Star Time (49 page)

She asked Greg a few more questions about the proposed program and then fell silent. They were both thinking the same thing. Chris voiced it first.

"When do you and I get time alone? Where? How? I can't walk into a lobby without being recognized."

"I'll rent an apartment in someone else's name.
With a private entrance.
Maybe in a brownstone.
We won't be able to get much time together, but at least it will be something."

Chris grinned. "You're the best person at secrecy I know.” Then she recalled, “A friend is thinking of giving up her apartment."

She became pensive. "It will be difficult, and some part of me will feel ugly all the time I’m with Ken."

"I try to think of it as a separate life apart. And we only have to hold on until the end of the year."

"When it comes, I don’t know for the life of me how I’ll be able to face Ken and tell him.”

"And then we can live happily ever after and have lots of kids."

"Sounds wonderful.
We'll just have to wait a couple of years for the first one . . . you know, until the program's established. Ken has a hard time with that, but you and I have the same priorities."

He bent forward and kissed her again. "I made a terrible mistake when I left you. How often does a man get a second chance to correct his life?"

Chris met with Matt Blanchard to convince him to hire Gerry
Torborg
for the planned newsmagazine program. She could pull rank and demand it, but sensed determination in the young man to stand his ground now and demonstrate that he was boss, regardless of her power.

"Gerry's a fine producer," she argued, "a fine man."

"I like Gerry personally. But we don't have time for his kind of contemplation over every little thing. We're going to be going at a pace that will wear out someone half his age. If he slows up the process so that we don't get something on the air, it's my ass. I can't take that chance."

There was an additional reason, she sensed: Blanchard wanted to be surrounded by his own people and not have in his midst someone known to be her ally. But his argument about the need for a quicker, less meditative producer was unassailable. Gerry could never work at the accelerated pace. She nodded and stood up. Tomorrow the terminations would be announced, and she could not prevent Gerry
Torborg
from being among them.

Chris did not sleep much that night and came in early to be sure to catch Gerry as soon as he arrived. She brought him to her office and, as gently as she could, told him he was being let go. She had expected dismay and then worry. She had not expected that his understandable anger at the company would be directed toward her.

"I thought you, of all people," he said, "would have the principles not to knuckle under to the news-as-entertainment thinking."

"It wasn't like that. I fought for you, but it was impossible."

"This isn't the Saturday morning cartoons or
Wide World of Mindless Entertainment
. This is the news, the information that's essential for us to provide to a free people. I'm being fired because I took that duty seriously."

"You have every right to be upset. But choices had to be made. The budget was just too high."

Gerry
Torborg
gazed at her with the full dignity for which she had always admired him, and then he rose and went to the door. He had one last thought to express before he left.

"Nobody ever said the budget was too high before we had an anchor
who
made two million dollars."

Stew
Graushner
parked his Jaguar in a shopping center parking lot. He ran into The Home Depot’s men's room and hurriedly changed from the plaid vicuna jacket and silk slacks a private tailor had recently run up to an old K-Mart ensemble he had worn before Susan
Glendon
scattered magic dust on his life. The new clothing was then locked into the Jaguar's trunk. A taxi awaited him at the shopping center’s entrance,
which let him off a block away from
The Guts of the
Story
’s
ramshackle offices. He walked the rest of the way.

To determine whether he could risk giving up the job that was providing what Susan believed to be his inspired imagination, he had once called in sick at
Guts
and stayed home to work with her. All that day he was devoid of ideas. He returned to
Guts
the very next day. The excuse he gave Susan for disappearing was that he wrote best at night and must go off into the mountains each day to think. He told her he was pondering a paper to be entitled "The Semiotics of the Semaphore, Five, and Six."

Susan was awed by his depth. She revised her own work schedule to write with him after he returned at the end of the day (once more back in elegant clothing). She marveled at the new plots and details he managed to come up with each night about their series' characters. She was humbly grateful for the chance to work with him.

Susan was troubled on the personal level, however. After their writing was done for the night, she seemed unable to interest him enough to keep him from going to sleep. She feared that a man of such towering imagination and intellect would soon grow tired of their conventional lovemaking and of her.

Each day, while he was gone, she labored to devise new scenarios and techniques to maintain his sexual interest. She bought weirdly lascivious outfits and prowled the most disreputable sex shops for kinky implements and for books with scurrilous plots she might adapt for their bedroom. They seemed to catch his attention. But she knew if she was to retain it, she would have to invent ever lewder and more unconventional pleasures. She was falling apart, but dared not let on for fear of losing him.

Stew thought
he
finally and truly understood what hell must be like. He had finally seen his dreams realized: He was on the brink of success as a writer, he was making crazy money, and the most incredibly sexy woman nightly plied him with erotic delights. But success had turned out to be a curse. He could barely keep his eyes open. He dared not confess his fatigue resulted from holding down a job at
Guts
for fear
of undermining the basis of her respect for him. So, after working at two jobs, in order to prove his infatuation he had to make love in everything from a Saran Wrap toga (he was Transparent Zeus) to, on this particular night, a Santa Claus outfit with an open fly. On his shoulder he hefted a bag full of the most bizarre toys

and extra batteries if they ran down.

Attached by the reins he held, as an antlered Vixen Susan galloped around the house crying out, "To the top of the rooftops!" Finally, getting into the spirit of the game, he cracked a velvet whip over her naked rump and demanded to know whether she had been "naughty or
nice."
Off came the antlers, and she dropped down beside the faux fireplace.

"Oh, Santa," she cooed, now a lonely and very naked widow without a man or a dildo for company on Christmas
eve
, "I just love your North Pole."

He snorted brazenly. A cloud of talcum powder whitening his beard flew up into his nose and sent him into a fusillade of sneezes. By the time he had recovered, his North Pole was pointing solidly south.

Greg listened through the oral presentation given by the three impressive gentlemen from Research. He had already read their voluminous written analysis. All of the groups on whom they had carefully tested Arnold Mandel's pilot show for
What's
the World Coming To?
had
had the same reaction: They were scandalized.

"I told you they would be," the West Coast researcher of new shows smugly maintained.

His boss, the head of the Research Department, was even more pessimistic about the series' potential. "It might even pull down shows that come
before
it."

Greg thought for a while. "Something bothers me. Very few people said they found it funny."

"If you'll notice, one of the subjects mentioned that it was amusing 'if you like that sort of thing.' "

"Has Jimmy Minh seen this?"

The Research
v.p
.
was startled.
"No, of course not.
This isn't his area. He just tabulates our ratings."

The man had no idea that Greg
Lyall
knew Jimmy Minh. Actually, he had no idea that
anyone
knew Jimmy Minh, who had been entombed in the same office and position for over a decade.

"Ask him to come up here," Greg ordered.

"He'd probably be embarrassed . . ."

Greg picked up his receiver and punched in the number from memory—Jimmy had counseled him many times over the years. The vice president turned ashen.

A few minutes later, the wiry Vietnamese ambled into the room. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, and his shirttail had climbed out of his pants. A shock of black hair dipped down in front of his large eyeglasses.

Greg explained their problem. Jimmy perused the report for a few minutes. Then pushing his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose, he looked up.

"Greg, you say this show is really outrageous?"

"But I also thought it was wildly funny. These people never mention that."

"They wouldn't have with so many others in the room. They would say what they thought would sound respectable. You have to test that sort of show where they'll really watch it: in the privacy of their own homes. They’ll be more honest."

"Can we do that?"

"Sure, we can get a cable company to play it in a sample area next week. We give them remotes to press that record their responses while they're watching the show, and then we phone a random sample for their confidential opinions."

"Handle it, Jimmy. I need an answer no later than two weeks from last Monday."

Jimmy's boss tried to assert, "If we had known you were looking for that sort of information . . ." His voice faded away under Greg's disregard.

It was inconceivable to the Research vice president that the chief executive officer would transgress protocol by consulting directly with his subordinate and not dealing directly with him. But shocking form or not, the conclusion was inescapable that despite having always conducted his corporate life with exemplary political caution, he had suddenly and without the slightest warning come face-to-face with his personal apocalypse. Over Jimmy Minh, of all people! He wondered if it was too late to take advantage of the severance package offered a few months back.

The party was a dazzler, one of the
kind
she used only to read about. But Marian Marcus received dozens of invitations a month now. Tall and erect, chicly gowned, she was an impressive and glamorous woman, but most important, she was a
power
in Hollywood, feted and flattered everywhere.

Her escort this night was an intriguingly muscular young assistant director she had come upon while viewing a rehearsal for a dramatic pilot. She ignored him most of the evening. Both of them understood that parties such as this were for business. She conversed with several studio heads about buying a group of their latest theatrical films for showing next season. Some of the films were committed first to cable, which had provided money to help fund production. But if she could obtain a package of films that had not yet played on cable and add to those some TV movies FBS was itself financing, two attractive hours every week could fill a large hole in the schedule.

As she and her escort left the party, one of the valet parkers came up to take her ticket. Her heart nearly stopped. Before her was the face enshrined in the deepest vault of her memory.

"Excuse me," she asked, pulling back the parking stub, "aren't you Derek Peters?"

The well-remembered smile shyly lit his face. "Yes . . . yes, I am. Do we know each other?"

Derek Peters, she thought, you are still the most beautiful creature on this entire earth.

"No reason why you should remember, I guess," she said aloud. "We used to go to UCLA together."

He looked a little puzzled. "I usually have a good memory for faces."

"I'm Marian Marcus."

Most of the young people who parked cars at such events were actors trying to make ends meet. She asked if he was.

"Not a very lucky one," he admitted. "A couple of shots on
Tour of Duty
, a walk-on or two, some little theater. I always end up getting beaten out for the part. What do you do, Marian?"

"I'm head of Programming for FBS."

Once more his smile formed, but astonished now and eager and gleaming. "I think I remember you now, Marian.
At UCLA."

"We have a lot of catching up to do," she assured him. "Are you doing anything later tonight?"

"No. I'll be through at one."

"Well, I'll just drive my friend here home and come by for you then." She turned to her escort. "Derek and I practically grew up together. I know you won't mind."