Madonna and the Starship (9781616961220)

by Morrow, James

  “Wait till four-twenty before tuning in NBC, and you won’t have to sit through a Brock Barton chapter called ‘Fangs of Death.’”

  “Get thee to a typewriter, Kurt Jastrow,” said Saul, wheeling his chair back into place. “Meet the deadline, and I’ll up your salary to four cents a word.”

  At three o’clock I arrived at Studio One, only to discover that our golden-tonsiled host, Jerry Korngold, had just phoned in sick, a bad case of bronchitis—not a surprise, actually: this was the smoggiest New York November on record. Much to Floyd Cox’s distress, nobody in the regular cast was willing to plug the gap. Apparently AFTRA, which I’d never gotten around to joining, forbid its members to sign contracts on the spur of the moment. My initial impulse was to volunteer my own thespian talents—the Writers Guild didn’t particularly care if its constituents did impromptu moonlighting on the actors’ side of the camera—but then I realized that, at the climax of the episode, I’d have to be in two places at once: the announcer’s booth and the attic set.

  I suggested recruiting Walter Spalding as our pinch hitter—in his youth he’d played Captain Midnight on the radio—and Floyd agreed, so I went charging down the carpeted hallway toward the executive suites. Mr. Spalding’s secretary told me that he, too, was out with bronchitis, so I started back toward Studio One, when who should I meet but Connie Osborne, dressed in a charcoal business suit and carrying a stack of freshly mimeographed Not By Bread Alone scripts. I could smell the ink.

  “Hi, Kurt—give me a hand with these,” she said, dumping half the scripts in my arms. “The read-through can’t start till everybody gets a script.”

  “My show goes on in twenty minutes, and our host is out sick.”

  “This will only take a sec.”

  Connie guided me into conference room C, a smoke-filled space dominated by a circular table around which sat the cast of “Sitting Shivah for Jesus.” She introduced me to her director, the elderly but energetic Ogden Lynx, who throughout the 1940s had acted in CBS’s Sunday-morning religious radio program, Light Unto the World.

  “My grandchildren are devoted to your show,” Ogden told me. Dressed in a loud checked jacket and polka-dot bowtie, he seemed more like a vaudeville comic than a TV director. “I wish Bread Alone did as good a job promoting spiritual values as Brock Barton does selling Sugar Corn Pops.”

  “Yesterday Kurt asked me a fascinating question,” said Connie. “Why isn’t our East Coast audience in church instead of home staring at their TV’s?”

  “My cousin in the Bronx has it both ways,” Ogden replied. “He watches our show and the first half of Corporal Rex, Wonder Dog of the NYPD, then walks three blocks and catches an eleven o’clock service at Saint John’s Episcopal.”

  “What profiteth it a man to patronize Rex the Wonder Dog and lose his immortal soul?” I muttered, thus eliciting a scowl from Ogden.

  As Connie passed out the scripts, I realized that we might solve our announcer crisis by borrowing one of her performers—maybe ancient Judeans were less beholden to union protocols than Rocket Rangers—but when I asked, she said, “AFTRA won’t hear of it, but you can borrow me. Mom says I have a chipper Jean Arthur sort of voice.”

  “Chipper isn’t quite right. The role requires gleeful hysteria.”

  “I can do that, too.”

  “Aren’t you needed here?” I asked, encompassing conference room C with a sweep of my arm.

  “Ogden never likes having a producer around when he’s working with actors,” muttered Connie, “especially if that producer wrote the script.”

  “Your presence interferes with his creativity?”

  “No, it inhibits him from doing capricious last-minute rewrites, one of his principal joys in life.”

  Seconds later I escorted Connie to Studio One and introduced Floyd Cox to our emergency host.

  “Your lines are underscored in red.” Floyd handed Connie a script. “’Fraid I can’t give you a contract,” he said, ushering her into the announcer’s booth. “I’m allowed to hire all the non-union actors I like, so long as I don’t pay ’em.”

  “I’m doing this for the fun of it,” said Connie.

  “After the flour-mill experiment, cut to a midshot of me,” I instructed Floyd. “I’ll be making an important announcement.”

  Two minutes later, receiving her cue, Connie counted down from ten to zero while urging viewers to scramble aboard the Triton. “In our last episode,” she continued, “the dastardly Argon Drakka arranged for a monstrous python to attack Brock and his crew! Coiling itself around the Triton, the serpent suddenly rammed its head through the viewport, threatening Wendy with a razor-sharp tooth! And now we present ‘Fangs of Death,’ chapter two of ‘The Cobra King of Ganymede’!”

  As the episode ran its breathless course, I headed for dressing room B, where Trixie Buxton applied my makeup and complained about her husband’s drinking. I sprinted back to Studio One. Entering the attic set, I made a beeline for the dressmaker’s dummy. I probed the chest, inspected the hips, scrutinized the wrought-iron feet, failing to find any retrofittings that might have animated the thing. Either I’d hallucinated its gyrations, or the dummy had been piloted by alien telekinesis—two theories I found equally disturbing.

  Argon Drakka’s python did not prosper. No sooner had the creature reared back to strike Wendy than Brock pulled out his blaster and vaporized both fangs, even as Lance Rawlings threw a switch that caused the Triton’s hull to overheat and turn the monster into teriyaki. The next sequence required Brock and his crew to traverse Ganymede’s harsh terrain toward Drakka’s lair. Arriving at the mountain fortress, Cotter Pin deduced that it occupied the site of a dormant volcano. Cut to a commercial: the usual non sequitur of Brock savoring Kellogg’s Sugar Corn Pops at Galaxy Central. “And remember, kids, it’s got the sweetenin’ already on it!” Cut back to Ganymede. Acting on Cotter Pin’s advice, Brock and Lance dropped a small explosive into the volcano, their goal being to trigger an eruption and thus destroy Drakka’s laboratory. Alas, the bomb proved too powerful, causing so prolific a flow of lava—there was nothing Mike Zipser couldn’t do with oatmeal—that Brock, Wendy, and Lance found themselves standing in the burning river’s path. Fade-out. Cut to Brock doing an Ovaltine commercial. Dissolve to title card, CATARACT OF FIRE.

  “Be sure to tune in on Friday for ‘Cataract of Fire,’” shouted Connie, “chapter three of ‘The Cobra King of Ganymede’!”

  Now came Uncle Wonder’s Attic: an installment that proved mercifully free of catastrophe. True, Andy scratched his scrotum on camera. (Floyd immediately switched to a close-up of the steamer trunk.) True, when sauntering toward my worktable, I tripped over my shoelaces and collided with the dressmaker’s dummy. But the flour-mill experiment came off beautifully. When I blew the white powder into the flame, the chemical reaction lifted the paint-can lid three feet into the air—a spectacular but innocuous effect—while the fireball bloomed and vanished in an instant. The set remained intact, Andy was unscathed, and I delivered my big news with aplomb.

  “Boys and girls, on Friday we have a special treat for you,” I said, facing camera two and resting my palm on the Motorola. “Instead of our usual science experiment, two aliens from Planet Qualimosa will be dropping by to give Uncle Wonder a jim-dandy award, the Zorningorg Prize. I can’t tell you much about the Qualimosans, except that they look like saltwater crustaceans and they’re very curious about the universe, just like you and me.”

  “Wow, that’s gonna be swell!” said Andy, ad-libbing astutely. “So long, Uncle Wonder! I’m goin’ home to try that nifty flour-mill experiment!”

  “Great, but remember not to—”

  “Not to fill the funnel all the way! Safety first, Uncle Wonder!”

  “Safety first!”

  Dissolve to end title. Fade-out. Cut to NBC logo.

  “So what will happen to Brock, Wendy, and Lance?” asked Connie, striding into Uncle Wonder’s domain, her perky voice ringing across the attic se
t. “Do they get fricasseed by the lava?”

  “But of course,” I said with a slanted smile. “It’s time kids learned to cope with unhappy endings, don’t you think? Terrific performance, Connie. I’m sure Floyd was pleased.”

  “Walter will get a thousand letters complaining that the show should never be narrated by a woman,” said Connie. “Hey, Kurt, what was all that malarkey about a Zorninwhatsis Prize? Don’t you think it’s boorish to give yourself an award, especially on the air?”

  “I’m not giving it to myself,” I protested, gesturing toward the dormant Motorola. “Evidently I have a following on Planet Qualimosa.”

  As if on cue, the picture tube glowed to life, revealing the skinny lobster. Just as the aliens had promised, the image was sharper now, and I had no trouble discerning the crustacean’s surroundings: the bridge of a spaceship, considerably more textured and detailed that our Brock Barton set.

  “Greetings, O Kurt Jastrow, in whom we are well pleased!” the skinny lobster declared.

  Now the fat lobster appeared on the bridge. “You not only publicized the awards ceremony, you celebrated our philosophy. ‘They’re very curious about the universe.’ Magnificent!”

  “Since last we spoke, we have calibrated our onboard TV antennas to tune in educational programs other than Uncle Wonder’s Attic,” said the skinny lobster. “We are confused, O Kurt Jastrow. Your civilization stands as a bulwark against irrationality, yet we find no scientific substance in the seminars of Liberace or the symposia of Red Skelton.”

  “It’s a cultural crosstalk problem,” I said, improvising as cannily as I could. “The substance is there all right, but you have to know where to look.”

  “Bulwark against irrationality?” said Connie. “What are these clowns talking about?”

  “They aren’t clowns,” I said. “They’re benevolent beings from outer space, the whole Michael Rennie bit—at least, I think they are.”

  “This is a gag, right?” said Connie.

  “I see you have a friend, O Kurt Jastrow,” said the fat lobster.

  “Connie Osborne,” said my colleague. “I write for TV, too, but you’re not about to give me a prize.” She turned to me and said, “Fraternity initiation rite?”

  “Fraternity rite not, O Connie Osborne,” sneered the skinny lobster. “Behold!”

  Once again the dummy surged to life. This time, instead of prancing about the set, the thing began spinning like a child’s top, then rose toward the studio ceiling and hovered amidst the floodlights.

  “Jesus, Kurt, how did you do that?” rasped Connie, flabbergasted.

  “I didn’t do it,” I retorted. “The Qualimosans did it.”

  Now the dummy descended—slowly, like a paratrooper—and reassumed its normal place in the attic.

  “Jeepers,” said Connie.

  “We shall arrive on Friday afternoon at four-fifteen, disguised in trench coats and slouch hats,” said the skinny lobster. “Tell the security officer to expect us.”

  “That’s cutting it awfully close,” I noted.

  “Our ship cannot travel faster than the laws of physics allow,” said the fat lobster. “After the awards ceremony, we shall visit some of those Manhattan dining establishments about which Lieutenant Lance Rawlings is always reminiscing.”

  “Do you like seafood?” asked Connie. “I know this great shellfish place on Lexington near Eightieth.”

  “Connie, please,” I said.

  “Praised be the gods of logic!” cried the skinny lobster.

  “All hail the avatars of doubt!” exclaimed the fat lobster.

  Abruptly the Motorola expired, the image contracting to a gleaming pinprick.

  “Might we have dinner tonight?” I inquired as the bright speck vanished. “I need to talk to somebody about all this.”

  “I’ll bet you do.”

  “The Russian Tea Room? Eight o’clock?”

  Connie frowned and said, “Tonight I’m having drinks and bar food with Sidney at the White Horse Tavern.”

  Sidney Blanchard. Criminy. My stomach attempted to digest a stick of rancid butter.

  “Dylan Thomas will be there,” she added.

  “To be honest, I’m often disappointed with Sidney’s Catharsis scripts.”

  “I’ll suggest he throw in a rocketship next time, or maybe a snake as long as the Holland Tunnel. Here’s an idea, Kurt. Come to the Saint Francis House tomorrow night, 90 Ludlow Street, six o’clock. Take the F Train to Delancey. We’ll feed the vagrants and talk about your Martians.”

  “I appreciate that. Hey, Connie, guess what? I’ve been working on a Bread Alone teleplay. Not my strong suit, but I thought I’d give it a shot.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “The plot isn’t easily summarized,” I replied, largely because I wasn’t really working on a Bread Alone teleplay and therefore had no idea what it was about.

  “Toodaloo, O Kurt Jastrow!” declared Connie as, with a bright laugh and a trenchant wink, she handed me her script and strode away.

  The next morning I phoned Floyd at his office and told him I wasn’t kidding about Friday’s installment of Uncle Wonder’s Attic. He should indeed be prepared to cover a freewheeling awards ceremony featuring two extraterrestrial crustaceans.

  “Was this Walter’s idea?” asked Floyd. “He’ll try anything to goose the ratings.”

  “Walter knows nothing about it. Connie thinks it’s a fraternity stunt. No harm in playing along, I figure.”

  “Your girlfriend’s got a good head on her shoulders,” said Floyd. “Jerry’s still sick, so I’m putting her back in the announcer’s booth.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  I spent the afternoon rewriting “The Phantom Asteroid” while trying to think of a viable premise for a Judeo-Christian teleplay. Nothing sprang to mind. Apparently my science-fiction sensibility was inimical to the ethos of religious drama. The immediate future would find me doing my part for the Kellogg’s account and the Ovaltine account, but Connie would have to service the God account on her own.

  As it happened, my self-diagnosis proved wrong. Riding the F Train toward Delancey Street Station, shielded from November’s chill by Uncle Wonder’s cardigan, I was visited by an idea for a potentially worthy Bread Alone installment, keyed to Jesus’s famous observation—Matthew 6:27—that no man had ever lengthened his life by worrying. “Pazuzu Jones, Demon of Regret” would tell of Dr. Felix Olinger, a psychiatrist who makes a diabolical pact. The demon in question agrees to uncouple Felix’s psyche from his personal regrets, so that they can no longer cause him mental distress. For his part, Felix must capture each such amputated sorrow, now incarnated as a hideous imp, and cast it down a mine shaft. The bargain soon spins out of control, for our hero keeps encountering missed chances he’d forgotten about. In the end Felix realizes he should have settled for brooding ineffectually on his regrets, just like every other pathetic mortal.

  The Saint Francis of Assisi House was an unassuming three-story building near the corner of Broome and Ludlow, the adjacent lot devoted to the stockpiling of wrecked automobiles and the cultivation of giveaway vegetables. Hand-lettered signs indicated zones for CABBAGES, BEANS, TOMATOES, and SQUASH, though the produce had long since been harvested. Strikingly attired in a black beret and white wool scarf, Connie appeared on the sidewalk, then ushered me inside. I followed her across a parquet-floored foyer, through a sparsely furnished meeting room, and into the vicinity of a roaring stove. Hell’s Kitchen might lie on the far West Side, but Heaven’s Kitchen occupied these very premises. I pulled off my coat and sweater, Connie removed her hat and wrap, and we began taking turns stirring an enormous copper kettle abrim with New England clam chowder.

  As a somber line of Bowery bums shuffled past, puffing on cigarettes and pushing empty trays along aluminum rails, Connie and two fellow Assisians provided each tramp (mostly men, though I counted seven women) with a bowl of chowder and a hunk of bread. Some of our clients appeared
intoxicated, none looked especially healthy, and all were famished. Although I felt like an extra in some creepy Bing Crosby movie about soup-kitchen saints, I believed I understood why Connie chose to spend her spare time this way. “Pazuzu Jones, Demon of Regret” suddenly seemed an embarrassment to me, as spiritually inert as Texaco Star Theater.

  “Donna Dain invites us to see Christ in every person,” she said, “even a scabby wretch whose pants are stained with urine. My analyst thinks I have a savior complex. I tell him there are worse role models than Jesus.”

  Mirabile dictu, as in a minor-league reenactment of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, our store of victuals was sufficient to feed everyone who showed up that night. After supplying the last tramp with his chowder and bread, we four missionaries—I now considered myself an honorary Assisian—commandeered the remaining portions and adjourned to the basement, a warm but gloomy grotto suffused with cigarette smoke and crammed with vagrants consuming their dinners at dilapidated picnic tables. Slurping sounds filled the air. The far corner evidently functioned as the editorial offices for the Catholic Anarchist—conference table, Silex coffee-maker, bank of typewriters, mimeograph machine, back issues papering the walls—and it was here that Connie and I alighted to eat in privacy.

  “So how’d it go at the White Horse?” I asked her.

  “Horribly,” she replied, thereby producing a rush of pleasure in my Schadenfreude gland.

  “Things not working out between you and Sidney?”

  “I’m talking about Dylan Thomas. The man is killing himself. After six straight whiskies, he went to his hotel to lie down. He wanted me to go with him.”

  “As his nursemaid?”

  “His tavern wench.”

  “Naturally you refused.”

  “Sidney did that for me,” said Connie. “An hour later, Mr. Thomas was back with us. He drank another six, kissed me on the lips, and collapsed. They took him to Saint Vincent’s. I expect to read his obituary in tomorrow’s Times.”

  “ ‘Though they go mad, they shall be sane,’” I recited, sipping lukewarm coffee. “‘Though they sink through the sea, they shall rise again. Though lovers be lost, love shall not.’”