Shatterday (8 page)

Writers take tours in other people's lives. Sometimes it's done casually, an evening stroll whistling down an innocent lane or around a familiar block. Innocent and familiar until the light is seen in the abandoned house, until the fabric of space and time is torn and the gaping hole opens onto The Other Place, until the lurker in the shadows emerges. "Flop Sweat" is one of those. I wrote it innocently enough; but something dark and unexpected happened here that I didn't plan on.

In December of 1977 I was contacted in Los Angeles by Carole Hemingway, host of the ABC radio affiliate KABC talk show bearing her name. I had done her program a number of times and had apparently been sufficiently weird for her vast audience to ask for return engagements. Several of these listeners remarked on my having written new stories in bookstore windows, and mentioned that I had even written a story over the radio for the Pacifica outlet here in L.A. She was intrigued and asked me if I would repeat the act on her show.

But with the enormous number of commercial interruptions endemic to the show's format, it was obvious to me that even with a two-hour time-slot I wouldn't be able to write anything coherent and still be able to carry on a conversation. So an alternate
modus operandi
was devised. And this was the method:

Carole would announce my forthcoming appearance for a number of days preceding, and as early as possible on the morning of the day I was to be her guest, she would call me and give me a specific thing she wanted me to use as the core of the story. I would take that basic situation or plot-element or
whatever
and write the story that day, completely that day, without any headstart or preliminary thinking … and have it finished to be read when we went on the air at 8:00 P.M.

Well, even under the most salutary conditions writing a story to order, with that pressing a deadline, from dead stop to completion, is a bit of a throw. But Carole made it that much more difficult by not calling till 1:00 in the afternoon; and when she did finally get through to me, her story springboard was—how shall I put this nicely—less than innervating.

Had she said, "An effluvium-covered brigantine without a living soul on board tacks into San Francisco harbor late in the winter of 1888. In the hold is an incredibly stout cage made of rare bubinga wood. The lock that seals the cage has affixed to it a strange, oddly disturbing runic seal. From within the cage come the sounds of something not-quite-human … in labor," yeah, had she said that, I'd have been home free.

Or had she said, "Start with a sixty-year-old Viennese violinist who has been having a love affair with a woman who comes to the seedy club where he has played for the past forty-five years since he was a young man, every year, but only once a year, on the anniversary of their first liaison. And he continues to age and wither … but she has stayed twenty years old," yeah, had she said that, I'd've whistled all the way to the studio that night.

Had she even said, "Disprove the existence of ghosts, or God, or Ronald Reagan," I'd have had something to sink my fangs into. "Tell me a story of the ancient spirit ghosts of the Mohawks, come again to bedevil those modern-day Amerind high-steel workers on Manhattan towers," okay,
that's
a story beginning. "Do me a story that explains why such a high percentage of big business crooks are practicing attorneys," not bad, a bit nebulous, but a workable basic concept; sure, I could have handled that.

But she said none of those. Nor anything else that might have made my life easier. What she said was:

"Write a story about a female talk show host."

I think I groaned.

A female talk show host wanted me to write a story about a female talk show host. If true love could ever possibly have blossomed between Carole Hemingway and me, it was brutally crippled in that moment. And it had been so many years since I'd done any radio interviewing myself, I wasn't sure I could write it with any degree of verisimilitude.

Nonetheless, undaunted, I accepted the challenge, sat down and started plotting. I had 6½ hours to devise and write a coherent story that wouldn't get me laughed off the air. In a few minutes I had the basic idea and started typing "Flop Sweat."

In the course of typing as fast as I could (I do about 120 words a minute on an Olympia office manual; never an electric, yucchhh; two fingers only), I found I needed some data I didn't have in my library. So I called her assistant at the station, Fred Harris, and asked him to describe the physical setup of the broadcast booth, how many and what kinds of telephone lines they had (it's a call-in show), and how many commercials per minute. And more. And more. That kind of stuff.

The dominant news story during that period, here in Los Angeles, was the mystery of the Hillside Strangler. I decided to use that as one of the basic elements in the piece, and I sat here writing the story with Ms. Hemingway's station blasting away so I'd get the proper cadence of talk-to-commercials that would make the story read realistically.

I wrote all day, and by 7:30 that night had completed the 4500 words . . . wasting myself in the process. But I then had to shower, get dressed (I'd been working in a bathrobe all day and I was, er, um, a bit fragrant), get in the car, and drive all the way across Los Angeles to KABC-AM.

The show went on the air at eight.

Fortunately, the top of the hour is given over to a five minute news roundup that's fed from ABC New York. That was all the slack time I needed. In the car, speeding down the Santa Monica Freeway at 80 m.p.h., I heard Carole Hemingway on my radio, saying, "Harlan Ellison isn't here yet, but as you listeners know, he's a most unusual person, and I'm sure he'll rush into the control booth at any moment."

"I'm coming, godammit, I'm coming!" I screamed back at her, pounding the padded dashboard.

I hurtled into KABC-AM at 8:16 P.M., took a few minutes for salutations and the catching of breath … and proceeded—if one can judge from the subsequent phone calls to the program—to scare the shit out of thousands of radio listeners with the story you're about to read.

This story has not been revised. It comes to you precisely and exactly as it was written between the hours of 1:00 and 7:30 P.M. on December 21, 1977, the day it was performed over KABC TalkRadio.

Why does he tell me all this? Well, I tell it to you to prove that writers are not mythical creatures that live on crystal mountaintops. They are laborers working with inexplicable and invisible materials, but no more or less noble than a cabinetmaker who takes pride in his or her craft, who makes sure the rabbets are tight and smooth; no less approachable than a classy bricklayer who takes joy in the look of a line of bricks laid even and true; no more mysterious or honorable than a schoolteacher who can bring the Wars of the Roses to life for young people.

HER FIRST GUEST Of the evening sat across the table from her, there in the tiny broadcast booth, staring at her with unreadable green eyes showing through the mask. She was dead certain he was crazy as a thousand battlefields; but he was, without a doubt, one of the best interviews she'd ever had on the program. She knew it without a doubt because her hands were soaking wet with perspiration and her upper lip above the glossed line of Ultima II was dewy with sweat.

When she had been in the theater, in the years before she had found that hosting a talk show was easier and steadier work, she had come to understand what the perspiration meant. In show biz they called it "flop sweat," the physical manifestation of nervousness just before going on stage. And during the seven years here at KDID the flop sweat had dampened her palms and upper lip every time she'd had a dynamite show. It was a certain barometer of something happening.

But to call this strange man, dressed all in black, wearing a cheap K-Mart domino mask, the kind children wear at Halloween, a "happening" was to fling oneself face-forward into understatement. Brother Michael Darkness was more than a happening; he was a force of nature, a powerful presence, a disturbing reality; even if he was obviously a certifiable nut-case, a card-carrying whacko, a psychotic in the top one-tenth of the top percentile of emotional walking woundeds with whom she shared airspace.

"Reverend Darkness," she said, "it's almost the top of the hour and we have to break now for the network news, but—"

"Brother
Darkness," he said, cutting her off.

She was nonplused for a moment. His voice. It had the deep, warm, musky timbre of secrets whispered in dark rooms. When he spoke she thought of a stick of butter, squeezed through a fist. "Yes, of course; I'm sorry. You've told me several times you're not a minister. I'll try to remember,
Brother
Darkness." He nodded politely. She could not read his expression around the mask. He disturbed her fluid ease behind the mike. That didn't happen very often. Seven years at this gig had made her almost unflappable. "What I was about to suggest, Brother Darkness, is that we break for the news and you come back for the second hour of the show. My next guest is Dr. Jacob Theiss, a very well-known psychiatrist who works with the Los Angeles police; he'll be coming on to talk about this epidemic of razorblade killings ... and I think some of what you've been saying about evil in our times might be very interesting to have him comment on."

"I'd be pleased to stay, Miss Ketchum."

The way he said it made Theresa Ketchum almost regret she had suggested it. He made his acceptance sound as if they had entered into some kind of unholy alliance. But she signaled to Jerry, the engineer in the control room, and he turned up the network feed pot and the news rushed in with drums and trumpets and the voice of the sixty-thousand-dollar-a-year announcer from New York.

Now she was alone with Brother Darkness. The on-air studio in which they sat was a claustrophial box, fifteen by ten, with two windowed walls: one side looked into the control room; the other looked into the waiting room where Millie sat taking and screening phone calls from the general public. The studio seemed somehow smaller than usual, and throat-cloggingly filled with menace. And it had started out being such a
lovely
day.

She took off her earphones and racked them. She stood up, smoothing her skirt, and was suddenly aware of Brother Darkness looking at her not as a dispassionate "communicaster," but as an attractive woman, thirty-four years old, body tanned and well toned from afternoons at the Beverly Hills Health Club, nose bobbed exquisitely by Dr. Parks, auburn hair coddled and cozened just so at Jon Peters's parlor in the Valley. She had a momentary flash of regret at not having worn something bulky and concealing. The blouse was too sheer, the skirt too tight, the whole image too provocative. But she had dressed for
after
the broadcast, for the party CBS was hosting that night at the Bonaventure to promote its new midseason sitcom. The party at which she would use the sensual good looks, the tanned and well-toned body, the exquisite nose and brushfire hair to play some ingratiating politics; to move herself out of a seven-year rut on local talk radio and into a network job. Dressing with care this afternoon, before coming in to the station, she had given no thought to the effect on her guests; only to how she would present herself at the party. Attention where it mattered.

But Brother Michael Darkness was staring at her the way men stared at her in the Polo Lounge or in the meat-rack pickup bar of the Rangoon Racquet Club. And she wished she were wearing a kaftan, a fur-lined parka, a severe three-piece tweed pantsuit.

"Would you like a cup of coffee?" She heard her voice coming thickly and distantly. Not at all the liquid honey tone she used as the trademark of an aural sex object when broadcasting.

"No thank you, Miss Ketchum. I'll just sit here, if that's all right."

She nodded. "Yes, of course. That'll be fine. I'll go get Dr. Theiss and be right back. We have five minutes before we're back on the air." And she escaped into the corridor quickly, finding herself leaning against the sea-green wall breathing very deeply.

Over the station speakers in the hall the newscaster was headlining the Los Angeles razorblade slayings, commenting on the discovery that morning of an eleventh young woman, nude and with throat sliced open, in the bushes near the Silverlake off-ramp of the Hollywood Freeway. She heard the voice, but paid no attention.

She stepped into the waiting room beside the studio. Jake Theiss was leaning against the wall sipping coffee from a paper cup. The telephone switchboard was lit from one end to the other, all ten lines strobing with urgency. Millie looked up from the log and rolled her eyes. "Jesus, Terri, you've got a live one tonight. They're crawling down the wires to talk to him."

She felt her heart racing. "Keep the best ones on hold; I'll try to get to them after I introduce Jake."

Then she turned to Jake Theiss, who smiled at her, and it was as if someone had returned her stolen security blanket. He had been on the show a dozen times before, and they had even gone out several evenings. His mere presence reassured her.

"Theresa," he said, stepping away from the wall and taking her hand, "you look a trifle whiplashed."

She hugged him and kissed his cheek. "My God, Jake, have you been
listening
to him?"

The psychiatrist nodded slowly. "I have indeed. But it's not so much
what
he says, as the
way
he says it. A little de Sade, a little Gilles de Rais, echoes of Proterius, a smidgeon of Cotton Mather and some direct quotes from the
Evangelium Nicodemi
, if memory serves well. All made contemporary by the addition of Jung, Freud, Adler and Werner Erhard's look-out-for-number-one. Nothing particularly spectacular about it; most modern demonologists plunder the same bag. But your Brother Michael in there has a sense of the dramatic, and a voice to match, and a nasty way of bringing in current events that … well … I can't say I'm looking forward to sharing a microphone with him."

She drew a deep breath. "Jake,
stop it
! This flake does a good enough job scaring the hell out of me on his own. I mean, it's like
Exorcist
time in there. When he starts talking about the return of the devils I swear to God I can
feel
the slimy things in that booth. And I never thought a kid's Halloween mask could chill me, but each time he looks at me with those green eyes I feel every part of my body trying to run away and leave my head behind."