The Love Machine Page 4

  “Why doesn’t he just say higher ratings?” whispered someone near Ethel.

  Someone else muttered, “See you in the unemployment-insurance line.”

  Randolph Lester continued, “IBC’s policy has always been—” He stopped as the door opened and Robin Stone swung into the room.

  There was a small spatter of applause, but something in Robin’s eyes made it die before it began. Then he grinned and they all felt like ridiculous children who had done something foolish but were forgiven.

  Robin Stone glanced down the table quickly, his eyes resting on no one. It was as if he was summing up the number of people, the room, the setting. Then he flashed an easy grin. Ethel noticed that everyone’s resistance seemed to liquefy. The charisma of that grin was like a voltage of paralyzing electricity. To Ethel he was suddenly more desirable than any movie star. God, to break through that steel façade … to make this man tremble in her arms … to control him … even for a second! From her distance at the end of the table she could stare at him without catching his attention. She noticed suddenly that he smiled only with his mouth. His eyes were cold.

  “I’ve studied the news operation,” he said quietly. “Each and every one of you is good. But IBC is dragging in the ratings. We’ve got to add some juice to the operations. I’m a newsman—remember that. First, last and always. This is my first shot as an executive. But I will also function as a newsman. In the Air Force, when they finally stuck a couple of bars on my shoulder, I still flew a plane as a fighter pilot.”

  Ethel watched him intently as he spoke. He was handsome, cold-looking but handsome. He had to be almost six three, and not an inch of flesh to spare. She had to diet. He was grinning again. He could win the war with that smile alone.

  “I intend to stay with the action here. This summer I want to build a top team to cover the conventions,” Robin continued. “By then Andy Parino, from our Miami station, will be established on the network—he’ll also be part of our convention team. I want to add to the combination—not eliminate.” He turned to Randolph Lester. “But first of all, suppose we go round the table and you introduce everyone to me.”

  The two men walked around the table and Robin shook hands with each person. His friendly grin was intact, but his eyes were remote and his greeting impersonal. It was almost as if he had never seen any of them before.

  When Lester’s eyes rested on Ethel, he seemed surprised, hesitated a second, then quickly passed by her. The entire procedure went so quickly that Ethel was unaware of the deliberate slight. She watched them return to the head to the table. But Robin didn’t sit down. His eyes scanned the table and rested on Ethel.

  He pointed to her. “I don’t believe we were introduced.”

  She stood up. “I’m Ethel Evans.”

  “What is your function?”

  She felt her face grow warm. “I’m with the public relations office …”

  “Then what are you doing here?” He was still smiling and his voice was gentle, but the eyes chilled her.

  “Well … I thought … I mean, someone has to be assigned to News. To publicize any new ventures. I figured you’d need someone.” She sat down quickly.

  “When I want someone, I’ll notify the publicity department,” he said with the same half-smile. “Now suppose you return to wherever you came from.” Every eye watched her as she walked out of the room.

  Outside in the hall, Ethel leaned against the door. She felt physically sick. She wanted to run away from that conference room—she could hear him talking inside—but she stood there. She couldn’t move … she was in a state of shock.

  Then she heard Lester ask Robin whether he wanted Mondays set aside for the weekly meetings.

  “There will be no weekly meetings,” Robin answered. “I call them as I see them. But I want one thing changed—”

  There was a second of silence. She knew everyone was leaning forward intently. Then Robin’s voice: “Get rid of this table, I want a round one.”

  “A round one?” This was Lester.

  “Yep. A great big round one. I don’t like to sit or stand at the head of a table. I don’t want seats assigned. If we work as a team, we sit as a team. Get me a big round table.” There was a moment of silence, then everyone began to talk at once and she knew Robin had left the room. She heard them chattering with nervous relief. They’d begin to file out in a second! She dashed down the hall. She couldn’t wait for the elevator—she didn’t want to face them. She ran to the stairway and ducked into the Ladies’ Room on another floor. Thank God, it was empty. She gripped the sink until her knuckles were white. Tears of humiliation ran down her face. “You son of a bitch, I hate you!” She started to sob. “I hate you!” She wiped her eyes and stared into the mirror. A fresh flow of tears spilled over. “Oh God,” she begged, “why didn’t you make me beautiful?”

  FIVE

  AFTER HER DISASTROUS EVICTION from Robin’s meeting, Ethel holed away in her office for the rest of the day. She didn’t want to run into anyone in the halls—she was positive they were joking about her unceremonious departure.

  She put the time to good use and typed out all the releases that had piled on her desk. At six thirty, the offices on the entire floor were empty. In her concentration on her work most of her humiliation had evaporated. Now she just felt drained—wrung out.

  She took her mirror and tried to fix her makeup. She stared at herself disconsolately. Her face looked lousy. She put the cover on her typewriter and stood up. Her skirt was a mass of rolled wrinkles. It was too tight. Ethel sighed. Everything she ate went straight to her hips. She really had to go on a strict diet.

  She took the elevator to the lobby. It was deserted but the coffee shop was still open. It was too late to go to Louis and Armand’s on the pretense of looking for someone and maybe having a few laughs at the bar. Everyone she knew would be gone by now. The dinner crowd would be coming in. She went into the coffee shop and ordered black coffee. Usually she took cream and two sugars. The diet was officially on! She watched the waitress pour it into a cup. The girl’s hands were red and cracked from washing dishes. She wondered about her. Didn’t she have dreams? Didn’t she hope to get somewhere? She had much more on the ball than Ethel, as far as looks went. She was slim and had a pretty face. Yet that girl was content to stand on her feet, slop up a wet counter, take crap from customers, smile at a dime tip—and Ethel Evans was making a hundred and fifty dollars a week!

  She got out her compact and retouched her lipstick. She was no beauty, but she got by. More than got by—but it would be nice to have a little something going in the looks department. Damn that separation in her teeth. And damn that lousy dentist who wanted three hundred dollars for a cap job. She had offered to sleep with him if he’d do it for free and he had thought she was joking. When she let him know she was serious, he pretended not to believe her. Then she realized he didn’t want her! Dr. Irving Stein, a lousy little dentist, didn’t want her! Ethel Evans who only fucked the big boys—who was known at IBC as the “celebrity-fucker”!

  She walked out of the coffee shop and hesitated in the lobby. She didn’t want to go home. This was the night her roommate bleached her hair and the whole place would be a mess. But it was a good arrangement, sharing an apartment with Lillian, who worked at the Benson-Ryan agency. Their hours were alike and they dug the same scene. They had met at Fire Island. That had been a great summer. Six girls had anted up to share a cottage. They called it the House of the Six Swingers. They had a blackboard and kept score. Every time one of them banged a guy, the others had to put a dollar in the kitty. And at the end of the summer the girl who had banged the most men won the pot. Lillian had beaten Ethel out by more than a dozen men. But then Lillian wasn’t choosy. She was a good girl, a fun girl, but a slob. She’d even bang an assistant director. In Ethel’s book, an A.D. couldn’t qualify for anything but a few laughs at Louis and Ar-mand’s bar, if she was desperate.

  She was suddenly conscious that the doorman
was staring at her. She left the building and started to walk. Maybe she’d stop at P. J. Clarke’s.

  They were three deep at the bar and she connected with some agency men. She stood there for over an hour, exchanging dirty jokes, toying with one beer, her eyes watchful for some good prospect at the door. Someone who might buy her dinner… .

  At seven thirty she saw Danton Miller walk in alone. She wondered where in hell was Susie. He looked straight through her without even nodding and joined some men at the other end of the bar.

  Another hour passed and then as if a timer went off, the agency men suddenly gulped down their drinks and raced to catch the last decent commuter train. And not one of the bastards picked up her check. She was hungry now. If she went inside and had a hamburger, Lillian would be through with the peroxide and jazz by the time she got home.

  She sat alone at a small table and ate the hamburger. She was starving but she left half the roll. Damn, why had she had the beer? She weighed a hundred and forty now. Well, she had a small waistline and her boobs were sensational. Size thirty-eight—upright and firm. Her problem was her ass and thighs. If she didn’t get it off now, she’d never lose it and next month she was going to be thirty. And still not married!

  She could have been married, if she had wanted to settle for a civilian—the cameraman at CBS or the bartender in the Village. But Ethel wouldn’t settle for anything less than a top celebrity. A one-night stand with a celebrity was preferable to a mediocre existence with a nobody. After all, when she held a movie star in her arms and he murmured, “Baby … baby,” as his climax came, that moment made up for everything in the world. During that one moment she was beautiful—she was someone. She could forget who she was… .

  She had always wanted to be beautiful, even as a child. Fat little Ethel Evanski from Hamtramck in Detroit. Eating mashed potatoes and fried onions, listening to everyone on the block talk Polish, playing potsy, double Dutch, double Irish, reading movie magazines, sending for genuine autographed pictures of Hedy Lamarr, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable. Sitting on the front steps and playing “The Game”—talking dreams and pretending they were real—with Helga Selanski, a stringy-haired little Polish kid the same age. The whole world was Polish on that block in Hamtramck. And the second-generation Poles seemed locked in, destined to marry their own kind. They went to movies and saw that there was another world, but it never occurred to them to try and enter it. But to Ethel, movies and the places she saw on the screen weren’t merely two hours of silver escape. Hollywood was a real place. New York and Broadway actually existed. At night she would stay awake and listen to the radio, and when the voice announced that the music was emanating from the Cocoanut Grove in Hollywood, she would hug herself with excitement—at that very second, the beautiful music she listened to was being listened to by the famous stars who were there. For that one moment, there almost seemed to be physical contact, like she was there.

  Ethel had always known she would leave Hamtramck. Getting to New York was Phase One in her dreams. One night when she and little Helga were listening to a band coming from the Paradise Restaurant in New York, Ethel began “The Game.” Planning what she would wear when she grew up and went to such a place—what movie actor would escort her. Usually Helga played along with The Game. But on this night, Helga suddenly protruded her bony jaw and stated, “I’m not playing anymore. I’m too big.” Ethel had been surprised. Usually she could make Helga do anything, but this time Helga was stubborn. “My mother says we shouldn’t talk and play like this, it’s time for us to be practical and not play make-believe games.”

  Ethel had answered, “It’s not make-believe. I’m going there someday, and I’ll know movie stars and they’ll take me out—and kiss me.” Helga had laughed. “Like fish! Kiss you! Oh Ethel, I dee-double-dare you to say that to anyone else on the block. You’re not going anywhere. You’re going to stay right here like all the rest of us and marry a nice Polish fella and have babies.” Ethel’s eyes had narrowed. “I’m going to meet stars … go out with them … maybe even marry one.” Helga laughed. “See, my mother’s right. She says it’s all right to talk about Hollywood if we know we’re just dreaming, but not to believe that it’s true. You’re crazy. And you won’t go out with movie stars. You’re Ethel Evanski and you’re fat and ugly and live in Hamtramck, and what movie star would want to go out with you!”

  Ethel had slapped Helga—hard. But she was frightened because she was afraid Helga might be telling the truth. But she wouldn’t stay on the block and marry a nice Polish boy, raise kids and make mashed potatoes and onions! Why had her mother and father come from Poland if it was to live in a little Poland in Detroit?

  The incident that triggered “The Game” into determined action was Peter Cinocek, a boy with protruding ears and large red hands who had “come to call” when she was sixteen. Peter was the son of a friend of Aunt Lotte’s. He was a “real catch,” half Polish, half Czech. Her mother and father had looked idiotic with delight at the prospect. She recalled how diligently her mother had cleaned the house. Everything had to be spotless the night Peter Cinocek came to call. She could still see them. Her mother nervously waiting, in a freshly ironed housedress. Her father skinny and bald, so old. God, he had only been thirty-eight. He had seemed worn and bloodless in her eyes, but her mother had appeared massive and strong.

  She would never forget the night Peter Cinocek arrived. First she saw the big ears, then the pimples on his neck surrounding a great red boil that had not quite matured. But he could have been Clark Gable the way her mother had beamed as she placed a pitcher of lemonade on the porch and discreetly disappeared into the kitchen to wait.

  Everyone on the block waited. Everyone in the small row of houses knew a “suitor” had come to call. She sat on the swing with Peter Cinocek. They sat in silence, listening to the creak of the swing, to the whispers of the neighbors on the porch that adjoined theirs. She could still see that house. A small cubicle, sandwiched in a long block of identical small frame houses. Every house had the same broken-down porch, the same small dinky dining room, the tiny living room, and the kitchen where everyone spent most of their time. And, oh God, the endless garbage pails and the cats that frequented the back alley. Even now she could still hear their mating sounds, and some disgruntled neighbor tossing out a pail of water to shut them up. Either their aim was bad or the cats were extremely passionate, because after a brief lull the mating yowls commenced again.

  She thought back to that night when she sat on the creaking swing and listened to Peter Cinocek. He told her about his job at the A&P, then he took her hand in his. It felt moist and limp.

  And he told her how he hoped to have a home just like this and many many children. That’s when she had bolted off the swing and run! Of course she came back, when she was sure the big-eared Peter had gone. Her folks had laughed. In Polish they kidded, “Little Ethel, she was scared of a boy. Ah, but she was born to have children—nice broad hips, she would have an easy time.”

  Ethel was silent, but she doubled her efforts at school and that summer she got a job in an office in downtown Detroit and became fairly efficient as a secretary. She never dated. But she was not unhappy. She was waiting. Saving all her money—and waiting.

  When she was twenty she had saved five hundred dollars and she came to New York. Her final job in Detroit had been in the publicity department of a small advertising agency. In New York she landed in the secretarial pool at a large advertising agency. Ethel’s big chance came the day a drunken movie idol who was appearing on one of the agency’s shows wandered into the office. She had been thrilled to follow him back to his hotel. He had sobered instantly when he found he had taken a virgin. But he had been too drunk to remember that the virgin had practically raped him. He was frightened there might be repercussions. He offered her money. Ethel haughtily refused. It had been love, she insisted. His panic mounted. He was married and loved his wife. Was there anything he could do for her? Well, she explained she wasn�
�t exactly thrilled being in the secretarial pool … He had acted immediately. With quick finesse and help from his agent he arranged for Ethel’s transfer to the New York publicity office of his movie company.

  This was smorgasbord for Ethel. She met a lot of drunken actors, even some sober actors. And she did it all for love. The word spread, and Ethel’s career had begun. When an opening came in the publicity department at IBC, Ethel took it. After all, she had practically gone through the movie company’s talent list. IBC offered more money and a whole new arena with its ever-changing shows. She was good at her work and superb at her hobby—her job was secure at IBC.

  She was well aware that her reputation had traveled from coast to coast. She enjoyed the notoriety, even her title. One of the Six Swingers from Fire Island had gone to work in Los Angeles in the publicity department of Century Pictures. She and Ethel exchanged voluminous letters. Ethel described every detail of each current affair, gave the man a rating, and even included the size of his equipment. Ethel had a funny style and Yvonne, her correspondent, had Ethel’s letters mimeoed and they passed freely around the office. When Ethel learned this, she took even greater pains to be more descriptive. It worked almost like a paid ad for her. Many big names called her when they came to New York. Famous men … beautiful men… .

  Often she wished Helga could see her on some of her dates with the handsome stars. Helga must be faded and loaded with kids by now. Helga had married Peter Cinocek!

  She looked up suddenly. Danton Miller was standing at her table. He was very drunk.

  “Hello, baby,” he said with his Cheshire smile.

  She smiled casually. “Well, well, if it isn’t City Lights.”

  “Meaning what?” he asked.

  “Like the picture of the same name. You only recognize me when you’re drunk.”

  Dan pulled up a chair. He laughed. “You’re a funny girl.” He waved for another drink. Then he looked at her with a grin. “They say you’re the greatest. Do you think I should lay you?”