Easy to Like

by Edward Riche

  Rainblatt’s diminutive stature was exaggerated by the stance his condition forced him to adopt. He explained to everyone that he’d been instructed by his doctors and therapists to always lean on something. As his semicircular canals no longer gave him any sense of where he was in space, the medical team was attempting to retrain his brain to gather the information it required from touch. Standing to talk, Rainblatt leaned against a wall. Sitting in his chair, he pushed himself up against one arm. He joked that he tried to favour the right, lest the president of the CBC be accused of being “left-leaning.”

  Rainblatt was tic-ridden — constantly bringing his hands together, knitting invisible threads, blinking and stammering. Aggravating his unfortunate circumstances were arms too short for his body. Elliot thought that if he spread them for balance he might only spin like a top.

  The time until coffee was occupied entirely by some opening banter and the introduction of the nine vice presidents and the fart catchers they’d brought along. The next interval, until lunch, was taken up with narcotic presentations from the VP and Chief Financial Officer — despite some one-time money from the sale of real estate assets, they were still broke — and the VP Strategy and Business Development — sales of CBC shows and formats in other territories were (there being none) behind projections. However, the plan to sell off many of the transmission towers owned by the Corporation to cellular telephone outfits held promise. She ended her submission by saying, incomprehensibly, “Go Leafs, go!”

  A light lunch of sandwiches, woody fruit, and weak coffee was served in a lounge next door. Elliot spoke in person with some of his fellow VPs for the first time since taking the job. They all expressed hope for the new season he was supposedly engineering and took the opportunity to cautiously diminish his predecessor Heydrich, by noting that the man didn’t have the requisite experience in the production end of the business to make good programming decisions. Elliot gave them all a funny Hollywood anecdote (he was now recycling the few he had) and they were happy. Only the VP for Radio, Caroline Bonham, seemed immune to his charms. Elliot worried that perhaps Ms. Bonham was on to him.

  Elliot made his way to Rainblatt, who was wedged in a corner, munching an egg salad sandwich with a tilted head.

  “Elliot, good to um um see you in the f-flesh.”

  “You too, Victor.”

  “It’s um-an-nah a good meeting today, no question.”

  “Yes.” Elliot supposed that when meetings were your life you became a connoisseur.

  “We’ve scheduled you to speak last, you’re the um um h-headliner, no question.” The pitch of Rainblatt’s voice rose until reaching a girlish laugh.

  Elliot was beginning to gather that Rainblatt’s view of his billing was not an overstatement. The assembled would be disappointed, for he had not studied the pitches with anything like the attention demanded to make a call. In all honesty, he didn’t have a clue what next season, his season, might look like.

  Maybe this meeting was the time to announce his departure. Rainblatt pushed himself off the wall and grabbed Elliot’s arm, now using him as his anchor.

  “Don’t give too much away. Keep them, um nah, guessing. You want some drama at the rollout, no question.” There was something paternal in Rainblatt’s manner; Elliot didn’t like it. Rainblatt dropped his voice. “Keep next Friday evening open, having a dinner thing at home.”

  “I will.”

  “Do you need to go anywhere?” Rainblatt held a pinched thumb and forefinger to his lips.

  Was Rainblatt suggesting that Elliot and he go outside for a toke? They prescribed marijuana for nausea, it was plausible the dizzy old dude was on the weed.

  “Maybe later,” Elliot said.

  Immediately after the break it was Bonham’s turn to speak. Hers was a substantial and focused presentation. Canadians apparently cared as much about the CBC’s radio service as they did not about its television service. She confessed to continuing failure in the two-to-four-p.m. slot but could speak with pride about other parts of the schedule. There was also a problem with the demographics of the radio audience: they were even older than the TV audience and were, quite literally, dying off. There had been some new shows that attracted younger listeners, but these tended to alienate the geezer core. Perhaps it was the soporific effects of lunch, perhaps it was the unaccountable disdain for the radio service, but scarcely anyone around the table seemed to care.

  After tepid applause Bonham gave the floor to the VP and Chief Technology Officer, who then passed it to the VP Communications, after which followed the Executive VP French Services, the General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, and the VP Human Resources. On and on they went with meaningless palaver about mission and branding pyramids and new platforms and new Canadians and five- and ten-year plans. Nothing of substance was put forward, but it was all said in the ornate poetry of management nonspeak. The very air in room became shit mist.

  Elliot could think only that here, in essence, was the reason for the decline of the West: its leadership class excelled only in its ability to obfuscate and occlude, to appear to take responsibility while never doing anything for which there was a risk of being held to account. Accomplishment was less important than the running of things: the primary objective was the continuation or advance of one’s position in the bureaucracy. The world, in short, was being managed out of existence. Product was insignificant; process was all.

  It was soon Elliot’s turn to speak. What could he say to get these people on his side? Elliot had been in the company of some powerful figures in Hollywood; there was a science to their influence. They suggested sociopathic cruelty, that they would use their clout brutally. But they were bullies in whose company you were safe, not ever their friend or equal but, as long as you agreed with them, not numbered among the enemy. Lucky Silverman was one of those men, respected because they were feared.

  But who was the enemy in this circumstance? The production community? The writers? The private broadcasters? The audience? Elliot scarcely knew which his “side” was. He thought of his most recent pitches back in Los Angeles: abject failures. He hadn’t told those listening what they wanted to hear. That, in the end, was the secret, wasn’t it? That’s what he needed to do. Jesus, Rainblatt was wrapping up his introduction, they were applauding. Elliot got to his feet.

  “Thank you. Everybody has made me feel welcome, made me feel at home. After all, this is, as most of you know, a homecoming. I’ve spent my entire professional life in the entertainment industry in the United States.” He watched Hazel move to an empty seat closer to him.

  “I’ve had a lot of success down there,” Elliot lied. “My experience should have prepared me for this position at the CBC. But even in my first weeks here I saw that we faced a unique challenge. There is one master in America: the market. The situation in this country is more complex. The CBC has a mandate that is almost impossible to meet. We have a viewing public that is also a shareholder, and one that is vocal about its stake in the operation. We have to be mindful of regional representation; our programs have to reflect the diversity of the new Canada; we have to entertain but also, in some ways, to educate. If we provide programs that are too populist, we are accused of dumbing things down. If we do shows that are sophisticated but appeal to too small an audience, we are accused of being elitist.” Hazel was smiling — was she buying this? Encouraged, he went on.

  “We are accused of having a liberal bias and of being too accommodating to the right as a way of countering this criticism. We are asked to be all things to all people. How can we possibly do this? As much as the television business in the United States is driven by stars and money, by glitter and ambition, the business of public television here is driven by the very lack of those things. This is a broadcaster whose mandate is dictated by an act of Parliament. That is why, unlike a private broadcaster or a studio, it has to be led not with bluff and bravado by risk-seekers but with caution by professional managers.” Now Hazel’s eyes popped, sp
arkling, and he saw her suppress a bark of laughter. Poor gal was the smartest person in the room, but not smart enough to realize that no one else got the joke. Elliot guessed she’d suffered thus her whole life, in school, in love, in work.

  “It is too easy to overstate, to romanticize, the role of creators in this process. Decisions regarding content cannot be impulsive, but have to be weighed. And the people making those decisions have to be conscious of all the mitigating factors. I’m happy to say that I feel I am in the company of just those people.”

  Elliot saw that a couple of women opposite were about to applaud. He gestured, pontifically, that they should wait.

  “As I put together the coming season I am going to be in a process of continual consultation with all the knowledge in this room. I am going to prevail upon you to take more meetings than you might usually, there might be more analysis than you’ve been used to in the past, there’s going to be thorough planning in advance of any action. It’s going to be all hands to the bridge. There are a couple of executive decisions I’m going to have to make, mostly obvious things like putting better-looking people on the screen, only because there isn’t time to gather input. But otherwise I’m counting on you.”

  Now Elliot let them rise to their feet and clap. How much time had he wasted in Los Angeles trying to get his point across, trying to convince, trying to make the producers see things his way? All this time he should have been telling people what they already believed.

  From: bonorg@locuracanyon.com

  To: matou@aol.com

  Subject: Bank

  45 large was less than they said was min so I am amazed they aren’t calling it. You owe Loschem 17 for spray.

  From: malvoise@aol.com

  To: bonorg@locuracanyon.com

  Subject: Re. Bank

  I can forward another 17 in two weeks.

  Four

  WHEN HAZEL HAD GIVEN Elliot her address in Forest Hill, he’d understood it was a tony quartier. But the Edwardian brick edifice in front of which he pulled his car was a mansion. It was surrounded by an iron fence, on top of which rested light snow like a line of piping on a cake. He was curious and about to get out of his car and make for the front door when, by remote control, a gate barring a long, wide driveway opened. Hazel, pulling on gloves, was high-heeling it from the rear of the main building, or perhaps from a smaller carriage house he only now noticed hidden among trees in the back.

  Hazel was from money?

  Climbing into the passenger seat, Hazel had only to glance at Elliot to divine what was going on behind his eyes.

  “It’s in the family.”

  “The house?”

  “Yes. And other things.”

  Driving to Rainblatt’s Rosedale home, Hazel told Elliot what she knew of the president’s set. The guest of honour was Thorsten Marshall, former editor of the magazine Toronto, Toronto, Toronto, now the director of the Toronto Symphony. Hazel once saw him at a Halloween party at the end of a dog’s lead held by his much younger boyfriend. The leather collar had looked shiny from wear — new dog, old tricks. Hazel said Marshall was a wine snob and a bore and would therefore probably latch on to Elliot. This meal was a public rapprochement between Marshall and Rainblatt. They were both on the board of the Royal Ontario Museum and they’d feuded over the design of an extension. Rainblatt felt that Thorsten had hoodwinked the board, promising them a design that looked nothing like the exploded baby barn that was finally rammed into the structure. Rainblatt never ceased telling anyone who’d listen about how much he loathed the look of the addition, saying it had “more wonky corners than the cabinet of Dr. Caligari.”

  There would also likely be in attendance, Hazel continued, one Joanne Johanson, a theatre actress and director, now a leading culturecrat at the Canada Council. After a few drinks Johanson could not be stopped from tallying the leading men she’d bedded. Johanson was a friend of Rainblatt’s wife, Helga. Helga was a permanent fixture on the board of the Textile Museum (was “positively mad for textiles,” said Hazel) and always invited along a prominent Canadian textile artist who never lent anything to the conversation. The financier Delmore Reitman was a regular, as was Patrick Cahill. Cahill was a defrocked Catholic priest who, many years earlier, when television was an altogether different beast, produced a CBC program about faith and spiritual issues called Glory Be. In St. John’s, when Elliot was a kid, people joked that, in the case of the local station, CBC stood for Catholic Boys Club. Hazel said that Cahill held a Rasputin-like influence over Rainblatt, a Jew, that nobody could understand. She herself found Cahill disagreeable; he stood too close and held too tightly to outmoded ideas about telly. As well as these usual suspects, there would always be two senior partners and their spouses, one each from a leading Tory and Liberal law firm. There would be a few new faces, people with some profile in Toronto, and there would be “an exotic,” someone visiting the country or from the far-flung colonies.

  “And from the CBC?”

  “Rarely anybody. It would poison the atmosphere. I haven’t been myself in many years.”

  Turning off Yonge Street into the maze of luxe Rosedale, Elliot wondered if his bringing Hazel as his date was a faux pas.

  It didn’t seem so as Helga and Victor greeted them as the door. The zaftig Helga even gave Hazel a hug once the maid had taken her overcoat. Again Victor shifted from the wall to Elliot for support. Elliot found himself tensing at Rainblatt’s grip and forced himself to relax. He was grateful for the clamour and chatter of a large group inside. He could hide among them.

  The Rainblatts’ dwelling, two storeys at the end of a crescent, would have felt spacious if it were not so cluttered with furnishings, many of which were collectible antiques. They were serious pieces all, but too many. Moving up the hallway to join the other guests, one navigated two intruding benches, one simple, the other backed. The former was so plain Elliot guessed it was a genuine Shaker piece. Hazel’s brief on Rainblatt said he was from modest Montreal beginnings. Before his term at the CBC he’d managed the equity fund of a family fortune from his hometown and achieved notoriety for being one of the few to lose big in the bull market of the 1990s. The worn maple Shaker bench was the sort of object acquired by the most well-to-do, which Rainblatt was not. Helga, then, was the dough. Perhaps that was how she knew Hazel.

  Farther into the house could be seen a similar taste in pictures, uninteresting work by names. There was a murky Tom Thomson that looked to have been painted through a veil of blackflies. There was even a small Bonnard, a supine nude on a bed that conveyed not indolence but somnolence. It was the collection of someone with the means but not the taste. Perhaps Helga gravitated to textiles because she could at least feel what she could not see. Elliot resented not her affluence, or her profligacy, but the fact that her bad eye made him think, as he was trying never to do these days, of art.

  There were fifteen or sixteen guests in all, an ambitious party. An extra table was set and ran into the living room. This pushed the Champagne-sipping guests tightly together and gave a sense of boho fun to the fete. Elliot sniffed his bubbly — it was a brand, Veuve Clicquot, he thought.

  Hazel had the guest list right. Rainblatt introduced Elliot to a circle containing Thorsten Marshall and Joanne Johanson. And while Reitman, the financier — a potential investor in Locura Canyon and so the one person Elliot looked forward to meeting — was not in attendance, the former cleric, Cahill, could be heard sermonizing from the other side of the room. Here also were the “exotics”: a young playwright called Steven Harris and his girlfriend, Abby Amstoy, who, by their dress at least, looked to live much farther south and west in the city. Johanson reacted as if Elliot’s introduction was an ill-mannered interruption of her hungry study of the young dramatist.

  “Vice president English television?” She wondered aloud. “I used to listen to the radio until it became . . . what? Thorsten?”

  “I’d say ‘common’ if not for the risk of being called a snob or an elitist.”r />
  Everyone chuckled but the young playwright and his girl.

  “There was a day,” Johanson said, addressing Elliot by way of young Harris, “when a play such as your little thing at Tarragon — satire, historical themes — might have ended up on the CBC.”

  “I’m sure,” Elliot said to Johanson, “you are too young to remember when we broadcast stage plays.”

  “You flatter me,” she said. “It wasn’t that long ago.”

  “Opera. Experimental film. Theatre,” said Thorsten. “Time was you could find it all on the CBC.”

  “Did you, um um, ever really, um, watch any of that stuff, Thorsten?” Rainblatt asked. He was standing back from the group, against the nearest wall, and so needed to raise his voice.

  “Rarely.”

  “But still you um a-ad-advocate for it.”

  “I can see more value in it than in some dire situation comedy or cop show that tries to ape the American equivalent.” Thorsten was one of those snobs who dismissed television without ever watching it. Elliot was one of those snobs who defended television without ever watching it.

  “So it’s um um, important what’s on, even if you’re not, um-nah, seeing it.”

  “Absolutely. It’s a public institution.”

  Johanson still hadn’t taken her eyes off the playwright. He was a rail, over six feet tall with a mass of carefully uncombed blackest hair. He was wearing an elaborate western shirt, with pearl-buttoned pockets and florid embroidery.

  “What sort of television do you like not to watch, Mr. Harris?” Johanson asked.

  “I don’t own a television.”

  “What a surprise,” said Hazel. She must have escaped Helga and silently sidled up to Elliot. She held in her swollen hands a glass of bubbling mineral water, lemon floating atop. It was Elliot’s first good look at Hazel since she’d taken off her coat. She was wearing a mod kilt-like skirt of an unusual emerald-coloured material, scaly like the skin of a snake, fastened by a punkish, easily weaponized, raw metal pin. Her ivory blouse was tightly tapered and flirted with transparency. Hazel had buttoned the shirt so that the ochre and orange stones hanging from her long neck played support to her décolletage. It was almost audacious, but by richness of fabric and precision of cut stayed just within the line of respectability.