Triptych Interviews
Clarice
Monday, December 22 (After Chapter 26 of Odalisque)
[Phone Ringing]
CLARICE: Tony Ames’ phone. Clarice Bortelli speaking.
aroslav: Clarice? How is Tony doing?
CLARICE: Who’s calling, please.
aroslav: Sorry. It’s aroslav.
CLARICE: Aroslav? Oh. Yes. You are on Tony’s list.
aroslav: Is that good or bad?
CLARICE: Just means he said you might call.
aroslav: I’m just checking in. The past week has been pretty chaotic.
CLARICE: You’re telling me.
aroslav: Why are you answering Tony’s phone?
CLARICE: It’s what agents do. Sometimes I wonder.
aroslav: Is he doing okay?
CLARICE: He and his crew have gone home for the holiday.
aroslav: Wendy?
CLARICE: She’s with him.
aroslav: That’s a relief. I worry about those kids.
CLARICE: Tell me. Can I get Tony a message for you?
aroslav: No. That’s okay. Maybe if you have a few minutes we could chat, though. I’m trying to talk to all Tony’s friends.
CLARICE: You’re going to include me in that?
aroslav: Aren’t you one of his friends?
CLARICE: Hmm. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but since I haven’t made much of any money off our relationship, I suppose I qualify as just a friend working her tail off to protect him and make him successful.
aroslav: What are friends for.
CLARICE: [laughs] Sure. What can I tell you?
aroslav: What’s your real name?
CLARICE: Shit. Okay. Emily Dotson. Alias Clarice Bortelli, Bortelli Agency.
aroslav: That sounds like a story in itself. Why the alias?
CLARICE: Foolishness of youth. I started as an actors’ agent when I was in my 20s. No one wanted to talk to Emily Dotson. I did some research and two of the top agents had Italian names, so I set up an alias. It worked. I started placing my clients pretty quickly.
aroslav: How did you get from actors’ agent to artists’ agent?
CLARICE: How does anything like this get started? It was mostly accidental. In fact, I’m not primarily known as an artists’ agent. Mostly people think of my dancers.
aroslav: Dancers?
CLARICE: Ballet. Back in the late eighties there was a big influx of European and Russian dancers who wanted to dance in the U.S. You remember. The Berlin Wall came down. Gorbachev’s détente gave way to Yeltsin’s democracy. I was in the right place at the right time to land a Russian principal and a dozen dancers followed her. Suddenly I was negotiating contracts for ballet dancers all around the U.S. and in Europe. Everyone was desperate to have a Russian or French or Spanish dancer as a guest performer. It was a heady time. They’d come to me because of my Italian-sounding name.
aroslav: That’s pretty wild. Do you still work with dancers?
CLARICE: Oh yes. But now my work is mostly once-a-year or even two years. Most of the dancers who wanted to stay in the United States have settled with companies like Northwest Ballet. I meet with them to negotiate their contracts or if there is a problem and the rest is pretty much worry-free. There aren’t that many guest performers these days. A few, but not that many.
aroslav: Wait. I’ve heard you mention a dancer in Spain who is his agent’s pet. Did you know them personally?
CLARICE: Not a very happy time. Brandon Michaels was one of my clients and I placed him with Corella Ballet, Castilla y Leon. They are in Barcelona now. He was young and impressionable, but a remarkable dancer. And a little weird. He met Dona Caliente after one of his performances and the next thing I knew I had a voided contract on my desk and Brandon was sleeping at the foot of Dona’s bed. Not a happy time at all.
aroslav: So you expanded into art?
CLARICE: That was a bit of an accident, too. Who thought of artists as needing an agent? I was doing a lot of work in Europe at the time. That’s where I first met Jack Wade and Lissa Grant. A friend in Paris pointed me toward an artist who wanted to arrange and exhibition in New York. I knew a few people on the art scene, so I agreed to make some contacts for him. He became very big after his first show. A very big flash in the pan.
aroslav: What happened?
CLARICE: The bastard quit painting. He had a good collection before he came to the U.S. and did a number of signed lithograph limited editions of his work. Money started rolling in and he bought a condo in the Virgin Islands and hasn’t been heard from since. Stupid waste. He was very talented.
aroslav: It sounds like you’ve had a lot of clients who kind of started out strong and then faded.
CLARICE: Well, in one way, that’s the nature of the business. I do have a few clients who have been with me for several years, but actors, dancers, artists, models and so on often wear out. Look at Lissa Grant. Jack represented her from the time she was twelve until she was nineteen. Then she was pregnant and out of the modeling scene. Done. We’re constantly looking for new talent. It’s what agents do.
aroslav: That brings me to a question I’ve been wondering about. You’ve been around a while, right?
CLARICE: Is that supposed to be a subtle way of asking how old I am? The answer is ‘younger than you!’
aroslav: Yes, and I deserved that. Thank you. What I was actually wondering, though was how things have changed. You’ve been in this business since your mid-twenties. You’ve gone from actors to dancers to artists. I noticed on your site that you are representing a couple of authors as well. But now you don’t seem to be traveling as much. You’re in Seattle most of the time.
CLARICE: It’s the advent of the computer age. Aside from the fact that I like most of the people I represent, I could do my job from anywhere in the world. I negotiate over the phone and by email. I receive a contract from a company, studio, or publisher, go over it to make sure my client is well-represented, and then send the client the contract with instructions to sign it. Occasionally, I have to make sure my client is fulfilling his side of the agreement or I have to hit up a slow-paying studio, but most of that is done over the Internet now, too.
aroslav: So, that brings me back to the beginning of this conversation. Why are you answering Tony’s phone?
CLARICE: I don’t usually have clients who become heroes overnight and are credited with saving a hundred people’s lives. Well, ninety-seven, damn it! Most of my clients just dance or exhibit their art. Tony is a very special case. Since he hasn’t actually had an exhibit yet, the publicity, no matter how positive, could be just as damaging as it is helpful. He and Kate are young and about to plunge into a world that is bigger than either of them has ever known. Once their first exhibition takes place, frankly it will be hard to keep them in school. The pressure to produce is going to be incredible. I’ll need to arrange a showing at least every six months and to do that I’ll need new artwork to show.
It’s sad. I’m going to rob them of the rest of their youth. Not me specifically. They came to me for representation. But the demands this will place on them are bigger than anything they could have anticipated.
Of course, I could be wrong and their first exhibition might be a big flop.
aroslav: I doubt it.
CLARICE: You’re the author.
aroslav: You’ll be okay representing them, though, won’t you?
CLARICE: For a while. Tony has a lot going for him. He was one of those who were in the right place at the right time. He was noticed when his mural went on display at PCAD. Then he has this hero thing that’s keeping his phone ringing. Did you know that four calls have rolled over to voice mail while we’ve been talking? But the truth of the matter, from my humble perspective? Kate has more raw talent than Tony. She’s never been anything but an artist. She doesn’t play racquetball. She doesn’t study criticism. She draws and she paints. Her charcoals are stunning, but her pastels—oh my god!
aroslav: Tony seems to be getting all the attention. Kate is just along for the ride.
CLARICE: Tony has found his style and content. There’s no secret that his favorite subject is nudes and he does them extremely well. I’m pushing him to some other things, but the nudes are really where his heart is. Kate hasn’t found her calling yet. She will. When she decides what kind of painter she really wants to be and quits flitting around from one subject to another, we’ll really see something.
The sad thing is that someday I’m going to have a conflict representing both of them. Honestly? I don’t know what’s going to happen then. One or both of them will end up with another agent. I hope that’s all the split that will happen.
aroslav: That sounds ominous.
CLARICE: Just part of being in the business.
aroslav: So what are you doing now—I mean with Tony’s phone?
CLARICE: Well, everyone wants to talk to the hero of Tent City. It’s been a real zoo. I don’t even know how these people get his cell phone number. Every local television and radio station, every local newspaper has called dozens of times. Four national networks have asked for interviews. I field the calls and read Tony’s official statement to them, then refer them to the University. Thirty different lawyers have called wanting to represent Tony or Wendy. They call here because they have no contact information for Wendy, the poor thing.
I’m sorry. I cry every time I think about her. I could just kill that bastard.
aroslav: Uh...where is “here,” by the way?
CLARICE: Oh. I’m at Carmine’s.
aroslav: I thought I heard dishes.
CLARICE: It’s almost lunch-time.
aroslav: You’ve known Wendy quite a long time, haven’t you.
CLARICE: I guess as long as anyone. Carma and I go way back. When she opened the restaurant I moved in. So I was here the day Wendy started waiting tables. I swear, she curtsied when she came to take my order. She was so humble—so anxious to serve me. It didn’t take long, though, before I saw the spark of mischief in her eyes. She is so alive and happy to be in the world. She’s a real contradiction in personalities.
I had no idea she was living in Tent City. I should have had some if I’d been paying more attention to what Tony was saying and what I was seeing. All I thought about was the abusive relationship she was in. I actually thought Tony might be taking advantage of her. When I found out both she and Tony had been injured that night, I was frantic. I was waiting at Tony’s house the night they left the hospital. There was no way to get to them before that.
What a nightmare. As soon as the news broke, I knew what would happen. I bought a prepaid cell phone and activated it on my credit card so that when I took Tony’s phone he would still have a way to keep in touch.
aroslav: This must have been a horrendous time for all of you.
CLARICE: Thank god for Kate and Bree. As much as I wanted to keep Kate out of the limelight, she was a Godsend. And Bree... she just did what needed to be done. She helped me find the right people at the college to get a press conference set up. She arranged transportation for the bunch of them. She got her father to pick up Tony’s car. She’s as protective of them as I am. There’s a lot to that girl that no one knows yet.
aroslav: What happened?
CLARICE: We put together a press release and I worked with the University public relations department to address the press. We agreed that all the students should be kept out of it at the moment. We pulled down all kinds of privacy regulations that surround students and managed to keep the press focused on the University and what they were doing to help the victims. In the flurry, Tony and company escaped unnoticed.
aroslav: Clarice, you’re doing a great job. I know Tony appreciates it, even if he doesn’t say so.
CLARICE: I’m the agent, not the star. There’s never been an Academy Award received by an actor’s agent. That’s okay. We’re here to get the actor on the podium, not ourselves.
aroslav: What’s in the future, Clarice?
CLARICE: Well, if I can get off the phone from all these constant calls, I need to plan how to capitalize on the unfortunate events of this past weekend to get a bigger attendance at Tony and Kate’s opening. I hate that part of my job. I just want to join the mourners and sympathize with those who have been hurt—like Wendy. Instead, I have to figure out how I can turn this all into more, bigger, and longer sales for my clients. I’m expecting an exhausting couple of months as we head toward their debut. If it’s successful, we might not get rich, but we’ll pay the next month’s rent. That’s really all we can hope for.
aroslav: I’m glad you are on their team. Oh, Clarice?
CLARICE: Oh no.
aroslav: One more thing.
CLARICE: Yes?
aroslav: There seems to be some bad blood between you and Lissa Grant. What’s that about?
CLARICE: I didn’t know she and Jack were involved. God! She was nineteen. I was fifty. Jack was a nice guy that I’d met at several events. Why wouldn’t I invite him to my client’s opening in Paris? I will never live that down. At least Lissa and I can work together where it concerns Tony now. Christ! Give it a rest, will you?
aroslav: They’re divorced now though. What’s stopping you?
CLARICE: Pride. I’m not going back there.
aroslav: Okay, Clarice. I’ll let you get back to answering the phones and protecting Tony. And believe me; we all appreciate it.
CLARICE: You take care, aroslav. Thanks for giving me a break.
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
