by Al Roker
“Noted,” I said. “I’ll be sure to include that information in my next dispatch.”
That bit of sarcasm seemed to please him. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and removed a folded piece of paper. “Here’s the intro we put together for you. That and the acknowledgments at the end of the show are pretty much all of your planned material. It should be a snap. Both of them are voice-over, so you won’t even have to memorize it.”
The hot dogs arrived while I was reading the intro. They were very big and very tasty. Conversation more or less ceased until they were resting uncomfortably in our digestive tracts. Then I took another, harder look at the material and said, “ ‘The Celtic Lord of the Laughs.’ ‘Lord of the Laughs.’ ‘Lord of the Laughs.’ I suppose I can say that without tying my tongue in knots.”
“It’s pretty damn good, right? You get the reference?”
I stared at him. “I assume you’re comparing Des to Michael Flatley.”
“Who? No,” Gibby said. “We’re referencing the Lord of the Dance.”
“That would be Michael Flatley,” I said. “He created the show, choreographed it, danced it.”
“Oh, yeah?” Gibby said. “I didn’t realize the term applied to anybody specific. That’s good to know. What about the rest of the intro?”
“I don’t know what this means, the part about Des trying not to be starstruck,” I said.
“We wrote this killer opening bit to bring Des on,” Gibby said. “The stage is gonna look like the night sky. You know, dark. Some stars blinking in the far distance. Closer up, there’ll be foam stars about a yard wide hanging from the catwalk. Covered with glitter. Des is gonna make his entrance lowered from the catwalk, straddling a crescent moon and singing one of the standard moon songs.”
I blinked. “How high up will he be on takeoff?” I asked.
“Twenty-five, thirty feet. I don’t know. However high up the catwalk is. Oh, Jesus. I shouldn’t have said anything … It’s perfectly safe, Billy. It’s a great opening. Des loves it. He wants to do it. Please don’t fuck it up by scaring ’em on the East Coast.”
“When I make my evening report, you mean?”
He shrugged and looked sheepish.
“Gibby, I’m not a company spy. I’m a cohost on the network’s morning show. The reason I was sent here to be Des’s first guest announcer is because Howie Mandell wasn’t available. Howie isn’t a WBC spy, either. Maybe an NBC spy. Anyway, if Des wants to play man in the moon, more power to him. Okay?”
“I guess,” Gibby said, frowning.
He continued frowning while he paid the bill, which I made no offer to pick up. And his forehead remained creased during the drive back to the theater on Fountain.
I got out of the Boxter, but before he drove away, I asked, “What’s bothering you, Gibby? I told you I’m not a company spy.”
“That’s what’s botherin’ me, bubbie. If you really are just … on-air talent, then you sure as hell aren’t gonna be doing me any favors. You probably got your own bid in on the gig if Des can’t hack it.”
“Gibby, I’ve never known anyone quite as clueless as you. About everything. I live in New York. I love the city. I have my own restaurant. I like working on Wake Up, America! I can’t imagine what the network could offer me that would make me give up all that to come out here and try to host a late-night show written by somebody like you.”
He gave me his idea of a wise-guy sneer. “Yeah, you say that now …” he said. He put the sports car in gear and roared off.
Watching him grow smaller and smaller, I wondered how far Gibby would go to get his own show. Would he, for example, write an entrance that put the star of the show on a flimsy piece of scenery thirty feet in the air in the hope that something just might go wrong?
I suddenly realized comedy is a lot like sausage: Everybody likes it, but nobody really wants to see how it’s made.
Chapter
SIXTEEN
The chirping of the guesthouse phone woke me the next morning at eight a.m.
It was the cosmetically restructured Amelia St. Laurent of Crockaby Realty. In a voice considerably more arch than I recalled from our first meeting, she informed me that she would be showing the villa to prospective buyers in one hour—at precisely nine—and would greatly appreciate it if everything were “in apple-pie order.”
Since a cleaning crew had removed all evidence of Des’s and Fitz’s brief occupancy, including any vestiges of the rat, and I’d done the dishes after the previous night’s dinner, I assured her that the place would be spick-and-span. Unless I decided to bake an apple pie. In which case, would that not enhance its apple-pie order?
Our conversation ended on that note of high frivolity. I hopped from the sack, took a quick shower and shave, mopped up the bathroom, and deposited the towel in a hamper. I dressed. Made the bed. Hid my pajamas and dirty clothes in a drawer.
Finally, I removed the cleaner’s wrapping from the tux I would be wearing on the show that night, to let the fabric breathe. I then stood back, surveyed my temporary abode, and judged it to be, like the villa, in, yes, apple-pie order.
Not wanting to be on the scene when Amelia made her pitch, I drove the Lexus down the coast highway to Patrick’s Roadhouse, the legendary green eatery facing the Pacific on the Santa Monica–Pacific Palisades border that was better known for its patrons than its menu.
True to form, while dining on an acceptable breakfast of corned-beef hash and two eggs over easy, I counted, among my fellow customers, three bikers, two males and a female, who were nodding into their omelets, a pair of surfer dudes in rubber suits who seemed to feel that every noun had to be modified by the word “bitchin’,” two guys in business gray suits who might have been accountants but more likely were junior agents, and Sean Penn, sitting alone with a book.
Hunger satisfied—did I mention the slice of Dutch apple pie?—I returned to the Lexus, which I’d street-parked on Entrada Drive, and was about to start it up when my phone serenaded me. Cassandra, calling from the Bistro.
“You’ve got a problem,” she said.
I checked my watch. Nine-twenty. The lunch hour in Manhattan. There was considerable noise in the background. Conversations. Cutlery clicking against plates. “Sounds like you’ve got a good house,” I said.
“We’re at near capacity,” she said. “The Bistro is not the problem. You should call your assistant.”
“Kiki? Why?”
“She’s totally pissed off at you. As I would be, if I were in her place.”
I was having a little trouble sorting out this information. I try to keep my restaurant and television worlds spinning on different axes, and it always surprises me to discover they’ve collided. “I didn’t know you and Kiki were friends.”
“Billy, we get together once a month. Late lunches or early dinners. Usually here. You’ve seen us.”
“I guess I have,” I said. Though, obviously, it hadn’t registered. “It just never occurred to me that you’d have much in common.”
“Only one big pain in the ass, really. You. Our boss. You’re pretty much what we talk about.”
This wasn’t the sort of thing I needed to hear long-distance. “I’m guessing these aren’t complimentary conversations.”
“They’re the usual. We try to top one another with examples of how you take us for granted. Or ignore us. Or say you’ll do something and forget. In general, how you behave like an asswipe.”
This is what being a bigamist must be like at the moment of truth, I thought, and congratulated myself for not being even a half-bigamist.
“But what Kiki told me at lunch today extends way beyond asswipe behavior,” Cassandra went on.
“Tell me what she said.”
“She thinks that when you told her you didn’t need her out there, you had an ulterior motive.”
“And what would that be?”
“To keep her from becoming Stewart Gentry’s new flame and, consequently, quitting her going-
nowhere job as your assistant.”
“So lemme get this straight,” I said, feeling a sudden heat that had nothing to do with the Southern California sun. “First, before getting that going-nowhere job, Kiki was the secretary to a crude, bust-out Broadway producer who wasn’t even paying her half the salary she’s getting now.”
“How much is she getting?”
“That’s beside the point,” I said. “Moving on to her fantasy about becoming Stew Gentry’s flame, that’s crazy talk. She had one date with the guy a year ago.”
“She called him.”
“Yeah?”
“He said he’d had some serious disagreement with you. He wouldn’t tell her any details, but she’s convinced it was about her. She said he seemed very cool toward her and did not invite her to come out there for a visit, even after she’d dropped some pretty obvious hints. She’s sure you’re to blame.”
I took a couple of deep breaths of ocean air, ionized with just a hint of brine. “What happened to the ad salesman she was seeing?”
“She says he’s too nice.”
“Too smart,” I mumbled to myself, I thought.
“What?”
“My disagreement with Stew had nothing to do with Kiki,” I said. “I have not uttered a word to him about her. If, by some magical quirk of fate, she were to become the next Mrs. Stewart Gentry, I would be overjoyed to dance at her wedding.”
“Don’t tell me. Tell her.”
“The show debuts tonight,” I said. “I’ll be with it through the week, then I’ll be flying back to reality on Saturday. I’ll deal with Kiki then.”
“If that’s how you want to play it,” Cassandra said, in her nettling passive-aggressive way.
“Why the hell should I have to defend myself for something I didn’t do?” I asked.
“Do what you think best.”
“Do you understand what a big deal tonight’s going to be?” I asked. “Millions of eyeballs on the show. And a live audience. I’m never comfortable in front of an audience, even when I know what I’m doing. I’ll be announcing the show. A voice deal. Not really my thing. And there’s this crazy lighting guy who’s got us performing in semi-darkness. I have enough to worry about. I don’t need to be worrying about my assistant’s imaginary love life.”
I was expecting her to make some reply, but there was silence from her end.
“No comment?”
“Break a leg,” she said tersely, and clicked off.
Chapter
SEVENTEEN
The rest of the day went downhill from there.
I tried to chill out at the guesthouse, but Amelia St. Laurent had prospective buyers playing through on the hour.
I went for a jog on the beach and twisted my ankle.
While I was soaking the ankle to keep the swelling down, Harry Paynter called to say that Sandy Selman, the movie producer who was planning to bring our literary epic to the big screen, was demanding some kind of supernatural element. “He didn’t come right out and say ‘vampire,’ but I know that’s what’s on his mind.”
“Vampire?” I repeated. “That’s crazy.”
“The first thing you learn out here, Billy, is that everything is crazy. So there is no crazy. It’s Sandy’s nickel. He wants vampires, that’s what we give him.”
“How do you do that in a realistic way, exactly?”
“My suggestion?” Harry said. “We make our international assassins a romantic vampire couple.”
“That solves the realism problem?”
“Sure. We’re not talking Bela Lugosi. Nobody believes that bullshit. But young vampires getting it on—people buy that without blinking an eye.”
“How exactly would they relate to our story? My story? Something I actually experienced?”
“This is just spitballing, but when our hero starts looking for something linking the victims, he discovers they’ve all bled out. Only here’s the kicker, there’s been no blood found.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And since our hero owns a restaurant, in the big climax scene, he can trick the vampires into thinking he’s fixing them a midnight snack of blood-rare porterhouse steaks. But when he lifts the lid on the server, it’s two wooden stakes. Which he drives into their respective hearts.”
“Shit, Billy, that’s gold, cinema gold. You’ve got a talent for this.”
This was said without sarcasm. Without a hint of irony. Too sunny for irony.
“Thanks, Harry. I’d love to continue spitballing with you, but I’ve got a show tonight and lots to do.”
“I understand, Billy. Hell, you’re the man. You’ve cracked this story, really opened it up. My juices are flowing. I’m on this. Stakes for steaks. I love it.”
I snapped the phone case shut and looked at my ankle. I decided it needed a little more soaking.
Chapter
EIGHTEEN
“Moonlight madness and mirth at midnight. Tonight at the midnight hour. O’Day at Night. Live from L.A.” That was pretty much the substance of the ads running in the East Coast media. Since the telecast would begin at nine p.m. Pacific Coast time, the “live” aspect would be missing locally, of course. The L.A. network affiliate, KWBC, reserved that family-hour slot for the ratings hits Hot Bodies (two wacky young coroner’s assistants cut comedy capers in the morgue) and Flaunt It! (male and female runway models compete for the attention of single multimillionaires). Therefore, the hour would air nationwide (prerecorded in L.A.) a half-hour after the usual talk-show time of eleven-thirty p.m.
Actually, the show wouldn’t be precisely live in the East, either. It would be seen on a seven-second delay to allow the ever-watchful standards-and-practices folks to nip profanity and wardrobe malfunctions in the bud.
These particulars, as important as they might have been for the network and the show’s producer, were of small consequence to me. As I aimed the Lexus in the direction of Hollywood that night, my main concern was that I arrive on time for the telecast. I was expected at least an hour before the show went on the air. Hearing tales of traffic congestion on the highway heading east from Santa Monica, I’d given myself an hour for the trip. So I touched down at a little before seven p.m., with more than enough time to relax alone for a bit in the dressing room I would be sharing with country-western singer Rennie Nolan.
Someone had been kind enough to stock the room with iced champagne and plates of caviar and crackers and, it being L.A., carrot sticks and celery stalks filled with feta cheese and something that was probably tabbouleh. Since the morning show was telecast live, I’d learned the hard way that you shouldn’t drink fluids too close to showtime unless you want to suffer the torture of a full, unrelieved bladder. Ditto for eating. I’d fixed a tuna sandwich at two-thirty p.m., washed it down with bottled water, and kept dry and food-free thereafter. So I was thirsty and hungry, and the sight of that frosty bottle of champagne and caviar was too damn tempting.
I decided to stroll down the hall and pay Des a visit. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to him since Gibby mentioned his belief that I was a company spy. This would be a good time to quash that notion.
With my tux in the hands of the wardrobe folks, who were steaming out the wrinkles, I rewrapped the elastic bandage on my ankle, slipped on the terry-cloth robe the production company had provided, and left the room. The door to Des’s dressing room was shut. I was about to knock when I heard him speaking angrily and loudly enough for the words to penetrate the door.
“Cop on, ya eejit. The bloke’s got nuthin’. An’ you’re shittin’ bricks. Jasus, you make me wanna gawk.”
I couldn’t tell if he was talking to someone on the phone or in the room with him. No less curious than the next guy, I moved closer. I had my ear about a foot away from the door when:
“Nice legs, Billy.”
I jumped back, my heart pounding with that just-been-caught beat.
Vida Evans was facing me in the hall. She looked beautiful, dressed in a sensational shiny aqua dress slit up the left s
ide almost to her hip. A Versace, she would inform me later. Actually, the way she put it was: “This little Versace?”
“Vida,” I said with a croak, almost running toward her and away from Des’s door. “Hi.”
“You’re looking just a little … undone,” she observed.
I tightened the robe, though she might have been talking about my awkwardness.
“I wasn’t expec—What’s up?” I asked.
“Just dropped by to say hello,” she said. “And to tell you how much I enjoyed working with you on those spots. I hope we can do it again. You okay?”
“Sure. Just … before-the-show butterflies.”
“I know the feeling,” she said. “Well, I’ll let you get back to … whatever it was you were doing out here in your robe.”
“Taking a walk. That’s … all I was doing. Are you sticking around for the after-party?”
“I … I’m not sure.”
“Please,” I said. “I promise to be a little more unflappable. We might even have a full-blown conversation.”
She smiled. “I’ll try to make it.” Judging by the way she said it, I figured the odds at one hundred to one against. “In any case, Billy, break a leg.”
“It’s what everyone seems to want,” I said.
An hour later, I was standing stage left, hidden from a rather noisy audience by one of Pfrank’s scrim/light-cloaking combinations, while a sound tech adjusted my wireless lapel mike. He asked me to mumble a few words into it, stepped back, gave me a wink and a thumbs-up, and promptly disappeared.
I was feeling a little better than adequate for the job ahead. Not only was my mike working, my freshly steamed tux fit me perfectly, a symbolic emerald-green display handkerchief peeking from its pocket. The stomach butterflies had been replaced by an unhealthy but invigorating rush of adrenaline that was having the added benefit of deadening the pain in my ankle.
