by Al Roker
“Glad to have the company, Gin,” I said, rising and gesturing toward a chair. “Sit. Please. Want me to order something up?”
“No, thank you. Sure ah’m not distractin’ you from somethin’ important?”
“What could be more important than being distracted by you?”
She smiled. “Fact is, Billy, I been meanin’ to ask yo’ advice about somethin’. You were sweet enough to help me get loose from that son of a bitch Bobby Lee.”
The reference was to a relationship that had turned ugly when Gin refused to “lend” her then boyfriend, Robert Lee Ferell, seventy thousand dollars to semi-finance a documentary on media bias in America. His fallback position was to threaten her. He’d secretly filmed one of their more intimate couplings and told her that unless she paid him the seventy thou, he would give the TMZ and Gawker websites something to make their day.
She hadn’t known what to do. Going to the police was out of the question. Ditto the network. She didn’t even trust her manager or her agent to keep the secret. Instead she’d settled on me.
I wasn’t surprised. When I was younger, I realized that I possessed something rare: Because of the way I looked or talked or because of my body language or manner, people trusted me. Men, women, black, white, or in between. Didn’t matter.
In my teens, I misused this gift. But the karmic danger of that to body and soul had been brought home to me in a particularly brutal and violent way. I’ll save the details of that part of my life for another time when we’ve known each other a little better.
Let’s just say that for nearly two decades I’ve done penance for my misdeeds by justifying the faith that people seem to have in me. The closest I’ve come to falling back on my old ways was in getting Gin out of her bind. I conned her ex-boyfriend into a situation, filmed by his own camera, resulting in a short movie that, if unspooled, would have led to his spending time in prison. He and I settled on a mutual agreement to let Net cruisers find something more positive to watch.
“What’s the problem, Gin?”
“Nothin’ like the last one,” she said. “That was mah first and last cougah moment. As I hope you know, ah’ve been totally faithful to Ted evah since we met, even with him away so much.”
“Ted” would be Theodore O. Parkhurst, byline “TOP,” an investigative reporter for Now Magazine who’d spent nearly a year covering the progress of the war in Afghanistan. He seemed like a nice guy and an excellent journalist, and I hoped that Gin really was being faithful to him. And vice versa.
“My problem this time is strictly business, Billy. About my future on Wake Up.”
She had my full attention now. The morning show was important to me. I was about to urge her on when Bridget arrived with my dinner, announcing her presence with a loud clearing of her throat.
The physical result of Juan’s slap was no longer in evidence. Natural healing or makeup artfully applied. Bridget was a tall, handsome ash-blonde with the look of a college football cheerleader who’d added a few years and enough curves to move on to the pros. The Bistro’s uniform of khaki pants and pink men’s dress shirt did very little for her full figure. That was the point. I was running a restaurant, not a wet-T-shirt bar. Still, there was a sensuality about her that even a clown suit would not have subdued. “You wanted to see me?” she asked.
“I do, Bridget. But not right now. Give me a half-hour?”
“Sure.” She turned to go.
“Whoa,” I said. “You can leave my dinner.”
“Oh, ’course.”
She took her time walking to the desk and depositing her tray. “Can I get you something?” she asked Gin.
“No, thank ya. Ah’m fine.”
Bridget gave me a fleeting smile and departed, closing the door behind her.
“Wow. Bridget, huh?” Gin said. “You ever fool around with the waitresses, Billy?”
“Nope. And I hope I’ll always be smart enough not to, even if there was no risk of losing this place to a harassment suit. But we were talking about you and Wake Up, America!”
“Right. The morning show. That must go on. Billy, I don’t know what to do.”
“What’s the problem?”
“I’ve been on WUA! for almost seven years. People have forgotten I started out as a standup.”
“I certainly haven’t. I remember seeing you at Carolines. You killed. But I still don’t get—”
“I’ve been offered my own comedy series,” she interrupted. Her usually pale face flushed with excitement.
“Great. And the problem is what, that it’s on the CW?”
“It’s CBS, honey. Prime time, between CSI: Atlantic City and M*A*S*H in Mosul.”
“Sounds like a great slot,” I said, trying not to look too longingly at my roast-beef sandwich. “You going to be able to fit it in with Wake Up?”
“That’s the problem. See, The Gin Fizz Show is gonna be kinda like a once-a-week version of The Daily Show. Comedy news, heavy on the politics. Only we can’t do it here in the city because, well, The Daily Show is here. And also, we’re gonna be in prime time on network, which means instead of usin’ really clever unknowns that go on to be big stars, we’re gonna start off with big stars. To do that, we’ve gotta tape it on the Coast. So it’ll be bye-bye to Wake Up when my contract runs out.”
“When will that be?”
“Next month. Unless I just blow off the series. What do you think I should do?”
“What do your people say?”
“Frank and Hildy are … not crazy about me leaving Wake Up. It’s a big, big risk leaving an important, successful show for a series that has about a five percent chance of makin’ it. If it flops, I’ll be used merchandise.
“And there’s Ted. He says we’ll be able to work it out somehow. I mean, I probably won’t be seeing any less of him on the West Coast than I am now. Still, one of these days, he’ll be back and then …”
“Sounds like you’ve already made up your mind,” I said.
“The thing is, I like comedy,” she said. “And I’m funny. I don’t get the chance for funny on Wake Up”.
“Okay …”
“But I think I’m turnin’ into a pretty fair newswoman,” she said. “You know, I do a lot of mah own research and I write mah own material. And that gives me great satisfaction. I don’t know if I want to go from real news to fake news.”
“Then …”
“But Rudy has been givin’ the gets to Lance.” Lance Tuttle was her slightly pompous but sincere coanchor on our show. “Ah’m real tired of interviewin’ Dancin’ with the Stars losers and novelists.”
I decided not to remind her of the interviews I was assigned: cookbook authors, faddists, diet doctors, and their ilk. “Have you talked to Rudy about it?” I asked.
“Uh-huh. He said he admires Lance. They have this frat-boy thing goin’ on, you know?”
I knew. “You tell Gretchen about the series offer?”
She nodded. “Yesterday. That’s when she suggested we all meet for dinnah.”
The mention of dinner reminded me of the sandwich. It had been eight hours since lunch at the studio. But it didn’t seem polite for me to start wolfing it down. “If Gretch is putting on the feedbag, that’s got to be a good sign,” I told Gin. “My guess is at the least, she’ll offer a pay bump.”
“This isn’t about money, Billy.”
“Of course it isn’t,” I said, and gave in to the gnawing in my stomach. “You mind if I have a bite to eat while we talk?”
“Oh, Billy, ah’m keeping you from your dinnah. Please eat.”
It was more encouragement than I needed.
“So you think Gretchen might agree to me getting some of the first-half-hour interviews?”
The question caught me mid-chew. Instead of speaking with my mouth full or rushing to swallow and risking the need for a Heimlich, I gave her a noncommittal shrug.
Gin seemed to interpret this as a “yes.”
“But I may not get anoth
er chance at a prime-time series.”
I swallowed, savoring the aftertaste, then followed it with a sip of wine. It whet my appetite to the point where I wanted nothing more in the world than to enjoy the rest of my sandwich. Alone and unobserved.
“You’re right, Billy,” she said, again interpreting my food-induced silence as encouragement. “It’s a win-win situation. If Gretchen gives me what I want, that’s fine. If she doesn’t, I get to do the series.”
Standing up and striding to the door with purpose, Gin looked back at me and said, “Thanks so much for … clarifyin’ everything.” Then she blew me a kiss and was gone.
I hadn’t done a thing except listen to her. I raised the sandwich, opened my mouth, and was about to take my second bite of the evening when Bridget Innes said from the doorway, “Do you want to see me now?”
“Sure,” I lied. “Come in and sit.”
She took the chair that had been occupied by Gin. She sat rigidly, leaning forward, as if she expected to be fired or worse.
“So what’s the deal with Juan?” I asked.
“Just a mistake,” she said.
“There are degrees of mistakes,” I said. “Sprinkling cayenne pepper on sweet rolls instead of cinnamon. The invasion of Iraq.”
“This is closer to the cayenne-pepper example,” she said. “Juan and I … had a thing. I guess he was into it a little more than I was.”
“I guess. When did the breakup occur?”
“Well, five days ago I realized I’d fallen in love with somebody else. And when I told Juan, he closed down. You know how he gets.”
“No, I don’t,” I said. “But so I understand the situation, you told him about your new romance tonight and he swung on you?”
“No. I told him, oh, three days ago,” she said. “And I could see he didn’t like it, but he just moped and walked away.”
“What got him going tonight?”
“Well, when I went in the bar with a drinks order, he called me a puta. And I called him a one-legged asshole. And that’s when he slapped me. But it’s okay now. It was just a flash anger thing. I like Juan. I didn’t want to hurt him, but the heart knows what the heart needs.”
Holy heartburn and thank you, Dr. Phil!
“Okay,” I told her, “I think I’ve got the picture. You feeling okay?”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. My face stung for a few minutes is all. But I’m fine.”
“Good. Then you’d better get back to work.”
She stood. “You’re not going to fire Juan? He really needs the job.”
“I hope I won’t have to,” I said, liking her a little better for having said that.
Alone at last, I turned my attention to the sandwich. It looked a little soggy now, but I ate it anyway. Then I drank the wine and thought about love and all its vagaries.
Then I went to bed.
Chapter
SIX
“Pick you up at eleven?” my driver Joe asked as he braked near the elevator bank in the Glass Tower’s Midtown underground parking area. “Or is this day not usual?”
“It’s very usual,” I said, exiting the Volvo, blissfully unaware of what a lousy prophet I was. “You think you might get the car washed?”
“No. It start looking too good, somebody steals it.”
He didn’t wait for an argument, not that I had one.
As he aimed the dirtmobile toward the exit, he swerved to avoid a rider in yellow leather zooming in on a motorcycle. The newcomer parked a few feet from me, dismounted, and removed his black helmet. He peeled off a glove and hand-combed his long blond locks, regarding me with sleepy blue eyes. He put a grin on his pale poet’s face and said, “Yo, Bless-sing, wha’s happ-a-ning?”
Chuck Slater was Wake Up, America!’s new film and television critic. Barely in his twenties, Chuck had gained fame as an Internet blogger and host of the popular website Flicpic.com. He was an arrogant, impatient young movie nut, either overly effusive in his reviews or devastatingly brutal. Quite the opposite of our former entertainment critic, George Miles, a Pulitzer Prize–winning twenty-year veteran of the Washington Post, whose critiques were thoughtful and informed. Unfortunately, all that experience meant nothing to management except that George was getting on in years. Which in turn meant that he had to be out of touch with our audience. Unlike Mr. Slater.
“Nice bike, Chuck,” I said.
“Sy-kel, baby, not bike. Ka-wa-saki Z One Thousand. A kick-ass machine. You oughta get yourself one, Bless-sing.”
“I’ll go out right after the show and buy one,” I said, pressing the button for the elevator, “if you can name the director of The Seventh Seal.”
He frowned. “Real cute, Bless-sing. You know I don’t waste my time on kiddie flicks.”
We were among the last to arrive at Studio 2.
Stepping into the vast array of sets, wires, cameras, monitors, and bustling people, Chuck took one look at anchorman Lance Tuttle and said, “Damn. I forgot it’s Western Day.”
Lance was wearing a fake handlebar mustache, a ten-gallon hat, a starched white shirt, black trousers as tight as Gene Autry’s, and hand-tooled boots with heels that brought him nearly up to six feet. He waved to us and yelled, “Howdy, pod-ners.”
On occasion, usually a holiday like Halloween or St. Pat’s, the show took on a special look, with decorations, costumes, and theme-appropriate guests. That day we were celebrating the old Wild West. Why? The ostensible reason was that the Professional Bull Riders were in town holding an exhibition at Madison Square Garden; some of them would be dropping by to talk up the contest and shake hands with the street crowd. But more important to the network, we would be promoting The Golden Lady, a dramedy set in a San Francisco casino during the 1849 gold rush that, judging by its ratings, needed all the publicity it could get.
“I hate this bullshit,” Chuck grumbled. “They’re making me dress up like an Indian. Hell, you’d make a better Indian, Blessing.”
“Thank you, Chuck, but they see me as more of a General Custer type.”
“You’re shitting me, right?”
“Yes, I am shitting you, Chuck,” I said, and headed for my dressing room/office.
Before I could get there, Gin McCauley, done up in Ultrasuede pants and shirt, Calamity Jane–style, called out, “Billy, mah hero!” She ran to me, hugged me, and kissed me on the cheek. “Thank you, thank you,” she whispered in my ear.
“For what?” I asked.
“For bein’ you,” she said.
Before I could press for a slightly more specific answer, she was on her way across the floor to where our producer, Arnie Epps, was chatting with Lance. Both men stopped talking, looked at Gin, then at me, and frowned. Actually, it was more of a scowl. Two scowls.
Puzzling over that, I wandered into the dressing room my assistant, Kiki Owens, had been slowly transforming into an office over the past few years. She was seated at a Formica-topped desk, typing away at a computer.
Kiki is a tiny, thin, seemingly fragile black woman who, though attractive, consists primarily of brain, bone, and muscle. She can get any job done if she puts her mind to it. Her role in life was helped by a British accent, earned by birthright, that, depending on her mood, fluctuated from charming to brutally intimidating.
She gave me a disappointed look and said, “Today’s a ‘special’ costume show, Billy. And you’re late.”
“My bad. I sort of put it out of my head.”
“I got Arnie to sign off on your cowboy costume,” she told me. “He gave someone else the Indian outfit.”
“I know,” I said, smiling. “Thanks.”
“I told him about your feather allergy. But I don’t think he believes it any more than I do.”
“It’s just the whole deal—the paint on the face, the feather headdress. I think it’s demeaning to Indians. Like asking me to wear a bone in my nose.”
“We’ll save that worry for Jungle Day,” Kiki said. “Now I think you should change into your outfit and
go to makeup as quickly as you can. Lo and Jolly have been popping in and out for the last twenty minutes, looking ever more anxious.” Lo and Jolly were our cosmetics artistes.
The costume that I’d handpicked consisted of a white ten-gallon hat, a black shirt and white string tie, tight gray pants, and black boots. And, of course, a black leather holster with twin shootin’ irons. When Lo, a very round Jamaican-American woman who had been with the show longer than I, finished removing my facial sheen and applying a thin mustache, I purposely avoided looking in the mirror. I wanted to preserve the mental image of myself as Herbert Jeffrey, the handsome cowboy star of the old movies my father would pop into the video player when I was a kid. The actor went on to sing with Duke Ellington’s band as Herb Jeffries and become one of the top vocalists of the forties, but to me, he’ll always be the heroic “Bronze Buckaroo” and “Two-Gun Man from Harlem” who rode the plains on a small black-and-white TV set in our living room.
Channeling the non-singing Herbert, I galloped through the morning, palavering with the bull riders while howdying the visitors lined up outside on the street, joining trail cook Buck Parminter in rustlin’ up some gold-rush griddle cakes, and introducing the C&W singing group The Sons of Sacramento.
We were nearing the end of our third half-hour segment when I sensed a shift in the on-set atmosphere. Usually, we’re crisp, fresh, and a little brittle at the start of the show, unless there’s breaking news or a special guest to create an immediate burst of energy. Toward the end of the first half-hour segment, we’ve loosened up a bit. During the third half-hour we’re relaxed enough to goof around.
But not that day.
I noticed there was whispering among the crew members and a tension in the air. At the start of the show, coanchors Lance and Gin had been gleefully outdrawing each other. Now it looked as if they wished they were carrying real guns. When news anchor Tori Dillard delivered a report on progress in the Middle East peace talks, she sounded so glum, you’d have thought a new war had broken out. Chuck Slater, interviewing a starlet from The Golden Lady show, angrily tore off his Indian headdress on camera and then tossed a wet blanket over the actress’s effervescence by reminding her of the show’s low ratings.