They're Not Your Friends Read online

  Lem swallowed a piece of beef without chewing. If he were twenty years younger, he would have stared straight at Cyndi and said, “He must have been a good fuck, too.” Instead, he gulped the remainder of his water and said, “Well, that’s me. If you want an outside opinion, ask your father about Sir Lem.”

  Cyndi took a languid sip of her Pellegrino. “As I’ve already verbalized, my father’s only thinking about his golf game these days—and movies. He loves old movies. And quite honestly, my father was from a different generation. He doesn’t understand the celebrity paradigm of the new millennium. He kowtowed to the press, if you ask me. He thought a story in Personality was the measure of success, but I approach it differently.”

  “Oh really, Miss Bowman. And do tell how you’ve reinvented the art of publicity.”

  She didn’t catch his sarcasm.

  “My father would have been calling Personality months before anyone knew the name Chris Mercer. By the time Chris gained recognition, everyone would have been sick to death of him. People are screaming to know about Chris, and right now, we’re enjoying the sound of mass hysteria.”

  “Your father did all right in his day.”

  Cyndi laughed and examined her nails. “I love my father to death, really. But, quite frankly, there’s a whole new school of publicity out there. It’s important that you media people get on the same page with us.”

  “Huh?” Lem swallowed the remainder of his drink. “What the hell am I, bloody Rip Van Wrinkle?” Ambushed by the despondency in his voice, Lem burped out a quick laugh. “You can’t even order beef tartar in this town anymore.”

  A tsunami of sadness rushed through him, but Lem wasn’t about to lose his cool in front of the ice bitch. He forced out a weak smile and a fake laugh. “I miss my beef tartar,” he said too loudly, smacking his lips and slapping his hand on the table.

  Cyndi shot him a patronizing smile. “I’ll tell you what. I’m strategizing with Chris next week and I’ll mention you. At this point in time, that’s all I can do. In the meantime, fax me some samples of your work so I can show Chris.”

  Imagine! A tryout for some moronic actor. Shove it up your skinny ass, he wanted to scream. Instead, he said, “Wonderful, wonderful. I’ll get those over to you this afternoon. Thank you. Your father must be very proud of you. Actually, tell your father that Lem Brac said hello and that I think you’re doing a brilliant job.”

  Cyndi motioned for the waiter to bring the check. When it arrived, she reached out for it while Lem tried to grab it away. “No. I won’t have it,” he said. “I invited you.”

  Cyndi smiled broadly, squinting her eyes and flaring her capacious nostrils. It was as if she was saying, What a cute child, but you shouldn’t have broken your piggybank for me. Instead she said, “No. Please. No favors—no regrets. I’d feel better if I paid.” Her icy voice prompted Lem’s hand to leap off the check.

  “Thank you very much,” he croaked.

  TWO WEEKS LATER, he still hadn’t heard anything. Cyndi hadn’t even had the class to return his calls—and he’d left one every afternoon since their horrid lunch date. After that lunch, Lem had given Reggio the thumbs-up sign, saying it seemed promising. Reggio had regarded Lem skeptically at first. But soon he was caught in the excitement. “Way to go, Sir Lem,” he said, pumping a fist in the air. “You’re off the bench and back out in the field. Now let’s just finish the play.”

  Lem had actually been convinced that the minute Mercer saw his magnificent prose, he’d be dialing Sir Lem up himself. But there was nothing. Reggio wouldn’t look Lem in the eye anymore. You dropped the ball, Lem could hear Reggio thinking.

  And now it was a free-for-all, he was certain. Why else was Mike Posner being wined and dined by Bernie? Even Lot a Love waltzed into his office and announced that she was at a party chatting it up with Cyndi Bowman. “I lit-rully met every Next Big Thing. It was incredible. Cyndi told me that Chris lit-rully isn’t talking to anybody. I told her we were, like, dying to do a story on him?”

  As if that high-speed, squeaky-voiced, plastic bimbette was on a par with Sir Lem! There was nothing real about Lottie Love. Fake mammaries. Fake nose. Valley girl question mark lilt genetically encoded in her larynx. Lem couldn’t take it anymore. The whole staff seemed intent on undermining him under direct orders from Chief Saboteur Vincent Reggio.

  AFTER A LONG day at the office, Lem returned to his Beverly Hills apartment. The Sherman Oaks home had become his wife’s decades ago, so Lem moved back to the West Side, to an impressive address and an unimpressive apartment. When he first arrived from Great Britain, Lem had been shocked by the concatenation of ugliness that constituted a neighborhood. His Moorish-styled condo was no exception. The name, Palm Oasis, was scrawled along the side of the building like some sash on a beauty pageant contestant from the Ozarks who’d never make it anywhere near the finals.

  Safe at home, Lem grabbed a yellow legal pad and headed for the deck. It was less cluttered than his apartment, and the air was delirious with night jasmine. After the divorce, Lem had tried to rebuild a life for himself, and since his apartment was so small, he focused on his large wood-slatted deck. He had spent all his free time at nurseries picking out oleanders, verbena, bougainvillea, and cacti. He planted them in Greco-Roman-style clay pots, with gargoyles and Medusa’s heads and cherubs frolicking about. He pruned and watered them and replanted them when they outgrew the pots. He strung tiki lights along the sides of his Popsicle-style fence. And it was a magnificent jungle. Yellow, purple, red, and pink flowers bloomed and rioted around him, their sugary scents wafting throughout the otherwise dank apartment. During the day, butterflies gamboled among the flowers. At night, publicists and agents mingled in the Lem-made jungle. They’d drink and bullshit until the wee hours of the morning.

  Then sometime, a few years go, maybe even ten by now, maybe more, Lem stopped pruning. He wasn’t exactly sure why or when. It wasn’t as if it were a moment of revelation. One day he forgot, then the next and the next, until there was no point in trying to resuscitate his garden with water or fertilizer. He allowed it to quietly dehydrate and die. Now, the cracked clay pots were filled with dry bricks of dirt and a few straggly brittle weeds. The butterflies were long gone. So were the friends.

  What a waste of time, Lem thought as he shook his head. But he still enjoyed sitting outside rather than in his cramped apartment. There was a stale, brackish smell to his place that he couldn’t air out, even when he opened the windows and doors.

  During his heyday, Lem had written a couple of modestly successful unauthorized biographies. Paul Newman, Katharine Hepburn, Farrah Fawcett, to name a few. It had been years and years since he wrote a book—Lem had lost the patience it took to nurture anything, it seemed. But he decided it was time to try again. This time, he would tell his own story. The truth. He was sick of all the lies, half-truths, and spins. He had a warehouse full of anecdotes that just needed to be pruned and watered, if only he could focus. So far he’d written two hundred pages. The yellow sheets of legal paper were stained with ink, wine, and vodka, and his handwriting was barely legible. A few years ago, he would have polished off the book by now. He did have a title: They’re Not Your Friends: My Years with Celebrity. He began the tale with Franny Blanchard, honing and tweaking it for months. His agent, Al Ziegler, had read the first chapters and loved it, but Zig died of a heart attack a few months ago. In his place was another Cynthetica, who’d probably want to see an outline and writing samples.

  FRANNY BLANCHARD. HOW could someone who was part of his life for such a small amount of time still occupy such a big part of his memory? When Lem met Franny, she was a struggling actress who’d just landed a starring role on a new sitcom, Lisa the Love Witch. Their time together was full of promise. Franny Blanchard was full of promise. It was palpable to Lem. It radiated off Franny—energy and light bounced around her like lightning on a lake in a summer storm. She was beautiful, but it was something more than that.

  He’d n
ever heard of Franny, but he was already a star at Personality magazine when he got a call from a fledgling publicist named Thomas Bowman, who wanted to pitch him some stories.

  “Sound great, Thomas. Let me grab your phone number and I’ll get back to you—soon as my schedule clears.”

  Thom had laughed. “Listen, I wasn’t born yesterday. You’ll never call. You probably don’t even have any intention of taking my number, do you? At this moment, is there any type of writing device in your hand?”

  Lem smiled at his empty hands.

  “Come on, my treat. I promise you won’t be disappointed. We’ll make it a quick lunch.”

  “Listen, I wasn’t born yesterday either. Publicists don’t know the meaning of a quick lunch.”

  But something about Thom Bowman appealed to him. Maybe it was the tenor of his voice—deep and gravelly, the voice of a man you could believe in. Maybe he seemed smarter than most people Lem had met since his move. Maybe he reminded Lem a little bit of himself.

  They hit it off immediately. Both ordered numerous martinis and rare steaks with blood that dripped down their lips and formed puddles on their plates.

  Thom was tall—about six-three—with movie-star looks. He had dark thick eyebrows, deep-set blue eyes, and a square chin. He had moved to Los Angeles years earlier to pursue an acting career.

  “I love movies. Love ’em. Ask me anything, absolutely anything about movies and I’ll know. I can recite dialogue from every major movie. Casablanca. Gone With the Wind. The Wizard of fucking Oz. The problem is, I don’t recite it with feeling, with emotion, with empathy. I am an absolutely horrible actor, but I can sell ice to Eskimos. So I figured, if I can’t be an actor, I’d sell ’em.”

  “Makes sense.”

  Thom smiled. “You think so? Good.” Then he pulled out a headshot.

  “This is Franny Blanchard. She’s going to be huge. Huge. Isn’t she gorgeous? You have to meet her. I’ll call her right now. I’ll have her stop by. You can see for yourself. This woman is something else. You’ll see. Let me call her.”

  Lem laughed. “You’re quite persistent. But I’ve gotta get back to the office. Deadlines.”

  Thom stared hard at Lem and smiled. “That’s bloody bullshit. I know your magazine’s schedule. Your deadlines aren’t until Thursday. Come on; meet her. A quick drink. She loves strawberry daiquiris. She’ll love you.”

  Lem stared back. “The truth is, the magazine only runs stories on actresses who are huge—not on actresses who are going to be huge, according to their publicists. . . or their mothers.”

  “Trust me. She’s going to be enormous and then you’ll be begging me. I’m giving you first crack because, well, I like you.”

  Lem guffawed. “Your audacity is incredible. Did everyone else turn you down? I’ll tell you what, who else do you represent? Maybe I can work something out.”

  Franny Blanchard was Thom’s only client. He’d just met her a few days earlier during an audition for Lisa the Love Witch. The casting director had told Franny she had the part and told Thom, “Don’t call us. We’ll call you.” It had been rejection number 973. He was sitting in his broken-down Dodge Dart pondering his future when Franny asked for a ride home. It hit him then. He’d be her publicist.

  “Okay. I’ll meet her,” Lem said. “I don’t want you swinging from a noose on my account.”

  It turned out she was waiting in Thom’s car.

  LEM BRAC WAS thirty years old and too cynical to believe in love at first sight. But he met Franny and fell in love at the second strawberry daiquiri. She did, too, it seemed. For a few months, it was wonderful. He helped her rehearse. He’d type out his stories while she sat next to him reading scripts. He surprised her by convincing his editors to run a full-cover profile on this actress no one had heard of but whose series was about to air.

  “Trust me on this one. She’s going to be a star. We’ve got to catch her now before the competition does,” he said.

  “If you think she’s going to be huge, then she’s going to be huge. We trust your instincts, Lem,” they said.

  He even committed the cardinal sin of journalism—he let her read the article before he turned it in to his editors.

  “I love it, Lem, but please don’t quote my high school acting teacher. She hated me. ‘Franny didn’t show promise.’ What the hell kind of thing is that to say?”

  “It just shows how wrong she was and how far you’ve gone.”

  “It still hurts. Just because she didn’t see it doesn’t mean anything. And for my so-called best friend to say I was the class flirt, well, in Hollywood that means I’ll blow just about anyone.”

  She unzipped his pants. He made changes. It was a hagiography if ever there was one.

  “LISA THE LOVE Witch Reveals All” by Lem Brac. With a spell you were under her command. A few days after the story ran, she signed with a major agent. A few days after that, she signed a contract to play Lisa for a lot more money. A few days later, she landed a role in the next Clint Eastwood movie. And a few more days later, she dumped Lem Brac.

  “It’s too hard right now,” she said over the phone. “I don’t have time to give one hundred percent of Franny Blanchard to anyone.”

  “I don’t need a hundred percent. How about fifty?”

  She yawned into the phone. “We’ll talk tomorrow. I’ve got to get some sleep.”

  “Let me come over. I’ll tuck you in. I’ll read you a bedtime story and then I’ll go home. I need to see you.”

  Franny had laughed. “Oh Lemuel, you are naive. There are no bedtime stories in Hollywood, just movies to fall asleep to.”

  She had hung up. Lem knew she was gone for good. But it still shocked him the next day when he called the number and it had already been changed.

  LEM WAS SNAPPED into the present by his trilling phone. No one called him at home anymore. It was probably a telemarketer. When he picked it up, he was surprised to hear an agitated Reggio.

  “Any progress with Mercer? New York wants some news tomorrow.”

  California

  POSEUR

  CHAPTER 3

  MIKE POSNER KNEW THAT MOST OF THE PEOPLE IN THE CONFERence room despised him.

  He was twenty-nine. Handsome in a nonchalant kind of way. Talented. The heir apparent. Hell, he was Prince William of the Los Angeles bureau of Personality magazine. Big things were planned for Mike Posner. In case anyone doubted it, Vince Reggio announced it to all one hundred editors, writers, reporters, copy editors, researchers, and proofreaders assembled in the Los Angeles offices for three days of corporate seminars designed to unleash excellence in reporting, writing, and researching.

  “Mike Posner arrived less than a year ago. Already he has amassed more sources than most seasoned reporters do in a lifetime. His scoops have made him a regular on Access Hollywood, E.T., Extra, E. If he were any more dedicated, he’d be pitching a tent in front of Jennifer Garner’s house.”

  There were a few guffaws, a gentle roll of laughter, and some nervous giggles—the corporate laugh track, your reaction indicative of your power, ambition, or fear. There were smiles aimed at Mike, who sat at the head table next to Bernice Banks, the New York–based editor in chief. Bernie beamed and patted his back. Mike gave a quick grin and sipped at his water. Gee, I’m just trying to do my job.

  “During this conference, we’ve covered reporting techniques, research gathering, and the intricacies of the Personality paradigm,” Vince said as the staff nodded. Mike wondered if anyone knew what Vince was talking about. Bernie and Vince referred to the Personality paradigm constantly but had never defined it.

  As if reading Mike’s mind, Lem Brac cleared his throat and asked, “Would you be so kind as to expand on that for me? I must admit I’ve become unsure of its meaning.”

  The staff—even Mike—rolled their eyes and huffed. Bernie blinked slowly, sucked in a deep breath, and rubbed her temples.

  “Vincent, would you mind enlightening Mr. Brac?”

  Vi
nce’s eyes bugged out and he gulped some air. There was silence for a few moments. Then he said, “Well, Bernie, I couldn’t do it justice. I’d rather you lobbed this ball.”

  Vince held his breath as he waited for Bernie. She smiled at him and he exhaled.

  She cleared her throat. “Well, as most of you know, our stories all have the same format. The opening is a scene setter at the celebrity’s home, which really gives an inside look into the celebrity. We want our readers to feel as though they’re friends with Brad and Tom and Julia and Gwynie. So when a reporter scores an interview with say, Julia Roberts, the reporter must demand to go to her home to observe her routine. Be a fly on the wall. A great scene setter would be something like Danny cooking filet mignon while Julia plays with the twins. And we always love having dogs yapping away nearby. We love celebs interacting with animals. It makes them so human. Then follow this up with a really descriptive quote from Julia about why she’s so happy with married life, et cetera. Domestic scenes like this make a good P.P. Then back that up with quotes from some thirds, which as we all know are friends, family, and coworkers. Third till you hurt and then third some more.”

  As Bernie babbled on, Mike wondered if she believed what she was spewing. Julia and Danny would never even speak to a Personality reporter, unless accosted by one on a red carpet. And then they’d only recite wardrobe details.

  Mike flinched when he heard Bernie say his name.

  “And now back to business. Mike will discuss an equally important but often ignored piece of the reporting puzzle: source cultivating. For without gathering and nurturing sources, there would be no Personality magazine. Sources are the lifeblood of our publication. Here, the art of sourcing is more important than the art of writing. . . Mike?”

  Mike headed to the podium and shook Bernie’s hand. He looked out at his audience. Many eagerly clutched pens, waiting for him to bestow wisdom. Lem Brac rolled his eyes. But what else was Lem going to do?