“It’s good to have you back, Bob,” I said. “Even if you’re only in town briefly.”
“I wish I could say it’s good to be back. I leave for two weeks,” he said, “and the place goes wacky. Someone is shooting at my anchormen, ratings are down twenty percent, and cutbacks are coming.”
“Maybe they’ll shoot enough anchormen and you won’t need to make any cutbacks,” I said.
Bob didn’t even smile. Instead, he took off his horn-rimmed glasses and rubbed his eyes in a fatigued, battle-weary way.
“Listen Robin,” he said after putting his glasses back on and nervously patting the white comb-over that hid his bald spot. “I asked you to meet me for a reason.”
All the good nostalgic feeling left me suddenly and I felt a sick chill. He asked me here for a reason. This was it, the talk I’d been dreading, the one where I’m told the company appreciates my years of service, but their needs have changed and there’s no room left for me in the new order, that I’d be “happier elsewhere” but they’d keep me on the payroll in some blow-job position until my contract expired. Naturally, this delicate task would be entrusted to McGravy, because he knew how to handle me.
I took a gulp of my light beer and, fortified, said, “What is it?”
“There are people who think you’re unstable. I’m sorry to . . .”
“What ‘people’?”
“It’s not important. I was asked to speak to you because someone has been playing pranks on some of the executives, and your name came up when they were making their list of suspects.”
No doubt my name was near the top of their list, along with Louis Levin’s. I’d heard about these pranks and was insulted anyone would suspect me of perpetrating them, since they were so amateurish. For example, someone sent away for Rogaine information on behalf of our less hirsute executives, and someone dropped VD pamphlets into the mailbox of an executive who had recently left his wife. Pathetic.
“It isn’t just the pranks, Robin. It’s a history of behavior the executives think is ... odd and insubordinate.”
“Bob, everyone is odd, some people just hide it better than others. And I have been on my best behavior the last couple of months. I did most of the work on that vigilantism series ... I nailed Nicky Vassar . . .”
“And all that is taken into account. God love ya, Robin. I’m sorry about this. I didn’t want to bring it up at all, but . . .”
“It’s okay.” Actually, I was relieved it wasn’t the “happier elsewhere” speech—yet.
“I just want you to keep up that good behavior, okay?” he said, and I nodded.
“Seriously.”
“I’m taking you seriously.”
I had planned to complain to McGravy about the sensational, gratuitous, and spurious story Jerry was making me do, but this didn’t seem a propitious time to whine.
“Bob, am I going to be affected in the reshuffle?” I asked. “Is that why I have to be on my best behavior?”
“I can’t tell you that, Robin,” he said. “You know I can’t.”
“I am going to be affected, aren’t I?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Please don’t let them send me to Nutrition News, Bob. Or take me off the air.”
“Robin, I can’t discuss the content of our editorial meetings. Don’t ask me again,” he said. “So how’s life with Jerry? Are you behaving yourself?”
“I’m trying to behave myself, but Jerry gets worse every day. He goes out of his way to provoke me—”
“Yeah. But the guy knows how to get ratings, that’s for sure.”
McGravy said this with a kind of grudging respect for ratings I’d never seen in him before. If anything, he had always disdained ratings, and felt that the network’s mandate was the story first. For years, he had waged a one-man crusade against the tabloidization of broadcast news, a Sisyphean mission in the age of O.J. Although ANN was not nearly as tainted as some of the networks, it had fed at the trough too often and too noisily for McGravy’s tastes.
Special Reports was always the first hog at the trough. Yet, despite that, Jerry’s star was rising at ANN. While the rest of the network struggled for ratings and ad revenue, Special Reports was effortlessly generating huge piles of money for our fearless leader, Georgia Jack Jackson, who greatly appreciated this moneymaking. Jackson was fighting off a slow, persistent takeover attempt by televangelist Paul Mangecet and needed all the cash he could raise. The pressure was on.
“It makes you wonder what we’ll do for ratings,” McGravy said. “How much is the media unconsciously manipulating events in order to get the best possible story? How are we influencing the outcome in order to grab viewers? To what depths will we lower ourselves to ensure our economic survival?”
I took that last rhetorical question rather personally, as I had done some pretty sleazy stories for Jerry and so knew a little about the depths to which one might stoop.
“This is me you’re talking to, Bob,” I said. “The woman who once posed as a sperm-bank customer. The woman who broke the exploding cheek-implant story. Who kept a straight face when a timid church secretary from Kansas told me she’d been gang-banged by aliens who got her drunk aboard their spaceship.”
Things are apparently pretty much the same all over the universe.
“I know you didn’t want to do those stories. I wasn’t passing judgment on you.”
Wearily, Bob sighed and punched me lightly in the shoulder. He had bigger problems on his mind.
“Are you learning to roll with the punches a little bit, Robin?”
“I’m being a very good girl,” I said. “Thanks for the Cab Calloway tape, by the way.”
“It’s a real pick-me-up in the morning, isn’t it? ‘Jumpin’ Jive, makes you nine foot tall when you’re four-foot-five,’” he sang. He emptied his glass. “Always cheers me up. I gotta go, Robin. Just remember, whatever happens, it could be a blessing in disguise.”
“Wait! What does that mean? Is that some sort of ... warning?”
“Robin, nothing’s set in stone yet. Just remember, a blessing in disguise.’’
Inspirational saying number 246: It’s a blessing in disguise.
Naturally, this worried me. If it was already a done deal and they just weren’t ready to tell me yet, then I wanted to know in time to, as Tamayo put it, “take the short sword”—quit before they bounced me off the air.
On the other hand, I didn’t want to make it any easier for them by quitting prematurely, not if there was a chance I could stay in television a while longer. I don’t know why. It wasn’t like television had been bery, bery good to me. But it certainly had its high points, like the vigilantism series, and it was kind of like a home to me. I’d been with ANN since the beginning, and if I made it to my next anniversary I’d get a silver-plated satellite pin and a signed certificate from Georgia Jack Jackson.
“I’m flying down to Miami late tomorrow,” Bob said, putting on his coat. “I’m going to miss a few of the meetings.”
Now I suddenly saw the whole picture. It could go any way for me, and McGravy wouldn’t be here to stand up for me in the executive meetings, so I had to be extra good and make an extra-swell impression on the higher-ups.
Bad news indeed. The Stoly bottle behind the oak bar was glinting at me most invitingly. But before I could consider the temptation further, McGravy said, “Don’t do it, Robin, remember Max Guffy.”
The door into Buddy’s opened and the resulting draft blew Bob’s comb-over up, so it stood almost on end, exposing his bald spot. He didn’t notice and was about to go when I pulled him back and gently pushed the hair back over his bald spot. “Look nice for your date,” I said.
Bob smiled at me, kissed my cheek, and said again, “Remember Max Guffy.” Then he left me to finish my beer alone.
Max Guffy was a good reason not to give in to the vodka goddess. It was such a good reason that I pulled out my reporter’s notebook and wrote it down, inspirational saying numb
er 247: Remember Max Guffy.
As if I could forget him. Getting avant-garde undertaker Max Guffy had been a real coup for me, as he’d never done a television interview before and he’d never allowed cameras into his operation. For months I’d schmoozed him, and finally he had agreed to talk to me, without cameras, in preparation for an on-air interview that would set the tone for my special report on death in modern America.
The meeting began well and we established what I thought was an immediate rapport. Then Guffy showed me around the embalming, makeup, and hair facilities, where I had the dubious privilege of watching three dead people sitting side-by-side, strapped into chairs under hair dryers while a stylist coiffed a fourth corpse in front of a mirror. Afterward, we sat in Guffy’s eerily quiet office and I confessed I felt uncomfortable, knowing that most of the people in the building were dead, that we were outnumbered, so he poured us both shots of vodka from the full bar he kept in his office for the bereaved.
Now, it wasn’t just vodka, it was Zubrowska, a beautiful, hard-to-find Polish vodka that goes down like water and leaves a light honey aftertaste in the mouth. As you can imagine, a swift shot of Zubrowska really loosened us up. Before long we were laughing together like old friends and exchanging mordant undertaker jokes. When he offered another shot, I was feeling rather warm and convivial, and took it. I hadn’t had vodka for a while but I thought, hey, I’m in a funeral home. How much trouble can I get into here?
One slip of the tongue later, and an angry, red-faced Max Guffy was asking me to leave his office, saying he wouldn’t speak to ANN if his life depended on it.
He called me “tabloidesque.”
No more vodka, I resolved after that. As I said, that day with Guffy was the second-to-last time I had vodka, so clearly my resolve didn’t last long. The last time I had vodka (and rather a lot of it) was with comic Howard Gollis, on our fourth date, the night we almost had sex.
Blessings in disguise, bright sides, silver linings ... I wanted to believe in all that stuff, but it wasn’t easy. Walking down Fifty-seventh Street to the subway, I passed five or six homeless people. Could they look at their lives and say, well, this is a blessing in disguise?
On the subway ride home I read the evening papers. Not having much information, they played the Kanengiser murder pretty light, with brief stories. None of them knew about the handcuffs yet, and none of them made any mention of his patients except to note that the police had sealed his files.
As I folded up the newspapers and stuffed them into my valise, a tough, mustachioed guy next to me, smelling strongly of liquor and chewing tobacco, struck up a conversation, telling me just how attractive he thought I was.
I wanted to be nice, so I said, “Thank you, that’s kind of you.”
He took this as an invitation to proceed further. He asked me out on a date and confided he’d been recently paroled from prison.
Where I come from, this is a courtship killer. What is it about me and ex-convicts? I wondered, because this had happened to me before and, coincidentally, both men had been free for exactly five days. For some reason, I’m very popular in the freedom-impaired community and I look especially good to guys who’ve been free for five days. You know, I appreciate their honesty and all, but what is it about me that makes recently released felons think a criminal record wouldn’t be a big thing with me? To be honest, it wasn’t even the criminal record that bothered me so much. It was that Aryan Nations tattoo.
In order to cut off conversation with this stranger politely and safely, I pulled out a book, a special book I had bought just for this purpose, called So You Have Lupus. I’ll take conversation-stoppers for 200, Alex. This can stop it cold, since most people don’t know what lupus is and are not sure if it’s contagious
The man had distracted me from my train of thought. I’d been wondering how the killer got into the building without alerting security. If he — or she — had come after six p.m., he or she would be required to sign in before proceeding to the commercial floors. However, someone could have come into the building during the day, when no sign-in was required, and just hidden out somewhere. That would require hiding out after the murder and leaving the next day during regular business hours. Risky, to say the least, but not impossible.
I made a note in the margin of my book. Even as I did, I was thinking, don’t sweat this story. Just do the minimum required by Jerry, slap the security tape onto a generic piece about S&M, and move on to nobler things. Do not let yourself get sucked too deeply into a sleazy murder. Avoid unpleasantness.
“So,” said the guy next to me, after roughly clearing his throat. “You have lupus?”
I got off at the next stop and took a cab the rest of the way home.
CHAPTER SIX
When I got home the guillotine was gone, retrieved by the artist, and my building foyer was free of delusional neighbor ladies. Things were looking up, until I got into my apartment and saw my answering machine was blinking three times, each flash like a threat. Lately, I had looked on my answering machine as at best annoying, at worst a sinister tool that allowed people I was avoiding to reach beyond the constraints of time and space to invade my home. It made unpleasantness unavoidable.
I pushed the play button and went to fix dinner.
“Robin, guess who,” said the voice of Daffy Duck.
“Howard Gollis, I’m ignoring you,” I sang to the machine. It had to be Howard because who else would call me and leave a rude message as Daffy Duck? Also, I recognized his flair for words. Tonight, he called me a “vodka-swilling red-haired succubus.”
Speaking of crazy people. A dark, twisted renaissance man —comic, artist, writer—Howard Gollis was really sexy, truly brilliant, and unbelievably needy. Although we hadn’t dated in a while, he hadn’t yet stopped calling me. Of course, he hadn’t had the courtesy to leave his name—or use his real voice—since we had that big telephone blowout, the time he called me at three in the morning because he ran out of Prozac and needed to try some jokes out on somebody and have them laugh. I had a five a.m. crew call the next morning, so I told him he couldn’t call me at three in the morning anymore and he got mad. Since then, I had been screening all my calls.
I don’t mean to make it sound like I am some femme fatale who has hordes of muscular, well-oiled men panting after her every casual acknowledgment. I do see myself that way in my more grandiose moments, but as much as I like to think I’m Theda Bara, the truth is I am probably a little more like Fanny Brice (in the body of Rita Hayworth).
There were plenty of men I liked who weren’t panting after me, who barely knew I was alive. Those men who were panting after me generally did so because they were (a) psychotic or (b) couldn’t believe someone like me would turn down someone like them. We clearly weren’t compatible, but they didn’t see that. I wasn’t good enough to turn them down. It was a vanity thing, they had to redeem their self-image and it had little to do with their genuine feelings for me, so it wasn’t flattering. I say that with the knowledge that I, too, am just a tad self-absorbed.
Anyway, Howard fell into the redeem-his-vanity category, as did Reb Ryan, who, despite my best efforts to dodge him, had cornered me in the hallway earlier that day and invited me to go to his gun club with him the following Saturday to shoot a few rounds.
And they say romance is dead.
The answering machine beeped into a message from Gary Grivett, a nice, funny guy from Minnesota I went out with once on a blind date. He wanted to know where I was at lunch. Apparently, we’d had a second date and I’d stood him up. As he was just in town for the day, he said he’d take a rain check. This was the third time I’d missed an appointment since losing my old Filofax in the Great Purse Robbery.
Two down, one to go. Somehow I knew the last message would be the worst of all. Sure enough, the next voice I heard was one that has chilled me to the marrow since girlhood, the voice of my dreaded Aunt Maureen.
That voice of hers .. . What can I say? It was like a
trauma time machine, wrenching me back to the past. I heard her voice, and I was fifteen again and everyone was over at the house for a potluck. All the aunts and uncles are sitting around talking, I walk in with a guy I want for a boyfriend, and Aunt Mo grabs my face and says, loudly, “How’s your ACNE?”
Then she twists my head back and forth so she can examine it more closely before starting a major debate on my ACNE in front of a guy I was trying to impress. I would like him to look beyond my ACNE and see the whole me, but it’s going to be hard for him to forget I have ACNE when my aunt is moderating a panel discussion on my ACNE and suggestions ‘are whizzing back and forth—”oatmeal plasters,” “witch hazel,” “tetracycline.” Aunt Mo interrogates me. How often are you washing your face? Are you eating chocolate? You’re eating chocolate, aren’t you? She’s eating chocolate, that’s what she’s doing!
I’m completely humiliated. I’ve been exposed as an illicit chocolate-eating ACNE Girl. I hope I never see this guy again as long as I live.
“Aw, let her go, Mo,” one of my uncles says. “You’re embarrassing her in front of her boyfriend.”
Which just makes it worse. I’m embarrassed to be embarrassed. I’m embarrassed because he isn’t my boyfriend and never will be now and he probably thinks it’s really funny that they presume he’s the boyfriend of a Girl Who Has ACNE.
“I ... I have to go,” the boy says. He leaves, I burst into tears and flee the room only to hear Aunt Mo say, “That girl’s oversensitive, isn’t she?” Another panel discussion about my social skills ensues.
That’s my Aunt Maureen. No ounce of body fat, no wrinkle, no blemish, physical or psychological, can escape her keen all-knowing eye or sharp tongue. As I got older, her rebukes grew worse. Even after all these years, she could get at me in a way nobody else could, maybe because she was such a big part of my life before I moved to New York, maybe because she looks so much like my dad, although my dad’s jolly personality made his features more Churchillian than Mussoliniesque.
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