Free The Diamond Lane by Karen Karbo

Anyone could do coverage. Some of Solly’s producer clients had beautiful, hot-eyed Iranian assistants they’d hired because they liked the accent answering the telephone. These women, if they could read, read only Farsi, and they did coverage.
    Mimi begged Ralph to quit, but he stayed on because Keddy held out the same old limp carrot that was dangling in front of the bent-out-of-shape nose of every drudge in town: Keddy promised to get Ralph a Deal.
    And maybe someday he will, thought Mimi, begging Ralph to chill out and have a beer. Who knew? Mouse was getting married. Shirl got bopped on the head with a ceiling fan and lived . Something good might as well happen to Ralph.
    After everyone arrived and sat down, Mimi brought out a tray of haute cheese and crackers. The cheese, which was runny and French, and smelled like a high school gym after a boys’ basketball game, was expensive for Mimi at $14.95 a pound. Shehad spent far more than she should have, considering her finances.
    Carole got the drinks, flavored seltzer water and imported beers. The evening was smog-sticky and warm. It was October and there was no sign of anything resembling fall. Leaves dropped miserably off the trees like shriveled scabs. The front page of the Los Angeles Times kept running pictures of grandmothers in shorts fanning themselves in grocery store checkout lines with Halloween cards they were buying for their grandchildren who lived in less relentless climates.
    Outside, a burst of Santa Ana wind blew the fronds of a palm tree into a telephone wire, sending off hot blue sparks and a sizzling zitz .
    John Sather sat cross-legged on the floor, reading Ralph’s photocopy. To Mimi, he looked like the quintessential Greenwich Villager. He wore his straight brown hair combed straight back, kept his jaw in five o’clock shadow. He chain-smoked and listened to jazz. No one else Mimi knew listened to anything other than what they played in aerobics or on the car radio.
    â€œNot more about People in Film,” Sather said, folding the article into a paper airplane.
    â€œWould you please explain it to me?” said Ralph.
    â€œAs opposed to Film People,” said Darryl D’Ambrosia. Darryl was built like a wrestler, all bulging veins and muscles and fierce black hair. Testosterone gone mad.
    â€œHo ho,” said Sather. “People in Film and Film People, completely different animals.”
    â€œPeople in Film actually make movies. They actually touch celluloid –” said Darryl.
    â€œâ€“ projectionists don’t count –” said Sather.
    â€œPeople in Film, on their income tax forms? No more than two words to describe what they do. Film Director. Screenwriter. Film Editor,” said Darryl.
    â€œBut Film People always have a lengthy explanation. ‘I’m a waiter and do some reading for Fox on the side, but I’m workingon this development deal for a two-hour miniiseries –’” said Sather.
    â€œâ€“ TV doesn’t count, this is only features –”
    â€œâ€“ right, right –”
    â€œYou know you’re a Film Person if you avoid someone at a party who’s going to ask you what you do.”
    â€œYou see them coming and you run the other way.”
    â€œFilm People live in a state of perpetual humiliation. People in Film live in a state of perpetual self-congratulation.”
    â€œFilm People have been reduced –”
    â€œâ€“ much to their chagrin –”
    â€œâ€“ much to their chagrin, to making a career of trying to be a Person in Film!”
    â€œPeople in Film send their children to Ivy League schools but can be reached at home in the middle of the afternoon,” said Ralph. “Film People can also be reached at home in the middle of the afternoon, but it’s because they’re unemployed.”
    â€œBy jove, I think he’s got it,” said Sather.
    â€œYou guys,” said Mimi,