Mumbo Gumbo

by Jerrilyn Farmer

  I nodded.

  “And I needed the benefits. The health insurance. I mean, I’m not married. I had to look after my career.”

  “So why are you still working as a PA?”

  “Well, that’s a whole ‘nother story,” Susan said, her eyes twinkling. “But let me tell you what happened that got me into the guild.”

  “And that leads to the sheep?”

  “Yes, it does. See, I was working for Artie at the time. This was about five years ago. He had that Great Escapes show, do you remember it? It was on for two seasons.”

  “I think so. Where celebrities went on safari?”

  “They went everywhere exotic, yes. And Tim was the head writer and Greta was the AD and I was the first PA.”

  “All the same people who are working on Food Freak.”

  “Right. Usually, when a team of people works well together, the executive producer keeps hiring us all from show to show. It’s easier for everyone. We know we work well together. Anyway, Artie can be pretty difficult. You know that, right?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, laughing a dry little chuckle. “He can be very difficult. You haven’t seen that side of him yet, but believe me he can. A lot of these guys are like big babies. They want everything their way, and when they get it, they’re still not happy.

  “Well, I’d worked for Artie before. He’d blown up at me before. Every other time I just took it. I just stood there and let him scream at me. And the next day, he’d always apologize. He usually gave me some big generous gift and begged me to forgive him. He can be extremely sweet, as I’m sure you know. And it’s like he has these temper tantrums and then when they’re over, they’re over.”

  “I am just amazed, here,” I said.

  “So anyway, we were in Mexico, I remember. We were getting set to shoot an episode where the woman who starred in Touched by an Angel and her family were going to visit the Aztec pyramids outside Mexico City, in Teotihuacán. So we’re out on a scouting day with the director and the art director and the lighting director, so Artie can pick the exterior locations, and he’s furious. These aren’t majestic pyramids, according to Artie. They’re dusty little broken-down ruins, he says. It was hot, and we didn’t have the time to select another location. We were having budget problems, but then Artie is always worried about money no matter how rich he is. And he just lost it.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Typical Artie Herman tantrum. He couldn’t yell at his good buddy the director. And he couldn’t yell at his art director or his lead camera guy or his lighting director, so he turned to me and screamed that it was all my fault.”

  “Oh, Susan.”

  “This had all happened before, Madeline. I’d heard him blow up many times before. Only this time, it felt different. This time I was hot, too, and we were in a foreign country, and I had no way to just go to my room. I had to ride back in a van with all these guys who had just stood there listening to Artie fire me.”

  “He fired you?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, smiling. “He fired me. I think he’s fired me at least five times in the past eight years.”

  “Oh my God, Susan.” She seemed so sanguine and unruffled, but this story was grotesque.

  “Anyway, when I finally, finally got back to the hotel that night, I kind of lost it. I went to the bar to buy the biggest bottle of tequila I could to take to my room. I didn’t know what to do. Artie was furious with me. I didn’t have my return ticket. I didn’t even have my passport—the hotel had it, I think. I didn’t have any money. And I was crushed. I had counted on my salary at Great Escapes to make payments on my car, and to cover the months when I wasn’t able to find work. Plus, I wasn’t in the union at that time, so I was paying for all my own health insurance. It was just a terribly scary time for me to be out of a job. So I went to the hotel bar and ordered a bottle of tequila.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then I saw Tim. He was at the bar. He hadn’t been out on the location scout and he hadn’t heard about me getting fired. I told him. We had known each other pretty well before, but this night I was hysterical. He took me back to his room and mixed me tequila and fresh-squeezed orange juice and just listened to me. I usually have such good control over myself, but that night I really lost it.”

  I shook my head, trying to imagine a younger Susan, scared about losing her job, working in such insane conditions. She was such a kind soul, it just made no sense.

  “Then what? Did Tim help you get your plane ticket?”

  “Not exactly. He did something better. He stayed up with me all night and we talked about what we really wanted to be doing with our lives. I mean, his point was so true. Did we really want to make some game show or some vacation travel show the most meaningful thing we would ever do? Tim told me he had a secret dream. He said the only reason he continued to work for Artie was to save enough money to buy his dream.”

  “What was his dream?”

  “He wants to write historical fiction.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded, smiling. “He is a really talented guy. He was a history major at Columbia.”

  “Tim Stock?”

  “Yes. He just needs the money to get to his dream. He wants to buy a house free and clear so he won’t need to make any more payments. He wants to travel to London to do historical research. He needs to save enough money to take five years off and write the novel he’s always wanted to write.”

  “Wow. That could take a lot of money, five years and a house.”

  “That’s Tim’s dream. He’s been making pretty good money writing television, but it isn’t the big money that sitcom writers get. Nothing like that. And Tim has to have a new car and he likes to date expensive women. But still, he’s been saving little by little. And he told me that night back in Mexico to do what he was doing. Think of my PA work as just a job. Turn it into a way to earn enough to bankroll my dream.”

  “What’s your dream?” I looked at Susan, wondering why I never noticed before how serene she was, how positive and peaceful. Maybe she only felt that way outside the studio.

  “That was the difficult part, Maddie,” she said, laughing at herself again. “I had no dream. All I wanted was to get into the Directors’ Guild to get my medical insurance covered. Pretty pathetic dream, right? So Tim kept pouring us tequila and orange juice and I tried to concentrate on what my dream should be. And I was still so tense, from my day out on location, I couldn’t stop crying about not having a dream. Finally, Tim told me to close my eyes and imagine the most peaceful place I could think of. And from out of nowhere popped this image of a pasture and a flock of sheep.”

  “You’re kidding! That is so weird.”

  “It’s bizarre, isn’t it? I mean, I’m a New Yorker. I knew absolutely nothing about sheep. I’d never been on a farm. And you know what, right then and there I told Tim I was going to buy myself a ranch someday and raise sheep.”

  “In your peaceful, tequila haze, you were Little Bo Peep,” I said, in awe. “Amazing.”

  “I know! But whatever that vision was, whether it was the booze or my nervous breakdown or what, it made me feel incredibly happy to think about buying those sheep.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “The next morning I couldn’t even wake up. But I didn’t care. I was fired anyway. I wasn’t in my hotel room all night, so Artie couldn’t find me and do his typical apology with a huge gift. So you’ll never believe what happened. Artie started to panic. He had Greta searching everywhere.”

  “Because Artie really felt ashamed after he came down from his raging?”

  “Yes. He felt bad. He always felt bad. He was the same guy he always was. But I had changed, Madeline. I was no longer sniffling in my room, cowering, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was sleeping off a night of tequila sunrises in Tim Stock’s bed.”

  “So,” I asked delicately, “were you and Tim…?”

  “No,”
Susan said, laughing again. “No, he let me sleep in the bed. He’s such a great friend. And while I’m sure you have heard that Tim has slept with a lot of women, we never had that in our relationship.”

  “So what did Artie do when he couldn’t find you?”

  “He went ballistic. I mean, he was in Mexico. Where was he going to find another English-speaking PA. What had he been thinking when he fired me, anyway?” She shook her head. “So Tim was out in the lobby, listening to Artie going nuts and watching Greta come back with her field reports that I wasn’t at the pool and I wasn’t in the restaurant and I hadn’t been in my bed the previous night, that sort of thing. And finally, Tim tells Artie, ‘I know where Susan is.’ And Artie is ready to kill him and Tim says, ‘But I won’t tell you until you agree to make Susan the AD, pay for her to join the Directors’ Guild, and buy her six sheep.’”

  “This is too much. And Artie said ‘Okay’?”

  “Yep. And that was the start of my flock. I went back to work and when we got home, I found out that Pierce lets some of its students keep their livestock here at the college. I had Artie lined up to pay for them, so I decided to get started right away. I took a course here in sheep.”

  “They have courses in sheep?”

  “They do. And I took the course and was allowed to bring my sheep here. That was five years ago. To this day, I’ve been saving my money for my dream. And I’m almost there.”

  “I’m amazed.” I looked at her and smiled. “I’ve known you at the office, but I had no idea about all of this.”

  “It’s funny about people, isn’t it? We all have so many layers. We’re not what you expect.”

  “Especially you,” I said, admiring the way Susan had found her own freedom. “And yet, you still work for Artie Herman?”

  “Yes, I do. And you know what, he’s never blown up at me after that time. I don’t know if it was how scared he got the next morning when he probably thought he had driven me to suicide, or if it is how much damn money he has to pay every year to keep my flock in feed and to pay for shearing.”

  “Artie still pays?”

  “Oh, yes. Tim hammered out the details and Artie was happy to sign. He can really be a generous guy at times. Temperamental. But most creative guys are. Only a few days ago, Artie walked into my office and told me his stock portfolio was in trouble. He said he wouldn’t be able to pay for the sheep this quarter. I don’t know if I believe him, so I wrote that note to Tim. Maybe Artie has just kept paying all these years because he was afraid to cross Tim. Now that Tim is gone, maybe Artie figured he could renege on our deal. And if I don’t pay for my sheep, the school can’t let me keep them here. I’ve worked out the numbers, but I would have to let two of them go.”

  “How can you be so easygoing and forgiving?” I asked. My temper runs way too hot to be able to forgive and forget.

  “It’s the time I spend with my animals,” she said, smiling. “I love my dogs and I love coming out here. Three mornings a week, I come out and tend to my little flock. Then I drive back into town and work on the show.”

  “So I guess Food Freak will never feature a recipe for mutton.”

  “Maddie!” Susan’s eyes twinkled, or at least her wire-rimmed glasses did. “Let’s not go there,” she said. “You’re ba-a-a-a-d.”

  I couldn’t groan. I deserved that.

  Chapter 17

  Normally, most of Freak’s office staff arrive at work sometime between nine-thirty and ten. Some gogetters are in earlier. They, and the one or two individuals who draw excellent paychecks but have come to discover that their positions serve no earthly purpose on the show, tend to arrive just a hair before nine, the better to impress Artie, who usually pulls his Cadillac onto the lot a few minutes later. At seven-thirty, however, even the most insecure production executive is at home in bed. At this hour of the morning, our side of the studio was a ghost town.

  I used my key to unlock the glass door to Food Freak’s reception area, and then, once inside, to lock myself in again. No reason to take chances. I turned on the lights and Chef Howie was everywhere, smiling down at me. Chef Howie frying bacon. Chef Howie flipping flapjacks. Chef Howie frappéing a banana smoothie. Gigantic framed posters of Chef Howie filled three walls. As it had been left by the hardworking contestant department the previous night, everything in this room was in readiness for that department’s great daily quest, to sift through hundreds of amateur chefs and find for the show just the right talented home cooks with just the right telegenic personalities to make it on the air.

  I walked past a credenza where an instant camera and ten boxes of film were staged near a section of plain white wall. Pictures would be taken of every hopeful Freak contestant, to be attached to his or her application. Across from a large reception desk were rows of black plastic seats with wide arms on one side like college desks. Aspiring contestants were seated here, in groups of thirty, to fill out forms.

  I walked across the empty room to one of the stairwells located on either side of the open reception area. Again, I flipped a light switch and this time illuminated the staircase. I had never been the earliest one in the office before, and with each of these steps, I began to wake up the building.

  Up on the second-floor landing, I tried a few switches until I found the one that lit up the hallway, and as the fluorescent fixtures buzzed into brilliance, I listened for a moment to the slight tickings and faint hummings that make up the silence in a silent and empty office suite. I walked down the hall, watchful, careful, and thought about Honnett’s directive of not being alone in the building. I hadn’t meant to. I had agreed to never again stay at work after-hours, not alone. But for some reason, maybe from lack of sleep or lack of some basic talent for paranoia, I had forgotten to consider how deserted this floor was likely to be at this early morning hour. Rooting around in my bag, my fingers identified my cell phone by touch, and I grabbed it. I punched the numbers—911—and held the instrument in my left hand like a weapon, my thumb over the Call button, ready to shoot off an instant distress signal should an emergency arise. I looked quickly behind me. No one. Of course not. Damn Honnett.

  I pulled the tricky maneuver of unlocking Tim Stock’s office door while keeping the phone in play, alternately glancing over my shoulder into a perfectly deserted hallway and feeling like a perfect fool. I hated this. Always nervous, always second-guessing. But just as I managed to jiggle the old lock and open the office door, I was instantly alert. The overhead lights had been left on. And before I could recall whether I might have left them burning all night, I discovered I had a visitor.

  Fate Finkelberg was sitting on a beautiful new rose-colored sofa. Chef Howie’s wife, lying in wait, upon my reward piece of furniture, the ugly brown Herculon monster that clearly figured into my ugly bump-on-the-head memory of the previous night.

  “Fate.” What else could one say?

  “Oh, Madeline, dear.” She turned to me and smiled. When she used that expression, her thin lips almost disappeared, but the tight line they made did curve upward. “I am so relieved you are an early bird. I had expected to be here for hours before we could chat. I let myself in Tim’s office. I thought I’d get a bit of work done.”

  “You have a key?”

  “I have all the keys. I’m executive producer.”

  “I thought Artie…”

  “Well, yes, Arthur has that title, too.” She smiled again. Really, I had been treated to 200 percent more affability in the past minute than in all our previous encounters. “We’re partners, really, Arthur and I. He provides the studio and production staff and so on and so on, and then sells the show and deals with the network assholes, and I provide the star.”

  “I see.”

  “You should watch the show’s credits, sometime. You’d find them fascinating. I think I may even have them…” Fate deftly flipped open a mammoth-sized three-ring binder that contained about thirty colorful dividers. She quickly came to a page and turned the binder to face me. The p
aper showed the order of the crawl, that moving list of names that rolls over the final seconds of Food Freak each week.

  I read the names and noticed the order of importance:

  FOOD FREAK

  Starring

  Chef Howie Finkelberg

  Executive Producers

  Fate Finkelberg

  Arthur Herman

  Produced by

  Greta Greene

  Directed by

  Peter Steele

  Head Writer

  Timothy Stock

  Written by

  Madeline Bean

  Neal Herman

  Jennifer Klein

  Quentin Shore

  “Hey, they put my name in.” I looked up at Fate. “So soon.”

  “Susan is very efficient,” Fate said, pulling the large binder back to face herself. “I’ll give her that.” Something in Fate’s voice got colder.

  “But, wait, who is Neal Herman? Artie’s son?”

  “Um-hmm.”

  “I’m so out of it. I’ve never even heard that Artie has a son or that he’s a writer here, too.”

  “That’s not all that surprising.”

  “Oh?” With Fate Finkelberg, one had to be prepared to measure the depth of sarcasm, drip by drip. “You mean,” I suggested, “Neal Herman doesn’t make his presence felt?”

  “Well put,” Fate said, giving me another tightlipped grin. “He’s on the payroll but I don’t think he’s ever made it to the studio. The good news is, he’ll never get in your way, right?”

  Fate had such a dog-eat-dog way of looking at the world. I perched on the desk chair and studied her, watching her recross her thin legs in her gold Capri pants, dangling one foot. The foot, like its partner, had been perfectly pedicured in blood-red lacquer and was shod in a gold wedgie sandal, tied up her calf like the ones worn by Roman gladiators. The woman took fashion way past the limit, to be kind about it.