by Jack Martin
“I wonder how you get to be a contestant on this show?”
“I don’t know. Nobody seems to come back next week.” He wanted to touch the back of her neck, wanted to soothe it with a kiss, but was afraid of hurting her. She left it exposed. “What did you say happened to your shoulder?”
“A friend,” she said. “I think he’d like VIDEODROME.”
The first mention. Now it all comes out, he thought. There was always another “friend.” How could it be otherwise? He should have known.
He felt a pang of jealousy. Was she taunting him? Or was it merely her brand of honesty? Perhaps that was the most powerful come-on of all.
“You let somebody cut you?”
“Uh-huh,” she said sweetly. She batted her eyes at him. “Well, what do you think?”
“Uh, I don’t know . . .” It was hot in the apartment and getting hotter all the time. He unstuck himself from the couch and sat forward.
“Want to try a few things?” she asked.
“I . . . don’t know.” He really didn’t. His mouth was dry. Where was that drink? “You might have to stay on radio if it gets out of hand.”
“Radio’s been good to me. I like it because it’s so free. It’s liberating. It allows your mind to make anything you want of it. Or need. But there’s always VIDEODROME. C’mon, lover,” she said smoothly, pouring herself over him. “You could start with, um, nail clippers and work your way up to razor blades.”
He pulled back, afraid. He wasn’t sure of what.
“Uh, no. I think I just feel like talking dirty.”
She laughed, playing along for the moment. “ ‘No’ is the dirtiest thing I’ve ever heard. Kiss me and say it again, would you?”
“No,” he said, nuzzling her. “No.” The television played on, the image flowing with red. “No.” The screams were almost given over to unconsciousness. “No.” Nicki clung to him, every muscle in her body coming awake. He felt her breath hot in his ear. He held her too tightly. Yes, he forced himself to think, yes. Come to me, Nicki. I need you. I need something. Yes, you’re what I need. I need to know that you’re here for me. I need to know that you’re real, that you’re possible. He closed his eyes as the room and everything in it, including Nicki Brand, began to strobe red. “No,” he said.
As soon as he entered the marginally organized chaos of the Civic TV building the next morning, he felt his nervous system winding up tight as a violin string.
His senses opened too wide. His eyes dilated and his lids raised another degree, letting in more light than he could bear so early; he was assaulted by playbacks of advertising jingles and pressurized conversations sounding through the concrete channels of the complex as through the amplifying canals of some gigantic model of a human head; his skin tingled with a hypersensitivity that was near pain as he brushed against employees busy on their appointed rounds, nearly all of whom seemed to be hopelessly behind schedule and dangerously close to panic; he smelled the synthetic bouquets of perfume and cologne still fresh at this hour, like the close, nauseatingly aromatic cloud with which one was invariably greeted upon arrival at a funeral in progress; and a nasty, metallic taste flowed from his mouth, making his sour stomach growl in protest. He had forgotten to brush his teeth again, and to shave. The grain of his stubbled face felt like a mask of rudely hammered base metal.
He was not ready.
He followed the corridor to an all-too-familiar junction. There a compulsively ordered desk stood out in the midst of the activity like an oasis at the edge of a battlefield.
Bridey, he thought as he marched numbly forward, as through the trenches to review his troops. Save me. The neurological floodgates are about to be forced open the rest of the way, and then there will be no turning back. For the next few hours there will be no escape. You know how to help me. Don’t you?
As soon as he revealed himself, several polyestered bodies separated from the flock and descended like vultures, authorizations in hand and pens at the ready, as hypertense as lawyers who had camped out all night to obtain last-minute reprieves.
The secretary jumped up to meet him. She ignored her telephone and went into action, steering him by the sleeve to the nearest door.
“Max, thank God you’re here. Masha Borowczyk has been waiting in your office for an hour. What were you doing last night? Didn’t you get my message?”
Masha? he thought. Masha. Oh, no . . .
He saw the hordes of lackeys drawing nearer, about to surround him. He wanted to sink from sight and come in again the back way. Or, better yet, to go home and back to bed where it was safe. But there was no choice. There was only one door in sight. The door to his own office.
“I don’t think I’m ready for this,” he informed her.
Efficiently, using the fewest possible moves, Bridey inserted her own half-empty cup of coffee into his right hand, her own half-smoked cigarette into his left.
“Coffee,” instructed Bridey. “Cigarette.” She aimed him toward the office and set him moving with a gentle push between the shoulder blades. “Masha. Go. She’s hot to trot.”
Chapter Five
The door whispered shut behind him.
He could still hear the frantic voices outside, but at least they were fainter now. Here the light was dimmer, more nearly bearable. The blinds had not yet been drawn up.
He bumped a reassuring piece of furniture and stepped over a pile of reports that littered the floor like familiar land mines. He stuck the cigarette to his lip and removed his dark glasses. He could make out enough of the clutter to relax slightly. It was his own office, all right. Just like home.
He took a deep breath, and inhaled an infusion of face powder and floral toilet water.
“Masha,” he said, turning to where he knew she would be. “I’m glad you could—”
“Max, it’s so beautiful to see you!”
She abandoned the couch, marked his cheek with lipstick. A dainty handkerchief unfurled like white wings in front of his face as she tried to wipe off the smear. She drew back and combed his hair away from his forehead with her fingers, straightening the collar of his tan jacket as if he were a small boy. Satisfied at last, she presented him with a full frontal view of herself, complete with fake leopard skin suit and hennaed pincurls.
“But Max, you look terrible.” She let her voice fall like a mother who has been betrayed by her own son. “Tired, exhausted . . .”
Max felt inexplicably guilty. Just what I need, he thought. He decided he couldn’t go on with it. He backed to the door.
Masha read his intention immediately and saved herself by shifting to another approach.
“But excited,” she cooed, “alive! I can see it behind the fatigue. So . . . no. You look great. How are you?”
She was so transparent. And yet there remained something touching about her pathetic efforts at old-world charm, even though they were only for the purpose of misdirecting him from the hustle.
He nodded resignedly and allowed her to lead him to the couch, where she plumped herself up next to him and rummaged in her ornate purse for a Turkish cigarette.
“I’m great,” she announced, as she lit up and French-inhaled a tendril of the foul smoke.
He made a brave effort to ignore the odor. “It’s good to see you, too.”
“You have a hangover?”
“I stayed up late watching TV.”
“Ahh.” She fluttered her eyelids closed and emitted a contented sound. Then, as if revived by the acrid smoke, she lifted her lids and their burden of caked mascara and said in an altogether businesslike tone, “Max.”
He crossed his legs and faced her, feigning interest.
“Two words,” said the woman. “Ready?”
Max nodded without expectation.
She said the secret words. “Apollo. Dionysus.”
Max frowned.
“Exciting?”
His own—Bridey’s—cigarette was down to the filter and burning his fingers. He put it out
and patted his pockets for another. He had none. He considered one of Masha’s Turkish ovals. But the one she was sipping from smelled like burning hair. The smokescreen was scraping his throat raw.
“Uh.” He sampled the coffee. It was black, the way he liked it. “Maybe. Greeks, weren’t they?”
“Max. Don’t joke. Two shows.” She held up a pair of fingers as a visual aid. “They go together like this.” She entwined her fingers to mimic gnarled legs in contraction over the pallid crotch of her knuckles.
“I have to buy both of them?”
“You will beg me to sell you both of them.” She elevated her chin with thespian extravagance. “Apollo: hard, aloof, cruel.” Her face distended lasciviously, cracking the groundcover of her makeup. “Dionysus: drunken, sensual, orgiastic . . .”
She crowded him on the couch, leering like a madam.
“See them. Now.”
He had no choice but to humor her. It was the only way he was going to get through it.
The Board Room was on the other side of a connecting door. He led her to a comfortable seat, drew the blinds closed and switched on the VCR.
She took two tapes out of her purse and left her seat to insert the first one for him, adjusting the color and volume with a perfectionist’s care. He sat back and awaited her presentation. He had seen enough of her tapes to know what to expect. The sooner it was over with the better.
He settled into the cushions and did his best to remain interested. There was always hope. Wasn’t there?
Unfortunately the first show was as shabby as he feared.
Togas that had, until a few days ago, served as bedsheets in a cheap hotel room. Actors with sideburns and wristwatches. Doric columns fashioned from cardboard tubes covered in butcher paper. A Grecian urn with a Hong Kong dragon stenciled onto its surface. The togas fell away soon enough, but only in soft focus.
Masha pretended not to watch his face as she sat forward in rapt attention and picked flecks of tobacco from her tongue.
Max caught a few seconds of microsleep while the tape unreeled. No matter; the action never progressed beyond the puerile. The same mismatched bodies continued their simulations behind the same out-of-focus vases. Which was just as well. The “actor” who was impersonating Apollo had pimples on his back; even through a diffusion lens his shoulders resembled the craters of the moon.
Time passed. The clock hummed high and white on the wall.
The second tape was no better. Max fast-forwarded with his remote control, accelerating the lackluster action into a Keystone Kops two-reeler. He tried not to laugh and swallowed a yawn. It was like a high school pageant version of the Satyricon. Both tapes had been shot silent with a track of Viennese waltz music dubbed in later. Dutifully he dipped into the tape again and again at various points, but the tinkling music box repeated endlessly, like the powdered and rouged bodies which moved to its mechanical strains as if underwater.
“Masha,” he asked at last, “does it ever get good?”
“It’s all good. Max, tell me. Which one do you identify with? Apollo with his nobility of purpose, his controlling intelligence? Or Dionysus with his unleashed excesses, his insatiable urges? Don’t let me influence your opinion, but personally I find . . .”
“Personally I don’t see any difference.”
“But Max! They’re distinct personalities.”
“Two sides of the same coin. In the end, they both behave exactly alike. Well, don’t they? So where’s the distinction? Given the same setting, the same temptations . . .”
“Mm-hmm. I see, I see. Like Jekyll and Hyde, in other words?” She leaned in slyly, playing him out. “Tell me, though. Which side would you prefer to be?”
“Depends on the time of day,” Max snapped. “Right now I’m supposed to be on my best behavior. But old Mr. Touchie-Feelie won’t give up the ghost. He’s still there. He’s always trying to get his licks in, one way or another.”
Masha spoke intensely. “You must let him, Max. Give him permission to realize his potential. Suppress him and he may reveal himself at what you would call an inopportune time.”
She sounded like a Model-T Freudian. He had heard it all before.
“I’m trying, Masha,” he said impatiently, “I’m trying. But if I let myself have too many dreams before, say, four o’clock in the afternoon, I’d never get my work done.”
“But that is your work, isn’t it, Max? Dreams? Be honest with yourself. And what I’m offering you is the perfect integration of the twin halves of the eternal duality, light and darkness, the yin and the yang . . .”
He held up his hand. The bull was really flying now, too thick and fast for him to deal with it any longer in abstract terms. He rubbed his eyes.
“It doesn’t work that way, behaviorally speaking,” he said. “I wish it did. But it doesn’t. If it did, the Catholic Church would have gone out of business centuries ago. People go one way at any given time or they go the other. It’s a choice. A man can’t have his shit and eat it, too, to coin a phrase. I wish I could. But I can’t.”
God knows I’ve tried, he thought. That’s what’s tearing me apart.
But I’m beginning to sound like some firehouse sociologist myself.
He stopped himself.
Masha would not give up, however. She said, “The two have kept each other alive since the beginning of civilization. The sun and the moon, the flame burning more brightly over the water. They feed each other.” She took a breath. “And now, today, with my latest production, you have before you . . .”
Max killed the tape and the ludicrous morality play withered to a dot on the screen, an eye racing away down a tunnel, growing more vivid at the last just before it disappeared completely.
“But there’s no edge to it. You know what I mean, the edge? Masha, darling, I’m looking for something a lot more . . .” He sought for a word that might ring a bell in her decadent mind. “More contemporary.” There, that was the ticket. Perhaps, if he pointed it out to her tactfully enough, she could be reminded that she was living in the last quarter of the twentieth century. “I want something that will show people what’s really going on under the sheets. This stuff is too—too nice. Too sweet. Like you, darling.”
Masha’s expression was neither nice nor sweet. She dispatched another lipstick-stained cigarette butt to the ashtray. “Well,” she said, “it’s your market. Darling.”
“You know a show called VIDEODROME?”
“Video-what?” She eyed him suspiciously, as if he had broken an unspoken rule and mentioned the name of one of her rivals.
“D-R-O-M-E. Like, you know, video circus, video arena? You’ve heard of it?”
“No.”
“It’s just torture and murder. No plot, no characters. Very, very realistic. I think it’s what’s next.”
“Then God help us,” she said wearily, in her most dramatic fin de siècle tone.
“Better on TV than in the streets.”
Masha rose unsteadily.
He was suddenly struck through with pity, even compassion for her. The old ways were changing, too rapidly for her to keep up. Soon she would be obsolete. Her customers, like Civic TV, were moving on; before long she would have no one to hustle.
He could not picture her riding out the rest of her days in a home for out-of-work procuresses. He could offer her something, couldn’t he? A crumb, a bone? Besides, she might turn out to be of some use to him, after all, in a very tangible way. She had been in this field a long time, longer than anyone else he knew. We can do each other a favor, he thought.
He called after her. “You interested in tracking it down for me? I’ll see that you get the agency commission.”
She turned back, renewed hope coloring her cheeks. “I’m interested.”
Money talks, he thought sadly. “We think it comes from Pittsburgh.”
“Let me try.” She retrieved her cassettes, her mind racing ahead to a new scheme. “Max . . .”
“Yeah?” Why di
d he feel that he was still being manipulated?
“Did you ever think of producing your own show? Right here? I could be your agent. Worldwide. I could sell subterranean for you everywhere.”
“No. I don’t have the temperament.”
Masha dug in. “But if you did, what kind of show would you do? I mean for the subterranean market. Would you do VIDEODROME?”
Max smiled uncertainly, toying with the idea. Purely hypothetically, of course. But no. It was crazy.
“I guess we’ll never know,” he said.
But even after she had gone, he couldn’t get the question out of his mind.
Max came out of the kitchen balancing two drinks. He had intended to make them stiff—but not this stiff. The glasses were overfull, dripping in rivulets from his wrists. Or was it only that his hands were shaking?
It had been another long day.
“Why do we always end up at my place?” He navigated around a sagging carton of tapes. “I’m not set up to entertain.”
“I guess it’s ’cause we both love the slums,” Nicki deadpanned.
He set the drinks on the coffee table and bobbed his head to sip one down to a reasonable level. Disturbing pools of liquid formed around the bases of the glasses, staining the tabletop a dark color.
“Sexy-crazy?” said Nicki.
Max looked up.
She had opened a small case from her purse and was holding up a pair of earrings.
He took one, examined it. It was gold, very light, but with a stinger. The screw pin in back pricked his finger, drawing blood.
“These are for pierced ears,” he said, sucking his finger. Then he touched the small lobe beneath her ear, a delicate curl of flesh as pink and unique as a seashell. His finger left a red smudge behind. “Your ears aren’t pierced.”
“Not yet.” She produced an oblong box from her purse and said coyly, “Doing anything tonight?”
So it began.
He milked his finger, squeezing out another thickening drop, another. It tasted warm and metallic, like her teeth when she chewed his lips. She had taught him that. And as always VIDEODROME replayed soundlessly in the background, as ubiquitous now as electronic wallpaper. He had long ago stopped watching it.