Filthy Rich (11 page)

“Every few minutes, you can pet him,” said Lois. “It will be great.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “For one thing, I’m allergic to dogs.”

But Norma and Frank agreed with Lois, and I was too sleep deprived to argue.

Frank awakened Bruno gently, offering him a little doggie treat from Mrs. Schwartz’s kitchen. He then scooped up the drowsy schnauzer and carried him back to my apartment. I trailed behind schlepping Mrs. Schwartz’s chair, my nose itching from being around dog hairs.

This entire caper took about half an hour. At about 5:45
A.M.
, once Frank had carefully positioned the stolen chair for maximum karma, all of us collapsed—including Bruno. We each grabbed a nearby piece of floor or sofa and immediately fell sound asleep.

About fifteen minutes later, however, our naps abruptly ended with heavy knocking at my door. Disoriented, I thought at first it must be my neighbor, miniature Mrs. Schwartz, refreshed after the Richard Simmons workout and looking for her missing furniture and dog. But instead, of course, it was Diane Sawyer and her crew. They were right on time. With Frank absent from his post in the lobby, they had come up unannounced.

People who saw the interview are always coming up to me, wanting to know, “What is Diane Sawyer really like?” I’ll tell you what I tell them: Much as I try, I have nothing bad to say about her. In person, Diane Sawyer is even blonder and nicer than she seems on television. She is also very tall, which is hard to tell from TV, because a lot of times, she’s sitting behind a desk. The one thing I didn’t like was her lipstick, which was too dark and too glossy for my taste. In sum, too Monica Lewinsky.

As for the interview itself, the less said the better. It began well enough, in the bathroom of all places, with me showing off Neil’s “His” and “Hers” spritzers and pointing to the hole in the plaster where Neil’s prized antique Water Pik once stood on a glass shelf.

We then moved to my feng shuied living room, where I pointed out the deep indentation in the rug where Neil’s ghastly old dental chair used to be. The grand tour completed, Diane Sawyer settled in Mrs. Schwartz’s chair, and I plopped myself across from her on the sofa, right next to Bruno, whom I then slid onto my lap, much as Lois had instructed.

The questions were mainly puffballs about how I felt after getting dumped by Neil on
Filthy Rich!
and my decision to return to the show as a contestant in just three weeks. I fielded these deftly, mostly by repeating answers drilled into my head by Norma. Even as it was happening, I
couldn’t believe some of militant things tripping off my tongue, but it was just as well because I was too exhausted to have any clear thoughts of my own. At one point, I dutifully held up a copy of Norma’s newest book,
Raging Hormones, and Other Outrages
, and urged everyone within the sound of my voice to race out to the bookstore to buy a copy. I felt like a brainwashing victim, but at least things were moving along more or less on an even keel.

It was then that Diane Sawyer turned to the gripping topic of my sex life. Things went rapidly downhill from there.

“I apologize for asking this, but as a serious journalist, I feel I must,” she said. “There’s been speculation that you and Neil were having trouble in bed, and that was the real reason for your breakup. Is there any truth to that rumor? And, in retrospect, how do you assess Neil as a lover?”

I was startled. Kingman Fenimore hadn’t warned me that our deal included me being interrogated about my sex life on national TV at seven-thirty in the morning. I needed time to think. So I reached for Lois’s plate of homemade cookies.

“Cookie?” I said. “They’re fresh-baked.”

“No thank you,” said Diane Sawyer. “It’s a bit early for me.”

Of course, it was also a bit early to be discussing my sex life. If I answered honestly, my guess was it would have people wretching up their breakfasts all over America. But Diane Sawyer did not get to where she is today by shying away from prying questions.

“But back to your sex life with Neil,” she persisted. “Any problems there?”

“Well, you know about Neil’s obsession with dentistry,” I found myself saying. “In bed, he tended to forget I wasn’t just another tooth he was drilling.”

I regretted those words as soon as I blurted them out. To this day, I kick myself for not answering, “None of your business,” and leaving it at that. When you know the camera is running, in theory your instinct should be to carefully censor yourself. But, in fact, the opposite reaction occurs, and you find yourself revealing intensely personal things you haven’t even told your girlfriends. You’re so concerned with being an interesting “personality” that you forget about everything else. That doesn’t excuse my indiscreet answer. But it does help explain why Bill Clinton answered that impertinent question about his taste in underwear early in his presidency, setting a low MTV tone that would permeate two terms. It also explains why “reality TV” bears so little resemblance to reality.

Before Diane Sawyer could serve up a follow-up question, the proceeding was momentarily interrupted by a loud pounding noise. My immediate thought was, Oh no, Mrs. Schwartz is back. But no such luck. It was my mother. Plainly unaware that the whole nation was now privy to her wacky behavior, she was determined to gain entry to her only child’s apartment. Right Now!

“It’s your mother,” she was screaming loud enough to be
picked up on camera. “Let me in. Did you see what that schmuck Neil said about us on
Letterman?
I’ve retained a lawyer. A nephew of a friend of your uncle Mel. Not a genius like that Alan Dershowitz, but he went to law school near Harvard and he’s giving us his family discount rate. We’ll go to the Supreme Court if we have to. I know you’re not sleeping, Marcy. Let me in.”

Finally, after letting my mother go on like that for a while, a bemused Diane Sawyer signaled some stagehands to open the door. Mom swept in right past them only to stop dead in her tracks when she saw the famous newswoman.

“Diane Sawyer!” she said, primping her short silver hair and obviously grateful she had remembered to remove the rollers before leaving her house. “Interviewing my Marcy. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“No interruption. We’re glad you came,” said Diane Sawyer. “Please join us.”

Words are inadequate to convey how much I wished at that moment it had been Mrs. Schwartz at the door instead.

“I watch your show every day,” Mom said, joining me on the sofa. “Hi, Charley.” She was waving now to Ms. Sawyer’s cohost back in the studio, Charles Gibbons.

That was harmless enough. Unfortunately, at some point she stopped waving and turned her attention to me.

“What’s this, a dog?” she said, referring to Bruno, who
was now growling ever so faintly at this strange woman who had just plunked herself down next to us. “You don’t have a dog. You’re allergic.”

“I do so, Mom,” I said, sneezing. “You must have forgotten.” I now addressed myself to Diane Sawyer. “You know, if she doesn’t take her gingko—”

“And what about
that
,” my mother said, pointing to Mrs. Schwartz’s chair. “Where did
that thing
come from? I like your big green chair. Where did it go?”

Trying to stay calm, I took a big breath in and then exhaled, setting off an unfortunate chain reaction that ended the interview. The button on my skirt popped so loudly that it scared poor Bruno half to death. The little schnauzer then hopped off my lap, onto the floor, where he promptly peed on Diane Sawyer’s open-toed Manolo Blahniks, apparently mistaking them for the lobby’s oriental rug.

“
You were great
with Diane Sawyer. Just great. You’re a natural, kid.”

It was Kingman Fenimore speaking, and the occasion for sharing this enthusiastic review was a crowded news conference and photo op his people had organized at network headquarters uptown. I was whisked there immediately following my mortifying stint on
Good Morning America
by a hideous white stretch limo with a vinyl leopard-skin roof that looked as if it was borrowed from a pimp. Our chat occurred as Kingman and I posed together atop a hastily erected platform with a giant mock-up of the
Filthy Rich!
logo behind us. Kingman was holding up a much-enlarged $1.75 million check as I looked on approvingly with a big, greedy grin on my face.
Time
and
Newsweek
ran almost identical versions on their covers, only in the superior
Newsweek
version, the dark rings under my eyes were miraculously airbrushed away—a highly appreciated compromise
of journalistic ethics that lessened the humiliation of my drab overall appearance.

I didn’t have time to change, but my unreliable skirt button was now supplemented by a safety pin for insurance, and a white
Filthy Rich!
T-shirt covered my blue blouse. The shirt had a picture of Kingman on the front, and underneath, his signature phrase was plastered in big red letters: “Absolute Answer?”

“Are we talking about the same show, Kingman?” I said. “Me, my meshuga mother, and the dog with a weak bladder?”

“Yeah, I loved it. Especially the bit with the dog.”

I’ll have to tell Lois, I thought. Inviting Bruno was her idea. If Kingman liked it, maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.

“And your remark about Neil’s drilling technique,” Kingman continued, “you must have been up all night thinking of that one. It was inspired.”

“Ya think? I thought it was pretty embarrassing,” I said. “‘Frisky sex vixen’ is not the image I’m going for. I’m a Barnard girl.”

“You lack perspective,” said Kingman. “Being on TV is never having to say you’re sorry. Believe me, a few days from now, all people will remember is that they saw you on TV, and they liked you. That’s the key in this business. Positive buzz.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” I said. “Positive buzz.”

We took just fifteen minutes of questions, which turned out to be fourteen minutes too many, as nearly all the queries
sought elaboration on three subjects I didn’t wish to discuss: my now-defunct sex life; the name of my secret restaurant companion; and the thorny, still unresolved matter of who I planned to anoint as my Lifeline. I just smiled benignly and kept coming up with creative new ways to say, “No comment.” I had exhausted my prepackaged answers from Norma, and I was determined not to run at the mouth like I had with Diane Sawyer. By this time, I’d been up far more than twenty-four hours, and, based on past performance, I had good reason to worry about regrettable things falling from my lips if I let myself get started. Finally, Kingman stepped in and kiddingly lambasted the reporters for showing so little interest in him. “What am I,” he asked, feigning insult, “gefilte fish?”

As these festivities were breaking up, Kingman got corraled by a young on-the-make reporter from the
New York Observer
, who was trying to peddle his idea for a new sitcom. The kid looked no more than twenty-three or twenty-four, and sported a J. Press navy blazer and horn-rimmed glasses befitting his air of earnest arrogance and what I surmised was a recent Yale degree.

“I hope you’ll consider it, Mr. Fenimore,” he said, handing Kingman a large manila envelope. “I’ve sketched out a few episodes. It’s about a big-time game-show host who also does a morning talk show. It could be really funny. And not a big stretch for you acting-wise.”

Kingman accepted the envelope and tucked it under his right arm. “A game-show host who also does a morning
show,” he repeated, politely wending his way around to a gentle rejection that succeeded in deflecting the immediate request without being abrupt or dismissive.

“It has real potential, I think,” said Kingman. “Very original. I’ll have my agent look at it but, to be realistic, I just don’t see having the time. If I were you, I’d change it to the sitcom adventures of a cross-dressing plumber from Hartford, and offer it to that chunky, bearded guy from
The Plank
. He’s hot right now, and it would just take some minor retooling. Good luck with it.”

“Why were you so nice to that preppy twit?” I asked Kingman once the kid departed.

“He
was
a preppy twit, wasn’t he? But he may outgrow it. Who knows, he could turn out to be a TV genius, another Seinfeld. His idea was terrible, I admit, but not so out of line with the crap that sells these days. Maybe when I’m feeble and forgotten, in another two hundred years or so, he’ll give me a guest shot.”

“I don’t see it,” I said. “I think you just wasted some of your legendary niceness on the wrong guy.”

“‘The wrong guy’?” teased Kingman. “Well, maybe I should listen, then. You have plenty of expertise when it comes to picking the wrong guy.”

As we started walking out together, Kingman took a quick look at his $2,500 Raymond Weil watch. I wasn’t sure my father’s dead-roach count even went that high.

“Well, it’s about my lunchtime,” Kingman announced.
Then he turned to me. “How about it, Marcy?” he said. “Have you eaten?”

“Not today, yet, but for the past three days, Kingman, thanks to your game show, I’ve done nothing
but
eat,” I said. “It’s why I have a safety pin holding my skirt together.”

“Marcy Lee,” Kingman said with mock exasperation, “I said I was hungry. I didn’t mean to open up a conversation about your safety pin. It’s not enough that Tracy Ellen took up most of the morning show sharing the ups and downs of her ongoing zits problem? A man can take only so much.”

“My safety pin and I apologize,” I said.

“Good. Now how about grabbing some lunch? I’m under strict orders from my wife to eat before going home. She says our thirty-two-year marriage won’t survive if I insist on being underfoot the entire day.”

“Sure,” I said, flattered by the invitation from one of the nation’s most popular TV personalities. “Where to?”

“Leave it to me,” said Kingman.

Put aside thoughts of a celebrity hangout like the Russian Tea Room, or even an ordinary coffee shop with tables, chairs, and central heating. Our first stop after leaving the news conference was Gray’s Papaya, the tiny hot-dog emporium at Broadway and Seventy-second Street, which many frankfurter devotees, including Kingman Fenimore, consider a holy shrine—a veritable Lourdes, if you will, for those
whose spiritual desires run to fatty smoked sausage, flavorfully seasoned and grilled to perfection with a crisp outside and then unceremoniously plopped in a soft, white bun.

At least that’s how Kingman described the religious experience called Gray’s Papaya as we waited in his Town Car while his driver picked up a half dozen of its nitrate marvels for the surprise lunch-hour “picnic” Kingman sprang on me.

“You’re in for a real treat,” he promised, as we watched with heavy anticipation through the Town Car window as his driver paid the cashier for the hot dogs, all of which were smeared with mustard and buried under a heavy blanket of sauerkraut and spicy cooked onions, as per Kingman’s instructions, before getting packed inside little Styrofoam boxes to keep them warm. The order came with two huge cups of sugary orange drink, which Kingman and I sipped as we headed in lighter than usual midday traffic toward the next stop—the New York Waterway terminal at Thirty-eighth Street and the Hudson River.

We arrived just in time to board the nearly empty noon ferry to Weehawken, something Kingman explained he tries to do at least once a week to get a break from the day-today pressures of show business and his own newly ballooned celebrity.

“Isn’t this great?” he enthused as we planted ourselves at a little round table inside the small vessel’s glassed-in cabin. “There are hardly any passengers this time of day, and they generally leave me alone. No one screams, ‘Is that your
absolute answer,’ every time I yawn, as if I’d never heard the joke before. The crew lets me stay onboard for a few round-trips without debarking, so I always leave feeling refreshed, like I just took a mini-vacation cruise on one of those fancy ocean liners Tracy Ellen gets paid a bundle to endorse.”

The view crossing was incredible, stretching from the George Washington Bridge to the Statue of Liberty and beyond, and taking in Manhattan’s glistening midtown skyline, New Jersey’s Hudson waterfront, and the southern end of the Palisades.

“I lived my first ten years in Weehawken,” Kingman reminisced between bites of hot dog and sips of orange drink, “so when the ferry heads in this direction, I feel as if I’m returning to my roots. My father was a bricklayer. Not a bricklayer like you see today. He was a real artist, and he loved his work. We had a house in the little Irish-Italian neighborhood that preceded that giant high-rise over there. For my father, it had to be a brick house, but since he didn’t build it himself, he was always finding faults in the workmanship. My mother always said he would have been a lot happier with wood shingles, and she was right. When I was eleven, my parents decided they wanted to raise their five kids in the country. So they sold the Weehawken place and bought a nearly identical house in a nearly identical ethnic neighborhood in Queens, which, believe it or not, still had farmland left. But we hardly ever got near it, since the so-called country was miles from the place my parents went to all that trouble to relocate us to. Go figure.”

By now, Kingman had wolfed down two frankfurters and was plowing through his third. “Ready for your second yet, Marcy?”

“Nope, I think I’m set,” I said. “My stomach is still in rebellion over the first. I think it may secede later.”

In all, we did three round-trips across the river, a forty-five-minute-plus respite that proved every bit as enjoyable as Kingman had promised, although not because of the hot dogs, which I could have done without, or even the striking views from the water of both shorelines. What made it special was getting to spend time with Kingman, who in person turned out to be pretty much the same charming and funny eccentric viewers see on TV, only more endearing.

“See way up there,” Kingman said, pointing to a high cliff as we departed Weehawken for our third and final time. “There’s a little green up there where Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton had their famous duel. The outcome wasn’t pretty, and Mr. Hamilton, one of the country’s great statesmen, ended up losing his life. But I give both men this much: They were acting as gentlemen, which is more than I can say about your ex-boyfriend Neil.”

At that Kingman turned his head from Weehawken and looked directly at me.

“Marcy, whatever happens in the next three weeks, whether you end up winning our jackpot or not,” he said,
“I want you to know that you’re already a
Filthy Rich!
winner in my book. Maybe the biggest. Just for getting rid of that guy. Try to remember that.”

I thanked Kingman, and told him he sounded a lot like my exterminator father. “‘It’s crazy,’ Dad told my mother when she got home from the show. ‘I spend my whole life killing roaches, and my daughter would have ended up marrying one if it wasn’t for
Filthy Rich!
’”

The one remaining thing on my schedule following the ferry ride was a drop-in at the midtown studio of a competing network to make a cameo appearance on the long-running soap opera
Days of Our Lives
. I was assigned to play a dedicated psychiatrist, Dr. Doris Lundgren. The specially written part called for me to don hospital whites and offer uplifting spiritual counsel to a young woman rendered suicidal by the news that her boyfriend blew the big cash prize on a major nighttime quiz show, and they would not be millionaires after all.

I had only two lines. Or just one line, depending on how you count these things. “Don’t worry,” I solemnly intoned, reading the pithy dialogue off cue cards. “There will be other quiz shows.”

Leaving the studio, I asked one of the young scriptwriters why they opted to have my Dr. Lundgren character serve as an enabler, encouraging her patient’s unhealthy game-show fantasy instead of helping her realize that money isn’t everything. “It’s not believable,” he said, plainly taken aback by my inquiry. “We try to keep it real.”

At this point, I was not traveling alone. From the news conference forward, I was shadowed by two burly private security officers, Abdoul and Waldo, who were hired by the
Filthy Rich!
production office to keep away overly enthusiastic fans and to make sure I adhered to the daily schedule of appearances dictated by the show’s chief publicist, a seasoned pro named Maxine Ferris, who generally arrived at events before I did to coordinate any press interviews and otherwise help make things run smoothly.

My two bodyguards were very big, and their dark, shiny suits gave them a slightly menacing
Sopranos
look that made them appear even bigger. Disappointingly, their bigness didn’t extend to being big conversationalists; their combined daily word output wouldn’t fill a whole minute on
The View
. Also, Abdoul was married, and Waldo had a girlfriend, which was sort of a downer for Lois.

Kingman was genuinely fond of me, I felt. But I knew the decision to sic Abdoul and Waldo on me for protection was nothing personal. I was valuable property, and this was an inexpensive investment to make sure I arrived at the
Filthy Rich!
showdown properly promoted and in one piece.

After returning home from my soap-opera debut, I laid down on the sofa and dozed for a while. I would have been
much more comfortable in my bed, and likely would have slept right through the night. Instead, I woke up a little before 7
P.M.
, sneezing from Bruno’s leftover dog hairs and with a painful crick in my neck owing to a bad combination of tension and the sofa’s lack of any real support, which is not to disparage Lois’s generosity in giving it to me.