Miss Wyoming

«She says I owed it to her. She says I'd have been nothing without her. And you know what she told me when it became clear that she'd swiped everything I had? She said to me, ‘That's the price you pay for being a piece of Tinseltown trash.' »

Dreama, not a shrieker, shrieked.«Tinseltown?»

Larry continued paying the rent on Kelton Street, but he told Susan his accountant would only let him do it for one more year or until Susan had her own income again, if that came sooner. Jobs were hard to come by. Casting agents knew she wasn't a skilled actress and didn't think her marquee value canceled out her bad acting. Lessons did nothing to improve her skills, and the fact she was even taking lessons made her a subject of snide whispers in class. Larry seemed to be giving her far less attention, too, not because of her unbankability but because he knew that Jenna was the root of the problem.

By the end of the Blooms run, Susan overheard Kenny the director say that if Susan ever got a role even as a tree in the background of a high school production of Bye Bye Birdie, it would be as an act of pity. The taping of the final two-hour episode was a bad dream to which Susan returned over and over.

«Susan, dear, you've just learned your father has prostate cancer. Your face looks like you're trying to choose between regular or extracrispy chicken. Let's do a little wakey-wakey because we're close to union overtime, okay?»

The cameras rolled: «Dad, why didn't you tell me before? Why all the others but not me?»

«Cut! Susan, you're not asking him “Where is the TV Guide ?” You're asking him why he didn't share with you the most important secret of his life.»

The cameras rolled: «Dad, why didn't you tell me before? Why all the others but not me?»

«Cut!»

Susan stopped again.

«Susan, less TV Guide and more cancer.»

«Kenny, can I use some fake tears or something? This is a hard line.»

«No, you may not use fake tears, and no, this is not a hard line. Roger? Give me my cell phone.» A bored P.A. handed him a phone. «Susan, here's a phone — would you like me to give you a number and you can simply phone this line in? Or would you like to do it for the camera, for which you're being paid?»

«Don't be such a prick, Kenny.»

The cameras rolled: «Dad, why didn't you tell me before? Why all the others but not me?»

«Cut! Roger? Please bring Miss American Robot here some fake tears.»

Soon Susan began going to parties each night, not because she was a party hound but because her celebrity status entitled her to as many free drugs as she wanted, as long as she tolerated being fawned over or mocked by the substance suppliers.

* I can't believe Susan Colgate's here at this party.

* Basically, for a gram she'll go anywhere in L.A. County. For an ounce she'll be the pony that takes you there.

As time went on, she learned not to stand outside the kitchens, where the acoustics were better and where she was more likely to hear the worst about herself. She had far too much free time on her hands, and with it she began to obsess about Larry. One early evening when Susan was feeling particularly alone and the phone hadn't rung all day, she decided she was sick of being iced out of his life, and went to his house. Larry had mentioned that Jenna would be away that night at her mother's birthday in Carson City. Susan knew that if she tried to use the intercom at the gate, or open the front door, she'd be frostily ignored. She cut through the next-door neighbor's yard, once home to a prized Empress Keiko persimmon tree, and approached the house from the back patio.

She was shortcutting through the yard when suddenly the place flared up like Stalag 17. Five Dobermans with saliva meringues drooling down their fangs formed a pentagram around her, and what seemed like a dozen Iranian guys with Marlboro Man mustaches circled the dogs, handguns drawn. She saw Larry amble out onto his veranda next door wearing his postcoital silk robe, the one he'd stolen from the New Otani back when he'd been negotiating the Japanese TV commercial deal. A naked little fawn named Amber Van Witten from the TV series Home Life scampered out after him, eating a peach.

Larry yelled to the Iranians, «Hakim, it's okay — she's one of mine,» and the Iranians, gaping at Amber, called off the dogs who, happy as lambs, bounded toward Susan to smell the urine puddle at her feet.

Larry beckoned Susan into the house. She followed him into his den, where he made Susan sit on a towel he placed on the fireplace's flagstones, making her burn with humiliation.

«Susan, it's over.»

She started to say, «But Larry,» but her pants chafed, the urine had gone cold, and Amber poked her head in through the walnut wood doors. («Oh,hi Susan.») Susan stopped speaking.

Larry said that he still wanted to be friends — and then Susan really did realize it was over. Larry said he had an idea, and that he could use Susan's help if she was willing to go along with it. He'd begun managing a new band out of England called Steel Mountain — «head-banger stuff for mall rats.» There had been a screw-up at the Department of Immigration and Naturalization, and the band's lead singer, Chris Thraice, needed a green card or an H-1 visa. If Susan agreed to marry him in order to get him into the country, she could earn 10K a month, live at Chris's house — no more Kelton Street — and have access to the social scene as something other than unbankable former child star Susan Colgate. So she asked him what the catch was, and he said that there wasn't a catch, that Chris was a closeted gay, so she wouldn't even have to deal with sex.

A week later she married Chris in Las Vegas — cover of People in a black, almost athletic, Betsy Johnson dress. She'd never had so much coverage of anything like this in her career. Music was indeed a whole new level.

She toured 140 concerts per year: all-access laminates; catered vegetarian meals; football arenas and stadiums. Everywhere they went little trolls out on the fringes pandered to their most varied substance needs. It was fast and furious but full of dead spots and time holes in Hyatt suites and Americruiser buses and airport business lounges. Susan felt like she was in a comfortable, well-stocked limo being driven very slowly by a drunk chauffeur.

Larry was around full-time, but he was business only now; fun was over, or rather, fun had moved on. Sex was easier for Chris to find than for Susan. If Susan had liked stringy-haired bassists with severe drug problems and colon breath, she would have been in luck — but she didn't. The only thing that kept her around was access to free drugs, but a few well-placed questions to the people out on the scene's fringes allowed her to set up her own supply in Los Angeles, and she camped out at Chris's Space Needle house in Los Angeles.

«I'd introduce you to my lesbian friends,» said Dreama, «but I don't think you'd find what you're looking for. And how can you continue to let yourself be in such a phallocentric and exploitative situation?»

Susan ignored Dreama's PC dronings. «Chris tells me I should just phone up hustlers and bill them to the company. What a hypocrite he is. He found out I was seeing other guys — or at least trying to — and he turned into the Killer Bunny from Monty Python because I was putting his green card in jeopardy. If he were to walk into the room right now, we'd probably rip each other up.»

«There ought to be some way for you to meet somebody.»

«The only way anybody meets anybody in L.A., Dreama, is through work, which I don't have.»

Just under three years into their marriage, Chris had an album tank. In the magical way of the music industry, Steel Mountain was, out of the blue,over. The record company withdrew support, money shrank and Chris had to start playing smaller arenas and cities, and he accrued the bitterness that accompanies thwarted ambition. Susan saw his snide side. Chris had his lawyer pay Susan her monthly 10K in the form of two hundred checks for $50, and then the checks started coming less frequently and there wasn't much she could do about it. One morning Susan went out to her car — a pretty little Saab convertible — and Chris had replaced it with an anonymous budget white sedan which Susan called the Pontiac Light-Days. «It's like driving a tampon, Dreama.»

A year later Susan had a new agent, Adam, who took Susan on as a mercy client. He owed Larry fourteen months' rent on office space his B-list agency rented from Larry's holding company. He phoned and told Susan she had a big break, that a young director with a development deal at Universal wanted her to play the deranged ex-