by G L Rockey
“He gets to keep his job, how's that.”
“Won't stick.”
“I'll make it stick.”
I realized the insane whispering in my head was right. Funny thing, insanity, you reach to touch the green toad and it's not there. You touch the red snake and it is there. No use fighting it. I withdrew, “I'll talk to Luther, see if he'll sign….”
“Talk hell, tell him.”
“I'll talk to him.”
Berry faced me and shook that index again. “You call him, get him in here, take it over there to his house, I don't give a shit, I want that contract signed on the dotted line by 5:00 today or else.” A nervous twitch under his left eye, he wiped his lips with his fingers, “Don't talk to him about moving to mornings, yet.”
No doubt about it, road kill, week old.
Berry looked out his window like he was counting rain drops.
I walked to the window and stood beside him. The sun struggled to break through the clearing sky. Pretty sure of the answer, I thought I'd ask anyway because sometime in the real world you get real answers. I wanted to hear him say it, get it into words so I could touch it and know I wasn't nuts. I watched a rivulet of water run down the outside of the window and said, “Okay, so I'm hallucinating, who's going to replace Luther?”
I could hear him smiling as he said, “I got somebody in mind”
“Let me guess.”
“You know her, Clip ‘en Snip Commercial, just started singing at Felix The Cat, has a record out, Peggy Moore.”
It's like you know you're going to get punched in the mouth by the Champ, see it coming, and then it lands.
Berry said, “She's built like a brick shit house, got it all.”
I began a mellow laugh that turned into a phlegm filled cough.
“What's so funny?” Berry said.
“Nothing, nothing.” Bending over at the waist, I wheezed thirty packs of Salem gunk.
“You better quit smoking.”
“I gotta quit a lot of things.”
Berry said, “Don't say anything to the staff yet, about Moore, we have to get some ducks in a row first … and get that contract signed … speaking of ducks in a row, wonder if our promotion manager is awake.” He called, “Judy.”
In a moment she appeared at the entrance. “Yes sir?”
“Call Jay Speaker. Get him in here.”
“Yes, sir.” She left.
Looking out the window, he said, “Maybe we can get Speaker kick-started on promoting this thing … kid's slow as molasses in January, analyzes too much, Joe picked it up right away.”
As mentioned earlier, Jay is our new program/promotion manager; he had been the poet laureate of Providence for a time.
CHAPTER 13
Real Time
10:35: 20 CDT
Jay Speaker—five foot ten, slender, rectangular face, brown eyes, fleshy nose, dark brown collar-length hair, legal pad in hand—stepped from the TV12 elevator into the second floor hall. Dressed casually in corduroy slacks, checked sports shirt, white knit tie, he walked to Berry's reception area and, standing to the side, did a little wave to Judy.
“Hi,” Judy whispered.
“Love you.” He said softly.
She whispered, “Me too,” and kept typing.
Jay, barely audible: “We still on for tonight?”
“Chinese, my place, 7:00.”
He feigned a smile and whispered, “Wish me luck,” and stepped to Berry's office doorway.
CHAPTER 14
Jack’s Time
Berry on the phone again with, I think, somebody at The Berry Inn, I pushed around a recurring thought: from conception to death, the only thing human beings are really doing, in a bundle of sacks, bladders, and tubes, connected by inferior plumbing, is maintaining a leaky ark to cross over and hope, if necessary, a ‘sorry’ will save the day.
I heard a knock.
Berry heard the knock too. He said into his phone, “Handle it,” hung up and gawked past me toward his office entrance.
I looked there too.
Jay—gray corduroy slacks, long-sleeve sports shirt, collar unbuttoned, white tie—stood with legal pad in hand and an uncertain smile on his face.
I noticed Berry seemed to be tweaking up his Gucci critiquer. Eyebrows lifted, head tilted to the left, eyes peering down his nose, he said, “Where'd you get those corduroy trousers, Speaker, J.C. Penn-ays?”
Jay said, “I….”
“That may be the way they dress up in Providence, Rhode Island, but not around here, and get a haircut.”
Watching Jay struggle to decipher Berry's mood, I was reminded of an oboe setting the pitch for an orchestra.
The uncertain smile vanished and Jay looked like people do when they're searching for meaning in every day run-of-the-mill life things like breathing. He said, “Judy, she called, said you wanted to see me.”
“Yes we do.” Berry said. “Come in, shut the door.”
Jay closed the door, walked to the sofa, and settled in. “Hi, Jack.”
Ignoring Berry, I said, “Get some coffee, behind the bar, Costa Rican bean, good.”
“No thanks.” Jay rubbed his palms on his pants.
I spoke loudly for Berry's benefit. “WHAT TIME DID YOU GET IN this morning?”
Jay said, “Around 9:00. Traffic is really messed up. I stopped by the news room … they say the rain is supposed to let up though.”
I raised my voice toward the window, “Yep, OL’ LUTHER's left shoulder is feeling better, you know what that means, rain's about over … and you know OL’ LUTHER, never wrong.” I looked at Jay. “You come in the expressway?”
“No way. I went around.” Jay relaxed, like he had almost forgotten Berry's stare. I didn't. The Kid's energy was expanding across the room like the ceiling in that Harrison Ford doom movie.
Jay said, “What about you?”
“I messed up, came in the expressway.”
“Really, I….”
”Excuuuuse me ladies,” Berry said, “I hate to interrupt the little breakfast club at the bistro chit chat but….” He smacked his desk. “Let me tell you guys something. Time is money. Never forget it. Especially never forget it in the broadcasting business. That's all we got folks. Time. And, I'll say it again, time is money. Got it?”
I thought so that’s what time is, hmm.
Jay said, “Yes sir.”
Berry beaded me, “Carr?”
I smiled, thinking I don't got it, don't want it, never had it. Fuck it. I said, “Does Joe got it?”
Berry said, “What?”
“I was just wondering, Joe not being in yet, if he knew that time is money.”
“Are you looking for trouble, Carr?”
“Just wondering.”
Berry mumbled something in tongues, sounded like Rev. Molino's shum da la mum with a son and a bitch mixed in. He stood, strolled to the front of his desk, rested one hip on the edge, said, “Jay, this isn't for publication yet, we have to tidy up a few things so don't say anything just yet, to you know, your staff.” He folded his arms, “Jay my boy, we've been doing some serious thinking, studied the last rating book, and, to keep on the cutting edge, we've come up with a sure thing for Music City U.S.A. We're going to hire a lady country and western singer to do our five, six, and ten o'clock weather.”
There it is, I thought, ‘we’, history's best friend.
Berry smiled, “You probably heard of her, she has a couple records out, Peggy Moore.”
Jay looked at me for a moment like he wasn't sure he had heard right, or that he had and the words had come out wrong, or gone in wrong, something wrong.
Berry straightened his cufflinks. “The reason we called you up here, we need to get the promotion ball rolling. I want you to come up with a dynamite promotion campaign. We'll want a ton of newspaper, billboards, billboards on every corner … expressways … of course we'll want to saturate our own air, every break with promos.”
That ‘we’ again.
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I noticed a puzzled frown form on Jay's face and I noted that Berry noticed it too.
Berry said, “What's the frown for, Speaker? Carr passing gas over there?”
Jay gave a little chuckle, “What about Luther?”
I thought, mistake one, or was it two, for Jay.
Just then Berry's private line buzzed. He walked over, picked up, sat at his desk, and said, “Frazer.” Listening, he turned his chair and looked out the window.
While he talked, I said to Jay, “Jay you remember that error in time thing you were telling me about a few weeks ago … you read somewhere.”
“Yeah, Pope Gregory?”
“Yes, that’s it, what was that again?”
“The Julian calendar worked on the assumption that a year was 365 1/4 days long. Every fourth year had 366 days. Back then they used movements of the planets … sun, moon, earth … to calculate time.”
“That's it, what was that?”
He glanced at Berry, still talking on the phone, then continued: “Around 730 A.D., a monk discovered that the 365 1/4-day Julian year was 11 minutes 14 seconds too long … that made an error of about a day every 128 years. Nobody paid much attention, but by 1582 A.D. the error in time was 10 days.”
“Yeah, that's it, so what did they do?”
“So Pope Gregory XIII decreed that the day following Oct. 4, 1582 should be October 15, dropped 10 days.”
“Yes, bingo, that's it.”
Jay glanced at Berry, still talking, “So what has that got to do with this?”
“So where is Pope Gregory when we need him. I mean, maybe we could drop a few days. Hell, drop the whole month.”
Jay smiled. “I wish it were that simple.”
“It is, all you have to do is do it.”
Berry still talking on the phone, Jay nodded to him and said, “Tell him.”
I said, “Maybe we could call the Vatican.”
“Right.”
Berry yakking, I stood, walked to the bar, sat on a stool, lit a Salem, rested my chin in my hands, and thought: this is insane. But then, I had come to know, in real time, insanity is reality. That's the only way the logic puzzle pieces fit. But then I thought, someday somebody is going to have to convince a jury this was all done in innocence.
I looked at Berry's bottle of Jack Daniels, rested next to Chivas, Wild Turkey, J&B, Jim Beam and assorted lesser relatives and, as I studied the booze, I pondered the difference between nightmares and reality. A good old fashioned standing up in bed screaming nightmare, red snakes and all, is easy compared to this. This is real. I simply have got to get out of here.
I crushed Salem out in a TV12 ashtray and looked at the gray day outside the window and as I looked, I studied a large cumulus cloud.
“What are you mumbling about over there, Carr?” Berry had hung up.
“Nothing.”
Suddenly a flash of lightning exploded and brilliance filled the room.
Berry said, “Jesus Christ,” walked to his window and looked out.
I listened to the moment before the thunder. And in that moment I wanted to go back but I couldn't go back, and when I started to move forward I lost my nerve and I cursed my cowardice knowing the thunder would come.
And it did, shaking the building, and as the thunder trailed off to the east, I swore I heard a bag pipe playing Amazing Grace and I saw time marching over the green hide-covered years and I saw the other side of the thunder. Almost had it. Didn't want to come back.
Berry turned and said, “What you say, Carr? Didn't hear you.”
Jay plunged in, “Berry, on the weather, maybe we should do some research, focus groups, before we, ah, replace Luther, he's an institution in this town.”
Mistake number three, or was it four, for Jay?
Everybody at TV12 (‘cept Jay, I guess) knew Berry loathed objections. To him any objection, plain and simple, was negative thinking. Besides, this weather idea was sealed in blood, somebody's blood, and the talk Jay spouted was not only negative thinking, it was, as Angelo would say, cojone suicide.
Berry swaggered back to his desk, “That's bullshit, Speaker. I don't need a pimp researcher to tell me a country singing weather girl, in Music City USA, will work. Jesus Christ, come up for air, boy.”
Jay, silent, seemed to be seeking a better read of Berry, beyond the optics, past the pupils, to motive. Like he was searching for the right answer in an oral exam, he tapped his ballpoint pen to his temple, said, “Our news is number one, we are winning, in no small part due to Luther's popularity.” He smiled, “Remember the old adage, if it isn't broke, don't fix it—applies here.”
I said, “As I recall, I do recollect something along those lines … yes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, yes.”
Berry put his hands on his hips. “That's inside the box thinking … I'm talking outside the box, ahead of the curve, cutting edge millennium stuff.”
I thought that’s two epiphanies this morning: time is money, and an insight into what the new age millennium stuff is all about.
Seeming to miss the epiphanies, Jay looked like a kid wondering why there was no peanut butter on his peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Berry sat behind his desk.
Jay said, “I'm just concerned, Berry, I….”
Berry cut him off, “Our Phi Beta Kappa concern for the day. Ya hear that Carr. Put that down. Look out when Yankee talk turns to concern.”
I think Jay still believed that logic must prevail in life, in the world, in the universe. He had been at TV12 less than a year and hadn't yet figured out Berryisms. I had some of it down—yes is maybe, no is depends, never is sometime, fifteen is twenty, maybe ten—all depending what you were dealing with and from who, what, where, and when.
Berry said, “Where was it you were poet laureate, Speaker?”
“Providence.”
“What you write up there?”
Jay looked puzzled. “Poetry.”
“Ever make any money, get published?”
I hated this.
Jay smiled, “Didn't pay the rent.”
Berry straighten his cufflinks, looked at his manicure. “It's called economics son, the marketplace, producing something then selling it … nobody ever ate a poem for lunch.”
Poem never ate anybody for lunch either, I thought, too bad. Then I thought, let's just please get the fuck out of here.
But Berry seemed to be on a roll. “Let me tell you something son, we're in a business and don't you forget it. Like the hide factory down the street is a business. We're here to make a dollar. Nobody gets nothing if we don't make that first goddamn dollar! And let me tell you something else. Everybody with any sense knows it is. But a lot of liberal assholes like to hear that stuff about saving the masses and get tears in their eyes when you say humanity and think that's some big pie in the sky with love and lollipops and everybody holding hands on top of a hill, with a flower stuck in their mouth, singing some shit. I got simoles riding on this thing. We all do. It's called capitalism, boy, capitalism with a capital C. You think all we have to do is … is what?” Berry cocked his head a little and stared at Jay. “I never could figure out what it is you bleeding hearts would do if you were running the show.”
I said. “Yeah, look where we are today with you guys running the show.”
“You don't like it Carr, go to China, see how that works.”
“How 'bout someplace warm.”
Berry waved me off then, picking at an open scab, said to Jay, “How is it you never got married, Jay, smart good-looking guy like you. All these horny females running around looking for a clam bake.”
Jay looked at me and smiled. “I thought Jack was taking care of them all.”
“Har har har.” Berry had circled behind me. He slapped me on the shoulder. “That right Carr?”
Taunt already, surprised at the slap, I wanted to kick something, but I pushed my pause button and sucked it in.
Berry chuckled as he ambled to his office door.
“Okay, Jay boy, I want you to start thinking how you'll promote our new weather show, ton of promotion, our air, and billboards, like I said, we want a ton of billboards, one on every corner.” Berry opened the door.
Standing, Jay looked like, on final approach, fifty feet in the air, an airline attendant had opened a door and yelled ‘EVERYBODY OUT’!
Jay said, “That's it?”
Berry said, “That's it.”
Jay looked at me. “We're going to do it?”
“Allegro.” I said.
Berry tossed me a look like I might be dog dropping on his carpeting.
Jay walked to Berry. “I hope you understand … the research … I was only….”
“I understand. Good work. Go put your promotion hat on, get on those billboards.”
Jay said, “When do you think we'll start it … we'll need a photo shoot … some….”
“We'll announce her premiere tomorrow, formal, like I said, have to work out a few details. Don't say anything just yet.” Berry winked at me.
I winked back.
Jay said, “I'll work up some generic ideas and….”
“Good, you do that. Now, back to the grindstone, Jay, good work.” Berry closed the door in Jay's face and, strutting back to his desk, said, “We gotta get rid of that chicken shit candy ass and I know it and you know it and Big Joe can't stand him. Hate to admit it, made a mistake there.” He sat behind his desk, “What kind of poetry does he write?”
“Roses are red, violets are blue, classical stuff.”
“Bullshit.” Berry adjusted his cufflinks. “Anyway, boy's not cuttin’ the mustard.”
I really needed a drink, maybe two. I clicked Zippo, lit a Salem, and walked to the window to look at something real, the weather. As I looked, it all conjugated and I was one step closer to no longer being amazed at how the world works. I blew smoke at the window. It fogged for a moment. I drew a little smiling face. I heard Berry's little cat steps. He stood beside me, his eyes fixed on, shrouded in the distance by thinning clouds, Nashville's skyline. He spoke almost mystically like he saw something, heard something, something, “You know, Jack. I could be Governor of this state one day. I could do it. Then … hell, who knows … 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue could use some help.”