Thank You and Good Night

by Ray Succre

  Tom Nash: Two minutes. Now, you’ve been very outspoken in the past about sponsorship problems and network trouble, and Gerald Moe once called you “the only man in television with enough fingers to point at absolutely everyone”. What I want-

  Emery Asher: Okay, sure.

  Tom Nash: -what I want to ask you is- and many people have noticed a less outspoken Asher since The Other Side first went on the air. Fewer harangues. Less complaint. But what I want to ask you is: Do you think you’ve conformed in the last few years?

  Emery Asher: I have plenty of ammunition, even a little for Gerald Moe, but I’m tired of the battle. It’s too overwhelming trying to fight with networks, with sponsors, and I’m tired of it. Those skirmishes really get you nowhere. I’m weary of campaigning for things I need, only to end up having to settle for much less. It’s an endless series of compromises, and with more of it on my end than theirs. It’s like asking dad for a nickel when you were twelve-years old, and he says he’ll give you two pennies, instead, and only if you do the following seven new chores, and you think, “no, that’s unfair, that’s worth a quarter.” But he’s your dad; you have to do what he says. This is right at the heart of what it means to be a television writer, if that writer wants to do anything at all controversial or timely.

  Tom Nash: Well, when I was twelve, it would have been a penny and not a nickel, but-

  Emery Asher: Right, sure.

  Tom Nash: Well, let me ask you this: Why continue in the medium? Is it for that nickel?

  Emery Asher: Oh, for the same reason you do, Tom. The nickel is nice, sure, but we fit here. We fit well. Some writers have left. I know Gore Vidal has said his goodbyes to the small screen, I think. But the shape of our souls might be different. Television fits all sorts. And also because I think there can be truly mature, entertaining, serious drama, writing that reaches for real, human meaning, without being mucked by marketing. There can be controversy and real meaning on the home screen, but only if the networks think that’s what the public wants. My job is to let them taste as much of that as I can sneak through. It’s not a great world, television, and I don’t mean to say that it’s a pit of snakes or an unfair enterprise, or that it will ever become some sort of peak for literature, I just think it’s untapped and hasn’t really begun to do what I’m certain it can.

  Tom Nash: Do you seek controversy?

  Emery Asher: Well, it’s a little sinister to me that social evils aren’t permitted to be shown in a dramatic light on television. Human beings are controversial. We are. Our themes are like that, too, and buried deep in our culture. We’re incredibly timely, and our entertainment could be, too. Should be, sometimes. Keeping these elements out of our drama is like keeping a preacher away from a pulpit, or a car from moving down some nice, newer road. This is what’s happening, I think, and it’ll be up to future writers to flesh that out, if it’s possible. For now, I want to write more and keep doing new things, and continue to work with television in the mode that I can.

  Tom Nash: Thirty seconds. I want to get to this briefly: You’re about to embark on a world lecture tour across numerous countries. Is this a short stint for you, or something you plan on doing more of in the future?

  Emery Asher: I’ve never really done anything like it before, but if it goes well, I might be interested in doing so more often. If I can help inform new writers a bit from my experiences, I’d be glad to. The tour starts off in Boston on the 24th of this month.

  Tom Nash: And good luck. Emery Asher, thank you for being here this morning.

  Emery Asher: Sure, my pleasure, Tom.

  Chapter Thirty

  FADE IN:

  EXT. HONG KONG, DOWNTOWN - EVENING

  A large and busy city of both eastern and western influence.

  We see large structures, vehicles moving through intersections, and people moving about in large numbers, the Sun low on the horizon. A slow pan towards one area of town, then we zoom towards a smaller building. As we draw close, over rooftops and traffic, we focus in on the building. It is a hotel. We can see a plane taking off in the not-to-distant background.

  CUT TO:

  The stark prints of a thriving organism about all others. Sweet, gut smell of human saturation, odor of mingling characters and fabrics, alloys, movements. Commerce. Emery’s voice was hoarse and his eyes and mind bleary from incessant travel, but he was near the end of his circuit, and the European leg of his tour had been sated on the small amount of substance he could offer it. Europe was quick to offer him substance, as well, and in particular, one containing alcohol.

  In Hong Kong, his final stop of the tour, he found that the element of every tree juxtaposed the high-rise vest of the city, and between these seemingly opposing forces, the surge of millions were moving about and trying to exist in the manner they sought. The culture was not as foreign as he had surmised it would be, but the structure was alien to him. The very air seemed to have been exhaled from a busy sort of being, and in no place was there such wondrous hurry than that to be found in Hong Kong.

  The vastness of the great city was thickening and extensive, broaching upon its own foundation with new ideas. There was a clash of sensibilities and tradition here, British clouds that had been given room to float in the panoptic, Chinese sky. It was if a crayon of civilization had melted over the Earth, coloring it in varying degrees of modernity, and brought all souls near it to converge on a watering hole’s natural, tank limits.

  Contrary to his notion that he would be upset, he had enjoyed Germany. His stop in France had been somewhat rejuvenating, though he had come down with a flu in London. Through all the stops and all the lectures, he still found a good time in traveling about with those who had offered him the engagements. In none of these places had he felt something he might believe was new. Europe was saturated in the reverberations of history, and unlike the United States, could not escape it.

  There was beauty in tradition and heritage to witness in his travels, but these modes were somewhat alien to him. They were fascinating, but he did not possess the natural tether to these cultural aspects. The United States were somewhat young, and he was unaccustomed to the presence of a millennium in one’s culture. Hong Kong was decidedly different, however. There was tradition, yes, and much of it, but this coexisted with the mighty swath of wanting the new, of knowing the future in some way. As Emery walked about the area near his hotel, it almost felt as if Hong Kong would try to design the future, itself, for everyone who wanted in on the gambit. It was a more west than the east, and more east than the west.

  From the trip’s outset, he had been predisposed to quelling frustrations, a building sense of confrontation between himself and time, which changed with each act of relocation. The hiving madness of this was difficult to manage. He found himself operating biologically, relying more on the Sun’s position than his watch, in order to gauge a day’s state. He had grown weary of adjusting his watch, and could never be certain he had it just right. Entering various time zones had played with his senses in a rude way. At times, he would discover that his watch was off by more than an hour, despite that he was cautious to set it with each new time zone he entered.

  His celebrity overseas was greater, he discovered, but quieter, and more street-oriented. There were plenty of European producers at the lectures, as the American fish tended not to swim so far from their own reef, but Emery was delighted to find an almost unwieldy assemblage of fans and fellow writers. He felt admired, and wanted, which was as if bourbon to him. It would be strange to return to Los Angeles, to be in a place where his credentials were in a diminished state. He was more popular in America, but less liked. This made him a will among many others, whereas throughout Europe, he had gained that small spark of notoriety that caused him to feel, at least for an hour, here and there, as if he had done more than win Emmys.

  Europe, and now Asia, seemed to enjoy his work more than his awards, and this carried the sensation of certain forgiveness, of tolerability from the
world, something Emery was haggardly thankful to receive. America focused on the name and treated his work as a product. Europe, and especially Asia, focused on the reason for the name, and thought of his work as exactly that: His work. It was refreshing and accommodated his ego in a useful and sating way.

  The circuit seemed to be one long motion of escaping from each narrow place, only to wind up in another. He existed between these walls of force, amidst the hours of day and night and his rush in getting from one lecture to the next. There were the relieving calls from his soul’s base, however, and these came to him from his true life and home, from his foundation. Beth seemed to have grown accustomed to his lecture circuit, was more at ease with it than she had been at the beginning. The first two weeks had been the rough ones, and he looked forward to their conversations with much zeal.

  The lectures ended in a brief question and answer setup, which gave him time to be more legitimate and even affect a bit of charm, if his mood agreed. The questions, usually from college students and minor members of various British and German television crews, focused on the industry itself, where it was headed and where it had been, but there would invariably come the time when someone would ask Emery the question he had come to dread: What’s next for Emery Asher? He had devised many lines of thought on this matter, in order to answer these questioners somewhat, but there was little in his various responses that felt true to him. In answering what was next for him, he felt to be a pitchman again, selling a product that was only in the basest sense of any use. He did not know what was next. There could be more trouble with Pacific. He might perform more scrambling to get his scripts purchased and, with any luck, produced and shot (while needing even more luck and finagling to get that thing aired).

  Over the telephone, Emery gave his words a tone that masked his gloominess. He treated the excellent sound of her voice to his warmer thoughts, but was business-faced in keeping back his trouble: He missed her terribly and had nearly cancelled the tour but two weeks back. Surviving this potential catastrophe, and managing to stave off the self-sullying his name and respect as a reliable speaker would have faced, he was now back on track. Hong Kong would have the biggest pay-out of his lecture tour, eclipsing even the amount he had made in London. He was nearly finished. Hong Kong was two lectures over two nights, and one of them had already been given.

  Once he returned home, when the tour was done, he would better describe how awful it was to be away from his family. He did not want to inspire any sadness in her while he was away, or let fester any more shame in himself over being gone for so long. By its nature, the tour was providing his family in the means it required, but it dwelled in a realm of thought that made him question his more significant roles of father and husband.

  She relayed business to him in a curt way, being uninterested in fostering further talk of work while he was away on said work, but Emery needed to know what had come in the mail and when. He needed to know who was calling and why. Beth kept him abreast of his career back home and, after this information had made it through the awkward electrical delay between continents, the thousands of miles of wiring into his ear, when it was done, she would relax and become her usual self. He had never been much for hugging, but there was the matter of that popular phrase about absence and what it does to the heart, and his thoughts continually returned to hugs, kissing, and simply being in the same room with his wife, even if they were only sitting on the couch and watching television.

  “Your producer called and so did your friend, Ted,” she updated.

  “My producer?”

  “That Mr. Dozier.”

  “Oh, oh. Bernie. He’s my ex-producer,” Emery said, more to himself.

  “Right. Him. He wants you to call him back.”

  “Did you mention I’m busy over on the other side of the planet right now?”

  “Yes, he knows about it. But he said you should call him right away.”

  “That sounds urgent. Did he say what it was about?”

  “No. Is it maybe The Other Side is going back on?”

  What an overwhelming nightmare that would be. After fighting relentlessly to stay on the air, season after season, his time in the network gulag of The Other Side was done. He now saw that having it cancelled for good was not the punishment or bad luck he had at first attributed the problem, but more of an early release for good behavior. Only a few weeks after the cancellation, he had begun to see just how much the show had absorbed him, and sadly, his family. That force had not been one of inconvenience, as he had surmised it to be, but was proving to have been more destructive in scope. Now that he had performed his own mental funeral for the show, having it return would be as maudlin and horrific as Sol Jamison returning, having clawed his way out of the coffin, undead and relegated to walking the Earth once more, an abomination that once was loved.

  “Dear lord, it better stay in the dirt. I’d cancel that show myself, anymore. I’m done with it.”

  “Well, do you want the number?”

  “Sure, give it to me. I’ll call him later tonight, I suppose. Around... damn it, maybe eight p.m.? It’ll be morning where you are then, right?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Let’s see, fourteen hours-”

  “Thirteen, I think.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I think so, yes. In Honk Kong, it’s thirteen hours.”

  “And we’re ahead, right?”

  “Uh, I’m ahead of you.”

  “Right so, thirteen behind you, if you’re at eight…”

  “Okay, it’ll be seven a.m., your time. Got it. That’s fine.”

  “Seven… on which day?”

  “I think the same day, in this case. Seven your time is eleven my time. Same date. You said someone else called?”

  “Hmm? Oh, Calvin called.”

  “Ah, how is Calvin? He settle down yet?”

  “He seemed fine. He wanted to tell you that Larry is sick. I tried calling Helen but no one has been answering.”

  “Oh, that. I heard about it last month. If it’s still going on, it must not be the flu.”

  “He sounded concerned. He said it’s mental.”

  “Larry having a nervous breakdown? That doesn’t seem plausible. I’ll visit him when I get back.”

  “We should have another dinner party.”

  “That’s a good idea. Especially if he’s getting out of sorts. Maybe he hasn’t found work yet. I know the feeling. Poor Larry. And Helen. Let’s make sure we do that. We’ll have them over.” Emery removed his shoes as they spoke and, when done, leaned back in the uncomfortable hotel chair, his room a swirl of the unfamiliar, and yet achingly usual.

  “Say, is Rebecca there?” he asked then.

  “In the kitchen. You want me to put her on?”

  For Rebecca and Vivian, he offered adventuresome but quick tales of things he had encountered along the way. The telephone calls overseas were going to stack up a great amount of debt if he let himself talk as much as his fondness for the girls urged him. Keeping within a timed frame, understanding the verbal length of minutes and seconds, while telling a story was, however, one of the few things he had truly mastered over the years. He even found himself subconsciously separating his adventures into acts.

  Rebecca told him about how much she disliked being her junior high school’s president, and that she was tired of it, wanting only for the school year to end. The father, in this instance, was able to discuss her dilemma in somewhat simple terms. He remembered being in the same position when he was a child, and he remembered it quite well. Holding the school presicency had been somewhat miserable, most days, but these would almost always be punctuated in instances of great fun and an eager sort of responsibility. She would see, soon enough. She just needed to give it time, which, given her age, was asking much. The matter of being the first female school president in the history of her school was noteworthy, and he wanted his daughter to cherish that feat. The time zone manipulation between Hong Kong and Los An
geles was stark and so clear when compared to the difference in time’s passage between prepubescence and adulthood. Entirely different zones. School was nearly out for the year, and he knew Rebecca would hang in there just fine.

  Vivian had gotten into a bit of trouble with a boy at school. It seems they had been caught in the act of a fistfight in the gymnasium. Beth had handled the dean well enough, and the problem was now somewhat moot, but Emery did feel the need to address it with his daughter. Fighting was out. No good to anyone, even if it was but a slap between children. These things needed to be taken up early, approached and carefully instilled, or a parent might have a devil of a time trying to lecture the lesson later. He had not kept on Rebecca about her studies and grades, and this had resulted in summer school between her fifth and sixth grades. She had been quite upset by this, but now things were going well, better than merely being “on-track”. Her grades were acceptable, her eighth grade habits in study were no longer lagging behind the other students, and she was the school president, no less. Granted, this had been won more by popularity, rather than grades, but that, in itself, was something from which she would come to learn much. Emery certainly had, though much later in life. Popularity could make you a holder of gold statues, or an utterly collapsed wreck of a soul.

  When the girls were finished talking, the telephone was given back to their mother. Emery mentioned all of the things that a telephone call over such a distance demanded: Assurance of safe return, affectations of love, and those quieter, sighed utterances of missing someone. They were the only way to end these particular scripts, and the characters taking part in the story accepted them as truth.