"Myra Ascheim is legit," Hank said. "Mildred is the porn-producer side of the Ascheim family."
Jack saw that Mildred Ascheim had joined Muffy the vampire hooker in the doorway. "Stop stalling, Hank!" Milly yelled.
"What is Myra Ascheim legit at?" Jack asked.
"She's some kind of agent," Hank told him. "She used to represent Val Kilmer, or maybe it was Michael J. Fox--lots of people like that, anyway. It's all about who you meet out here," he added. Hank was walking back to the house like a man about to have nonstop sex with a vampire hooker. He looked less than thrilled.
"Good luck!" Jack called to him.
"I'll look for you on the big screen," Hank said, pointing skyward--as if the big screen, in both their minds, lay in a heavenly direction.
"Good luck, little schlong!" Milly called to Jack.
Hank stopped and walked back to Jack for a minute. "If you ever meet Myra, don't tell her you've met Mildred," he warned Jack. "That would be the kiss of death."
"It's not as if I actually auditioned," Jack said.
"This was an audition, kid. I'll look for you," Hank said again.
Jack would look for him, too, although he didn't tell Hank that at the time. His porn name was Hank Long--a big, handsome guy, no stranger to a weight room, always with minimal dialogue, no doubt because of his high, nasal voice. Jack would see him in fifteen or twenty "adult" movies after their first meeting--for the most part, nothing memorable by title or plot.
Jack could have recognized Hank's penis all by itself--Emma could have, too. They watched Hank Long movies together, after Jack's not-exactly-an-audition in Van Nuys.
"Never go to Van Nuys," he told Emma, when he got home. "There are a lot of guys with huge schlongs out there."
"Like that would really keep me away," Emma said somewhat ambiguously.
Jack told her the whole story--how his penis, in Mildred Ascheim's estimation, didn't cut it; how he was "cute," according to Muffy the vampire hooker, but not in a league with Hank Long.
"I wouldn't say you were tiny, baby cakes, but I've seen bigger." More than Milly's small-schlong assessment, Emma's bluntness left Jack a little crestfallen. "For Christ's sake, you're not trying to be a porn star!" Emma said, trying to cheer him up.
She called Lawrence at C.A.A. immediately, beginning the conversation by telling him she would never fuck him. "Let's get that out of the way," was how Emma put it. "Do you have any other brilliant ideas about which agents Jack should see?" Emma covered the mouthpiece of the telephone and turned to Jack. "He says no," she reported.
"Ask him if he knows Myra Ascheim," Jack said.
Emma got a quick answer to her question over the phone. "Lawrence says she's a has-been, honey pie. She's been let go by everyone. She doesn't even have an assistant anymore."
"She sounds like a good place to start," Jack said. "Ask Lawrence if he'll make a call--just one call."
Emma asked the bastard. "Lawrence says Myra doesn't even have an office."
"She sounds perfect for me," Jack said.
Emma conveyed Jack's feelings to Lawrence over the phone. "He says not to mention Myra's sister," Emma told Jack.
"I know," Jack said. "It's Myra, not Mildred. I know, I know."
That night there were three messages on the answering machine when Jack got back from American Pacific. He was anxious that one of the messages might have been from a housewife he'd been banging in Benedict Canyon. The woman was insane; she claimed that from her bedroom she could see part of the estate on Cielo Drive where Sharon Tate had been murdered, but Jack couldn't see it. When the Santa Anas were blowing, she said she could hear the screams and moans of Ms. Tate and the other victims--as if the murders were ongoing.
She called Jack frequently, often to reschedule their rendezvous. Usually the postponement had something to do with her husband or one of her children, but the last time the family dog had been to blame. The unfortunate animal had eaten something it shouldn't have; the complications were so severe that the vet had promised to make a house call.
Emma said that Jack should learn to read between the lines--clearly the housewife was also sleeping with the vet. Emma loved listening to all the reasons the Benedict Canyon woman found not to sleep with Jack, or at least to postpone the illicit act. But Emma had been writing; she'd not answered the phone that night. She and Jack listened to the answering machine together after Jack came home.
Both Lawrence and Rottweiler said they had called Myra Ascheim and told her she should meet Jack; they'd given her his phone number. The third message was from Myra. Her voice was alarmingly like her sister's. Jack first thought it was Mildred, calling to further abuse his small schlong.
"There's two people, both assholes, who say I should meet you," Myra Ascheim's message began. "So where the fuck are you, Jack Burns?"
That was the message--not very elegant, and she didn't even leave her name. Jack knew it was Myra only because he'd met Milly and recognized the sisterly voice. (It was a voice with more Brooklyn in it than L.A.)