Life Its Ownself (11 page)

"Not with faggots." Big Ed waved at a waiter.

The show was called
Rita's Limo Stop
. Barbara Jane played "Rita." The show was based on the premise that a pretty young divorcee who happened to be going blind would try to open a restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

I had asked Barb the same question she had asked the producers. Why was "Rita" going blind?

"We had to think of something to make you more vulnerable," a producer had explained to Barbara Jane.

To the Bookmans, I said, "Rita has a partner in the restaurant. Amanda. It's kind of a Lib thing. Rita and Amanda cope with all these problems in the business world. The restaurant is a big load of trouble, and weird characters are supposed to come in and out."

"I hope one of them is an eye doctor," Big Ed said.

"I don't think Rita goes completely blind if the show gets good ratings," I said. "Maybe things will get a little dim now and then."

Big Barb didn't understand the name of the show. What did
Rita's Limo Stop
mean?

I said, "There are truck stops, right? The title's supposed to be a gag. New York? East Side? Rich people? Texas has truck stops, New York has limo stops."

"I always hire a limousine in New York," said Big Barb. "It's the only way you can shop and get anything done."

Big Ed asked what chance the show had to be funny.

None, I said, based on one of the scripts I had tried to read. But that didn't mean the show might not be a success. With few exceptions, sitcom humor catered to the intellect of a rooster.

I had saved the script I'd tried to read, thinking it would be invaluable evidence if Barbara Jane were ever called into a courtroom to explain why she had murdered Sheldon Gurtz and Kitty Feldman, the executive producers and lead writers of the show.

The first two pages alone would have ensured my wife's acquittal. A verbatim reproduction follows:

RITA'S LIMO STOP

COLD OPENING

FADE IN:

INT. CHIC RESTAURANT—NIGHT

(EAST SIDE MANHATTAN. PAN TO KITCHEN.
RITA
, A BEAUTIFUL GIRL, RUSHES OVER TO
KO
, A CHINESE CHEF.)

RITA

I'm starved!

(SHE GRABS A BITE OF FOOD OFF A PLATE.)

KO

No, you Rita! Velly good owner!

RITA

Thank you, Ko. I'm glad you agree. Now stop putting bean sprouts in the onion soup!

(RITA LEAVES KITCHEN, ENTERS RESTAURANT PROPER, BUMPS INTO
AMANDA
, HER PARTNER. THE RESTAURANT IS CROWDED, THE OWNERS FRANTIC.)

AMANDA

We've run out of lamb!

RITA

I wish we'd run out of bean sprouts.

AMANDA

This is serious, Rita. What are we going to serve?

RITA

Chili dogs.

AMANDA

Again? We're supposed to be a Continental restaurant!

RITA

Our chili dogs are made with the best French mustard! If we can serve bean sprouts in the onion soup, we can serve chili dogs.

AMANDA

How did we get into this? We're getting our brains beat out.

RITA

I've got that part down. It's all those days off I can't get used to.

(AN
ANGRY WOMAN
INTERRUPTS THEM.)

ANGRY WOMAN

I wouldn't send a pornographic mugger to this restaurant! The food stinks and the service is rude!

RITA

I'm sorry but I've forgotten your name.

AMANDA

Trouble.

(RITA TURNS TO AMANDA.)

RITA

That was your husband's name, wasn't it?

ANGRY WOMAN

You won't see me in here again!

RITA

What have you got against grease?

ANGRY WOMAN EXITS. RITA SUDDENLY LEANS AGAINST A DOOR FACING, CLOSES HER EYES, PRESSES ON HER TEMPLES.)

AMANDA

Rita, what's wrong?

RITA

Nothing.

AMANDA

Yes, there is!

RITA

I'll be fine, Amanda, as soon as the bean sprouts go away.

AMANDA

Is it another one of those headaches?

RITA

Really, it's nothing a million dollars can't cure.

AMANDA

You must see a doctor.

RITA

He'd only find something wrong with an entree.

AMANDA

Do you ever wish we were still married— away from all this?

RITA

It's the car pools I miss the most.

(A
CUSTOMER
RISES FROM A TABLE JUST IN TIME TO HIT A TRAY BEING CARRIED BY A WAITER. WE HEAR A CRASH.)

AMANDA

Oh, no!

RITA

I wish they'd stop overtipping.

(NOW WE HEAR A KITCHEN CRASH.)

AMANDA

Oh, my God!

RITA

It's all right. That could be the last of the bean sprouts!

(AMANDA CONTINUES STARING AT RITA WITH A WORRIED LOOK.)

DISSOLVE TO:

"Can Barbara Jane act?" Big Ed was now asking.

"I don't think it matters, but I'll find out when I get to L.A.," I said.

"When's it gonna be on TV?"

As I understood it, there was something in television called a "mid-season replacement" and something else called "a second season." The show had a chance to go on the air in late October or late January. In October, the networks looked at the ratings to see which car wrecks people were watching and which car wrecks they weren't watching. They did the same thing in January. The car wrecks nobody watched got canceled and were generally replaced with better car wrecks.

Big Ed said, "I never see car wrecks. All I see is faggots in living rooms."

"Those are the hits. They never change."

"What network is it?"

"ABC."

"Which one's ABC?"

"The one without Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw," I said in an effort to be helpful.

Big Ed and Big Barb still seemed confused.

"Helicopter crashes and car wrecks?"

Still no clue.

"Olympics?" I said.

"Faggots," Big Ed scowled.

"Fags in the Olympics?" I couldn't avoid a look of astonishment.

"Hell, look how they dress when they compete in those silly events," he said. "Everything they wear crawls up their ass."

"ABC is the network with Howard Cosell," I said, taking a final stab at it.

"Oh, shit," said Big Ed, guzzling his vodka.

The plight of TCU's football program came up for discussion. Big Ed was an influential TCU alum, a major contributor to the athletic fund. Through the years, he had provided new lights for the stadium, artificial turf, a modernized weight room, four or five quarterbacks who excelled at throwing incompletions, a dozen or more ball-carriers who ran backwards, a bevy of linemen who never learned to block, and a vast amount of purple paint for the coaches' offices.

All Big Ed wanted for his untiring generosity was one more Southwest Conference championship. TCU had won championships regularly when he was a kid, but he hadn't enjoyed one since Shake and I had led the Horned Frogs to an 8-3 record in the early Seventies.

T. J. Lambert was the right man at the right time, Big Ed was convinced. He was the coach who could get the job done if the Frogs could only recruit a little more aggressively.

"I don't want any NCAA probations,, but I can live with a few reprimands."

He was aware of Tonsillitis Johnson.

"Tonsillitis can do it all. He can take us to the Cotton Bowl straight as a Indian goes to shit."

"That's quick," I said.

Big Ed reached for another Sherman cigarettello. "T. J.'s worried we can't outbid Texas or Oklahoma for Tonsillitis. They'll give him a car, an apartment, a summer job that'll make him richer than two orthodontists. I said, Hell, I know how we can get that nigger. We'll give him his own 7-Eleven, tell him he can rob it any time he wants to!"

Big Barb shushed Big Ed with a look and a gentle tug on the sleeve of his coat.

I had never been able to shush Big Ed. Neither had Barbara Jane or Shake. Big Ed had been saying nigger for as long as we could remember.

We all said it as kids without realizing the hurt it caused. But if you have any feelings, you change when you get older and life drops some smart on you. You can even get pissed off when you hear it applied to a teammate who blocks his ass off for you and accepts you as his equal.

I don't know if Shake and me had become totally colorblind through sports, which is the best thing about sports. I hope so. We still said nigger in a joking way around black guys who acted like they understood there wasn't any hate in our hearts. Anyhow, the word wasn't going to disappear, no matter how loud your Eastern liberals hollered at your truck-stop Southerners.

I'd stopped worrying about the way people talked a long time ago. It was what a person was that mattered. And the truest thing of all was that I didn't have a black friend who wouldn't understand that you can't shush anybody worth $60 million.

At River Crest, all I did was seize the moment to excuse myself from Big Ed and Big Barb's company, telling the lie that my knee was starting to act up. What I really intended to do was go back to my hotel and get drunk alone.

It had become a pre-game ritual. After all, I had to help that other great liberal, T. J. Lambert, beat the Rice Owls the next day.

Blue and gray crepe paper—Rice University's colors — cluttered the ceiling, crawled up the walls, and wrapped around benches in the TCU locker room. Over in a corner, a stereo blasted away with a scratchy recording of "Put On Your Old Gray Bonnet," the Rice fight song.

"It's inspired," I remarked to T.J. as we stood near a coffee urn, watching the gallant Horned Frogs lazily suiting up for the game.

"We've had it lookin' like this all week," T. J. said. "The equipment people done it. I've had 'em playin' that song all week, too. I figured it was a way to get our crowd sick to death of them Chinese cocksuckers."

"Chinese?"

"Yeah, fuck them rice-eatin' turds."

T. J. wheeled on his squad.

"Fuck Rice! Fuck ever grain in Uncle Ben's fuckin' box! Piss on China!"

T.J. was getting his game-face on. Two players responded with zeal.

"Rice eats shit!" somebody hollered.

"They eat owlshit!" came another cry.

I stirred the coffee in a paper cup. "Uh...T.J., what's China got to do with anything?"

"Chinks eat rice, don't they?"

I looked at the floor.

"Well?" he said.

"Well, what?"

"Well, I ain't gonna lose no football game to a fuckin' bunch of Chinks!"I said, "T.J., they haven't moved Rice from Houston to Peking while my back was turned, have they?"

"Fuck Houston!" T.J. reminded the room.