Star Time (34 page)

"Last night was wonderful. I hope you thought so, too."

His memory was becoming clearer. Last night had been terrifying at first. He had felt like a first-time skydiver hanging on to the wing's trailing edge for dear life. He vaguely recalled finally letting go and more or less getting the hang of free fall before he would have splattered. And how it felt when the chute gloriously opened.

"Last night," he began and discarded the parachute simile as too needy and artsy in favor of hard-to-fault
cliché,
"was an earthquake."

"Three point two," she said, nodding in confirmation. "The radio said it was centered in the Valley. Breakfast will be ready soon. You might want to shower."

The bathroom was as large and lavish as the kitchen: pink marble with a built-in hot tub and a stall shower. The toilet was housed in a separate enclosure, the bidet in the open beside the sink, which seemed to signify something about modern morals, but he couldn't quite figure out what. One thing he did conclude: Her second husband must have been very rich.

He showered and found the new toothbrush and fresh shaving paraphernalia she had placed beside the sink for him. He thought the razor might be a hint. In a rush of self-improvement, he trimmed his beard down to what looked to him like a triangle of unruly pubic hair, but what he hoped might be mistaken for a raffish Vandyke. By the time he began dressing, he was humming happily to himself.

Susan was placing plates of food on the breakfast table when he returned. Her eyes brightened at the sight of his diminished facial hair.

"I like it. But don't shave it all off." She smiled. "It tickled in several appropriate places."

She took the seat across from him and was about to cut into her melon when she stopped and gazed straight at him in wonder.

"I can't believe I'm actually going to write with Stewart
Graushner
."

He suddenly remembered the nonsense about the sitcom. He had planned to tell her this morning that he couldn't do it, but his hunger asserted itself. He had lived on Twinkies all week. Death by either tooth decay or a sugar overdose would quickly overtake him if he did not get a healthy meal into his system. The price of the breakfast set before him was allowing her to rattle on about her ideas for the sitcom. He heard little of what she was saying. All his concentration was focused on the delicious tastes his mouth and stomach were thanking him for.

As he sipped the last of his coffee, he reflected that maybe with alimony paying all her bills, she could afford to fritter away time on projects that would never happen, but he worked hard all week. He needed his weekend off. What he wanted most right now was to lie in his own lumpy bed and read the Sunday paper.

"The maid will do the dishes in the morning," she said as soon as he set his empty coffee cup on its saucer. "Come on."

He had no idea where.

The exterior of the house had been unlit when they arrived last night. As Stew followed Susan out the front door, he realized that although the house was small, it was stunningly handsome, all windows and balconies. And
its
setting handsomer still: It sat high above a view of Los Angeles to the horizon beside a swimming pool with the look of a mountain spring.

A door took them into the garage. He had taken little notice of her car last night. Now he did.
A white Maserati convertible.
He had never been
this close to a Maserati, much less ridden in one. As he slid into the enveloping tan leather seat, he decided to postpone the moment of truth a while longer.

"First, we have to pick up your car," she reminded him. "We left it at the party last night."

"It's at a garage being repaired," he lied. The lie came easily to him; he had used it several times at work this week.

"Then we can go right to the studio," she said.

She hit the accelerator and hurtled onto a road that dropped precipitously down from the hills. The G forces slammed Stew up against the headrest. Only a minute or two seemed to pass before she was slowing at a guardhouse stationed like a portcullis in the middle of fortress walls extending many blocks on every side. Over the entrance were the words "Monumental Productions."

Instead of being barred, they were waved straight through. Because it was Sunday, the streets separating the cavernous sound stages were empty. Susan pulled into a parking place, at the end of which was a tastefully small sign that read “Susan
Glendon
.”

Once more, Stew decided to defer breaking the bad news to her and followed her into a four-story office building.

Her name was also on an office door just before the words “Productions, Inc.” As she turned on the lights, a display case to one side of the reception area lit up. Inside were statuettes and plaques.

"What are those?" Stew asked.

"You
know,
Emmys and stuff."

"They wouldn't happen to be for writing sitcoms, would they?"

"Some for writing.
Some for producing."

"This sitcom you want to write with me. You don't see much trouble in selling it to a studio?
Monumental maybe?"

"Monumental and I have a first-look deal. They pay me a million two a year. Anything I come up with, they get first crack at. If they like it, we take it to the networks together."

She returned to him and put her arms around his neck. "That's why I'm so grateful to you. I felt guilty just sitting around taking their money, unable to come up with a good idea. You can understand that, can't you?"

He tried to appear as if he did.

She kissed him. "I hope you don't mind that your idea won't be a novel now. But we'd be partners on the series."

"Sometimes a man's got to stand up and be counted," he said with brave irrelevance. "What would my share be for this, you know, for being your partner?"

"You'd get one-half of what I'm entitled to—that is, once the studio makes a deal with a network and we get a go-ahead to write the script.
Your first payment will be twelve thousand five." She began enumerating the payments that would kick at later stages; they seemed to climb all the way to Heaven.

He had never been so aroused in his life. He ended the extravagant litany by kissing her mouth and swiftly removing her clothes. He feared delay might waste the orgasm about to overcome him. He tried to focus on only his first $12,500 payment and being able to travel in his own car again.

They coupled in front of the display case, with the Emmys glinting flirtatiously at him and one tiny bunker of his brain awaiting God's certain double cross.

Every morning Greg met with Chris and Hugo and a small cadre of producers and news writers they felt had the vision and taste to join them in crafting the new version of
FBS News Tonight
. The two men had already done a lot of thinking together since that initial breakfast. Chris was now being introduced to it.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Greg was convinced that networks had to differentiate themselves from local newscasts. Despite Ray
Strock's
assertion of high-minded journalism, FBS had tried for years to raise ratings by presenting the news much the way the worst of the local newscasts did, by arousing viewers' emotions: "If it bleeds, it leads." Imparting information had become secondary.

Greg believed that viewers depended on network news to explain in depth the social, economic, and political conflicts tearing apart the country and world. "We live in confusing, contentious times.
Big wars winding down in Asia.
Little ones exploding in East Africa.
Natural disasters hitting us right and left like a mortar attack.
Hate-filled politics dividing us.
People out of work.
Their houses plummeting in value.
Viewers are looking to us to make sense of it. That isn't local's role, it's ours."

He wanted Chris to go with more hard news. Some reports would be brief, but significant or complex topics would be given lengthier treatment. Correspondents always insisted they needed more time than the usual minute and a half to convey the "why" and not just the "what" of the news. Greg wanted to risk seeing what they could do.

Hosting morning television show had honed Chris's interview skill and, between that and her foreign reporting, given her valuable contacts the revamped broadcast would exploit by means of recorded and live satellite interviews with important newsmakers. The goal was to impart the sense that the network’s twenty-two minutes of content was not just the news, but also the inside story right from the people
making
the news.

Chris agreed, but grew sarcastic when Greg asserted that the more serious content had to be leavened and made more understandable by clearer and simpler writing and more exciting visuals and graphics. Although she, too, wanted to inform in the most understandable way possible, she ascribed his comment to a desire to pander to the lowest
common viewer. She knew that ratings superseded good journalism on Greg's scorecard and always would.

Designing a new set from which to broadcast was invariably the initial move to cure a news program's "bad numbers," its low rating. They all agreed that the present pink-and-blue set that might have come from the lounge of a Disney cruise ship would be scrapped. Greg was determined to communicate the sense that Chris was at the central point where the world's news first arrived, that viewers would miss something if they chose another network over FBS. Viewers would always see the busy newsroom behind
her

the
busier the better. When an urgent bulletin came in, the camera would show the head writer at the end of the desk hand the bulletin to Chris. Maybe he would do it for effect, Greg joked, even when there was no bulletin.

A dress rehearsal of the new format had been scheduled after Ray Stock's final broadcast on Friday. With ten seconds left in the broadcast, the director cut from video back to the anchor desk for
Strock's
customary sign-off. But
Strock
added something more.

"As many of you know, after twenty-four years, this is my last newscast as anchor for FBS." His mouth curled disdainfully.
"After me, the dancing girls."

Because a dress rehearsal of the new broadcast was scheduled right afterward, Greg was watching the broadcast from behind the cameras. He stormed over to confront
Strock
. The older man was removing his lapel mike and earpiece.

"Forget it,"
Strock
declared. "I've given too much to this business and, I hope, to millions of Americans who've relied on me over the years for me to be shoved aside like dog meat in favor of the latest news starlet. That was my resignation."

He stood up and walked stiffly out the door. His office belongings, it was later discovered, had already been packed and sent home. His departure had been in the planning since the changeover was announced.

Hugo was the first to break the silence. "He kept asking me all week if I thought he could come up with significant opinion pieces. I think he was afraid he wouldn't be able to. This grand good-bye was his way out with flare."

Greg was making no attempt to in his rage. "What difference does it make why he did it? He just damaged us with millions of viewers and with a lot more when the other news programs replay the clip." Greg turned to a desk assistant. "Get our news publicity person on the phone right away and tell her we need to get out a response."

Chris was in the back of the room, shock still on her face. Greg rushed back to her.

"It wasn't your fault," he said as soon as he was beside her.

"I used to idolize Ray
Strock
. We both did, remember? He never let up on the Republicans' motives for impeaching Clinton."

"He had also gotten ponderous and self-important. He thought the news wasn't the news until he told America it was."

Chris turned on him. "How can you be so
callous!
The man was a giant, and we discarded him."

Greg shook his head. "I offered him an honored elder statesman's role. His editorials would have given him a lot more influence than most senators—ask your husband—but he couldn't bear to give up center stage. He thought it was his by divine right."

"And somehow it's mine?"

Greg remembered the Chris of ten years before who could so easily be stirred to righteous anger. He needed now to incite that in her.

"Ray
Strock
wasn't just saying those things about
you.
He attacked
every
woman in broadcasting, every woman in our audience. If you doubt yourself now, then I’ve made a massive mistake about you."