Bite The Wax Tadpole (9 page)

“Did you read about poor old Norman Tubby?”, she said. “ Lovely man, real old fashioned gentleman. He sexually abused me once in an episode of Blue Heelers.”

The clouds that lowered on Malcolm’s house dimmed still further. “Yes, and look how he ended up. Dying alone in a one room flat in the unfashionable end of Darlinghurst. There but for the grace of He who doesn’t exist...”

Phyllida frowned. “Are you sure there’s not something else bothering you?”

Malcolm shrugged. “Is it a myth, do you think, that your hair and fingernails grow after you’re dead?”

“Sliut me aan bij nos oz volgende week voor ene and ere episode van “Wie Gaat Volgend?”, said the smart young presenter as he sat on the edge of a bed where an old man, face as yellow as a newspaper announcing The Abdication, sat with a multitude of tubes entering his body through orifices both natural and man-made. The program’s theme tune, a slightly jollied-up version of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, started and the credits began to roll as Nev hit the stop button.

“What was that?”, inquired the stunned Rob. “The Dutch entry in the Eurovision Crap Contest?”

Nev swung his chair round to face Rob and Leo. “It might be crap but it’s the crap that floats on top of the other crap, the crème de la crap. Highest rating show in Holland, Germany and Belgium. You got the gist of it?”

“Basically”, offered Leo, “guessing which poor sod of a terminally ill patient carks it next.”

Nev took a long swig of Red Bull and stood up, restless after viewing the DVD. “ “Who Goes Next?” Brilliantly simple, eh? Clever bastards, the Dutch. I was in Amsterdam last week, you know. Guess what for?”

Despite his best efforts Rob couldn’t rid himself of the awful vision of Nev bending over with his Reg Grundys round his ankles while one of those ladies famous for standing in well-lit windows in the red-light district shoved jagged little crystals up his...

“Fascinating canal system? Van Gogh exhibition? Anne Frank’s house?”

Nev picked up a pair of dumb-bells from the Execo-gym in the corner of his office and began a set of biceps curls. “Negotiating with the ZVP Network about buying the rights to a local version.”

“And you’re telling us this because...?”, asked Rob who had the same uneasy feeling in his stomach that he had when going over the top on a roller coaster. Leo had stopped in mid-chew, his lower jaw set in a westerly direction.

“Because the writing is on the wall for “Rickety Street”. Know what I mean by the writing on the wall?”

“It’s in the bible”, said Rob unthinkingly, “Balshazer’s Feast. Mene, mene...”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, fucking writers. No offence. Yeah, the writing is most definitely on the wall for you guys.”

Leo scraped the gum off the roof of his mouth with his tongue and set his jaws in motion again. “We’re getting canned?”

Nev took a deep suck of air as the curls started to burn his biceps. “Re-zoned. We’re still finalizing the deal but if it goes through, and why the hell wouldn’t it with the dosh we’re offering, Who Goes Next? gets your time slot and you get moved to 1030. I mean, come on, look at the ratings. They’re shit.”

Leo looked at Rob with a raised I-told-you-so-eyebrow as Nev continued. “Another six months and you’ll be down with the SBS news in Serbo Croat.”

YOU guys... YOU get moved... YOU’LL be down? So much for Cabinet solidarity. Rob seemed to recall it being “us” when the TV fan mag awards and Logies were being given out. Nev replaced the weights, downed another slug of Red Bull and started lapping the desk, punching his left palm with his right fist for emphasis as he talked.

“The live ep’ll get the figures up; the stupid bastards out there...”

By which Rob assumed he meant the viewers who paid his and all their wages by watching the programs and then rushing out to buy dog food, cars and slim-line sanitary towels as instructed during the ad breaks.

“... lap that sort of thing up. Like dogs and their own vomit, you know what I mean?”

Another delightful image to run alongside anally delivered recreational drugs.

“Your mission, should you choose to remain in employment, is to keep the figures up there. Do that and if “Who Goes Next?” goes tits up you could get your old spot back. But you’ve got to give us something different, something edgy, something...” He waved his right arm in the sort of gesture Julius Caesar might have used when addressing the Senate. “Something... out there. Know what I mean?”

Rob followed the line of the outstretched imperial arm out through the window. “Something Parramatta-ish?”

“ We’ve done surveys, asked people what they want. And they want something warm and comforting, you know, like an old sweater. But at the same time they want something exciting, something arousing, something... something...”

“Not like an old sweater?”

“Yeah, something...”

“Edgy?”

“Yeah, something...”

“Out there?”

“Edgy and out there. You got it.”

Warm and comforting... old sweaterish... exciting... edgy out there... Parramatta-ish. Rob let the concepts roll round his brain for a moment or two.

“They weren’t more specific, these viewers, were they?”

“You could start by getting rid of some of the dead wood on that writers’ list of yours.”

Rob locked his teeth together in a dental death-grip in order to stop his lips saying something his bank balance might later regret and the urge to indulge in personal abuse passed. “Well, actually, as a matter of fact, I was going to have a word with one of the writers today.”

“Yeah? Well I hope the word’s goodbye.”

“Golden Brown” , the Stranglers melodic paean to heroin or possibly a nice suntan, burst forth as Nev’s mobile started dancing drunkenly about the desk. Nev grabbed the phone, looked at the caller ID.

“Okay, you blokes can scram. And this is strictly, strictly confidential, your eyes and ears only, got it?”

“Wild hearses wouldn’t drag it out of me”, said Rob as Nev indicated the door in the manner of a referee sending off a player for ungentlemanly conduct. As the door closed, Leo inquired of Rob: “Still got any contacts at TAFE?”

Nev accepted the call. “G’day, mate, how’s it going?” Outside – obviously - the Network helicopter rose from its pad and hovered above the quivering trees before angling away towards the City. Nev watched it go as he listened to the voice on the other end of the phone. “Everything’s sweet, nothing to worry about it. The deal’s going to go through. Relax, have a good time. You tried the Bridge climb? Be pretty damn exciting for someone from your part of the world, I should think.”

In another part of the city, near the airport, in a drab, concrete building seemingly designed by an architect who had not been informed that the Window Tax had been repealed, a Technician in the employ of a major telecommunications company noted Nev’s conversation in an electronic log before turning back to his Facebook page and updating his profile.

Malcolm and Phyllida strolled back towards the set. Malcolm was still eeyorish. “Doesn’t help having my ex constantly asking for more money.”

“Good grief, Malcolm, I thought you told me you’ve been divorced for ten years. It’s about time that woman stopped looking on you as a meal ticket for life.”

“I rather think she looks on me as providing the after dinner mints and liqueur of life. And then there’s the tax man after his pound of best liver.” They stopped outside the Green Room beside the cast’s pigeon holes. Letters and cards were crammed in or jutting out of the spaces allotted to the younger and sexier members of the cast. Malcolm’s slot contained a single, green script. He took it out and glanced at it. “Not to mention more amendments for the live episode. Saints preserve us!”

Phyllida took out her own copy along with several fan letters. “Come on, Malcolm, it’ll be exciting, a challenge. Think of the adrenaline rush. Did I tell you I’m doing the “Vagina Monologues?”

“No, no, you didn’t. You know, a friend of mine went to see it thinking it was some sort of adult ventriloquist show. He was very disappointed.”

He cast his eyes towards a group of young actors huddled round the coffee urn. “Anyway, I’m not worried about my own performance. When you’ve had your trousers fall round your ankles in the middle of Lady Windermere’s Fan, a live performance no longer holds any terrors. No, it’s our young friends I’m worried about. Some of them have trouble remembering the words to Happy Birthday. An entire script? Hah! It’s going to be a complete disaster. I can feel it in my water.”

A young man with a beard on the thin end of the Wispiness Scale slapped down the corridor in his Venetian suede loafers and stood breathlessly in front of them. “Where have you been?... I’ve been looking... there’s a new schedule out... you’re wanted on set.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead and handed them copies of the orange schedule.

“You’re the trainee director, aren’t you?”, asked Malcolm receiving a nod and a gasp in reply. “You know”, he continued, “I’ve worked with some of the top directors in the business in my time and I never once saw any of them running round like a blue-arsed fly looking for missing actors.”

With the Hounds of Impending Doom snapping at his heels, or at least the Shi Tzus of Possible Unemployment humping his legs, Rob trudged back towards the Script Department in a state of shock or bewilderment or possibly both. He was bewildershocked, that was it. It was one thing to want to jump from the ship, sinking or not, it was another thing altogether to be pushed overboard by the sick-minded Dutch inventor of a morbid reality TV show.

So what to do? Should he bite the bullet and mix his metaphors by staying with the sinking ship trying to replace the leaking deck plank by plank or bite a different bullet and abandon said ship by leaping boldly into waters unknown? It was a dilemma, all right, a big, black, snorting, Argentinian Fighting Bull of a dilemma. On the one horn...

Fearing that he might look as white as the ghost of someone who’d died of anaemia, he slapped himself across both cheeks and forced his lips into a mirthless smile before he stepped into the Department. Adam, staring intently at his computer screen, said: “Neil called, he’ll be a bit late.”

“Right.”

“Impotence Australia want to know if we can do a story to tie in with Erectile Dysfunction Week”, said Sally.

“Don’t see why not”

“I’ll let them know we’re up for it then, shall I?”, quipped Adam lugubriously, causing everyone to groan in the time-honoured manner. Everyone except Rob who merely asked for the dates.

“Are you all right?”, inquired Sally.

“What? Yeah, fine, just... that was a joke, wasn’t it? Erectile dysfunction... let them know we’re up for it. Very good.”

Hope stepped forward proffering a yellow stick-it note. “An Avril Pollard wants you to call her back when you’ve got a minute.”

“She’s not the mad woman from Dubbo, is she?”, he asked, taking the note.

“She said she was a literary agent. I think. It was something about a book, anyway.”

A little of the glow that had been physically drained from Rob’s eyes returned. One door closes and another one slides silently open. He hurried into the Writers’ Room and grabbed the phone. In his limited experience of phone conversations with literary agents, limited to the one he was about to have now, they didn’t call you personally to tell you your book was shite. But don’t get too excited, he told himself, don’t make a complete twat of yourself. He brushed down his shirt, blew out his cheeks and rocked on his heels as he waited for a connection.

“Avril Pollard”.

“Avril, Rob Jones here, returning your call.”

“Rob, hi, great, Thanks for calling me back. Just thought I’d let you know how much I enjoyed your “Prick!” ”

CHAPTER TEN

It hadn’t turned out to be quite the literary deal of the century. And he might have come over a little churlish when he asked if Tim Winton also got $6,000 as an advance. It was some way shy of being enough to enable him to tell Nev to shove his show the same place he shoved his metamphetamine crystals. Still, what was he expecting? A bidding war and a studio deal with Steven Spielberg? Well, actually, that’s exactly what he had fantasised about when having trouble sleeping. And why not? If “The da Vinci Code”, for all its failings, could become a worldwide phenomena then why not “Prick!”? Perhaps the world was waiting for a literary thriller set in 17
^th
century London. His hero was Kit Marlowe, whose faked death was the precursor to his career as London’s first Private Eye under the alias of Zacharias Bounderby. His Marlowe, alias Zac, was just as hard-boiled and wise-cracking as Chandler’s Marlowe and Elizabethan London made 1940s LA look like the House at Pooh Corner. For one thing, Philip Marlowe didn’t have to watch out for plague rats and pisspots being emptied out of upstairs windows. Yeah, six month, a year, two years, it could make his fortune. There was the small matter of actually finishing the book, of course. As instructed in the Writers’ Guide he’d sent in the first three chapters and a story outline to Pollard’s Literary Agency. Which was all he’d so far managed to write. So when Avril said that she looked forward to seeing the rest of the manuscript what he should have said was: I’m a bit busy at the moment and what with one thing and another it’ll be about six months before I can get a complete first draft to you. What, in fact, he had said was: no problem just needs a bit of polishing, that’s all. A bit of polishing! Hell’s teeth!

“Sorry I’m late”, said Neil Passmore as he hurried into the Writing Room followed by Hope.

“Don’t worry about it, mate. How’s it going?” Rob’s mouth felt like it was filled with rancid peanut butter.

Neil was the doyen of serial script writers, one of a dying breed. He’d started in the business before it actually was a business, in the glorious, semi-legendary, black and white days when no-one knew what the hell they were doing and script meetings were measured in wine bottles, literary quotes and the occasional punch-up. Nowadays, of course, everybody knew what they were doing, more or less, and spontaneity and fun had been given a severe talking to and sent packing. On the plus side a few livers had been saved along the way.