by Edward Riche
“Leo will —”
“I’ve anticipated his reaction. I have a plan.”
“Yes?”
“When he sees the alternative he won’t complain about having to do a bit of lite in his first half-hour.”
“Are you going to bully him? Blackmail?”
“I think he’ll respond to both.”
“You’re really taking to this senior management role.”
A waiter was standing next to the table. He handed them menus and told them the specials. As Elliot had anticipated, there was gustatory Canadiana on the menu, even something with bannock, but on the whole it looked good. He ordered sweetbreads, she the bison. She wished to skip the appetizer. Elliot insisted she share some of his foie gras. The wine list was perfunctory and Elliot wondered if he might speak with the sommelier about alternatives.
The sommelier, eager as a puppy, was soon at Elliot’s side.
“What do you have in the way of Californian wine?”
“Are you thinking Napa, Sonoma, a Cab?”
“Do you know Locura Canyon?
“I’m afraid not.”
“From around Paso Robles.”
Elliot must have said the right thing, for the sommelier’s excitement leapt.
“You know what we just received today? The Haldeman Estates Toujours Prêt. It scored ninety-seven points in Wine Advocate.”
“Oh.” Elliot’s voice dropped an octave.
“Announced yesterday.”
“I guess you’ve got some leading Canadian wines?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Just the best Canadian red you’ve got, then.”
“Very well,” the sommelier said, before shuffling off with evident disappointment.
That Haldeman’s beastly cough syrup had received the high score grated on him. It was predictable, he supposed, given the publication’s taste in things.
If Hazel had noticed the souring of his mood, she didn’t let on. “Okay,” she said, “if Monday is going to be all comedy, I want to advocate for another show.”
Elliot already had another one picked out, but he said, “Go on.”
“Les Les.” Hazel pronounced it, as was the intention, “Lay Lez.”
“You’re joking.”
“No.”
“Point one: a title that requires a tutorial for the audience . . .”
“It’s the funniest script I’ve read. No exaggeration, in all my years at CBC this is the funniest. And the two women that play the leads, I’ve seen them on stage —”
“Like, the theatre?”
“Yes, and they are hilarious.”
“It’s about a lesbian couple.”
“So?”
“In their forties. Catty. Cynical.”
“Skeptical. A lot of the humour comes out of that.”
“You’ve seen The L Word. Those girls live on cable, in West Hollywood.” Elliot knew his aversion to the Les Les script was partly to do with some similarities he noted between its principal characters and Lucy and Ascenscion. If Lucy merely suspected he’d used even a moment of her life as fodder for a sitcom on Canadian television, she would murder him.
“Granted, the characters on Les Les are not happy, well-adjusted people,” said Hazel. “They are marginalized. Sometimes they’re angry.”
“One character is a Québécoise, the other is from Newfoundland.”
“Yes?”
“Those people have nothing, nothing whatsoever, to do with Canada.”
“They’re part of Canada.”
“Politically, for now,” said Elliot. “Nobody in the populated areas of English Canada really cares about what’s going on with Newfoundland or Quebec or women. We need people of colour. Have you walked around this town? How about fiscally conservative Sri Lankan or Korean dykes? That’s much more the Canada of today.” How loud had he said this? Elliot wondered.
“I agree we’ve been too white, but you can’t order up a ‘show of colour.’ One will evolve organically.”
“Not at the CBC it won’t.”
“I want you to look at Les Les again, please.”
“These two girls get drunk and make out in the pilot episode.”
“Was that not a funny scene?”
“I guess. Yeah, it was. But. I know that at another time in my life I would have said, ‘Let’s challenge the audience,’ but maybe they don’t want to be challenged.” A thought came to Elliot. “Do you think that the taste of an entire society can change at once?”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s seemed to me that one day, people are, I don’t know, eating butter- or cream-based sauces, and then another day, all at once, people don’t like them.”
“I’d not noticed.”
“It’s the same with shows, you know. A sitcom that everybody found funny one day becomes ridiculous the next. I mean maybe the culture gets saturated with police procedurals or Cabernet Sauvignon or hip hop and then turns from it, but what’s important is that the culture behaves as a single organism.”
“And you’re suggesting that . . . ?”
“That maybe the comedy of Les Les is of a different time. One where people were perhaps more . . .”
“More sophisticated?”
The sommelier returned. He held a bottle of wine out for Elliot’s scrutiny.
Elliot gave a perfunctory nod, still pissed at the man’s fawning mention of the Wine Advocate review. If Elliot’s wine had achieved same, he would have worried that he had completely compromised his principles. And yet it would be nice to occasionally get some approbation, a meaningless score or an award of some sort for a screenplay or the wine, even if the people making the call didn’t have a clue. Wouldn’t it?
The sommelier uncorked the bottle and poured a sample. It was closed, not showing as well as it would with some air, but promised fresh thyme rubbed between your fingers and the rare figgy thing of an unlit Gauloise. Better than expected.
“That will be wonderful,” said Elliot. The waiter went to fill Hazel’s glass but she put her hand out to cover it and decline. “Hazel,” protested Elliot, “this seems decent stuff.”
“I don’t really drink,” she said. She glanced out the window. “Half a glass, then.” The waiter poured and left the bottle. Hazel tasted her wine.
“It’s nice,” she said. “But perhaps wasted on me. My father drank wine, got the bug while he was a student at Oxford. He was an interesting man, fabulous storyteller — with many to tell. Quite funny. Only when he talked about wine did he manage to become a bore.”
“Is that a warning?”
Hazel took a great draught of the wine and swished it about her mouth with the same vigour she might Listerine. “What about Wednesday?” she asked.
Over three courses Elliot explained the rest of the schedule. Hazel voiced her disbelief with an animation, and volume, that attracted the attention of the neighbouring tables. It wasn’t that Hazel did not drink but, Elliot saw, that she could not. His hitherto decorous second was, under the influence, voluble and blousy.
“If we aren’t going to carry Reason, who the hell else will?” Hazel was pitched up on the table by her elbows, leaning over empty plates toward Elliot. Her right hand, clutching a lipstick-rimmed wine goblet, swung loosely, yet she spilled not a drop.
Reason was twenty eponymous television hours dedicated to the discussion of its advance. This was without precedent on television. The documentary series’ writer and host was an eccentric academic, Dr. Jurgen Palme. The scholar was motivated to make a public case by what he saw as a return to irrationality in contemporary society. Palme’s producers provided not just a proposal but the entire run in first and second draft, as well as a fifteen-minute pilot. The show was engaging and — this should not have been a surprise — well considered. It was even entertaining, was never stuffy but always, always demanded the full attention of the audience.
Elliot weighed how the show would play at the weather office. Two people there w
ere religious: Kulvinder was a devout Sikh and Heather, from HR, was a recent convert from non-practising Catholic to enthusiastic Pentecostal. They would be offended. Elliot could see a few of the other guys and gals maybe staying with it for a few minutes, but when it got challenging, and they were tired . . . only Felix, the clarinet-playing, cross-addicted information technology dude, would stick with it. And in Elliot’s reckoning, Felix’s tastes flagged trouble. Felix would love Les Les.
“It might have once been the CBC’s function to carry shows no one else would,” Elliot finally replied, “but I made some commitment regarding performance when I interviewed for this job.”
“Forget about those dorks. I mean, really, Elliot, think of the sort of mind that can measure things only in quantitative terms. Jesus, bring in Robert McNamara and instead of bodies he can count viewers.” Hazel put a finger to the corner of her mouth to wipe away a drop of wine. She checked the spot with her tongue. Elliot watched this with what must have been too close attention, for she looked back at him and laughed. “If people are stupid enough,” she continued, “to judge whether the CBC is serving the nation only by how many people watch a show . . . you can’t listen to that. Everything isn’t quantitative, doughnuts aren’t better than lobster because more of them get eaten, you don’t buy your dresses because they’re cheaper by the dozen, bigger is not necessarily better . . .”
“No, but bigger is bigger.” Elliot did not like where the conversation was going, or, more accurately, where Hazel was holding it.
“You know, when I was younger, when I was doing my communications theory in university, I completely bought into that po-mo notion that there was no essential difference between high and low culture. WRONG!”
Heads turned toward Hazel’s raised voice.
“. . . Because . . .” Hazel hoisted an empty bottle. “Elliot, do we need more wine?”
“Maybe a glass of a sticky with a shared dessert.”
Hazel made a face like a baby rejecting a spoon, muscling her lips into a moue and crushing her eyes shut.
“Not partial to sweet wines, Hazel?”
“Make mine a Cognac . . . and no dessert for me. What about late-night? The audience is gonna be tiny no matter what we put on. We can’t pimp enough A-list celebs to compete with the American slate, so why not chase an entirely different part of the market, one that’s younger and smarter?”
“They are mutually exclusive.” Elliot needed to piss. He excused himself, hoping that Hazel’s drunkenness would help her forget what they were talking about in his absence. He looked back from the door to the washroom to see her waving down a waiter. Too much was made of wine, Elliot thought. In the end it was just booze.
He planted himself in front of a urinal. Finishing the schedule gave him a sense of accomplishment, one without the protracted anxiety that came with finishing a script. Scripts went on to be judged, and, despite all the hands in their realization, the author always assumed the ultimate responsibility for failure. Never mind that directors or actors would be credited for success — a bomb was the scribbler’s fault. These shows and pilots, on the other hand, would be commissioned with conditions, and Elliot would simply sit back and wait to see whether they met expectations. Finally he was the ultra-audience, sprawled on some elevated couch, like a Roman emperor, in judgement. As an executive, it would be he who assigned blame, even if the mistakes were his own.
Surely, though, there must be an upside to being in the creative end of the business. He was trying to think what it was when a man stepped up to the urinal immediately next to his and noisily unzipped. This was strange; there were four other pissoires available. Elliot turned to get a quick look at the man and found that he was staring straight back.
“Beautiful evening,” the man said. His white hair was combed back over a wide head. The ghostly mane was long for a man of his years, running to the collar of a bespoke jacket.
“’Tis,” said Elliot.
“So we meet. Fortuitous, us being in here alone.”
“How so?” Elliot was putting himself back together in what he hoped didn’t appear to be a panic.
“We don’t have much time.” The man looked over his shoulder and then back down toward his dick. “So I will be direct. You’ve had a hand in the privates.”
“Before you continue . . .” Elliot saw that in his haste he had captured a corner of shirttail in his fly. It was stuck.
“I want you to —”
“Look, no offence, I’m flattered, but —”
“Nobody has to know. The offer is there. I trust you understand me.”
“I —” Elliot pulled the fabric free, tearing it, and closed his trousers. He rinsed his hands, shaking them dry as he dashed for the door.
“I’m not asking that you do anything you don’t want to, certainly nothing unlawful, merely that when you’re done there . . .”
“Thanks . . . but no thanks.”
Hazel was slurping from a snifter when Elliot returned to the table.
“I saw that!” she said.
“There was a guy in the john.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I didn’t notice he was here.”
“Who?”
“Janeck Klima. He must have seen us.”
“This guy . . . I think he was trying to proposition me.”
“The man who runs CTV?” Hazel now whooped. It was a hillbilly holler; Elliot felt the wait staff bristle. “Klima what? Offered to blow you? Not likely. You must have got the signals crossed. That is too rich.”
“He runs CTV?”
“The corporate parent, these days. I saw him scurrying to the washroom after you went in. He must have been waiting for a chance. What did he say to you?”
“I . . . geez . . . I’m not sure. I assumed he was, you know, toilet trading.”
Hazel threw her head back and let laughter shake her. Her neck made Elliot think of a tall birds, herons or cranes, and he wanted to kiss her. She buckled a bit, so funny did she find the thought, bringing her knee in across her body as if to stop from peeing.
“Perhaps we should get the check,” Elliot said.
“Yeah,” said Hazel. “Let’s go to your place.”
En route to Elliot’s apartment Hazel made the cab swing by a 7-Eleven so that she could buy, she said, “a deck of fags.” She tried lighting one up in the taxi but was stopped by the driver.
Once in the door, before Elliot had even removed the key, Hazel made straight for the kitchen and lit a cigarette off the toaster. She wasn’t much practised in smoking, holding it away after a puff and yet somehow still managing to get smoke in her eyes. There was three-quarters of a bottle of La Gramière, a wine from the southern Rhone that Elliot admired, on the kitchen counter. She helped herself, pouring a hefty measure in a tumbler, and called for Elliot.
The hand holding the cigarette was around his neck and she pulled him in with all her weight. Her kisses were ravenous; she shoved her tongue against his and he could feel her teeth. As abruptly as she was on him, she pushed him away and stepped to lean against the counter. She took another graceless draught of the cigarette and tossed it in the sink.
“I don’t smoke,” she said. “But sometimes I feel like I want to.”
She grabbed him by the belt, using it as a lead to yank him closer even as she rushed to undo it.
Making their way to his bed, shirts were shed. It seemed imperative to Hazel that they be stripped naked, and once they were on the sheets she slid her whole length over him, getting an urgent fix of skin to skin, as much as she could at once. With her crooked arthritic claws she hauled on his cock as if it were a rope.
She was full to bursting with desire. This Elliot knew because Hazel said so. She was the most garrulous lover he would ever know, only ceasing her shameless talk if her mouth was full of him.
“I soooo need a good fucking, Elliot,” she said. She shoved his shoulders flat to mattress and climbed atop.
Not only did she demand
her needs, she narrated the act. “Now you’ve got your fucking cock right fucking inside me, Elliot, now you’re driving it. Hah, now you’ve got your hands on me, don’t you!”
This let Elliot take his pleasure twice, having it and hearing it again. They were commands and congratulations at once.
Her voice grew hoarser and more tremulous as she drew closer and closer to coming. The language fell apart — first into strands of words: “this like this, to me, yes, here in me here,” and then to guttural dissociated animal sounds: “tumtum,” she said, and “wasssawass,” then grrrrs and grunts and purrs leading up to a swallowed scream that took all her air and dropped her, limp, onto his chest. The cry finished him; he could wait no longer, and the rope went over the side, racing over the gunnels as the anchor sank back to the bottom of the sea.
She rested for no more than three minutes and then began to vibrate like a motor. She pawed at him for more, but he wasn’t capable. She crawled off and walked to the kitchen, giving him a show of exquisite ass on the way. He could hear the cupboards opening. She came back with a teacup full to the brim with Cognac; with her mouth half full of it, she kissed him. She pulled his hair and said, “You fuck me again.” That was enough to bring Elliot around.
And once more after that, after which she seemed to go into a faint and then a half-sleep of content and satiation. She murmured and whispered, nothings, incomplete thoughts, licks of the unconscious. “No wife? No family?”
“Divorced,” he said, and then, perhaps because he knew Hazel was falling away into brandy-drenched dreamlessness and would never recall, “And one kid. A son. Named Mark. You’ve probably seen him on television. He played the adorable Little Ricky on Family Planning. Unfortunately, with puberty . . . It wasn’t just him, the show was winding up, there were enough episodes for a syndication package. That kind of thing, for a kid of that age . . . and after that his life got sort of out of control. He blamed television, the whole industry, and me for landing him the gig. He’s in Soledad Prison now on drug and robbery charges.”
