Free Show Business Kills by Iris Rainer Dart Page A

technique.
    “Shh, you cretin, it’s Gestalt therapy. Read Fritz Perls,” Rose said, elbowing Ellen. “Go ahead, Mars. Then you moved to the
     other chair, and the bladder said…”
    “The bladder said, ‘Marly, I’m weeping for the loss of your youth.’ ” Marly looked around at all of them. “Isn’t that fascinating?”
     she asked, narrowing her green almond-shaped eyes thoughtfully, as if she’d discovered something profound.
    “You paid money for a session where you played Edgar Bergen to your urinary tract?” Ellen said irritably. “I was right, we
     are definitely in southern California. I think we all have to move. You three especially, because you have young kids. To
     make sure they don’t grow up thinking this is the real world. Rose, see if you can get Andy to move his practice the hell
     out of here.”
    “Are you kidding?” Rose said. “I’m not moving. I’m putting in a call to my ovaries to see if they’ll do lunch.”
    Marly’s New Age material always had them laughing for hours. But as funny as it was, they all agreed that her A material was
     in the stories she told about Billy Mann, her soon to be ex-husband. A man she’d married when he was an out-of-work stand-up
     comic and she was the star of a long-running television series. Now she was out of work and he was a giant star. “The King
     of Late Night Television.”
    She told the others that the reason she started calling him that was because one day, a few years ago, they were having a
     conversation, or rather, she was talking and he Was off in the ether and answering her questions by rote, so she said, “Billy?
     What is it?” And in a faraway voice, probably brought on by the stunning news that his 11:30 P.M show was in first place, he said in amazement, “My God. I’m the king of late night television.”
    “Billy’s such a narcissist,” Marly joked, “that in the heat of passion, he yells out his own name!” Everyone agreed that her
     jokes were a hell of a lot funnier than the dumb ones Billy did in the opening monologue of his show every night. Unfortunately,
     to Jennifer and Sarah, their twin daughters, none of it was even a little bit funny.
    They were the ones who since the separation were always waiting for their father to pick them up to spend the weekend at his
     house, and waiting and waiting until Marly looked at the clock and realized he’d flaked out on them again. Then her heart
     broke when she watched them unpack their little ballerina bags and cry themselves to sleep. It was an awful situation.
    And all the while Marly kept telling the twins, “He lovesyou, he just doesn’t know how to show it.” Many nights she sat in the bedroom with the two canopied beds, soothing them, singing
     to them, until finally their breathing told her they were asleep. Then she went into her own room and cried herself to sleep,
     too.
    GET IN BED WITH BILLY is what the billboards everywhere said. Billy’s new show was about to premiere, and the advertising blitz to promote it forced
     Billy into America’s bloodstream. Marly said she’d like to climb up onto one of those billboards with a can of red paint and
     write her addendum, YOU MIGHT AS WELL! EVERYONE ELSE HAS.
    How Billy could ever want anybody but Marly was a mystery to anyone who knew her. She was a startling beauty, tall, with white
     skin and hair that had turned Harlow white prematurely when she was in her twenties. She had poodleish curls cascading all
     around a chiseled face and a smile of perfectly white teeth. In fact, everything about her was blindingly white. She drove
     a white car and dressed in white and had a white dog.
    One night, in the middle of a screaming fight just before he moved out, Billy harangued her about just that. “I’m going blind
     from all the white! It makes me want to run around outside through the mud and then come in and dance on the carpets and the
     sofa, on the fucking duvet cover, and mess it up. I’m sick of