by David Eddie
When it was over, I rolled off, deeply ashamed yet immensely relieved. Lola rolled over on her back, put her hand on top of my head, and started applying downward pressure.
“Do me,” she said. “Make me come.”
“I thought you were too tired?”
“All that other stuff got me horny.”
What could I do? Fair’s fair (in love and war). I scooted down to the end of the bed and got to work.
I was used to waking up in my apartment to the sound of Georgie singing sweetly, but the next morning there was silence. I was late, hungover. I took a dump, had a shower, then came out wondering what happened to Georgie. Finally, prompted by a dim memory from the night before, I looked behind the bookshelf, and there was his little, lifeless, yellow body.
It was a bad omen, I felt.
My honeymoon at work was short-lived. And it was no wonder, considering I was hungover every day of my Cosmodemonic career. I guess I was bound to fuck up eventually.
I was moving around from show to show, being groomed, I felt, to be an all-around writer who could be parachuted into any show at any time. Lately, I had been working on the Afternoon Newsbreak, with Alison Bartlett-Jones. Alison Bartlett-Jones was a woman whose ambition was matched only by her hair-size; despite being relatively young, she had a huge, matronly, freeze-dried hair-helmet. The camera-operators had to dolly way, way back to accommodate both her daunting ‘do and the “cell” (the little box proclaiming the subject of each story) into the shot.
One day, it was especially busy; someone had called in sick, there was no one to plug in the gap. There were only two Cyranos on the desk: me and Sheldon, a lean, balding macrobiotic enthusiast about my age. Every day, he brought a Tupperware container of ricey goo that he ate with a spoon, like pabulum. He observed with horror my dietary habits, which I felt were in the grand old tradition of journalism. I started every day with a special Cosmodemonic anti-hangover “mud” of my own invention, a witches’ brew of sugar, cream, coffee and hot-chocolate mix. That was followed by a lunch of two quick-fry burgers, an order of gravy-covered fries, and a Diet Coke. Chips, chocolate bars, and assorted candy rounded out my diet. “My body is a temple, yours is a bar,” he said to me once.
Sheldon and I cranked out the facts in a cold sweat, script after script. Above us, on a shelf on the wall, there was a row of about a dozen television sets labelled: NBC, NBC FEED, CBS, CBS FEED, OUTPUT, VIZNEWS, CNN, etc. These were the various international feeds supplying everyone in the Cosmodemonic fact-factory with raw footage, as well as keeping them abreast of what the competition was up to. All Cosmodemonic Cyranos have to keep an eye on all these and another eye on the wires, while phoning reporters and the various bureaus for the latest updates.
One thing about hangovers: they tend to focus you on the present, on the task at hand. When I’m hungover, sitting at a computer, you could bounce a ping-pong ball off me, I wouldn’t notice. Sheldon and I beavered away, our heads rarely turning from our screens. About an hour before air-time, I finished writing. I looked over at Sheldon. He was typing like a fiend, staring at the computer, obviously way, way behind. He looked a little ill. Loudly, so the producer, Maggie Williams, could overhear, I asked Sheldon: “You need any help?”
He glanced over, glassy-eyed.
“Yeah,” he said. “Would you mind? Could you take a couple of things off my hands?”
At three minutes to air-time the last script was split, the editorial assistant tore off quick-like-a-bunny down the stairs to the studio, and the show went to air. Sheldon and I relaxed, and watched. About ten minutes before the end of the show, Sheldon said, “Well, that’s it for me. I’m off.”
“I’m going to stick around in case there’s an earthquake or someone’s assassinated in the next ten minutes.”
He smiled. He already had his hat and coat on.
“Later.”
“Later.”
A couple of minutes later, I spotted an “alert” on the wires. They’re marked by a capital “A” next to a story, and a number of stars denoting how serious the wire editor thinks it is, from one to five. This one had five stars. Something about a bomb on a train in Johannesburg. I brought it to Maggie’s attention.
“There’s a five-star alert on the wires,” I said. “Train-bomb in Johannesburg.”
She called it up on her computer, and quickly skimmed through it.
“Yeah. We’d better do a 20-second copy story for the update,” she said.
“O.K.”
I fired it off. There were only about three minutes until the update. Therefore, I had about a minute to write the story; the producer had 30 seconds to check it over; and the E.A. had a little over a minute to run, run like the wind distributing it around to everyone who needed it. I wrote:
Fourteen people died in a bomb blast in Johannesburg today.
The bomb exploded in a train as it was pulling out of the city.
Police are investigating…
But it’s believed the bombing was the work of followers of Inkatha chief
Mangosuthu Buthelesi.
Anchors love to say “Mangosuthu Buthelesi,” because it rolls so trippingly off the tongue. Same with “Nagorno-Karabakh,” which is the only reason, I’m convinced, that godforsaken backwater ever made it into the news.
Maggie Williams quickly looked over my script.
“SPLIT!” she yelled. The E.A. came scurrying over, split the script, ran off to bring it to everyone. I leaned back, relaxed. The show was almost over. Soon I’d be home, a vodka and 7-Up with a twist of lemon twinkling and sparkling in my hand.
“Hey, wait a second,” Maggie Williams said. She was staring at her computer screen. “It’s not 14 people killed in this bomb blast, it’s 14 injured.”
“Huh?”
I checked. It was true. Suddenly, I was soaked in sweat.
“Shit!” Maggie said. She picked up her phone, pressed the lift-to-ring button hooking her up with the studio. “Listen, we’ve got to change that copy story on Johannesburg.”
I looked over at my television screen. Just then, Alison Bartlett-Jones was staring into the camera, saying: “…the work of Inkatha chief Mangosuthu Buthelesi.”
Maggie was talking frantically into the phone.
“… a mistake, a MISTAKE. The writer got it wrong. It should’ve said 14 injured, not killed. We’re going to have to do an apology. No. No, we have to. We’ll have to put it in the goodnights. Yes, well, I don’t like it any more than you do.”
She hung up. She didn’t even look at me. Five seconds later, an ultra-grave Alison Bartlett-Jones said to the camera: “A few moments ago, I said 14 people were killed in a bomb blast in Johannesburg. I should have said 14 injured, not killed. On behalf of everyone here at Afternoon Newsbreak, I apologize for this error of fact.
“Well, that’s our show for today. I’m Alison Bartlett-Jones. Thanks for watching. Have a good evening.”
All over the newsroom, people were watching this newscast. Silence — or, at least, a lull — descended upon the newsroom. On-camera apologies were very, very rare. Heads turned towards the Afternoon Newsbreak info-pit.
Alison Bartlett-Jones came out of the studio. She yanked her telex out of her ear, and asked me (it was the first time she’d ever spoken directly to me): “Where’d you get that about the bomb in Johannesburg?”
“I read it wrong off the wires, I’m sorry.”
She stormed past me, in the direction of Frizell’s office. The director came up from the control room.
“Where’d you get that about the bomb blast?”
“I read it wrong off the wires, I’m sorry.”
He shook his head and walked past me, also in the direction of Frizell’s office. Maggie Williams didn’t say anything to me; she gathered her papers, stood up and walked over to Frizell’s office, all without a glance in my direction.
I looked over at Frizell’s office. People were literally lined up in front of it to complain about me. Insi
de, Alison Bartlett-Jones was yelling and pointing in my direction, her hair-helmet quivering with passion and rage. Outside, the director and Maggie were waiting their turn, to point the finger, to assure Frizell the fuckup had nothing to do with them.
I thought I should probably join that line, do a little damage control. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Maybe tomorrow. I grabbed my bag and slipped out of the newsroom.
The next morning, when I arrived, there was a note in my pigeonhole to see Frizell. I expected the worst, but actually he was quite gentle.
“I’ve got to beat you up a bit here, Dave,” he said, after I sat down.
He chewed me out, but with a smile on his face. He didn’t seem angry, it was more like something he had to do, like reprimanding a star pupil for a minor delinquency. Perhaps the memory of “more chips off the Communist bloc” and “they decked the Wall with boughs of holly” were still fresh in his mind.
“Frankly, they all came in last night to complain,” he said. “Alison was particularly upset. She was in tears. She said she’d spent all these years building a career, only to have it shattered in a single blow.”
Pure histrionics and melodrama, I thought to myself. “Maggie asked me where I got you from.”
Still, I said nothing.
“Don’t you want to tell me your side of the story?”
“I don’t really have one,” I said. “I read the wire story wrong. I can’t explain how it happened, it was a sort of dyslexic episode.”
He paused, as if weighing the options of various things to say.
“There’s no doubt you’re a talented writer, Dave,” he said. “Perhaps one of the best. But you have to be accurate, you have to be reliable, the people you work with have to be able to depend on you. This corporation prides itself on its accuracy, on being the broadcaster of record for many people.”
He said a few more things, then let me go. Outside his office door, I breathed a sigh of relief. That could’ve been worse. He’d taken it easy on me, been really gentle, on the whole. I felt a tremendous kinship with this man.
Don’t worry, chief, I thought, I’ll make you proud. You took a chance giving me a chance and I won’t let you down. You can count on me. I won’t fuck up again.
20
Fall
Then I fucked up again.
Actually, it wasn’t really a fuckup. Technically I was in the right. But I got involved in a huge, public fight with one of the anchors, which in television news pretty much means: you fucked up. A writer getting into an argument with an anchor is kind of like a bug getting into an argument with an elephant. “Hey, this is my seat!” the bug yells at the elephant. “I was here first, I bought the seat for a hundred bucks, here’s the bill of sale, and —”
SQUI-I-I-I-ISH!
I was working on the Noonday News, anchored by Colin Kelly. Colin Kelly was a tough buzzard from the old school. He had a cheap, creased, opera-villain face and he screwed it into one of three expressions when he read the news: 1) poker face for run-of-the-mill stories; 2) ultra-grave expression for particularly tragic stories, as if to say to all the Noonday News buffs out there: “I, Colin Kelly, was personally affected by that story”; 3) and a full-on leer for light, kicker-type items. “Leer” is the only word for it, all the unfamiliar muscles and pulleys turned up the corners of his mouth and he bared his false-looking teeth (like the grille of a ’60s roadster). But I don’t think you could call the result a smile.
Just for some background, I’d like to say a few words about my hangover on this particular occasion, one of the “emotional rollercoaster” variety. Have you ever had one of those? The slightest provocation can send you spiralling into the blackest pit of despair, or set you soaring on gossamer wings to the sunniest heights of giddiness and self-satisfaction. These types of hangovers are the closest I, as a man, will ever get to having PMS (I hope).
The Noonday News taped at 11:00, 1:00, 2:00, and 3:00, to air live at noon in various parts of the country. All I had to do for the 11:00 show was write a “copy” story (no pictures) about the annual inflation rate, and “wrap” it together with a story about the consumer price index.
The annual inflation rate is sort of a tricky concept. I’m sorry to have to go into the boring details about it here, but it’s important to the story. The annual inflation rate compares prices from one year to the next, on a given month. So if prices, say, are up 5 percent this December from last December, the annual inflation rate is five percent. The tricky thing about it is this: the annual inflation can go up even if prices went down that particular month. That was the case here. It was April, stats were just coming out for March. Prices were down, but the annual inflation rate was up.
Attempting to explain all this in the simplest possible terms, I wrote the story and sent it to the producer. He looked it over, then printed it up. Colin Kelly was hanging around the news-pit, one cheek of his ample ass on the producer’s desk, flipping through the scripts before the first newscast. Suddenly, he flared.
“WHAT THE HELL IS THIS? WHO WROTE THIS ?”
He had one of those stentorian, Shakespearean-actor, basso profundo voices, that carried across a room like a foghorn. Everyone in the vicinity looked up. My instincts — always quick to detect early-warning signs of disaster, failure, public shame — told me immediately that Colin Kelly was referring to an item I’d written. This premonition was quickly confirmed: Colin asked the producer something I didn’t catch, waving the offending copy under his nose, stabbing it with his finger. They both looked in my direction, then Colin came storming towards my desk, like a locomotive at full tilt, leaking steam. With a contemptuous gesture, he tossed the script on my desk.
“DON’T YOU WRITERS EVER READ THE SHIT YOU WRITE? CAN YOU TELL ME WHAT THIS SAYS?”
“Yes, it…”
“IT SAYS PRICES WENT DOWN, BUT THE INFLATION RATE WAS UP.” He looked around, addressing everyone now, playing to the room. “DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENSE TO YOU?”
He paused for effect. A couple of people at nearby desks tittered nervously. Thinking, no doubt, that I had fucked up again. In the silence that followed, there were throats clearing, chairs scraping on the floor (no doubt as my colleagues adjusted their positions to get a better view). I stared at Colin, thinking, Lord, please make this be over soon. My face was crimson. His was covered in pancake makeup and powder. When I spoke, my voice was thin and constricted, and small, so small.
“Colin, what I think you don’t understand is…”
“NO, MY BOY. YOU’RE THE ONE WHO DOESN’T UNDERSTAND.” He gave me a close-up of his face, but still spoke at top volume. “THINK ABOUT IT. IF PRICES GO DOWN, WE’RE IN A STATE OF DEFLATION, RIGHT?”
“Well, not…”
“NEXT TIME, CHECK YOUR FACTS BEFORE YOU TURN SOMETHING IN, MY FINE YOUNG FRIEND.”
With that, he marched off to Makeup for a touch-up. People turned back to their work. I sat, stung, at my desk. What irked me most of all was that he couldn’t have taken the time to read the whole story, because I’d included a paragraph explaining this apparent incongruity in the simplest terms. After Colin left the room, I explained all this to the producer, Hans Kohl. He looked over the story, had me rewrite it according to his instructions, and it was printed again.
The show went to air, but the spot where my story was supposed to be went by and nothing happened. Colin read the story before and the story after, but not mine. It came as much of a surprise to Hans Kohl as it did to me. He got on the phone to the studio.
“What happened to the story about the annual inflation rate?”
Hans listened to the answer, nodded, then hung up.
“Colin refused to read it,” he said with a shrug.
After every newscast, Colin went outside for a smoke with Delia Flack, his favourite Cyrano. I caught up to him on the way into the elevator.
“Colin, can I talk to you?”
He said nothing, looked away from me as he stepped into the elevator. He s
hook his head and made a motion of erasure with the flat of his palm, as if trying to wipe me (like a pesky bug) off the windshield of his day. Forget it, pal. If nothing else, I’m a persistent little roach. I slipped in just as the doors were closing. The elevator sucked us downwards. We rode in silence for a couple of moments, then I spoke up, trying to be as polite as possible.
“Colin, I just want to explain about that story…”
“ARE YOU GOING TO TRY TO DEFEND THAT STORY OF YOURS? ARE YOU?”
His town-crier voice was startling in the silence of the elevator’s acoustical chamber. Everyone else stiffened and stared stonily on at the digital display of the floors flashing past or at their shoes.
“Well, I just wanted to say…”
“HERE’S A WRITER,” he began. Ostensibly he was speaking to Delia Flack, but his glance swept around at all the faces in the elevator. Down, down we went. “HERE’S A WRITER WHO SAYS WHEN PRICES GO DOWN, INFLATION CAN STILL GO UP. AND HE EXPECTS ME TO READ THAT OVER THE AIR!”
We arrived on the bottom floor. Colin marched out of the elevator, with Delia Flack tagging along at his side. For a moment, I was wrong-footed, I didn’t know how to cope with Colin Kelly’s unique brand of boorishness. Finally, I decided to give it one last heroic shot. I caught up with him as he was going through the doors into the Cosmodemonic parking lot.
“Colin, can I just say something?”
It was a warm day, lunchtime, there were about 30 people standing around outside the doors, smoking. Colin turned on me with savage fury.
“STOP FOLLOWING ME! WHY ARE YOU CHASING AFTER ME, TRYING TO DEFEND THAT IDIOTIC STORY?”
“Colin, I…”
“I DON’T BELIEVE THIS! IF YOU’RE GOING TO CONTINUE TO DEFEND THAT STORY, MY INTEREST IN YOU AS A WRITER IS TERMINATED! TERMINATED!”
I stood there stunned. I opened my mouth, and shut it again. All the smokers stared at me, silent but still smoking, like cattle chewing cud. Now might be a good time to cut my losses, I thought. I turned around and went back into the building, with Colin Kelly’s cries of TERMINATED! TERMINATED! still ringing in my ears.