An American Love Story (21 page)

“Where?”

“Up in the sky,” he would say, and behind him she would curl into his contours, her knees curved into his legs, her head on his shoulder blades, her arms around him held tightly by his; sniffing the wonderful freshness of his skin.

She thought how she would know him anywhere just by that smell, the way a mother seal knows her pup. On his back like his papoose or his passenger she floated into the starry sky, flying protected into their adventure, and was asleep in an instant.

Laura had faded into the periphery of their world, the Bad Wife, while Susan tried hard to be the Good one. There were times when it was difficult, when she was lonely and in pain. In New York, Clay went back to The Dakota to sleep. One Saturday after
lunch he bought six Billie Holiday albums, stacked them on the turntable in Susan’s apartment, and patiently made love to her until the last one had fallen. When he had gone away she could never play them again—it made her too sad.

On Valentine’s Day he bought her the Elsa Peretti gold heart on its threadlike chain. Passing the television set she saw on top of it a discarded bill, the faint writing from the carbon paper: Two Peretti hearts.

Two? A mistake? But then Susan realized he had also bought one for Laura. This time there was just a pang of jealousy. But then she thought how unimaginative he was about jewelry, and how she had been the one who liked Peretti in the first place. She never said a word to Clay about finding the bill, and of course he never mentioned it. On the one hand she wanted to get rid of Laura, to prove to him how easy she, Susan, was to live with, how different their union could be. And on the other hand, she knew that Laura’s existence made their “marriage” possible. She didn’t know quite why—it was simply something she understood.

On television that year people were watching and laughing at Archie Bunker, the outrageous loudmouthed bigot; their hearts were warmed by the Waltons with their old-fashioned family values struggling through the Depression in the rural South; and there was a plethora of one-hour detective shows. Columbo in his sloppy raincoat acting dumb but actually very smart, cowboy detective McCloud, sophisticated McMillan and his cute wife who kept getting involved in solving murder cases, were just a few. Clay was developing a new pet project for RBS that would include aspects of all the more popular shows (except for
All in the Family
, a show he never really understood).

He had seventy-five projects in the works from ideas to full fledged scripts, of which very few would actually make it to the home screen, but his true spirit was with his own creation: “The Stevenson Family Detective Hour.” In this projected one-hour show a large close-knit Middle American family of various ages and personalities was always getting involved in solving crimes. There was dashing bachelor Uncle Luke for sex appeal, tough physical oldest brother Dean for violence, the precocious young
siblings Crissie and Peter for the younger viewers, Mom for moral support and an occasional murder solving of her own to please the female viewers, and Dad to make a speech at the end.

There would be glorious production values, magnificent scenery, big guest stars, music and occasional singing, blood and gore, intrigue, and homilies. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue; Clay was thrilled.

He had a love/hate relationship with television and the people who watched it. “Everything’s been done,” he told Susan. “You just rework it. There isn’t a show on television today that wasn’t once something else—another show, or radio, or a movie, or a classic novel brought into the present. There are only seven basic plots in the world, and
they’re
all stolen.” He laughed.

One day Clay left a script of “The Stevenson Family Detective Hour” lying in the bungalow, and Susan read it. To her dismay she thought it was terrible. She remembered the series she had created for him when they first met, the one he had said was too good to put on. Now she understood. Clay was The Great God of Programming and she was still an idealistic amateur. But still … No, she wanted to be positive and encouraging, and there were shows on TV that had been as bad as this; who was to know what would click and what would not? She thought it was best not to mention it at all.

He worked very long hours, and she was sure that a woman who didn’t have work and a life of her own could never be happy with him. She felt lucky to have found such a perfect fit, and wondered how Laura could put up with her charade of a marriage. Apparently many women did; the revenge shoppers she saw along Rodeo Drive, buying too expensive clothes they might wear only once, and charging them to their inattentive or absent or cheating husbands. Clay had contempt for those wives and called them “hookers.” He said they had married those men for their money and had gotten what they deserved. Susan’s answer to this, while he was creating the fall schedule, was to interview several of those frustrated women and sell an article about them. She called it “The Orchid Growers.”

The Stevenson Family Detective Hour
was getting a tremendous
amount of publicity. While Clay wanted it to be the same as what people were already watching, he also wanted it to be different, seem newer and better. To this end he spent an enormous amount of money, and unabashedly went over budget. A week before it aired he had a lavish press party. He was excited and happy, moving around the room to talk to everyone, charming and charismatic, winking at Susan the way he had at the press party the night they first met; but this time she would go home with him. “How’s the monkey?” he murmured as he passed her, and she glowed with joy.

But she was not with him when the reviews came in because he was already at the office.
MISHMOSH FAILS
,
Variety
headlined.
The Hollywood Reporter
and the newspapers were as brutal. “The only thing
The Stevenson Family Detective Hour
lacks is jokes,” one reviewer wrote, “which perhaps is a mistake since the whole mess teeters on the edge of satire.”

“Never mind,” Clay told her. “There have been hits that were massacred by the press and shows that got rave reviews and died. People don’t care about reviews.” He took out more ads. Apparently, however, people didn’t care about ads either. The ratings were so low that the head of the network demanded Clay take the show off after only ten episodes. If he hadn’t been so emotionally involved Clay would have taken it off himself.

RBS was losing advertisers. The old shows were weakening from age and Clay had to perform a mercy killing on two more of his new shows that had started the fall season. He knew that he had to find or create a new series that would make up for some of these lost ratings. Then a pair of young writers came in with a script for a half-hour comedy show called “Nail Soup.”

Every episode would start with the hero facing the audience and telling them about his grandfather back in the old country who was a peddler traveling around the farms selling a “magic” nail. “All you have to do is put this nail in a pot of boiling water with a little salt and pepper, my grandfather would say to the lady of the house, and you will have the most delicious soup. Cheap too! Only one ruble. So she’d buy the nail. Oh, my grandfather would say, I notice you have some old potatoes lying around you weren’t going
to use anyway. You should put them in the soup they shouldn’t go to waste. So okay. And maybe you have an onion, or a piece cabbage? Yes? Good. It wouldn’t hurt to throw them in as long as they’re here. This is a magic nail, you don’t need anything else, but I wonder if you have around a chicken that died already … So she puts in a chicken. And an hour later the soup is ready and she tastes it and it’s wonderful. My grandfather reaches in and pulls out the nail and holds it up triumphantly and says: See, nail soup!”

The hero would go on to say that he had inherited his late grandfather’s talent, and then his adventures would begin. Everyone at the network thought it was a delightful idea with a great deal of promise, and a search began for the proper actor to play the part of the modern con man. The authors wanted a comedian; someone young, new, slapstick and off the wall. Clay wanted a name actor, someone more sleek and sophisticated, a Cary Grant.

There was hardly a battle. Clay was in charge and he won. He hired Gregory Serdry; continental, handsome, suave, middle-aged. The show went on as a midseason replacement.

Gregory Serdry’s persona skewed the premise—
Nail Soup
wasn’t wacky and it didn’t work.
Variety
attacked again with
RUSTY NAIL
, and
The Reporter
called it “Stale Soup.” People didn’t watch.

But Clay had no intention of giving up, and when the show came on again the following fall the grandfather had been replaced by a great-grandfather, and Gregory Serdry had been replaced by twenty-two-year-old, round-faced Mike Seeg, who looked completely lost whether he was acting lost or not. He wasn’t either pretty enough or sexy enough to attract a teenage following, and adults were not interested. It was simply another example of the wrong chemistry, a mistake anyone could have made, but not twice with the same show.
Nail Soup
went off the air.

Susan was surprised at how calm Clay seemed. He was a bit angry at the network but took it as a learning experience. “I’m never going to be forced again into using people my instinct told me were wrong, just because we were in a hurry,” he said. He never referred to Mike Seeg by name, pretending he had forgotten
it, and referred to him as “that little fat kid,” even though he wasn’t fat. He didn’t mention Gregory Serdry.

“Let’s get an apartment,” Clay said. “I’m an adult; I shouldn’t live in a hotel like a gypsy all my life. This bungalow is too cramped for the two of us.” He no longer went through the pretense of renting the additional room for Susan—they had been together four years, after all—and no matter how hard she tried to straighten things up she had begun to feel she was a visitor in a filing cabinet.

“An apartment!”

“Would the monkey like that?”

Their California apartment … It was not just the additional space and welcome privacy, it was stability; but most of all it was romantic. “Oh yes!”

He gave her a map of Beverly Hills with the acceptable area marked. It had to be Beverly Hills because that was prestige, but he didn’t want to spend too much money, so he had also marked certain streets. He told her to start looking while he made a fast trip to New York to meet with the head of the network.

When Clay came back three days later Susan had already compiled a list of places she wanted him to see. His choice was immediate. It was a very nice two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment with a small terrace, on North Oakhurst. She was proud of herself because it cost even less than the limit he had given her.

He took her to dinner at a quiet little restaurant at the beach. “We’re going to start a new life,” he said. He looked very pleased. “I’ve quit programming for RBS and I’m going to be an independent producer. I have a contract with them for a two-pilot deal, to start; with offices, salary, all my overhead, expenses; now I can spend my time being creative and stop worrying about satisfying idiots. I’m going to do great things. I’m excited about this.”

So that had been the meeting in New York. She looked at his glowing face and was filled with love for him. He would always be young and adventurous. “It will be wonderful,” she said.

“And,” he added happily, “if any of my shows becomes a big hit I’ll be very rich.”

The two of them furnished his new apartment in three days. Clay dragged her everywhere until she was exhausted: he needed everything from a bed and linens to plates and towels. They ordered furniture, and a carpenter was hired to build bookcases. Clay wanted the decor to be spare and modern, very different from his apartment in New York. The second bedroom was to be an office for Susan’s work. He had two phones put in with two different numbers, one of which would be hers, and both of them had answering services. Of course this also insured that no one who was not supposed to would know she was living with him.

There was a garage for his beloved vintage Thunderbird and her rental car. The name outside the front door of the apartment was, naturally, only his. But from the moment they moved in the people in the building assumed they were a married couple. And somehow they were.

She couldn’t believe how far they had come. She felt as if she were floating along on the crest of a river—exciting, peaceful and good—not knowing where it would lead but letting it take her, secure in his strength and love.

13

1974—BEVERLY HILLS

H
e was still Clay Bowen. Nothing could change that. He was the cat who landed on its feet. His new offices were impressive, all his business expenses were taken care of, and there were fresh flowers twice a week.

He had contacts; people knew him, they owed him, they liked him. He knew more about the business than almost anyone.