Zeitgeist (7 page)

“But he’s here, Tamara. Khoklov is here in Cyprus.”

Now Tamara was nearing panic. “There’s a Russian here? There’s a Russian in this casino? Someone who knew me? Someone who could talk about me?” She stared at Starlitz, unable to conceal her terror. “Did you tell him about me?”

Starlitz lowered his voice. This wasn’t working out the way he’d hoped. “No, Tamara. I didn’t get around to telling Khoklov about you. Khoklov doesn’t know.”

“You’re lying,” she concluded in anguish. “Of course you told the Russian about me. Now some Russian is here to chase me, with his big Russian tongue hanging out. Oh, my God!” She put her hand to her forehead. “Men are so stupid!”

The extent of his misstep was now clear to Starlitz. The scattered, decentered entity that was Tamara Dinsmore simply couldn’t assemble a cogent narrative. There was no continuity in Tamara’s late-twentieth-century filmscript. No rewind button in there.

“The Russian doesn’t know about you,” Starlitz promised quietly. “I don’t have to tell him a thing.”

“Khoklov is here in the casino, yes? Where is he?” She began to gaze around in agitation. “
What
is he? He must be Russian Maphiya by now.…”

“Look, Tamara, I can handle all that, okay? Relax. You’re a Yankee businesswoman now, you’re Mrs. Dinsmore
from Los Angeles. Pulat Khoklov is this washed-up gun from Petersburg who’s running around on one lung. Pay no attention to him. He’s not even in your universe. This thing you once had with Khoklov, it’s gone, it’s not even of this world anymore. It’s yesterday. No one cares, no one’s counting.”

Tamara wasn’t mollified. “Why do
you
still remember?” she demanded shrilly. Her doelike eyes beneath their eyelid tucks were full of obscure pain. “Why do you remember all of that old time and that old world? Why do you lick your lips like that, why do you roll your eyes, why do you laugh at me? I hate you.”

Starlitz sighed. “Tamara, try and understand. You’re a pro and a trouper, a major asset to my operation. But if you wanna stay on my payroll, you just gotta come to terms with me being me. Okay? Being me has got its downside, I admit that. But I’m me right here and right now, I was me back then and back there, and I’m
always
me, and I plan to
stay
me.”

Starlitz held up his hand modestly. “I got sentimental about the Russian. That was lame. I was totally out of line there. We won’t discuss it anymore; it’s completely off the agenda. In the meantime, girl, mellow out! It’s cool, because you’re from L.A.! Take a couple of Halcion.”

At this sermon’s conclusion Tamara rallied herself. “Do you
have
some Halcion? I’m all out of Halcion.”

“Yeah, okay.” Starlitz quietly pressed two pills into Tamara’s taloned hand. “I was kinda saving ’em for the Italian One, but yours is the greater need, babe.”

Tamara signaled a bow-tied waiter and selected a double brandy sour. “No more surprises in personnel. All right? I
hate
surprises.”

“Right.”

Tamara drank and looked up wetly, her upper lip grainy with sugar. “Surprises never make me happy, Leggy. I had too, too many surprises in my life.”

“No problem, Tamara. I’m cool with that.”

“And fire the American One! Fire her tonight, while we still have a chance to hire a new one.” Tamara tossed
back the pills and drank. Then she stalked away, clacking.

Spotting her own opportunity, the French One sidled up to confront Starlitz. The French One was the group’s sophisticate. She had a good line in press repartee, and unlike her G-7 colleagues she fully understood how to sing and dance. The French One wore a ribbed designer bustier, a tricolor miniskirt, and a little red Marianne cap. She knew that the group’s stage gear was hopelessly louche and déclassé, but she was a pro, she was putting up with it.

The French One had brought the Canadian One in tow. The tartan-clad, toque-wearing Canadian One spoke a little French, which naturally endeared her to the French One. The Canadian One was polite, modest, and self-effacing, practically invisible in the group’s affairs. She was blond and petite, the third Canadian installment. (Two earlier Canadian Ones had angrily dropped out, once they’d realized that the act had no intention of breaking in the USA.)

“Comment allez-vous, la Française
?”

The French One put on her vinegar face. “Stop hurting my language.”

“Right, okay. Not a bad night, Canadian One, eh?”

“We need a favor,” said the French One primly.

Starlitz was properly cautious. “Just tell me what you want.”

“We want the Turkish girl to sing tonight,” announced the Canadian One.

“Gonca Utz? Wow. Why would you wanna do that?”

“I talked to Gonca tonight,” said the French One. “She can’t get a break in the music business. It’s sad. We’re famous musicians, so we want to help her.”

“Look, you know that Gonca can’t be in G-7, right? Gonca’s got no English.”

The French One nodded impatiently. “English, English, I know, I know. Who needs a Turk in G-7 anyway? Not me! But Gonca speaks French! Good French with good grammar, much better than her.”

“Hey!” scowled the Canadian One.

“Gonca sings in Turkish. She had classical Turkish voice training and can sing all the old songs. So I think, if Gonca sings here at Mr. Altimbasak’s big casino, then she could get a good chance later. A radio spot. Or a nightclub.”

“Mmmnh.” Starlitz turned. “Well, if you girls were performing tonight, I’d never allow some local amateur to go onstage, but … What do you have to say about this notion, Canadian One?”

The Canadian One was very pleased to be consulted. She drew herself up to her full height. “I concur with the French One! Minority voices deserve some time allotment! Besides, we own all the microphones anyway, so it doesn’t cost us anything.”

“I like the way you put that, Canadian One. That was very worthwhile. Now tell me something. Did you ask Mehmet Ozbey about this?”

“Mehmetcik loves the idea!” said the French One. “He said we were very generous.”

“Mr. Ozbey cares about us,” said the Canadian One, her blue eyes glistening in big powdered pools of eye shadow. “He knows all our songs by heart!”

Leggy soberly rubbed his double chins. “Well, you can’t just shove this guy’s girlfriend up onstage, and jam the mike in her hand. There’s a certain operational protocol involved here. We gotta walk carefully, because this can be kinda political.” He paused. “What’s your analysis there, French One?”

The French One leaned back on her platform heels. “My mother says that Mehmet Ozbey is a typical Westernized Third World elitist who is bound to carry out the interests of his class and gender.”

Starlitz nodded thoughtfully.

“My mother also says that Turkish cabaret music is an authentic form of proletarian expression despite its many patriarchal overtones.”

Starlitz scratched his neck. “Okay. I guess that settles
it. So can your pal Gonca rap over a backing track? We’re kinda low on Turkish cabaret musicians, at the mo’.”

The French One reached into her Liberty hat and produced a C-30 cassette. Starlitz, who was not wearing his bifocals, squinted to read the label, which was hand scrawled in green ballpoint pen. “ ‘Muserref Hanim Segah Gazel.’ Oh, brother. Did you listen to this?”

“Why should we listen to old Turkish cabaret?” shrugged the French One. “No commercial potential!”

“Backing tracks are Liam’s job!” the Canadian One insisted.

“Okay, you talked me into it,” said Starlitz. “I’ll run the tape by Liam. In the meantime, you tell Ozbey that he needs an MC who can do her intro in Turkish.”

Starlitz delivered the tape to Liam and smoothed arrangements with the lighting guys. He appreciated Ozbey’s tact in arranging things in just this manner. A direct request on Gonca’s behalf would have smelled too much like a strong-arm. But exploiting the artistes to get his way, well, that was something that everyone did in the music biz. With this arrangement, if Gonca suffered a flop night, it was nobody’s fault. There were face-saving positions all around. Lots of win-win options and interlocking benefits. Ozbey was a professional.

With the situation under control, Starlitz went in search of the American One.

The American One had abandoned the party in an angry, dope-addled huff. As usual the British One was trying to cover for her.

The British One had been working very hard on her own public image. Somehow, against all customary grain and expectation, the British One had become very buoyant and light of foot, almost as stagily vivacious as the Italian One. It seemed that some psychological barrier had finally snapped inside the British One. She’d burned her last royal rags of imperial dignity, abandoned all icy reserve. She was blatantly reveling in exhilarating sleaze.

Leggy collared the British One for a private conferral.
“Okay, British One, what the hell’s going down with the Yankee One?”

The British One’s face fell. “Don’t take it out on her, Leggy. She has a good heart and she always means well.”

“Look, just tell me where the American went.”

“The American One is perfectly fine! Look at the Japanese One,” the British One insinuated. “
She’s
the one losing her grip.”

Leggy shot a quick suspicious glance at the Japanese One, who was listlessly mugging for a camera in her autumn-leaf minikimono. The Japanese One had been suffering a prolonged attack of glum introspection. However, unlike the American One, the Japanese One always delivered the goods on time and within specs. “Okay, so the Japanese One is a little down lately. There’s nothing wrong with her that Wonder bread and a candy bar wouldn’t fix.”

“She’s clinically depressed, if you ask me.”

“No one’s asking you. We’re depending on you to talk sense into the American One. You’re the pro at doing that, you know. So what has the Yankee done to herself, huh? Is it the dope again?”

The British One pursed her glossy lips judiciously. “I suppose that’s part of it.”

“What do you mean, ‘part of it’? The Yankee One snorts more coke than the rest of you girls combined.”

The Japanese and Italian Ones eagerly horned in on the conference. They could smell that something was up.

“She’s just ambitious,” said the British One, her narrow shoulders hunching in apology. “She’s always inventing some big project for the gang of us. Then, when we won’t do what she says, she just borrows a lot of money from us and does it all by herself.”

“American One is not a team player,” scowled the Japanese One, scuffing at the carpet with her platform geta clog.

“She’s a very very big prima donna,” said the Italian One, with a dismissive flick of her fingers.

“Where’d she go?” Leggy insisted.

The British One sighed in defeat. “Oh, she ran off to snort more coke and cry.”

“Where?”

“Wherever there aren’t any cameras. The private pool, I presume.”

A Turkish radio MC took the stage to announce the imminent debut of Miss Utz. He struggled visibly to feign enthusiasm, over an unruly shriek of microphone feedback. Leggy left the party.

He discovered the American One lying in a white plastic lounge chair by the drained and empty swimming pool. She was still wearing her star-spangled miniskirt, and snuffling into an imported Kleenex.

“What’s the problem, American One?”

The American One looked up. “Stop calling me that! I have a name, you know.”

Starlitz sat on the popping edge of a plastic lounge chair and knotted his beefy hands. “What’s got you down tonight, Melanie?”

She looked at him through red-rimmed eyes. “This just isn’t working out the way you said it would.”

“Money’s good,” Starlitz offered.

The American One blew her nose.

“Nice hotel, right? Balanced diet. Plenty of aerobic exercise.”

“When you told me, when you first hired me, that G-7 was all just a big fake, and totally just for the money …” The American One drew a tremulous breath. “Well, I just didn’t realize what that
meant.
”

“Look, isn’t it obvious? That’s gotta be very obvious, right?”

“Well, I didn’t know you were
totally serious
!”

Starlitz shrugged. “We’re cashing in on a pop scam here! Why should that bug you? You’re the American One, for heaven’s sake.”

“But it’s not even fun! I thought it would be fun, but being a total fake is like a big boring drag! It’s like we’re
selling hot dogs. I hustle off the plane, and I hustle off the bus, and I hustle off the limo. I shake my ass onstage, and I sing all those stupid,
stupid
lyrics!”

“Look, G-7’s lyrics are a genius creation, babe. Verseverse-chorus from every international pop hit in the twentieth century, filtered through a four-hundred-word basic-English translation engine. That is totally high tech and wicked.”

“I memorized all the damn lyrics, okay? I can do all the dance moves too. But what about me, huh? What about
me
?”

Starlitz shrugged. “What about you?”

“What about
me
, me the artist, Melanie Rae Eisenberg?”

“Look, Melanie, the G-7 enterprise was never about you. The whole business shuts down sharp on the very first day of 2000. Then you fly back to Bakersfield with a big cashier’s check. That was our deal, remember?”

“Well, that stupid deal doesn’t ever let me be me! I’m like a kid’s cartoon! I’m like a blow-up doll or something.”

“So what? You’re a pop star! You get limos and a masseuse.”

“Well, I could be me, and I could be a big star too.”

“Nope! Sorry.” Starlitz shook his head emphatically. “Forget about that. That is totally impossible, by definition.”

Melanie stuck out her lower lip. “Well, that’s what
you
say. That’s what
you
think. I’ve been in the music business now, and I know better than that.”

Starlitz scratched his head. “Melanie, you’re cake-walking toward a swift career guillotine here, so let me clue you in. You don’t want to become a solo singer-songwriter. You’re just not up for that life. You’re very normal and average.”

“Sure,
once
I was normal and average. That was before
you
got hold of me. Now I’ve toured Poland, and Thailand, and Slovenia.… My life is totally freaky and weird.”