Who are you to expect Jack to play hero, lay it on the line, lose it all for some dumb dream? Would you, man, would you?
I would if I could, thought Lukas Greene, was I white and it could matter. And, masochistically, he left the TV on, sat back to watch and hope in the man who could matter, if he got it back, the man playing his cop-out game with Howards’ stooge Hennering—good old Jack Barron.
Cop-out, eh, Kingfish? thought Jack Barron as he waited for the commercial to end. Just trying to get me to blow my cool, eat dumb bastard Hennering on the half-shell, fry your fish, Luke, while Howards gets blood in his eyes for my scalp—kill Freezer Bill all right, but among the fatalities TV career of kick-’em-in-the-ass Jack Barron. Or do you still really believe in the old Berkeley truth-justice-bravery damn-the-torpedoes days bull kamikaze attack? Schmuck either way, Lothar. No one hands hara-kiri knife to Jack Barron. Paid my dues many long years ago, name of my game’s no longer Don Quixote.
The commercial ended and the too-fiftyish, too-true-blue, too-1930s-F.D.R.-handsome loser face of Senator Theodore Hennering (D-Ill.) split the screen even with Jack Barron. Looks like he’s holding in a year’s worth of cream-rubber-chicken-plastic-peas farts, Barron thought. To think this dum-dum has eyes for the White House. Teddy and his ghosts’ll eat him alive…Make nice, Jack, baby, he warned himself grimly.
“I hope I may make the assumption that you’ve been watching the show tonight, Senator Hennering,” Barron said, giving little fey false-modest, watch-yourself-Teddy-boy smile.
“Uh, yes, uh, Mr. Barron. Most interesting, uh, quite fascinating,” Hennering said hesitatingly in his fruity-hearty voice. Jeez, thought Barron, I gotta feed this lox his lines too? He looks like who-did-it-and-ran tonight.
“Well, then, I’m sure that after hearing Governor Greene you have a few things you’d like to tell the American people, Senator, seeing as you’re cosponsor of the Freezer Utility Bill which would grant the Foundation a Freezing Monopoly. I mean, Mr. Johnson and Governor Greene have made some pretty serious charges against the Foundation…?”
“I…uh…cannot speak for the Foundation for Human Immortality,” Hennering said, his eyes peculiarly and uncharacteristically furtive. “I will say that I do not believe that the Foundation practices racial discrimination. My…uh…record on Civil Rights, I think, speaks for itself and I would…er…dissociate myself immediately from any individual, organization, or cause that would perpetuate racial…ah…policies.”
Shit, the old blimp looks like he’s scared stiff, Barron thought. What gives? He saw that Gelardi had wisely cut down the now ashen face of Hennering to a quarter-screen inset. I could cut him up and feed him to the fishes and wouldn’t Luke love that, Barron thought with reflexive combativeness. Watch yourself, man, you’ve got too many knives in Bennie Howards’ back as it is…
“You are cosponsor of the Freezer Utility Bill?” Barron asked, straining to be gentle. “You do still support the bill? You do still feel it will pass?”
“I’m against discussing the chances of pending legislation,” Hennering said, fingering his collar.
Mo-ther! Barron thought. He looks like he’s ready to croak. I’ve got to get this boob to say some nice things about Bennie Howards or I’ll have the Foundation all over me. Lead the creep by the nose, Jack, baby.
“Well, since you are one of the authors of the bill, surely you can tell us why you believe that the Foundation for Human Immortality should be the only organization permitted to Freeze bodies in this country?”
“Why…ah, yes, Mr. Barron. It’s a matter of responsibility, responsibility to…uh…those in the Freezers and to the general public. The Foundation must be kept financially sound so that they can continue to care for the Frozen bodies, and continue their…uh…immortality research so that the promise of eternal life that cryogenic Freezing holds will not become a…cruel deception…cruel deception…(Hennering’s mind seemed to wander; he caught himself, grimaced, continued.) The Foundation stipulates that all income not required to maintain the Freezers will go into research, while the…ah…fly-by-night outfits that attempt to compete with it do not.
“Safety for those in the Freezers, financial soundness, the ability to channel large sums of money into immortality research, those are the reasons why I believed…uh, believe that the Foundation for Human Immortality must have a Freezer Monopoly. It is fitting, sound moral and economic policy that those in the Freezers pay for their upkeep and for the research that will eventually revive them. Yes…uh, that’s why I sponsored the bill.”
“Wouldn’t a Federal Freezer Program do the same things?” Barron shot back unthinkingly, wincing even as the words left his mouth. (Cool it, man, cool it!)
“Ah…I suppose so,” Hennering said. “But…ah…the cost, yes, the cost. To duplicate the Foundation facilities or buy them out would cost the taxpayers billions, and more billions on research. Not practical fiscally, you see. The Soviet Union and China have no Freezer programs at all because only in a free enterprise system can the cost be borne.”
You forgot God, motherhood, and apple pie, Barron thought. Is this cretin in some kind of shock? I knew he was dumb, but not this dumb. Howards has him in his hip pocket—this is Bennie’s Presidential candidate. Howards must be chewing the rug by now. And son of a bitch Luke must be having an orgasm. Gotta do something to cool it; I need Bennie Howards on my back like an extra anus.
“Then you contend, Senator Hennering, that the Foundation for Human Immortality performs an essential service, a service which simply could not be provided by any other organization, including the Federal Government?” Barron asked as the promptboard flashed “3 minutes,” frantically signaling for Gelardi to give Hennering three-quarters of the screen, my words in his mouth (even if he does look like a week-dead codfish) schtick.
“Uh…yes,” said Hennering fuzzily. (His head’s farther from here than the Mars Expedition, thought Barron) “I think it’s fair to say that without the Foundation there would simply be no Freezer program in the United States of any scope or stability. Already well over a million people have a chance at immortality who would otherwise be…uh…decomposed and buried and dead and gone forever thanks to the Foundation. Uh…of course, there are millions dying each year who cannot be accommodated, who are dead for all time…But…uh…don’t you think that it’s better for some people to have some chance at living again, even if it means that most people in the foreseeable future won’t, than for every American to die permanently until all can be Frozen, the way the Public Freezer people would have it…? Don’t you think that’s reasonable, Mr. Barron…? Don’t you…?”
The last was almost a whine, a piteous plea for some kind of absolution. What the hell’s got into Hennering? wondered Jack Barron. The S.J.C. couldn’t have got to him—or could they? He’s not only scared shitless, he’s wallowing in guilt. Why do these things have to happen to me? He keeps this up, and Howards’ll stomp me with high-heeled hobnailed jackboots!
“It sounds reasonable, when you state it so cogently,” Barron replied. (At least as coherent as the Gettysburg Address backwards in Albanian, anyway.) “Quite obviously, everyone can’t be Frozen. The question is, is the basis upon which the Foundation chooses who will be Frozen fair or not? Is it free from racial—”
“Fair?” Hennering practically shrieked as the promptboard flashed “2 minutes.” “Fair? Look, of course it can’t be fair! What’s fair about death? Some men can live forever and others die and are gone forever, and there can’t be anything fair about that. The nation is attacked, and some men are drafted to fight and die while others stay home and make money off it. That’s not a fair choice either. But it has to be made, because if it isn’t then the whole country goes under. Life isn’t fair. If you try to be fair to everyone, then everyone dies and no one lives—that’s being strictly fair, but it’s also being crazy…Death used to be fair, the only totally fair thing there was…Should we turn back the clock and make it that way again…? Do
es that make sense to you, Mr. Barron?”
Barron reeled for a moment. The man’s flipping, he thought. He’s in shock, what’s he babbling about? Ask the fucker a simple question he can say a simple no to and cool things and get back Sartre existential nausea why can’t he puke his being and nothingness on some shrink? He saw the promptboard flash “60 seconds.” Christ, just a minute to cool it!
“The point’s well taken,” Barron said, “but the question at hand’s not all that philosophical, Senator. Does the Foundation for Human Immortality avoid Freezing financially qualified Negroes?”
“Negroes?” Hennering muttered; then, like a fuzzy picture suddenly clicking back into focus, he became earnest, firm, authoritative. “Of course not. The Foundation isn’t interested in a client’s race—couldn’t care less. One thing about the Foundation that America can be sure of is that it does not practice racial discrimination. I stand behind that statement with my thirty-year record on Civil Rights, a record that some men may have equaled but that no man has bettered. The Foundation is color-blind.” Hennering’s eyes seemed to go vague again. “If that’s what you mean by fair…” he said. “But—”
Barron crossed his legs as the promptboard flashed “30 seconds,” and his face filled the entire screen. Enough of that shit, Teddy-boy, you finally spat it out, saved the bacon, balanced show for God, Motherhood, and the F.C.C. (not to mention Bennie Howards) can put their switchblades back in their pockets, tell the rest to your shrink.
“Thank you, Senator Hennering,” Barron said. “Well, America, you’ve heard all sides of it, and now you’ve got to make up your own minds, not me or the Governor, or the Senator can do that for you. Take it from there, folks, and plug yourself in next Wednesday night for a new disaster, history made, no time-delay live before your eyes, history made by you and for you every week of the year when you…Bug Jack Barron.”
3
Jack Barron emerged from the closed environment of the studio—with its camera, set, vidphones, promptboard, foot-buttons, monitor, all compressed into a twenty by fifteen by eight foot pocket universe—like a man suddenly brought down from a drunk or a high or an adrenalin-stress situation into a different, and, for the moment of adjustment, not quite as vivid reality.
Barron knew this; knew it so well that he had constructed a fantasy-image to concretize the essentially nonverbal Wednesday night psychedelic moment into the normal stream of memory: The inside of the studio was actually the inside of a hundred million television sets. There was a creature bearing his name that lived in there (seeing out through monitor eyes, hearing with vidphone ears, monitoring its internal condition through promptboard kinesthetic senses, shifting image-gears with the foot-buttons, ordering, threatening, granting grace all through the circuitry and satellites of that great gestalt of electronic integration, the network, into which he was wired, the masterswitch in the circuit) for one hour a week, a creature indeed, designed and built by him like a Frankenstein android, a creature of his will but only a segment of his total personality.
Emerging from the studio was a birth and a death: kick-’em-in-the-ass, plugged-in-image-of-power, phosphor-dot Jack Barron died then, cut off from his electronic senses and circuitries of power; and soft-flesh, bellyhunger, woman-hunger, scratch-itch Jack Barron, the kid, the Boy Desperado, Jack-and-Sara (cool it!) Jack was born again.
Barron left the studio, walked up the corridor, opened a door, and entered the monkey block directly behind the control booth. He nodded to the boys who were stretching their muscles and swapping horror stories behind the three tiers of vidphone-packed desks, and was about to open the control booth door when Vince Gelardi stepped through it himself.
“Right in the old groove tonight, baby,” Gelardi said. “They loved it in Peoria and other traditional show biz flak.”
“In the old groove?” Barron snapped with put-on uptightness, knowing it had gone over like gangbusters while avoiding the kamikaze plunge off the cliff. “In the old groove? You crazy guinea, you almost got me knocked off the air, is all! If I weren’t brilliant twinkletoes boy wonder Jack Barron, you and me and this whole silly monkey block would be out pounding the pavement tomorrow.”
“I was under the impression I was working Bug Jack Barron, the show with something to offend everyone, not old Parish Priest reruns,” Gelardi drawled. “We’re supposed to be like controversial, aren’t we?”
“You said the word, Vince, and the word is like controversial,” Barron said, now at least half-serious, he realized. “We pick on cripples, heartless bullies with feet of clay, if we feel real fancy we take on some big-mouthed dum-dum like Shabazz or Withers. We do not stick flaming swords into the tender hides of tigers with big F.C.C. network-sponsor teeth like Bennie Howards. We tweak the tigers’ tails every once in a while to collect merit badges, but we don’t tie their tails around our waists and beat said tigers with bull-whips.”
“Aw, horseshit. I knew how you’d play it, knew how it’d come out, and you know I knew,” Gelardi said good-naturedly. “Which is to say, with Bennie Howards getting no worse than a mild ulcer twinge, and that’s why I fed you Johnson. I knew you’d make points, but not belly-wound points. You’re my idol, Jack, you know that.”
Barron laughed. “And I suppose you knew that Teddy Hennering had suddenly contracted brain-rot, I suppose?” he said, immensely pleased with his fancy footwork in retrospect.
Gelardi shrugged. “So even the great Vince Gelardi’s not perfect,” he said. “Seemed more like an attack of conscience, though, to me.”
“There’s a difference?” Barron asked archly. “If there is, it doesn’t matter, ’cause the results are always the same. And speaking of results, did Howards’ secretary leave her number with you?”
“You’ve gotta be kidding,” Gelardi replied, and Barron saw (ah, well!) that he meant it.
“Vince, m’boy,” he said, W.C. Fieldswise, “an esteemed acquaintance of mine, upon reading in a learned journal that one out of fifty women propositioned cold on street corners was willing, tested this theory on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. He received a severe battering with umbrellas, purses, and other painfully rigid objects for his trouble. However, m’boy, he also got laid.”
Sycophant laughter drifted to Barron’s ears from the boys in the monkey block. “What?” he huffed, still in the Fields bag. “I hear them mocking my words of wisdom? For shame, for shame. No doubt t’was louts such as those who forced Socrates to quaff the hemlock.”
“I see, as per your usual Wednesday night bag, you’re feeling randy,” Gelardi said.
“Randi?” Barron replied, unable-unwilling to shuck the Fields schtick. “Who is the wench, and is she worth feeling?” Dropping Fields, Barron said, “And so saying, he exits stage left and is off into the night.” He nodded to Gelardi, bowed to the boys in the monkey block, and was—off into the night.
“You really are Jack Barron,” she said, cool honey-blonde, Upper-East-Side-27ish executive secretary with hippy Lower-East-Side-past hard-edged style. “I recognized your utter arrogance immediately, Mr. Barron.”
“Call me Jack,” he said, flashing her a great traveling-salesman false smile. “All my enemies do.” He saw her grimace, badpunwise, on cue, saw uplift hemibra holding boobs not quite all that good, espied little hairs peeping out from shiny black kini (this one wears underwear) telltale phony-blonde black hairs, felt hard hungry legs, and knew instantly that living-color Jack Barron had it made.
He leaned on one elbow on the bartop, offered her his pack of Acapulco Golds, clocked the tiny little-girl conspiratorial grin as she took one and quickly lighted it with her own lighter—meaning she was pothead from years past way back prohibition days, when shit had spice of danger from manila-envelope furtive earnest small-time neighborhood dealer. Why, he wondered, do all old-time heads prefer Acapulco (my sponsor) Golds?
“I’ll bet you have all kinds of enemies…Jack” (two points), she said, inhaling the offering, breathing out swe
et smoke sweet breath off the bartop teasing his nostrils. “Powerful enemies, important enemies…like Benedict Howards.”
“Ah,” he said, “gotcha! You caught the show tonight. (Sharp chick, but not that sharp.) Don’t tell me, you’re an old and loyal fan of mine.”
Tiny flicker of annoyance told him (would never admit it) that she was, as she said, taking another drag, “I’m no fan of yours. I just dig…”
“The smell of blood?” he suggested. She favored him with a wee bit feral smile as the grass began to hit, began to loosen thighs, loosen centers of hunger reality hunger make it hunger grab a piece of the action hunger ersatz power hunger fuck me into mystic circle of power where it’s all at hunger make me real with your living-color prick hunger.
“Yeah, we all dig the smell of blood,” Barron said, glancing around the carefully musk-dusky room, clean Upper East Side shuck barroom, filled with tightly casual aging young we made it we’re only one step from the top next thing to being real crowd, chicks no longer girls and never to be women. “I like a chick with the balls to admit it. (Dig verbal possession of male organs, don’t you, baby?) As you may’ve noticed, I’m a wee bit savage myself.” He cocked his head, caught chandelier lights off slick bartop in the hollows of his eyes, opened his mouth showing glimpse of lazy tongue behind teeth—conscious Bug Jack Barron image-trick.
Caught by his eyes, her eyes glistening flashed moment of girl-caught-looking embarrassment, big brown eyes pools of open hole hunger, she shrugged a can’t-fool-this-cat shrug, her shoulders slumped, elbows fell to the bartop, hands came up to cup her face, eyes still locked on his, she smiled pink-tongue wet-lips smile.
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