Clarice

Monday, December 22 (After Chapter 33 of Triptych)

[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.