Show Business Kills Read Free Page B

script, knowing she
     sounded a little too hysterical, thinking too late that maybe it was the progesterone she was taking that was talking for
     her. It made her moody and blue and she always thought of it as her “bitch pill,” because it also sometimes made her paranoid
     and panicky. Maybe Ed would tell herwhat she wanted to know about Monday’s script and everything would be fine. That Lydia would never shoot Maggie.
    But Ed Powell had a suspiciously flustered look on his face that confirmed her fears. “Janny, chill out. Maggie Flynn’s a
     linchpin in ‘The Brighter Day’ family. She’s not going anywhere. Starting next week she’ll be in the hospital for a while
     and you can have a vacation. You always say you never get a chance to be with your little boy. So this little break’ll give
     you some time off.”
    “I’ll be delighted to stay home, but I need to know you’re telling me the truth, Ed. I was able to adopt a child as a single
     woman, and buy a house, because you always tell me I’m here to stay.”
    “Darling girl, you are.”
    “I told you my sister in Pennsylvania lost her job, so I have to support her now,” Jan said, suddenly afraid that she might
     cry.
    “Right,” Ed said. “I know all about your sister, and I sympathize.” Then he laughed and asked her, “What’s the name of that
     place again where you told me she lives? That funny name?”
    “Beaver Falls,” Jan said, and Ed’s face broke into a grin followed by a big toothy laugh. His face was so shiny it looked
     as if someone had just polished it.
    “I always laugh at that,” he said, “because it sounds as if it should be the name of a disease women get when they’re old.”
     He was still laughing at his own joke as Jan left his office in a more urgent panic than the one that had brought her there,
     and went downstairs to wardrobe.

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   2   
    L inchpin, my ass,” Gladyce Colby said, talking the way she always did, with her teeth clenched around a line of straight pins.
     “Ed Powell told Elwin Martin that
his
character was a linchpin, too.” Gladyce was fitting a dark green wool-crepe suit on Jan for tomorrow’s taping. Gladyce had
     been doing wardrobe on the show for twenty years, and Jan trusted her. “Then Ed fucked him over royally. Last year they used
     to joke about Elwin in the booth. Any time he flubbed a line, Ed would turn off the mike and say, ‘Elwin, baby, you’re not
     dead yet… but Doctor Kevorkian is starting the car.’ ”
    Jan laughed in spite of the ugliness of the joke.
    “This suit is great on you, hon,” Gladyce said. She had watched Jan’s body “matronize,” the breasts sag, the waist thicken,
     and though in Jan’s early days on the show, Gladyce would dress her in clingy little silk dresses, these days she dressed
     her in suits with long jackets. And never with any criticism or comment.
    She was choosing shoes with lower heels to bring in for Jan, too. Not just because they were more seemly for a characterof Maggie’s age, but because Jan’s feet were too tired to wear the high heels all day, the way she used to.
    “And you remember what happened to Elwin,” Gladyce said with eyebrows raised.
    Jan remembered. Elwin Martin was the actor who played Aubrey Flynn, Maggie’s husband, for ten years. Until one day, the producers
     decided Elwin was too dull, but they still loved the character of Aubrey. So they had the writers write Aubrey into a serious
     auto accident that took his Rolls-Royce into a crash-and-burn over a cliff in northern California. There was no sign of his
     remains.
    Six months later they had Maggie walk onto a set that was supposed to be a bar in the Virgin Islands, and suddenly, while
     a steel band played their song in the background, there was the new, improved Aubrey. Now he was played by Tom Patterson,
     a handsomer, younger-looking actor. And the truth was maybe Tom Patterson was too handsome and too young, and by comparison
     Jan