The Bones (19 page)

"Frank, no!"

"Don't worry, babe. I'm not going to shoot myself. I'm just fuckin' with you." Without another word, Frank gets up from behind
the desk and walks out of the office, his Capezio shoes not making a sound on the soft carpet, thinking of tarantulas and
how well they withstand travel in confined spaces. Lloyd presses the tips of his fingers against his temples and begins massaging.
He wonders if Frank could have shot him and doesn't reach a clear conclusion. After a few moments Tai Chi appears at the door.

"It smells like an opium den in here."

"It's Frank's scent," Lloyd replies with fake calm.

"Evening in Shanghai," Tai Chi remarks. Lloyd has the quick thought that if he'd said that she could file a suit claiming
racial harassment and a hostile work environment. As he's smarting from this PC curtailment of the comedy impulse, she hands
Lloyd a gift-wrapped rectangular box about eight inches long saying, "This came for you."

Accepting the package, Lloyd says, "Would you mind opening all the windows?" He takes the little card attached to the gift
and opens it, seeing a handwritten note.

Dear Lloyd,

Thanks for a wonderful script. You da bomb!

From,

Pam, Jason, Jessica, and all your fans at Lynx

Lloyd removes the wrapping paper and ruminates on the phenomenon of white executives who will roil up the windows of their
BMWs when they see a black person on the sidewalk casually dropping phrases like
you da bomb
on company stationery. Inside the box is a solid-gold pen, which he looks at with a combination of amazement and guilt; amazement
that they would send him such a generous gift after having already paid a king's ransom for his presence and guilt since he
will be using it to stab them in their collective back. But he comforts himself with the thought that the backstabbing he
has planned is not just with their acquiescence; they've actually instigated it. Then his leg begins to shake again as he
remembers Frank just pulled a gun on him. A series of breathing exercises brings things back under control.

Lloyd is feeling sanguine about his situation a few hours later as he walks from his office to Stage 23 where the set of
Happy Endings
has been built. Opening a side door, he enters the cavernous space and lets his eyes adjust to the shadowy light. In the distance
he sees people seated at a table set up between the bleachers where the audience will sit when the show is taped and the set
itself, the gaudy Las Vegas home of Lee Roman, the character to be assayed by Bart Pimento. As Lloyd approaches the table,
he hears a loud cry of "Author, author" delivered in the booming tones of the aforementioned Pimento, followed by respectful
applause, all of which makes him want to beat an immediate retreat.

Advancing while trying not to look skittish, Lloyd sees the cast seated around the table along with the sleekly dressed director,
Andy Stanley, who appears to have stepped out of the pages of
In Style,
Pam Penner, Jason Fendi, Jessica Puck (with her ever present pad), and various underlings, all of whom are desperately hoping
Lloyd can deliver some much needed boffo-ness for Lynx, which is currently mired in a ratings miasma.

Lloyd smiles abashedly, gives a little wave, and sits, wondering whether Andy Stanley's wife makes him dress that way or if
he does it on his own. Tai Chi is seated to his left and she has had the foresight to have a cup of coffee and a legal pad
prepared for him, should inspiration arrive during the proceedings. Lloyd takes a sip of the coffee and looks up. For the
first time since his wedding, he senses everyone in the room staring at him, and it is not a sensation he enjoys. That their
faces evince a mixture of worship and respect does nothing to mitigate what he is feeling.

Why are they looking at Lloyd this way? Because he is no longer a humble scribe, a pasty-faced, late-night denizen of the
writers' room, released from confinement only to attend table reads and tapings, before having to slink back to his moldy
lair and work on next week's episode. No, now he is the creator and producer of the network television pilot all of them desperately
hope will become a show and as such is their fearless leader, their father,
el jefe!
Traditionally, writers in Hollywood have been viewed as well-remunerated doormats to whom absolutely no one has to kiss up.
Everyone knows the joke about the Polish actress who tried to get ahead by sleeping with the writer. What people don't realize
is that joke is about the movie business. The television business is something else entirely, because in the television business,
successful writers automatically ascend to loftier levels, and if they create a show, they become what is known as an executive
producer, and royal powers come with that exalted title. So if this Polish actress had been in television, the writer/creator
is
exactly
with whom she would have career-advancing sex, for these men and women are the new power centers of the TV world and careers
are often forged in the smithy of their whims.

Now Lloyd has joined these ranks.

Pam Penner shatters the nervous silence, calling out, "Thanks for coming," to Lloyd, causing everyone to erupt in forced laughter.
Lloyd surveys his cast. The bouncer is to be played by Kurt Umoja, a black New York stage actor with a shaved head and a bad
attitude about television, doing his best to make others realize he's here under duress. When Lloyd met with him, Umoja said
he intended to use the money he'd make from the TV gig to float his Brooklyn-based theater company, which was currently working
on a ten-hour, multimedia version of
The Upanishads,
to be performed entirely in Hindi.

Then there is Teddy Gilliland, a little person, whom Lloyd had cast as the towel boy. Teddy had gotten very hot off a series
of action movies where he played the funny pint-size sidekick to a much larger, steroid-engorged star. Lloyd felt he needed
a dwarf to fully execute his vision, and Teddy is happy to have a job.

The distaff side comprises Dede Green, a thirtyish actress who years ago had starred in a successful teen-angst picture as
the not-so-pretty girl who finds love, then promptly got a nose job, making herself both unrecognizable and uncastable, since
her offbeat charm had rested in her asymmetrical, slightly cubist features. Lloyd's conceit, of which he was proud, was that
she play herself, Dede Green, an actress who had destroyed her career by getting a nose job, then put a nightclub act together
and moved to Las Vegas, where she is now the wacky next-door neighbor of Lee Roman, Bart Pimento's character. Finally, there
is Jacy Pingree, a twenty-one-year-old, blue-eyed blonde from Virginia whose lack of acting experience is redeemed by perfect
features, unblemished skin, and an ability to recite dialogue in an almost indiscernible Southern accent without bumping into
the furniture. She boasts the added feature of being able to effortlessly make every married male in the room want to leave
his wife, a quality never lost on network casting departments. Barely dressed in tight, pink linen shorts and a tighter white
T-shirt that exposes several inches of flawless belly, Jacy is there to fulfill the Lynx mandate for maximum jiggle, a function
she performs ably whenever she moves. Jacy is to play the chief masseuse. Dede already hates her and they met five minutes
ago.

The actor playing the client who gets the skin rash, a guest-starring role, is Rob Lowe. Lloyd had met him during the run
of
The Fleishman Show
and he had kindly consented to be here today.

Lloyd looks them over.
All this effort,
he thinks, with no little amusement.
All these people, all this time. Such a shame. Ah, well, not my fault.

A sharply dressed man in a dark suit, silk tie, and Oliver Peeples glasses takes a seat at the far end of the table. He looks
familiar but Lloyd can't place him. Then, he realizes—Yuri Klipstein! Clearly, his agency, a Mafia-like monster feared by
its own clients, has big hopes for
Happy Endings.

Lloyd says, "Okay, let's get started," and the revels commence.

Scripts like the one for
Happy Endings,
a show meant to be shot on tape in front of a live audience, are composed with the rigor of haikus. There are usually three
jokes per page and usually two setup lines before the joke is delivered, creating an unbreakable rhythm of line-line-joke,
line-line-joke, ad infinitum. This rule can change only after a show has been on the air for several years if the producers
decide they need to spice things up and stretch their own creative muscles, an unfortunate impulse that can wreak havoc on
the lives of the main characters, usually in the form of a divorce or a cancer diagnosis. "A very special episode" often results,
containing slightly fewer jokes and significantly more hugs than usual. But generally speaking, the line-line-joke rhythm
is as inviolable to a television comedy writer as waltz time is to a boring pianist.

A viewer exposed to this form of entertainment over long periods will develop an internal cognitive signal that is trained
to respond to the rhythm of a joke much the way someone listening to a "shave and a haircut" knock on a door will stand there,
ear cocked, waiting for the "two bits" that will complete the aural equation and resolve the tension created by the rhythm
of the setup. This leads to laughs where the audience is not laughing because something is necessarily amusing, but because
someone just said the third line and hit it with special emphasis, indicating a joke has arrived. The laughter, as anyone
versed in psychological theory and remotely familiar with the American sitcom realizes, becomes Pavlovian. In the room at
a table reading, this involuntary response can often lead to a collective delusion regarding the quality of the project or
the actors therein.

Bart Pimento barges through his lines with the same brio that led him to throw paint on the lady with the fur coat at the
PETA demonstration, and the various executives around the table laugh uproariously whenever he hits a punch line, Pam Penner
leading the chorus and occasionally guffawing at the setups for good measure. The rest of the cast follows Bart's lead, and
by the end of the nearly half hour it takes them to work their way through the material, you would think the script had been
written by Feydeau and performed by the Comedie-Francaise in front of an audience of nineteenth-century Parisians who had
been fed pot brownies an hour earlier, such was the hilarity on display.

When the cast breathlessly crosses the finish line, everyone in the room looks at Lloyd, newly minted master of the comedy
cosmos, waiting for his verdict. He purses his lips and sucks in his cheeks, nodding slowly in the manner of Phil Sheldon.

"Not bad. Needs a little work, but overall . . . not bad." Oz has spoken, Lloyd notices from the collective reaction, the
group rendering of respect something he is still not accustomed to. He wishes it were more welcome. Or deserved. "Cast, take
a five."

While the actors all produce cell phones and call their agents, Lloyd meets with Pam, Jason, Jessica, and network spy Nick
Newborn—who will immediately report everything back to Harvey Gornish—to be given their notes on what he'd wrought. Everyone
is in agreement that Bart Pimento is a future television star (Pavlov!), so the postreading creative input being served up
to Lloyd involves how to make everyone else more likable, likability being perceived as the key to television success.

Teddy Gilliland's character, despite his diminutive stature, is a womanizer, but it is decreed he should not have sex with
one of the masseuses on a pool table in the first episode because it will make him less likable. Dede Green's character shouldn't
call Jacy's character "bimbotic"
(that
is unlikable behavior), and it is further determined Jacy's character wouldn't refer to Dede's character as "desiccated,"
not because it will make her unlikable, but because she wouldn't know what it means; instead she should call her "prune face,"
the thinking being Jacy is so darn cute, she could perform an on-camera vivisection of a live baby goat and the audience will
still love her. Lloyd nods as he listens to this, his insincerity completely undetectable, telling the helpful executives
he will take it all under advisement.

As Lloyd is walking back toward the door, he is approached by Yuri Klipstein, who, hand extended, introduces himself, saying,
"I represent Bart. The show's brilliant."

"Thanks," Lloyd says, polite, noncommittal, as he shakes hands with the agent.

"Are you happy with your representation?"

In a drafty studio on another part of the lot, Frank finds himself standing next to a Styrofoam igloo dressed in the polyester
animal skins of his character, Kirkuk the Eskimo, his mind drifting toward Russia as a result of Dubinsky's Rasputin-like
visage and the artificial tundra with which he is currently surrounded. Having exhausted all means of getting the script rewritten
by an expensive jokemeister of his choosing, he is scanning the Dubinsky-penned pages pencil in hand, outwardly unruffled
despite the Battle of Borodino raging behind his eyes, replete with galloping horses, flashing sabers, and the harsh clap
of gunfire as the Napoléon's Army of Frank's Need to Make a Living invades the vast Russian Motherland of His Self-Respect.
He calmly alters the rhythm of a joke by crossing out an offending word while cannons only he can hear roar in his ears. Looking
up, he checks on the progress of several technicians who have been trying to unravel the mystery of why the animatronic walrus
is malfunctioning at this critical juncture.

"Do you want to run lines?" Honey asks, appearing in front of him in her faux-wolverine anorak.

"Not right now, babe. I'm tinkering," he calmly responds, as a hundred of Napoleon's soldiers are slaughtered in a Slavic
countercharge.

They have been rehearsing for the past three days and are scheduled to tape the show in front of an audience tonight. Honey
is so juiced she can barely stand still, bouncing on the balls of her mukluked feet, fingering the imitation-whale-tooth jewelry
around her neck and wrists, and popping sunflower seeds to keep from smoking, a habit she has fallen back on as a result of
the tension that is so often the handmaiden of opportunity. Somewhat to Frank's surprise, her performance has been quite good.
Her years with him appear to have paid off in an unanticipated ability to time a joke, and the voluble reaction of the crew
to her mimetic interpretation of a female walrus taking liberties with her husband's tusk revealed a heretofore unknown rapport
with a live audience.