office got big as dinner plates at the sight of Marissa LaTerre. Harry had expected nothing less. Helen Keller, he thought, would’ve gotten big eyes in the presence of the power-forward drag queen, especially dressed up in that outfit.
“I’m Harry Garson,” he said, walking up to the older of the two men. He slid his ancient black-and-white head shot and CV across the top of the fancy etched glass desktop.
“Paul Spiegelman,” the man replied, shaking Harry’s hand. His eyes were still on Marissa. “This is my partner, Mel Abbott.” Spiegelman nodded his head at the man at the adjoining desk. Abbott, who looked about thirty — twenty or so years younger than his partner — stood and shook Harry’s hand.
“And this is...” Abbott said, gesturing at Marissa.
“My agent, Marissa LaTerre,” Harry said, immediately regretting it. He was more nervous than he suspected he would be and the words just came out.