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“I was thinking that … I miss you. And that I love you.” It was soft; needful.

His stomach tightened.

“Remember when we used to ice-skate together on New Year’s Day, Mom? Central Park?” She said nothing. Was she remembering? He kept talking. Thought he heard ice scrape glass. “I used to love that. When I’d start to fall, you’d always make sure I didn’t.” He thought if he kept talking, he could stay ahead of the feeling. He wanted to cry; couldn’t. “I can’t think of anything to say, Mom … isn’t that odd?”

Students were singing “Auld Lang Syne” outside and Alan remembered a Christmas in Maui when he had walked with his mother along a beach, arm in arm, singing it. Tipsy with possibilities; seeing hope everywhere. It
all came back to him; New Year’s Eves. Good ones. Ones that felt awful; wrong. Nights when bad things crept over a ridge, like death clouds and suddenly everyone was running, afraid of the downpour.

“Is that what’s happening to me? I’m falling?”

“No.” He saw her spinning backwards, mouth outstretched, hands reaching; a Hitchcock effect.

“You won’t let me will you? Won’t let me fall overboard, get left behind? It’s cold and black way out here.”

The hollow dexterity was gone. She was just a place with no light or warmth. He wanted to die. He wanted to hold her.

“I’m sorry you aren’t having a good time. I wish we were together. I love you, Mom …”

Their voices were touching, reaching over land and sea; a séance.

“… do you?”

He spent the next few minutes trying to convince her he did and when she began to almost believe it, the connection quietly, horribly cut off.

I
t has become a national phenomenon. The highest rated television series in the history of the medium. On average, eighty percent of the viewing audience tunes in to see it every week. We’re talking, of course, about ‘The Mercenary’ and, let’s face it, it’s changed the way we think about prime-time television. Huge movements are developing. Some pro. Others con.”

The voice excited and seduced.

“Fans love the character and admire the way he violently stands up for what he believes. Critics say he’s a psychotic sadist and by airing such ‘reactionary garbage,’ the network is contributing to the desensitizing of our culture.
Time
magazine, last week said, ‘ “The Mercenary” has further caused the manhole covers of repressed American anger to tremble and frustrated temper glands are overflowing. The show is a kind of reverse intellectual
nutrient and is sending a bloody and disturbing message to America’s youth.’ ”

Music cue.

Close-up on the announcer, an intense ectomorph. He stares the camera down, unflinching.

“Today on the ‘Robb Overton Show,’ we have the man who’s brought this explosive controversy into our lives, Alan White, creator and executive producer of ‘The Mercenary’! Also with us today is Professor Madeline Marx from the University of Southern California School of Graduate Psychology. Dr. Marx specializes in violence in our culture.”

Applause. Camera sweeping audience.

“Joining in the discussion today is nationally syndicated critic Richard Frank of the
L.A. Times
, an outspoken critic of the one-hour show which he is trying to have banned and which he’s called ‘vicious poison.’ Today, we’ll be discussing ‘The Mercenary,’ violence, and whether the show is influencing our society to kill and hate, or if it is merely entertainment. We’ll also be taking questions from the home viewers as well as from those live with us here today on location in beautiful Century City in Los Angeles. Stay with us. Robb’s just around the corner!”

Alan glanced at the critic and the professor and knew he had it in the fucking bag.

Madeline Marx had an inky crewcut, and dressed like an angry man. She resembled Iggy Pop, minus the dermabrasion, and her tanning treatments obviously weren’t taking right.

Richard Frank, meanwhile, struggled with a beard problem. Alan noticed Dick continuously sniffed at his
peppery mustache as he sat and stewed in his superiority, and picked at icky eczema.

Alan figured Overton’s audience would respond to some well-timed humor, a little philosophy to soothe their guilty viewing habits, and one or two show-biz anecdotes with some inside grime about the famous and revered.

The crewcut and the critic with the tic would regret showing up today. They were outclassed, outmoded. They’d look foolish, pompous, and stiff.

This would be fun.

Even the host would be easy. In the Green Room, as they’d all introduced themselves, Overton just smiled and generally exuded and Alan knew he would ask only what his staff had prepared. The man’s teeth glowed as if he had a mouthful of light bulbs and his hair was so perfect it needed a car cover.

His plagiarized style was to wander the audience, a dim-witted Donahue clone, who always appeared semi-lost and did his best to artificially stir up the audience by talking softly, then suddenly yelling.

He was also able to cry on cue and often ended shows or made points by soaking up the phony tears with Kleenex and staring into the camera, cheeks ashimmer with calculated wetness.

But Alan had been told the guy used to do weather back in Baltimore and could barely figure out how to schedule oil changes for his Lexus.

The makeup androgyne came over to the stage and touched the three guests up, with heavy Pepto-Bismol crap that made you look like you were getting fitted for a box.

“Nervous?” Alan asked the bronzed professor, who was adjusting her windsor knot.

“No.” She looked right through him.

Alan shifted in his chair and the director gave a cue. They were coming out of the commercial. The chubby announcer with the fearless stare grabbed the microphone and pitched his guts out, pointing centerstage with a porky finger.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Robb Overton!”

Robb trotted out and did a couple of minutes of dumb warm-up. His hair was a NASA craft, his nipples saggy. And the rumor was his romantic companion in life was a ten-year-old Cub Scout named Bobby.

Mostly what Alan noticed about him was that Robb clapped his hands together a lot to stimulate excitement and seemed to be giving birth with every thought.

“So Alan … how do you plead?” Robb was grinning and the audience laughed, chuckling good-naturedly.

“I guess … amused,” said Alan.

Robb raised a brow.

“I’m a writer. I’m sort of like a court jester who traded his curved shoes in for a word processor. I’m not trying to tear down anything. Unless you count the work I’m having done on my kitchen.”

“I’m afraid that answer is as glib as your morality.”

It was the woman in the man’s suit.

“In fact, you may be blueprinting bloodshed. Since your show has debuted, the incidence of armed assault has gone up three percent in this country.”

“Only three?” answered Alan. “With the economy the way it is, that seems fairly encouraging. Does anybody want to talk about how we do the stunts?”

Richard Frank sniffed his beard. Robb sipped at coffee, nodding, listening carefully.

“Richard? How about a critics P.O.V.?”

Richard lowered his upper lip enough to speak.

“I think the show is an obscenity.”

Alan sighed. Oh, blow it out your flabby dick, Dick …

“If we care about what’s happening in this country, we should—”

“Cancel it?” interrupted Robb. Then, a new thought creased his vacuous face. “But isn’t that—” he thought it over, “censorship?”

Robb was an eye chart, all right, thought Alan.

“Freedom of speech doesn’t give me the right to cheapen life and incite violence. This show simply goes too far. I am, in fact, spearheading a group which is circulating a petition and trying to get this thing yanked off the tube. Make room for decent programming. I’m no prude. I’m a critic. But I’m also a parent and a person. Frankly, I’m deeply disturbed.”

“Alan?”

“Well, he looks deeply disturbed,” said Alan, making eye contract with a beautiful brunette in the front row who’d caught his eye. She was mouthing something dirty to him and her entire face looked like some kind of genital.

Professor Marx was vexed. “Our children pay attention to what we put on TV. We accept TV into our lives like an unassuming Trojan horse, coming into the home and disgorging lies.”

Alan went on automatic. A cliché for a cliché.

“Parents can turn it off. They can unplug it. They can … sell the damn thing and buy a subscription to
Scientific American
and chain their kid to a desk if they want. Tell you what … if it is a piñata, don’t let the kids whack it. Take their stick away. Exercise parental privilege.” Alan teased her with a smile. “This is America, Professor. Try it sometime.”

The professor moved uneasily in her crewcut and the audience laughed uncomfortably. Alan sensed he was losing their affection and tried to make a safer joke.

“Look, my show isn’t compulsory viewing. Nobody gets detention if they miss it.”

The audience was happy again.

Alan felt the tightness in the room ease and smiled. The girl in the front row seemed proud of him and subtly spread her legs, after lifting her tight skirt a little. He could see her panties and she waved with a long-nailed finger.

Richard Frank started up his pipe and Alan wondered if it made bubbles.

“Mr. White, where do you draw the line? Snuff films?”

“Well, I never liked snuff. It hurts your nostrils,” said Alan. The audience was right with him, disliking Frank’s arrogant, cement head.

“I think Richard is serious, Alan,” said Robb, now up on his feet and drifting through the audience like a lost talk show host, wishing he had a desk like the big guys. “Where do you draw the line?”

Alan thought he ought to get a little serious. The snuff joke was really a conversation killer. But come on, what did this fucking critic want? A legitimate conversation or a snotty debate.

“Like I said, I’m a writer. Do I try to be creepy, kooky,
mysterious, and spooky? Sure.” Even Richard Frank was somewhat amused but he crammed his pipe in deeper to cork it. “I mean, I think …”

Everyone was watching Alan. The big camera pushed in for a close-up.

“I think that …”

Faces and expressions pressed in tighter. Robb looked terrified of dead air time.

“I think that … blood is pain in liquid form. I think maybe we’re flesh robots and blood frightens us because it’s a reminder we run on fuel. It reminds us that there’s a community inside the body we can’t control. Uprisings. Anarchy. Maybe cancer is even a sort of … cellular mutiny.”

“What’s your point?” asked Richard Frank.

Alan stared at him. Said nothing for a moment.

“That maybe … we are afraid of blood because it’s a sign from inside that we’re vincible. I mean, as long as we’re talking seriously.”

Robb was getting excited.

“Like a wet scream?” he added.

Alan shrugged. Go away, Robb.

“We’re not talking about blood,” said Madeline Marx, leaning forward, nose pores squeezing makeup. “We’re talking about violence. We’re talking about how exposure to violence infects the minds of those it touches.”

Alan took a drink of water.

“Are we?” he asked. “I thought we were talking about what interests people. I can’t be held accountable for that. I can only be accountable for myself and.…”

He stopped in midthought.

The audience was watching him. He couldn’t make a joke. It didn’t feel right. He was in his head. His thoughts. In a place that felt sharp and dangerous.

“… and I don’t know … maybe when I write, I’m in a kind of lightless place. Primitive people do a rain dance, don’t they? Maybe when I write, I’m doing a light dance.” He was speaking quietly; truthfully. “Maybe I’m just trying to get some light.”

Richard Frank cleared his throat. Puffed his pipe.

“So, buy a lamp,” he said.

The audience loved it and at that second, though Alan smiled, he hated him. Hated his smug face and his supercilious eye contact. Hated his stale thoughts and his ugly little gnawed fingers and the way he never created anything in his life that was original. How he simply walked through other people’s art galleries with his fucking scissors.

It wasn’t the joke. The joke was easy and Alan might have made it too if the setup were reversed.

What he despised, was the way Richard Frank sat there and made fucking, imperious pronouncements, sniffing for something to criticize like a bloodhound. Guys like Richard Frank were a dime a dozen and it offended Alan how this smug little fuck was trying to hurt his series.

“And has it occurred to you, that maybe you write this grotesque horror to get revenge? Pay back all those people who hurt you, betrayed you?” Madeline Marx was looking right at him.

“No,” said Alan, masking his thoughts.

He thought for a moment. Returned to Richard Frank’s incendiary claptrap. “Anyway, I don’t think art
can be considered instructive. If it is, then we better start looking at the religious art in all the museums of the world. The violence there is as brutal as anything I’m doing on my show. It’s just my images move.”

The professor stared at him.

“And your audience is made up, worldwide, of maybe a billion people. A billion people don’t look at a painting.”

Alan just looked at her, still felt loathing for Richard Frank. He decided to save the moment, instead of telling her she was a homely bore and needed to get laid decent for one hour in her life instead of spending her whole life bitching and looking like Robert Gulp.

“Look,” said Alan, glaring at Richard Frank, “there’s a lot of ritualistic killing going on all over the country, right now due to gangs on drugs, and satanism and skinheads and lunkheads and who the hell knows what else. Things are a mess, everywhere you look. S and Ls are going under like they swallowed too many depth charges. Angst is everywhere. Did the show do it?”

He stared at the audience.

“Was it me who did it?”

And the director cued them into a commercial.

Y
eah?” Asleep. Two-thirteen
A.M
. Bart beside him, chasing dream cats.