Showbiz, A Novel Read online

  Lawrence answered the call of Sweet Charity's “Hey, Big Spender” and invested a small fortune in the show. Fortunately for him, the Sweet Charity gamble paid off, as did several subsequent Broadway investments—which was not always the case for a Broadway show—and Lawrence became a regular in the Margolies office investing pool. He also became the unofficial “big spender” in Scarlett’s life.

  Lawrence was a venture capitalist by day, having made his fortune during the tech industry boom. Venture capital investing was nearly identical to Broadway investing, although Broadway was a lot more fun. Lawrence was brilliant with money but immature when it came to women, like a kid in the candy shop of Manhattan. He was far from serious boyfriend material, but that suited Scarlett just fine.

  Ironically, although Scarlett worked in a business that relied on massive gambles, in the heart department she played it very safe.

  However, having a man or two in her life kept her from being lonely. Plus, she always enjoyed spending time with Lawrence, and he was more than happy to introduce her to influential people whom she would need to know if she was to eventually take over Margolies' office. It was a good fit for both of them.

  “Are we still on for Friday night?” asked Scarlett, trying to wind down the conversation before he talked her into coming over after all. His penthouse across from Lincoln Center was only a few blocks away—an all-too-easy walk.

  “Wouldn’t miss it, Gorgeous. We have 8:00 p.m. reservations at Orso, but let’s grab a drink at Bar Centrale first.”

  She wasn’t a bit surprised at Lawrence’s plans for their evening. Both Bar Centrale and Orso were great places to see and be seen in Broadway circles, and Lawrence liked rubbing shoulders with the glitterati of New York theater. Not a night went by that you wouldn’t see Broadway denizens wheeling and dealing—at least the ones who could afford it. Drinkers and diners paid a steep bill when they were lucky enough to snag a reservation at any of the prime real estate tables inside those restaurants.

  “I’ll meet you there after work,” she said.

  “Sweet dreams, Gorgeous.”

  Scarlett hung up. She could picture Lawrence on his couch looking out over the city, probably contemplating who he should call next from his little black book. She may not have even been his first call of the night, which was fine by her; though she treasured her spot as the only theater person in his glamorous circle of jet-setting girlfriends.

  She finished her take-out and got ready for bed. It was a rare evening when she found herself home alone at a reasonable hour, since most nights were filled with theater obligations late into the evening. It was necessary that she keep up with not only the latest Broadway shows but also other performances and theater events around town. One never knew where the next big show or rising star would come from. She pulled her computer onto her lap to check the last of the day’s emails. Theater people were famously nocturnal, she had learned, in the city that never sleeps!

  There was nothing particularly urgent in her emails. She had learned long ago that working in a business that traded on theatrics meant that urgent and crisis were relative terms. In tonight’s inbox, there was no real drama. Scarlett had a sneaking suspicion that the real drama was yet to come.

  Scene 4

  Candace Gold’s driver dropped her off in front of the New York Banner an hour early the next morning. It was an impressive building, recently renovated for the bastion of journalistic excellence. Candace’s entire thirty-year career had been at the Banner, though only half of it had been in the illustrious position of Arts and Culture editor. The Banner had recently moved into shiny new offices on 6th Avenue, and that’s where Candace could be found nearly every day of the year, ever since her marriage and the rest of her personal life had circled and then gone down the drain, nineteen years earlier.

  No great loss, she thought daily.

  Her low heels echoed through the empty lobby and aggravated the pounding in her head—the result of another nasty hangover. She blamed her drinking habit on her high-stress job. Bourbon was her one comfort and only vice. After all, it was a tough time to be in journalism, and she hadn’t clawed her way to a top spot at the top paper only to be a victim of the changing times.

  Newspaper sales were down, online media was on the rise, and amateur reviewers and social media sites were putting critics out of business. Well, most critics. She had kept her theater critic, Ken Kanter, at the top of his game. Hiring him twenty years ago had been no accident, and Ken had eloquently stepped into the shoes of past Banner critics—the so called “butchers of Broadway”—ever since. Now he was gone.

  Dead.

  The articles and obituaries were already in the works. Her staff had probably worked through the night—not for the first time. She had kept an eye on their efforts via email, although she had been in no state to show up in person last night. But they didn’t need to know that.

  At least Kanter’s suicide will sell some papers, she thought as she sat down at her desk. She dry-swallowed two aspirin from a bottle that got so much use it never actually made it back into a drawer.

  She put her head in her hands. She needed to think, but her brain was fuzzy. She was sorely tempted to have a little hair of the dog. It wouldn’t be the first time she had spiked her morning coffee, but she couldn’t risk it that day. Her editor would be by any minute to find out her plans for ongoing coverage of the news, the theater industry fall out, and, most important, the critic’s successor.

  While she had been wishing for months that she and her managing editor could talk about something other than the fact that her department and her job were on the line, these weren’t exactly the circumstances she had in mind.

  And yet... as the aspirin kicked in and the throbbing in her head eased, an idea began to formulate. Maybe Kanter’s death was exactly what she needed.

  Scene 5

  By 10:00 a.m., it was already feeling like a long day at the office for Scarlett. Margolies was in one of his black moods. He was never a nice person under the best of circumstances, but his volatile moods, which were his greatest professional asset as well as his greatest liability, had only two settings: bad and worse.

  After the Thelma & Louise flop, Margolies intended to come back with a vengeance. His new Broadway musical, which had been in the works for nearly two years, would be by far the most ambitious project ever attempted by a Broadway producer. No one, least of all Scarlett, could question whether Margolies, of all the producers on Broadway, was up to the task. But Scarlett also knew better than anyone that that would test his professional credibility, and his finances, to the limit. It needed to be a hit of epic proportions.

  “Have the final contracts for the writers and director still not arrived from the lawyers?” shouted Margolies to Scarlett through the doorway that separated his tiny back office from the main office room that housed Scarlett’s desk, the intern’s desk, and the conference table. “Rehearsals start this week!”

  “They just came in. I’m going over them now, but they look pretty good,” replied Scarlett. She felt like she had practically earned a law degree from the amount of time her job required her to spend with the entertainment lawyers, negotiating royalty points, billing, rights of refusal, and the many pages of details that went into the contracts of each and every person involved in a Broadway show.

  “Glad to know those bloodsuckers did something right,” Margolies sneered.

  Scarlett couldn’t resist rolling her eyes. It was a move that did not go unnoticed by the current office intern, who was making final preparations for a meeting of the creative team that was starting in their offices in half an hour.

  “Glad to see he’s in a good mood today,” said the intern to Scarlett under his breath. Much like the Actresses in Margolies’ life, Scarlett was hard pressed to think of their intern as anything other than the intern. Usually well-intentioned
at the outset, these college kids were a staple in any Broadway producing office. Young aspiring producers, they would spend a semester in a producing office, doing the menial, mind-numbing tasks that are required in any understaffed and overworked office; more often than not, they got thoroughly disillusioned with the unglamorous, cut-throat, manic reality that was Broadway producing. Most were devastated to learn that every ounce of glitz and glamour that people associated with show business began and ended on the stage.

  The current intern was a doughy, baby-faced college junior who claimed he was tough enough to work in the notoriously demanding and difficult Margolies office, but he had been reduced to tears by that same demanding businessman on his first day of work. To the intern’s credit, he showed up the next day, and by all appearances he seemed like he was going to make it through the semester. That was not always the case.

  “You’ll understand when you meet the creatives. And don’t forget what I told you. If I see so much as a hint of any of this on Facebook or Twitter, you’ll be out of here before you even know what hit you.” Strict confidentiality was a key quality in their office interns. It was critical because their shows often revealed the less-attractive quirks and qualities of their celebrity collaborators. The up-close and personal nature of Broadway had a way of exposing vulnerabilities that celebrities could hide more easily in the somewhat-shielded film and TV world.

  “Don’t think I haven’t heard the stories,” said the intern with a grim look on his face.

  The intern was dressed up for the latest celebrity creative team. As he prepared a fresh pot of coffee, Scarlett could hear him humming a popular song by the pop-star writers of their next musical.

  The name of the epic new musical project? Olympus. Just as the Greek gods came down to earth from their lofty thrones on Mount Olympus to titillate, confound, and awe mere mortals, Margolies was bringing the majesty of that classic myth of Zeus, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite to the audiences of Broadway.

  Margolies stormed out of his office and took up his seat at the head of the conference table.

  “Let’s get this damn show on the road. Where is everyone?”

  Many producers favored round tables, which frankly would have fit better in their cramped office, but Margolies insisted on a rectangular table so that he could hold court at the head. It was a constant reminder that he was in charge. Just another of Margolies’ personal theatrics.

  Scarlett often thought that while Margolies’ production of projects on Broadway came and went, his magnum opus was the production of his own personality and career. To the outside world, he seemed like a brilliant but impulsive gambler with a notoriously fiery temper. It had become clear to Scarlett, however, that his image was actually a meticulously calculated persona.

  For all the pain and suffering Scarlett had been through, working with such an insufferable man, she still found him to be a fascinating character study. How much work it must be for him to maintain the façade! What must it be like, to be both revered and also deeply hated and feared? To have no family and no personal life to speak of? Scarlett could almost feel sorry for Margolies.

  “Scarlett, before they get here, I want you to reprint the final contracts…but shave a percentage point off the payment royalty amounts for the entire creative team. If they don’t notice and sign them, they are the idiots I think they are and don’t deserve the money. If they do notice, I’ll just tell them you’re the idiot who screwed up the contracts.”

  “Yes, sir.” It was par for the course. She’d take one for the team. Again.

  Maybe she’d feel sorry for him tomorrow. Today, like all too many days at the office, she just felt sorry for herself. It will be worth it, when I take over. Her mantra: It will all be worth it.

  Scene 6

  Reilly took up his usual bar stool at the second-floor bar of Sardi’s. Though several of his journalist and theater colleagues ribbed him for his loyalty to the old-school industry hang out, he still felt most at home in that restaurant, where decades of theatrical deals had been made. To some, it was corny; to Reilly, it would always be classic. It didn’t hurt that plenty of theater veterans still frequented the bar.

  His favorite bar stool allowed him to take in the view of the 44th Street Broadway theaters, where he always saw familiar faces coming and going, noting who was talking with whom. Familiar faces looked down on his perch as well—filling every spare inch of wall space were the famous Sardi’s caricatures of famous folks from the theater world, spanning nearly the last hundred years.

  It was his job as a theater journalist to stay abreast of the latest happenings. From that perch, he could keep an eye on who was climbing the stairs to his afternoon domain and decide if, through direct or overheard conversation, he could get some dirt for his daily sensationalistic column in the Manhattan Journal.

  The first new arrival to catch his eye was an attractive young woman in a zebra-print coat. She almost looked too young to be in the bar. She barely glanced at the other afternoon bar patrons and took up a seat at a bistro table by the window. There was no table service at the bistro tables near the bar. But on a quiet afternoon, the regular bartender, a long-time fixture in the venerable institution, wearing the signature magenta Sardi’s jacket and bow tie, called to her across the bar rather than making her come to him.

  “You’re here early today. Glass of white?”

  “That’d be fabulous, thanks.”

  Reilly caught her eye as she turned back to her table. For his trouble, he saw a spark of recognition in her blue eyes. His column in the Manhattan Journal had made him a celebrity in New York theater circles.

  Much to Reilly’s chagrin, though, his fame was a far cry from the celebrity attained by the late great Ken Kanter. Reilly’s column was a hit in New York, but Kanter had been read around the world. Cheers to Kanter, Reilly thought as he raised his glass of wine with a nod to the girl at the table.

  The bartender set her glass of wine on the bar. Reilly, never one to let an opportunity pass him by, snatched it off the bar before the girl could get off her stool and grab it herself. With his most charming smile, he delivered it to her table.

  “Things must be really bad in the newspaper business if Reilly Mitchell is moonlighting as a waiter at Sardi’s,” she said to him.

  While he’d never admit it, Reilly lived for these moments when he was recognized. Proof that he was somebody in the theatrical rat race where he had spent ten years of his career. The fact that the recognition came via a witty remark from the lips of a beautiful young woman made it all the better.

  “I expect a big tip,” Reilly responded with a wink to the bartender, as he helped himself to the empty tall chair at Scarlett’s bistro table and set down his own glass of wine. If his brazenness at inviting himself to her party of one bothered her, she didn’t show it. A good sign. The absence of a wedding ring is also promising, he thought.

  “So what’s a beautiful woman like you doing here alone at 4:00 in the afternoon?”

  She rolled her eyes, clearly the kind of girl who got her fair share of compliments. “Just one of those days.”

  “Reilly Mitchell,” he said, holding out his hand, “but you already knew that.”

  “Scarlett,” she said, giving him a firm handshake and taking her hand back quickly, despite his attempt to let their contact linger.

  My second flirtatious parlay, rebuffed, thought Reilly. Yet she hasn’t kicked me out.

  “I’ll admit I read your Broadway gossip column, just like everyone else.”

  “I prefer to think of it as investigative journalism, not gossip.”

  “Pretty words from a columnist who clearly revels in the misfortunes and tribulations of others,” she retorted.

  “The public has a right to know what happens in the back rooms of Broadway,” he joked with a twinkle in his eye.

 
“I’m sure your article yesterday on the ‘affairs’”—she made air quotes—“of Broadway’s leading men was vital to public awareness.”

  “I know a few members of the public, or rather, their wives and partners, to be exact, who were very interested.”

  “You’re terrible,” she said, but she had a smile on her face. “Seriously, though, do you really get off on writing this stuff? Leaving ruined marriages and ruined careers in your wake?”

  “You give me too much credit.”

  “You must really hate this industry.”

  “Actually, quite the opposite,” Reilly defended himself. It was turning into an oddly candid, though not unpleasant, conversation. “I’ve devoted my whole career to this industry, but sometimes I don’t like what I see. Someone needs to talk about it.”

  “Well, thank you, Reilly Mitchell, the Walter Cronkite of Broadway,” Scarlett quipped sarcastically.

  This girl has some attitude and isn’t falling for my charms, thought Reilly. It’s rare that someone has the nerve to talk to me like this. But he had to admit he was intrigued. He guessed she was an actress, from the looks of her, but that didn’t explain her confidence.

  Never one to shrink from a challenge and eager to spend more time with those beautiful lips and eyes, Reilly decided to up his game. He signaled to the bartender for another round for both of them. His glass was empty and hers barely touched. He'd better slow down. Then again, he was having fun, and his articles for the week were already turned in. He figured he deserved a break.

  “As it happens, I’m working on a big story right now. It’s going to be huge when it breaks.”

  “Jealous that Kanter stole your spotlight, huh? I hope you don’t try to top that,” she said. Reilly sensed a hint of flirtation in her voice. “May I ask what this ‘huge story’ is about?”

  “I would tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,” he said as he aimed his most charming smile in her direction.