Thank You and Good Night

by Ray Succre

  FADE IN

  Emery set to task red-lining his Green Hills script in the writer room. After a length of torture that involved changing the words ‘lighthearted’ to ‘good’, ‘a generous and gentle community’ to ‘a pleasant place’, and ‘a people with an excellent faith in both the region and the means of wondrous Ohio’, with ‘happy residents’, Maury entered the room with a box of papers.

  “Here we go,” he said, “one for you and one for me.” After a moment of picking certain papers from the box, he handed the rest to Emery.

  “I got Ford. You got somethin’ new. Supposedly, that huckster crap can cure anything from cataracts to ugly,” Maury said.

  “Oh yeah? Who do I have?” Emery asked, searching through the disordered sponsor packet of pages.

  “That Catalina stuff. You ever take it?” Maury asked. Emery found the title sheet and located the product name: Catalina’s Fifty-Eight. He grunted.

  “No. Beth has, though. Says it tastes like stale licorice and woodstain.”

  He spent several minutes looking over the treatment, tone, worksheet, and general expectation for the program. What the Catalina people had in mind was an audition show. Contestants were to be brought in to try the patent medicine and then rave about it. Catalina’s Fifty-Eight was loaded with alcohol, around 28% by volume, and boy did they have testimonials to offer. There were three pages of them, each more grandiose and phony than the last. This is what the ‘contestants’ were going to say, all in their own, legitimate opinion, of course. Now how about that! I really am feeling so refreshed by this. It’s like the Fifty-Eight recipe has actually turned off the switch to my arthritis! I can’t believe it. Thank you for this wonderful new product!

  “One of these days, I’ll get the car sponsor and you’ll end up with this shit.”

  “Keep dreamin’. Seniority has its perks, Asher.”

  “Did you look at this? It isn’t a show, it’s like a devotional. Some self-righteous, half-hour commercial spot,” Emery said, “Bellamy should host this.”

  “He’d do it if they paid him enough.”

  Emery made it into the second paragraph of the worksheet and a hollow sensation filled him. His gut turned as he read: This will be a program for the people. We’d like to see a real grass-roots approach that is popular and close to the soil. Frank Gill was there, in his mind, leaning back in a chair and groaning with a mouth full of hot dog. The program director had likely read this program pitch earlier in the day, hence the language he had used during his short meeting with Emery.

  Somewhere in the bellows of Emery’s gut, the universe began to laugh. Truly laugh. The future was here, all of it, an unending pattern of yokelism and cracker-barrel waggery. This was the marketing of an extended, pious phonytale to people who wanted it fast. A people treated to no less than extravagant claims of wonder and capitalism, but behind every line of contrived script, in the damp basement of every show, the people were but a demographic considered to possess no more reasoning than the characters in an Autry song. Emery was going to clatter a typewriter for this crowd until the end. His want for more and his need for a gamble would always be in evidence, the screws in his neck slowly turning into his brain. Worse, he would have to act pleased to do this, as if a zoo exhibit’s scrawny puma rolling over and batting his paws, an animal of ferocity pretending to be no more than a large housecat, all to get the passing crowd jabbering. He was to fake it for the audience and soften their eyes, feigning sincerity and bored nearly to death.

  Emery was either going to deny economic sensibility, or even common sense, and loose himself from the yoke of radio gimmicks to write dramatic shows, or he was going to bed down with the commercial world and thank it mercilessly, succumbing to the surf of each new rage and medicine. He would either free-lance in the mediums of radio and television, or double-shift for every new preacher show, every triple-faced cheap-jack to release their foul sanctimony on the air. He would write as he felt intended, with the full measure of his ability and thought, or scratch with red, strapped to the approach so characteristic to radio-writing, his work pandered down into the bottom-most possible basin of comprehension for an audience.

  “Maury, I want to apologize in person, ahead of time, for the all the work you’re gonna have on your hands this next week,” he muttered.

  Maury turned his head at this and looked over, at first irritated at the interruption, but then quizzical. The senior writer had been waist-deep in his Ford program.

  “What work?” he asked.

  “I won’t be back tomorrow,” Emery concluded. The senior writer’s eyes widened and he quickly set his cigarette in the ashtray, standing up.

  “Whoa there. Wait a minute. Now Em, you can’t do that.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m quitting,” Emery said, convincing himself.

  “Ah buddy, not now. Not right now. I’m already up to my knees in this shit; and it’s only Tuesday. I can’t handle your work, too.”

  “I know; I wish it were different.” Maury did not accept this statement.

  “No. You have to finish your programs. You gotta finish ‘em. You can quit next week when we’re caught up. Just wait another week,” he advised. This had the tone of a plead.

  “I can’t. It’s now or never, Maury. I’m sorry,” he said. This was remarkably selfish of Emery and he was more than aware of it. Guilt was festering. Maury’s mouth grew tight and he fought back a few insults. At heart, Maury was a considerate and understanding man that reminded Emery of his own father, except that Henry Asher had never been able to hold back his temper when truly angry. Maury could.

  “So you’re just- oh, you son of a bitch. Right now? You’re doing this to me right now?” Emery nodded.

  “Damn it, Asher. Is this the free-lance thing? Is that what’s happening, here?”

  “I have to see if there’s more for me. I- I don’t like this, Maury. What I do here.”

  “‘I don’t like this’,” Maury mocked.

  “Come on, now.”

  “Asher, you’re killin’ me. I can’t make you stay, but you’re really killin’ me. You thought about what it’s gonna be like to tell Frank?” Emery had not.

  “I’ll tell him at the end of the day.”

  “He’s gonna pop you right in the mouth.” This was likely. Emery thought about this aloud:

  “Well, I think he knows I’d clout him one back. Because I would. I think I would. And Frank Gill isn’t so young anymore.”

  “I should hold you down for him.”

  Maury returned to his desk and retrieved his cigarette from the ashtray, had a long, contemplative drag, slowly shaking his head. Emery reached into his pocket and found his own pack. After a slow filtering summary of the various assignments and scripts in the room, the disorder of pens and bins about, Maury rubbed his eyes before exhaling smoke and blinking. After a moment, he lifted his chin and spoke.

  “Okay. All right, Em. I guess I get it. You have to do what you have to do.”

  “Thank you for understanding.”

  “I don’t understand. And I’d like to go cut up your tires right now. But I just can’t yell at a vet, and… well, you’re an all right guy. Stubborn asshole, maybe, but all right.”

  “Your compliments are double-edged.”

  “Yeah well, a little more notice would have been better. That would have been the right thing.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do it like this,” Emery said.

  “Sure, you’re sorry. Sorry and more sorry. Don’t use up all your apologies just yet. This is the easy part; I’m a pushover. See, you still gotta tell Frank. And then? Shit, you’re gonna have to go home and tell your wife, you poor fool.”

  Chapter Seven

  His speaking was only disrupted from the ache of his jaw in a marginal way. The dull throb that had resulted from Frank Gill’s meaty, pugilist jab had diminished to strong degree, but there was still a tension at the right-side joint. The fat man had moved quick, struck Emery, and
then just stood there, as if all was done. Frank could have gone for the eye or nose, made Emery look the beaten part for a few days, but had chosen to make it smart and be done with it. Frank was Irish, and there weren’t many Irish people in radio; the employer had gotten where he was by being good at surprising people. Emery had a brief, military history in lightweight boxing, but the swiftness of Frank’s jab had surprised Emery quite expertly. He supposed he deserved the punch for a several reasons, and smarting off had not been the right way to approach Frank Gill.

  He sat with Beth in the warm, fry-scent of the Howard Johnsons near their home, continuing to attempt an explanation that would convince her he was sure of himself, in the good way, not the bad, and that she could be confident that all would be well. So far, what had dribbled from his mouth had none of the feeling he wanted to impart. He kept talking, however, gassing on and rephrasing. He had no route but to talk out his hope. This was proving quite difficult.

  Emery was annoyed with himself for not knocking Frank around afterward. He could have with ease. Instead, Frank had seemed so small, so needy and inconsequent. The program director fit his role and duties, and he was proficient, but no one cared much for him. Frank only represented the management and direction behind the airwaves. He settled the programs, had them recorded, and then he pushed them into the transmitter that they might undulate across the air and reach the receiver in every midwestern home. As a program director, Frank had none of the clout that the fantasy in those programs offered, the actual thing being made. Making and producing were beasts of differing blood.

  Emery knew that the gratification of punching his arrogant boss would be temporary, but the damage it would cause his name and future work would be long-lived. A hard-boiled attitude was simply a necessity to Mr. Gill’s job. Emery had chosen to leave in a troublesome, sudden manner, as well. A man might take a punch now and again for leaving things in a bad way, and that small bit of violence made it so that Emery no longer had to feel guilty over quitting. Everything was settled with the station.

  Now Emery had to face the last and larger repercussion: Being unemployed, and by choice, not ill luck. This made him three parts fool to but one part entrepreneur. He was a husband and newly a father. Rebecca was an adorable infant, making her feats to the day: Opening eyes. A tiny cough. A laugh. Turning over. Quitting his job was an awful idea, but it was done. His incentive now would be to provide for his family through free-lance, and having a young, struggling family was a very strong motivator. He would write all night long tonight, and tomorrow night. Every night. He could not allow himself to fail; too much was on the line. He bit his lip and swallowed. Too much was on the line for him to have quit his job, in fact.

  Emery wriggled his jaw to the left and right for a moment, trying to assuage the tautness, and then he cleared his mind and restarted. Beth was waiting to hear him out, but none of his pitches seemed to be appropriate. She knew better. There wasn’t a pitchman alive who could sell her on less income. Her upbringing alone barred this. One might sell her on a bogus appliance, or a swig of Catalina’s Fifty-Eight, but quitting a job was not something for which she could be easily relieved. Worse, the previous few false starts had given her all she needed to know: He had quit over some hair-brained plan to climb high. He had jumped out of a tree and now eyed the moon from the ground, moving ten steps back for a supposedly plausible million steps forward.

  Beth’s family thought career ascension a grand thing, but that it occurred by nestling-in somewhere, and climbing from that spot. One could not climb, they thought, if one didn’t have a place from which to reach the first, established rung. They were somewhat correct. Free-lance, no matter how he had tried to explain it to her father in the previous two years, had always come off sounding like a euphemism for shiftless and unemployed. Beth had found a babysitter for Rebecca, so they could talk alone, but Emery found himself wishing the baby was present. There was no buffer between them. She watched him and he squirmed.

  He was a small boy, one that knew he was in a lot of trouble for breaking a very expensive window. Beth’s question of why he had quit was ever-present, of course, and saturated the air more than the greasy scent from the restaurant kitchen, but her question of why his altercation with Frank Gill had turned physical was more available for an immediate answer.

  “Well, it’s funny, sort of. He said ‘you sheeny ass, I have half a mind to paste you one.’ And you know I- I can’t stand him, so I said, ‘Half a mind sounds about right,’ and so then he did paste me one. I think my father would be laughing right now.” Beth shook her head slowly.

  “But everything is done now,” Emery continued, “And see, it’s really a swell thing, because now we have a fresh start.” Her lips parted slightly and a sigh escaped. It was the sort of utterance that indicated it had many extended siblings and they would soon follow.

  “Emery, please stop saying ‘we’. I didn’t quit your job. You didn’t even bother to talk about it with me.”

  “Of course. You’re right. I- you know, honey, the truth is that a man could make a lot of money free-lancing right now. We’ve done it before, I know. I mean, I’ve done it. But it won’t be like that, this time. See, that was only part-time, so I only made part-time money, which is always bad. And I was only focusing on radio. I’ll be doing it full-time now, so we’ll make better money, and... so I’ll make us better money, sorry, but because I can write day and night, and I can pull in more than a lot of the other writers.”

  “If you say so, Emery.”

  If he said so, because he was the only one making decisions. He had not consulted with her. Beth could create a delicate sort of stab.

  “I know should have talked it over with you. It happened quickly, but I should have called,” he admitted. She said nothing.

  “Honey, I’ll get more work. And after awhile, I’ll get enough work to have a name for myself, which will get me even better work. The market is big now, and television is taking off, right? I’ll focus on television instead of radio this time, and- and it’s possible. I can make this happen, I’m sure of it,” he jabbered.

  The damnable timing of the waiter separated Emery from a response. Beth smiled politely and made her order, and then he followed suit.

  “And to drink?” the waiter asked. Beth only shook her head mildly.

  “I think I’d like a medium-” Emery began, stopping when he saw Beth watching him. She seemed mildly intrigued with his order. He swallowed and a certain shame overcame him. Beth said nothing and he cleared his throat. Everything was a bit different, even at the outset in a Howard Johnson’s.

  “Uh, water is fine,” he rephrased. The waiter ushered off with the orders and he was again in solitary with the unresponsive Beth Asher.

  It had been an errant wish in the past, his frame in the midnight hour bat-winged over a typewriter on the kitchen table, trying to dent a page or ten and sending it over all the hell and high water. This would have sufficed him had he the instinct to fit. He did not. A certain portion of him, designed to be creative, was also the mask of a deeper and less certain trait, one of being his self, of attaining more than what he held, and being greater than his sum parts and abilities. It was a peculiar need, formed in part from arrogance and in part from compulsion; some called it ‘drive’. Pure and declaratory, needling and hungry, at times a burden and at other times a sort of blistering dynamo, it was drive and it was in him. That those extra-occupational scripts and shows had only been successful in the basest sense had only augmented their economy. His stories had added some income, but not provided much; this free-lancing had been somewhat moot to his financial needs. Stories might provide in whole now, if he hit the ground in a sprint, if he knew how to move in that particular jungle. He believed he did. Then again, didn’t every writer believe he knew how the system worked or where it was broken, even the most unsuccessful writer?

  “The thing is, this is all- just that I can get paid for how I write, see? That's important, or else
what am I doing with all of this? Paid. For what I write, rather than, well, just writing how I get paid. It’s a good way and people are making it work now. Honey, I think I can do it. I know I can. It’s not a risk I’m taking; more like... like embarking. I’ll make all of this work. You do have confidence in me, don’t you?” he asked. This was a cheap way to swivel his nervousness and guilt into something more easily dealt with: Scrutinizing someone else. He wished he hadn’t asked her that question the moment it left his lips, however

  “I did until this.”

  Quitting was not as sudden as it had seemed that day. He had been pondering taking this initiative and free-lancing for some time. It was over coffee and the opening of his second pack of cigarettes for the day, in the Red Room, weeks before, that he first began to truly allow the idea a potential in his mind. There had been a sip of coffee, a drag from the cigarette, and another glance downward at the Home Journal, the article bearing the name of Paige Girdwood. His high-school crush had done as she had planned, accomplished something that she had told him she wanted. Many years had passed since high school, an entire decade. Paige had written her way into the thing she sought, and he was writing phony testimonials and hawkish commercials for Sheaffer’s Air Filters and that finger-dip stuff that Calgon was pushing this year. Yes, Paige was appearing in Home Journal as a free-lancer, and not a staff-writer, and she might never appear on those pages again, but for that month, there she was, after years of what must have been trial. The times were not fair to her gender, and the uphill assault she would have had to wage must have been a struggle of much scope. Good for her. He could do that, couldn’t he?

  Emery had read her article several times before returning to his own work, a praise piece for World Class Johnny’s Autos. He scratched out his original ‘sporting and affordable to match the wage of any consumer’ and re-wrote it as ‘great cars and they’re dirt cheap, friends’. It was over coffee and the endless volley of smoke down his lungs that the seed had been planted, there in the Red Room with a ladies mag and bleary eyes. He didn’t want to hawk ads anymore. The thought of indefinitely writing the things he was being paid for worried him. There was simply nothing of him in it, and what work did reach the air disappeared into nothingness at the start of the next program or commercial.