Like We Care (24 page)

“Then you’re a hypocrite,” Todd shot back, having loaded his verbal gun with this bullet long before he showed up. These two timid souls—Todd and Mr. Kolak—locked eyes and hoped the other would look away first.

Finally: “Thanks for stopping by.”

“You’re a hypocrite, Mr. Kolak.” Todd softened his tone, because he was disappointed. “What were you just saying? That you were going to give us extra credit for taking a stand, for making a difference? So where do you get off taking a pass?”

That stung. But not enough to concede.

“
Why?
” Frank asked with exasperation. “What do you care who’s on the City Council? You’re. . . You’re teenagers!!”

“Yeah, and there’s a bunch of us. And when we stick together, we can make things happen,” Todd said.

It was not hard to miss the determined mischief in Todd’s voice. Frank recognized it. Thus far the kid had called his shots pretty accurately, and Frank couldn’t help wondering how far his theories could be proven.

He sat down.

“It isn’t over?”

“We proved we could make a difference,” Todd said. “So we cost the Happy Snack a few thousand dollars. So what? They’ll just raise their prices to make up the difference and wait us out. Nobody believes we’ve stopped buying their crap forever.”

“But we got everybody paying attention,” Joel said proudly. “We can still
use
this.”

Joel winked devilishly. For all their self-righteousness, Frank knew that what had gone down at the Happy Snack was first and foremost nothing more than an effort to be annoying and screw things up. Teenagers
do
this.

He was forced to admit he had been flattered by their proposal. But it sure hurt when he realized it was all just part of their game.

“So this has nothing to do with me being a credible candidate. You guys just want to cause more trouble.”

Joel smiled and rocked happily. “If it works, it’ll be both. That’s the beauty part!”

“Does that Council want you sitting up there with them? No,” Todd said, kicking into gear. “Would most of the adults in this town, those who even bother to vote, get behind someone like you? No. Which is why you need to do this!”

“Jesus, Mr. Kolak. You’re the smartest adult I know,” Joel pleaded. “You know all about societies and laws and how things are supposed to work, and you’re a good guy, too! But it sure looks to me like if you’re not white, you’re not allowed to say how this town is run.

“Well, fuck that!” Joel said with indignation. “We’ll ram you right up their asses!”

Todd sighed and cleared his throat. “That probably wouldn’t be your campaign slogan.”

Frank smiled. How could he not? Rather than vandalize the town with spray paint or baseball bats, these two knuckleheads were out to jigger an election. And not entirely without noble intentions.

But still. . .

“Look, guys. I’m flattered—I think—but I’m just not. . .”

“The Council meets one night a week,” Todd said. “Issues come up, you study them, and you vote. If somebody in your district has a problem, you try to help. You’d still have plenty of time for all your other stuff.”

If Frank didn’t know Todd better, he’d think this was a shot. He had no “other stuff.”

“If you win, maybe you can do something about things like the Happy Snack. If you lose, at least you tried.”

“You can take what you learn and teach it in class,” Joel added helpfully.

He studied them both, wanting to let them down easily.

His out was obvious. For all their sincerity, their plan wouldn’t work.

“You know, I realize voter turnout is an embarrassment in this town. But getting a handful of eighteen-year-olds behind me isn’t going to do it. Not even close.”

“Don’t worry,” Joel said conspiratorially. “Todd has a plan.”

Frank dropped his chin to his chest.

“If you give us the okay, we’ll start talking to people tonight,” Todd said. “You wouldn’t have to register to run for another three weeks. If we don’t see enough interest by then, we can just forget the whole thing. It’d be your call.”

“
Totally,
” Joel emphasized.

A clock ticked theatrically. Pretty much every night prior to this one, no one was here to hear it but Frank.

“Please?” Todd asked.

Tick tick tick. . .

Joel leaned in somberly. “I gotta go let fly with a dump if you need time to think about it.”

T
he show had run, and that was that. For all of Annie’s hard work, for the sheer force of will that had turned a vague itch to produce something into a half-hour of aired programming, the premiere of
We’re Not Buying This Sh—!
seemed to be over before it had begun. She was proud of it—it bleated and throbbed and postured like R
²
Rev product was required to while still managing to have a credible point of view—but the event was sadly hollow.

Hutch and Viceroy had separately attempted to lure her into their own private viewing parties, no doubt certain that her gratitude at having been given such a chance would result in her making naked jump-jump with them. But she had resolved that under no circumstances would she use sex to sustain what she had started. This was no small self-promise. There remained no real role for her at R
²
Rev now that her show had been blasted into the void. She’d been so busy since coming in from the road and getting a green light for the show that she had yet to even secure so much as a cubicle for herself. The day after the show aired, she would have nothing. She knew that the night before.

Instead, she watched the premiere in her apartment with a small group of friends, all R
²
Rev staffers whom she didn’t know all that well due to her lengthy exile to the boonies. There was sufficient good cheer amidst the Coronas and chips and salsa, all undercut by the requisite cattiness of player-wannabes deprived of their own professional breaks. The raw desire for promotion, for status, was lethal at the cubicle level. Annie’s co-workers, who took for granted that she got the Casey gig in the first place by sleeping with Hutch, cheered her on strategically that night, knowing they’d need her benevolence if her star continued to rise, but also reserving the option to withdraw their friendship if she stumbled, as they hoped she would.

Where Annie really wished to be was back in Berline, back with Joel and Todd and the Happy Snack revolutionaries. She wanted them to like what she had done with their story, and felt confident they would. There would be no bias or gamesmanship to their excitement as they watched the show. They had simply found themselves swallowed up by the cameras that had wandered into their town, and now here was the grand regurgitation. Right there on R
²
Rev, like they themselves were ScroatM or Sweetie-P. For one half-hour, they were the stars.

There would be a party the night Annie’s show made Berline, and she should’ve been there. But she had worked so hard to get back to New York, had whined for so long about wanting to leave Middle America behind, that she had convinced herself that she had to stay in town on her big night. She got Viceroy to sign off on hiring a local crew to videotape the premiere party at Jeff Regan’s house, just in case there was any ancillary life to the story, but this would be the closest Annie would come to Berline that night.

Later, when she couldn’t sleep, she called home to Ann Arbor, even though it was late, even though she knew her parents wouldn’t be able to disguise their bafflement at what their daughter had invested so much of herself into.

“It was something,” her father said of the show, being so sweet as he sat on the edge of his bed, trying to sound proud as he scratched himself sleepily. “It sure was something.”

The show ran again five hours after the premiere—2 a.m. East Coast time—and would get another couple airings over the weekend. After that, it would be thrown into general rotation, just another half-hour block of programming used to pad out a day. If the subject matter had an open-ended shelf life, if a musician contained within could be counted on to draw some level of viewership, if there were no contractual restrictions (i.e. single-use-only licensing of a key piece of music or performance), shows like Annie’s could be expected to turn up anywhere on the schedule for the next few months. Nobody would promote it; nobody at the top would even know it was occupying airtime. It was just something to splice commercials into.

John Viceroy’s enthusiasm for the project had begun to ebb before the show had even run. When Annie turned down his invitation to watch the premiere at his Park Avenue apartment, it was over. There was a congratulatory message from his office on her voice mail the next morning— left at 7:43, when she was certain not to be there—but several attempts to return the call never got her through to Viceroy himself.

“He’ll return,” his assistant always snipped.

“Him and Jesus,” Annie thought.

Hutch had remained pissy throughout, mad at Annie for going over his head to get the show made, frustrated by her rejection of
The Nipple Room
gig (he really
did
need someone to take over that thankless job), and still not sure if she intended to make noise about the whole logo thing. What he didn’t know—because there was no upside in telling him—was that she had given up on trying to force the issue. She had produced a show, for Christ’s sake. It was her name alone listed as producer on an effort generally thought to be perfectly competent. If
that
didn’t earn her a continued role at the net, then what was the point?

To try and use blackmail to secure a promotion was almost as bad as using sex, she decided. She was better than that.

A
nnie found a cubicle and a phone the Monday after the show first aired, and set to thinking about
The Nipple Room
. There was a certain tradition to television dance shows, she told herself.
American Bandstand
had some vague meaning even to someone as young as Annie. She had logged long hours watching
Club MTV
and
Yo! MTV Raps
as a teenager. To be
executive producer
of such a show, right there in Manhattan, right there at R
²
Rev—well, that was something, wasn’t it?

She would have some control—whether a care-taker role or not, she
would
have some control—so maybe she could actually work to elevate the leering pimp ’n’ ho square dance that the net fed to young white minds every afternoon. There remained something honorable about black music,
somewhere,
so maybe Annie was the person to try and restore some dignity to the form.

Little white Annie from Ann Arbor, race savior.

She sighed at her strained attempt at rationalization. Besides, for all she knew, Hutch’s offer wasn’t even in play anymore. At least not without giving something up to get back in his good graces.

It was just past lunch that Monday when the call found her.

“Annie? This is Ashley Harper? With the
West Central Eagle?
In Grand Island, Nebraska?”

She scrambled to think, then she got it: It was one of her stringers. One of her
ex
-stringers. Annie had never even met this one. The kid never came up with anything worthy of a Casey debasement. As far as Annie could recall, she and the crew never made it as far west as Nebraska.

“Hello,” Annie said warily. One of the downsides of her interaction with high schoolers across the country was that several had had the nerve to hit her up for internships—maybe even an actual job—as graduation loomed. She figured this was one of them, although the girl only sounded about fourteen.

“Hi. Um, you know, I saw that show you did this weekend? I saw it with some friends, and we all thought it was really, really good.”

Annie melted. Genuine praise for the show had been hard to come by the past few days. Too bad this kid was just buttering her up.

“And you know what? They’re throwing pennies down at the 7-Eleven.”

Annie stopped. And came to focus.

“What?”

Quick, in one breath: “We’ve got this guy? This senior? His name’s Terry Beecher? And he thinks he’s the bomb, and I guess maybe he is, but he like runs the school and I guess he saw your show because him and a bunch of his friends went down to the 7-Eleven Saturday night and they thought it would be a goof to do what that Joel kid is doing.