Mean Woman Blues (21 page)

“Well, I’m so glad you’ve got a boyfriend.” For the first time, Terri detected a false note; the temperature in the room seemed to have dropped. Had Mr. Right been hitting on her, she wondered? Maybe the mention of a boyfriend had turned him off. “What kind of art does your boyfriend do?”

She laughed. “He’s kind of having an identity crisis. He used to be quite well-known as an outsider artist. Do you know what that is?”

“I believe I do; my wife Karen’s kind of got a weakness for ’em. They’re those people who paint angels and aliens, aren’t they?”

Terri had to laugh. “A lot of them do. Isaac never was into close encounters, but he painted nothing but angels for a while.”

“Was he good? Karen’s kind of a collector.”

“I don’t know. He never shows me anything from that period. See, the term
outsider
is usually used to describe artists with no formal training. When he decided to go to art school, he even changed his name.”

“I guess I should have known. Isaac’s kind of an unusual name.”

“Oh, he was always Isaac. But he used to be— are you ready for this?— the White Monk.”

She had expected Mr. Right to share a big old laugh with her, but he didn’t even bother to smile. Simply glanced at his watch and said, “Well, we’re running out of time here. Excuse me while I do a few last-minute things.” He called Tracie to take her to the Green Room.

The producer came in looking disconcerted. “Is— uh— is everything all right?”

Mr. Right flashed a splashy television smile; he had beautiful teeth, Terri noticed. “Everything’s wonderful. Miss Whittaker’s going to be just spectacular. You mind running down the format for her?”

On the way to the Green Room, Tracie kept glancing over her shoulder, as if looking for something. She was sneaking peeks at her watch too. She seemed distinctly ill at ease.

Finally, when they’d arrived at their destination, Tracie said, “Usually he… um— he didn’t tell you how the show’s going to go?”

“No. We just gabbed. He’s very easy to talk to, isn’t he?”

“It’s funny he… well, listen, I’ve got to be quick. I guess he really must be pressed for time, or he’d have gone over it with you. Because this is one of our biggest shows ever. Usually we have two guests, one who’s had their wrong righted and the new one— the one with a problem. You follow?”

Terri nodded, though she was slightly confused. She understood the format, but there was some kind of strange vibe in the air.

“This time we cancelled the other, because your problem is too important; it affects too many people.”

“Really?” Terri was starting to get stage fright.

“You’ll be on for the full hour.” She paused and held up a reassuring hand. “But don’t worry; you won’t have to do anything but describe what happened to you. We’re also going to have an expert on, talking about how banks cheat their depositors— the very people they’re supposed to be serving.”

“Hey, you sound like you could go on yourself.”

“Listen, Terri, the same thing that happened to you happened to me. Only I didn’t go to jail for it. You got a real raw deal.” She gave Terri an impulsive hug. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

When she’d gone, Terri looked around for the first time. The room wasn’t green, despite what they called it. It was a whitish gray— actually more like white with a layer of dirt on it— and the furniture had obviously come from a thrift shop. She remembered that this was a struggling cable station, but it would have been hard to imagine surroundings more drab.

She had a sense of failure, and she hadn’t even been on yet. Worse, she had no means of distraction. She hadn’t realized she was going to have half an hour to cool her heels, or she’d have brought a book.

There was a phone. She could call Isaac. But that seemed ridiculous; she’d call him on her cell phone after the show, when they could rehash it. She tried to remember if she knew anyone in Dallas. Actually, now that she thought of it she had a friend here— Jessie Newman, a girl she went to high school with, who’d married some guy from Dallas. What was his name? Kincaid, that was it; like some Son of the Confederacy. Donaldson Kincaid. Two last names.

She looked it up in the phone book that lay on the rickety, scarred table next to the phone.

Curiously, he wasn’t listed, but a Jessie Kincaid was. Terri thought,
Uh-oh. Divorce
. She wasn’t sure she should call at all.

But in the end, it beat the hell out of sitting there wanting a cigarette. When a message answered, she was disappointed but reassured actually to hear Jessie’s voice. They’d been good friends; she wondered why they lost touch. At the beep, she said, “Jessie? Here’s a voice from your past. It’s Terri Whittaker. Remember me? I’m just in Dallas for a day, and I thought I’d give you a call.”

There was a click on the line, and Jessie said, “Terri Whittaker! How come you never wrote me?”

“I thought you were the one who never wrote me.”

“Oh, forget it. It’s a treat to hear from you. Boy is this town
not
New Orleans. How the hell are you?”

“Today, fine. But something pretty bad happened to me. I’m here to be on this television show,
Mr. Right
. Do you know it?”

“Same old Terri.” Jessie laughed long and loud at that one, which put the fear of God in Terri. She wondered if she’d done something really stupid.

“Jessie, that’s not reassuring. What in hell’s so funny?”

“You can always be trusted, that’s all, to be in on the hot new thing. You’re the first person I know who had acupuncture. You were always first at every new club and restaurant and you were onto a fashion trend six months before it hit
Vogue
.”

“Hey, I’m kind of flattered by that.” Terri wondered if she’d just learned something about herself. “But
Mr. Right
’s this low-rent cable show where poor sad people go to cry. It’s not like, uh, crayon-colored hair or something.”

“Terri, you are
amazing
. You do it without even knowing you’re doing it, don’t you?
Mr. Right’
s the hottest thing in Texas. It’s a
phenomenon
. They just went to an evening format and everyone in town’s talking about it. Hey, have you met David Wright? He’s kind of sexy, don’t you think? He met his wife on the show. She was one of his first guests— girl from a prominent family that disowned her when she married a boy they didn’t like. She hit the skids and embarrassed them in front of the whole town by going on the show. It might seem like a grandstanding thing to do, but Terri, she was desperate, just a sweet innocent kid who didn’t know what else to do. It really put the show on the map.”

“I can imagine.”

“So the family had no choice but to welcome her back into the fold— again in front of the whole town— and then she married Mr. Right. Talk about creating a sensation!”

Tracie appeared and mouthed: “Five minutes.”

“Oh, gosh. The producer’s calling me.”

“Okay, I’m tuning you in right now. My husband’s out of town, by the way. You here alone?”

“Oh, good. That’s a relief.”

“What?”

“I couldn’t find his name in the phone book. I thought you might be divorced.”

She laughed again. “Oh, hell, no. He’s completely wireless these days— only uses his cell phone. Listen, where are you staying? Can you have dinner with me?”

“The Bluebonnet Motor Lodge.”

“Ughhh. Terri, you can’t stay there. I’m shocked that’s where they put you. You’ll
have
to stay with me. Will you? I’ll get a babysitter, and we’ll go someplace nice for dinner.”

Terri had actually given some thought to where she was going to find a restaurant. The thought of the depressing motel, of a night alone in a slightly scary neighborhood, had been weighing on her. “Jessie, you know what? You’re cheering me right up. I’d love to stay with you.”

“Get them to take you back to the Bluebonnet to get your stuff. I’ll pick you up there.”

The next few minutes were a blur. Someone slapped some powder on Terri’s nose, someone else led her to the set (which was much nicer than the rest of the studio), and she had time, looking out at the expectant audience, to get nervous while someone else clipped a microphone on her. She’d forgotten about the audience.

There was no sign at all of David Wright.

And then he was introduced, and he came out of the wings and made his bow. The audience went crazy. Jessie wasn’t kidding; this thing really was a phenomenon. She was scared to death.

Her nervousness wasn’t even slightly helped by the fact that the onscreen David seemed very different from the offscreen one. He seemed distant now, no doubt focused on doing his job rather than on her. Oddly, he wasn’t nearly so attractive under the lights. His eyes suddenly seemed small and calculating, way too intense for comfort.

It’s charisma
, she said to herself.
That’s what makes him a star.

The first thing he said was, “Terri, where you from, gal?”

She was a little taken aback by the sudden change of accent— from semi-English to full-out Texas— but the warmth appeared to be back in his eyes. She went with it.

He asked her a bit about school and her art, and then he said, “Well, they sure didn’t invent the phrase ‘starving artist’ for nothing. It’s not a calling that’s even recognized as a real job by most people, is it?”

“No, it isn’t. Most people think—”

“They just think it’s some kind of a self-indulgent hobby, don’t they? And since it’s not particularly valued by society, there aren’t many grants for art students.”

I should have seen this coming
, she thought.
That intimate little talk was all about stealing my material. I’m going to come off looking like an idiot if I just let him rip me off.

“Hence,” she said quickly, “the concept of the day job.”

“You’re a real hard-working girl, Terri. I hear your day job is running errands for people who have bigger fish to fry, people whose jobs— unlike that of fine artist— are actually respected by society.”

Once again, she dove in before he could spew her whole life out of his own mouth. “Yes, they work really hard too. But I don’t have twelve hours a day for my chosen profession…”

As she finished her speech, she made the mistake of glancing briefly at her host’s eyes. They were not merely focused; she could have sworn they were downright malevolent.

Like Corinne Kay Walker, the woman whose landlord had tangled with
Mr. Right
, she got to tell her story— Terri against the bank— and then Mr. Right asked, “Can we right this wrong?”

I must have done well
, she thought. The whole audience was on its feet. The theme music seemed even more urgent and frenetic than it had when she watched the show at home. The collection baskets were passed and people dug deep into their pockets. That part made her feel a little cheesy, but later, Jessie just shrugged. “It’s show biz.”

After the screaming, yelling, stomping, and pocket-emptying, an older woman came on, a consumer advocate who’d written a book called
Banking on Big
, and she ended up getting almost more applause than Terri. “Know what they do?” she’d say. “They know you’re on vacation in July and August, and might not see your statements. So that’s when they introduce the new fees.” The audience booed loudly.

“How do they get away with it? They’re banking on big: No one’s going to challenge a corporation named Bank of the Western Hemisphere. Did you ever notice their names? Calculated to intimidate.”

Or, “Do you realize many banks now penalize you for not using the ATM? Fees for teller transactions aren’t uncommon. And have you noticed how large the fees are these days compared to what they used to be?”

By the time she had finished, she’d whipped the audience into a meringue. But Mr. Right wasn’t yet done. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a surprise guest today— a gentleman who phoned us when he found out about Ms. Whittaker’s plight and asked if she needed a lawyer. Would you welcome, please, Mr. George Pastorek.”

Terri’s jaw dropped. George Pastorek was going to be her lawyer? She knew only two names in the world of consumer advocacy, and the other one was Ralph Nader.

“What happened to Ms. Whittaker is an outrage,” Pastorek began, but he couldn’t get another word out before the audience was on its feet, cheering. “It’s the kind of thing that can only happen to someone who’s too poor to get out of the hole these so-called guardians of your money can put you in.”

They loved that one too. But Mr. Right wasn’t one not to have the last word. He signed off with a final rabble-rousing speech: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are
not
going to let some corporate leviathan get away with this! With outlandish and outrageous fees! With backing a young woman— a poor student, a struggling artist— into a corner like a dog! With never even giving her a chance to make it right! But we will make it right! The day when a solid citizen, a young woman who has done nothing wrong except to fall into the jaws of a greedy monster, can be wrongfully imprisoned and harassed is a black day indeed for America! But a new and brighter one dawns for Terri Whittaker tomorrow.”

Again, the audience stood and cheered. Some threw coins at the set; others threw hats into the air. Still others fisted their hands and chanted: “Terri! Terri!”

Terri left the studio feeling dazed and strangely upbeat.
I should be
, she thought.
I’ve got a suitcase full of money.

She’d barely gotten back to the hotel when Jessie called from the lobby. “Get your Louisiana butt down here.”

That made her laugh. She nearly ran from the dismal little room, riding an adrenaline high.

* * *

Isaac tried calling Terri before she went on the air, just to say, “break a leg,” but he wasn’t all that surprised when she didn’t answer; she was forever letting the battery run down. But he really wished he knew where she was staying; he wanted to make sure he had a message waiting for her when she got back from the studio. Well, no problem, he called the station and talked to the producer, who said Terri was at that moment being interviewed by the host but she was staying at the Bluebonnet Motor Lodge.