WLT (30 page)

“Yo cli—what?”

Now Homer the sound effects man perked up his ears. He had been clinking coffee cups, rattling silverware, slurping soup, all easy business, but what in blazes is a clematis and what sound does it make? He thought,
whirr
.

“My clematis. It's on the back porch.”

Homer looked around behind him.
Shit, where's the screen door? It's summertime. All I've got here is a big heavy oak door and a creaking door and a car door and a jail cell door.

“No sense rushing out there to prune a
vine
—it'll wait,” said Dad. Then he heard a body fall. It was Becky. The reference to prunes had felled her and she lay in a heap, her body racked with giggles.

“Sit down and have a cup of coffee,” offered Dale. It was all he could think of to say, Faith having knelt down to stifle the child. But her sobbing could plainly be heard. “Little Becky's kind of allergic to that clematis. It makes her wheeze. That's why Jo wants it trimmed back, I guess,” added Dale.

“That's right!” Faith called up from the floor.

Roy Jr. and Frank and Ray all arrived in the control room in time to hear Dad say, “Well, anyway, we're pleased you dropped in, Miss Douche.”

“That's not her right name, is it?” whispered Ray.

Dad was perspiring. He held up two fingers.
Page 11,
he mouthed.
Last page.
They were on page 9. The others flipped ahead to page 11, except for Wilmer who misunderstood the signal and went back to page 2, the fishing scene. Wilmer arrived there first.

“Ah sho recommends you puts a new wum on dat hook, Misteh Dad. Ah blieves yo fust wum is near 'bout daid.”

Dale didn't hear him. “Jo, this is the best coffee cake you've ever made, I swear,” he said. “But I'd give anything to have a piece of your jelly roll.”

“Miss DuCharme,” said Dad, “let me show you to your bedroom.”

And the organ came up with the closing theme, and Reed did the back-announce, and the studio was still. The actors stood stock still. “Jesus H. Christ,” said Dale.

And that was what made Roy Jr. come striding red-faced into the studio. “Never say a word near a microphone that you wouldn't want to go out on the air. Never,” he said. Itch the engineer had been so convulsed by “Miss Douche” he forgot to the mike switch and so “Jesus H. Christ” went out to the friends and neighbors in radioland and so did Faith's “Get your fat little butt off the floor and out the door,” spoken to Marjery but, as Jo speaking in Elmville, it could only have been directed at Delores.

“Don't ever curse in a studio. Don't ever assume a microphone is off. You're professional radio people. You know that.”

“Well,” said Dad, mopping his face, “it could've been worse. At the moment, I don't see how, though.”

And then Mr. Odom popped in to say that Patsy had called to apologize—some pages got left in the script by mistake. “Some mistake,” said Roy Jr. He turned to Ray. “She's your problem. I can't do anything with her. You hired her and you're keeping her here, for reasons that have nothing to do with radio, if you ask me. Fine. Do what you like. But don't ask me to manage a situation that's unmanageable.”

“Patsy Konopka is a
hell
of a writer,” said Mr. Odom.

Roy Jr. turned and cocked his head and blinked. “I didn't ask for your advice, Mr. Odom.”

“If you don't want my advice, then don't talk about Patsy Konopka in front of me.”

“Patsy is fine,” said Dad, “but she isn't writing for our audience. I don't know who she's writing for.”

Ray said he would talk to Patsy, and Roy Jr. went off to call up Marjery's mother to tell her he was giving Marjery six weeks' notice.

Listening to the last minutes of
Friendly Neighbor
from the control room, Frank didn't find it funny. Not at all. The actors in the studio looked pale and helpless, and Maria trembled for ten minutes after it was over. He hugged her. She laughed and then she cried. “I'm going to get fired,” she said. “They'll throw me out on the street because I played the bad woman. You wait and see.”

“No, they won't,” he said. “It's only a part in a play.”

“I might as well pack up and go back to Milwaukee,” she said. “Oh, Frank. Just when I was getting to like you!”

So Frank ran, three stairs at a bound, up to Roy Jr.'s office. He was still talking to Mrs. Moore.

“Marjery's a little old for ten. She's been ten for almost fifteen years and she was fourteen when she started,” he said.

“Maybe Little Becky ought to grow up,” said the mother, hopefully.

“I don't think she can grow that fast. So I think she ought to go back to her dad. All good things come to an end, and this is one of them. Anyway, I think that Jo and Frank are going to have a baby.”

“I'd like to talk to Ray about this.”

“Honestly, Ray doesn't deal with this anymore. He turned this all over to me, Mrs. Moore, and I don't like to be the one to have to tell you, but I am the one, and you just have to accept it.”

“I think that if people knew—if the listeners out there were
aware
—that you are getting ready to dump Little Becky like she was a sack of potatoes—I think there'd be a real uproar out there if people knew.”

“She's a popular girl, don't think I don't know it. But I think the listeners would be a little surprised if they knew that Marjery's twenty-nine years old.”

“I know those people, Mr. Soderbjerg. I think they'd be behind us.”

“I'm not taking a vote, Mrs. Moore. I've made up my mind.”

“We'll see about that.”

Roy Jr. hung up and said, “Had your lunch?” and he and Frank strolled over to the Pot Pie. Then Roy Jr. said, “Naw, let's splurge.” And they walked downtown to Charley's. They ordered oysters and prime rib steaks. Frank had never eaten oysters before, and when the plates arrived, he thought of asking, “Is it
raw?”
and then thought, “Naw, of course not.” And ate all six of his, doused in red sauce. He was in love with Maria. He could eat anything.

T
he waitress at Charley's was one who believed in striking up meaningful conversations with customers and after she brought their steaks, they got to hear her thoughts about the criminals running loose in Minneapolis. She thought there were too many and that politicians were in cahoots with them and held back the police from making arrests. She said it was getting so that the streets were too dangerous for a girl to walk, even in broad daylight. She felt that a lack of religious faith was behind this trend. She said, “A person who goes to church on Sunday isn't going to come around and rob you on Monday.”

“No,” said Roy Jr. “If he is going to do it, he'll probably do it on Sunday.”

“Well,” she said, “it's been nice talking to you. Let me know if you care for dessert.”

The moment she sidled away, Frank leaned forward and said, “Mr. Soderbjerg, I have to ask a favor of you. Maria Antonio, who was on the show today, she's a friend of mine, and she's a wonderful person. I hope you're not going to fire her because of that. It wasn't her fault—”

Roy Jr. stuck up his hand. “Don't give it another thought. It wasn't that big a problem.”

“She's worried that you'll cancel the show or something.”

“Not a chance. It was an accident. Put it out of your mind.” Then he said, “Which one is your friend?” Frank told him. “Oh,” said Roy Jr. “The one Patsy Konopka is trying to get me to fire.” He laughed. “Poor Patsy doesn't care for Catholics, I think. She told me your friend is a gold-plated whore. Interesting terminology.”

“Who is Patsy Konopka?”

The older man smiled and looked at the ceiling, as if about to launch into a story, but then he thought better of it and frowned. “She's our head writer. An old friend of Ray's. Sits over at the Antwerp and cranks out six shows a day, believe it or not. It certainly isn't Broadway material but people like it. But she gets sloppy. Can't keep the characters straight. Dad's had six different next-door neighbors in the last month.”

Frank thought he would look up this Patsy Konopka and see what he could do to change her mind about Maria—but Roy Jr. was saying, “No, this episode today —I tell you, all the worst things that happen in radio aren't as bad as you think. The only unforgivable sin is to not show up. Punctuality. The first law of radio: BE THERE. Remember that. The corollary of that law is: a radio man should own two alarm clocks and have a third available. Not many people were ever fired for not being brilliant, but the list of brilliant guys who wound up as shoe salesmen because they came late for the shift is as long as your leg.

“We had a fellow once named Burns L. Strout who overslept one snowy morning and as a result
The Early Birds
wasn't there at five a.m., not the theme song, ‘Bugle Call Rag,' or the cheery voice saying; ‘Morning, early birds! And a beeeeeyoootiful morning it is too!' The voice that was supposed to say this was in the sack, dead to the world, having been out until three a.m. climbing into a whiskey bottle. Burns had a problem of wanting to be two things at once: a responsible decent person who brings sunshine into the lives of thousands
and
a crazy man who feels the throb of the midnight tom-toms and goes coursing out into the crowded avenues of the great hairy metropolis to seek the woman of his dreams.

“On this particular night, I believe, he had had to hire a girlfriend, so he was absolutely broke and came home to his slough of an apartment and passed out in a pile of old clothes and woke up late with a hangover that felt like his head had melted and came high-tailing it into the studio at 5:07 with terror in his watery blue eyes and hurled himself into the chair like a sinking ship, a sheaf of weather reports and livestock summaries and news headlines in hand, and he looked at his engineer Itch—the guy you just met—his real name is Mitch but he was always a little late with the microphone, so we called him Itch—a joke he never got, by the way—and Burns hit the chair, landing on his hemorrhoids big as Concord grapes, and his brains sloshed, he moaned and said, ”Jesus, this light is bright. Why in flaming hell can't I hear the music, you asshole?“ The reason he couldn't, of course, was that the microphone was on. Itch had put him on the air the moment his butt hit leather.

“Well, as you can imagine, out in radioland, all the friends and neighbors woke up in a flash. There they were, dithering around the kitchen, when suddenly this deep horrible voice three feet away says
asshole
. It's like the escaped rapist is sitting by the toaster holding a shotgun on them. Then they heard this awful breathing, and a bout of throat-clearing, like a swamp being drained, big gobs of phlegm rattling—and then he retched, a big dry heave—and you can imagine out in the friends' and neighbors' kitchens, where the good folks are fixing breakfast, the sound of a man retching on the radio is pretty darn disgusting.

“Well, Itch leaped out of the chair and waved at Burns that
Your microphone is ON!
and Burns, who was operating in dim shadows, looked up and said, ‘Oh fuck you.' The friends and neighbors looked up from their coffee. I happened to have just turned into the parking lot and I made it from the car to the control room in six seconds. Burns saw me the moment he realized what had happened. He didn't say a word, and neither did I. He got up and went out the door and became a shoe salesman.

“That was six years ago. He's still down at Thorn McAn, kneeling and smelling the feet, and you're here in radio, Frank, which is preferable. Just remember the rule: BE THERE. And never curse around a microphone. Never.”

“Did you get a lot of complaints that time?”

“If we'd apologized for it, we'd've gotten an avalanche, but without an apology, people couldn't be sure they had really heard what they thought they heard. It was five a.m. People don't exactly
hear
the radio at that hour. It's more like a warm thing that hums and reminds you of your mother.”

“Did this happen to take place in Studio B?” asked Frank.

“Of course,” said Roy, Jr.

Ray found Patsy at the Antwerp, banging away at the typewriter, her radio blaring, a band playing a polka—he had to pound hard on the door, ten heavy thumps, before she opened it.

“I'm sorry, Ray,” she said. “I heard the show. Cripes, I'm embarrassed as I can be. Come in and have a drink.” Ray sat down in a leather chair and accepted a shot of bourbon. (
Who do you keep bourbon around for?
he thought.)