Claudia Silver to the Rescue (9780547985602) (22 page)

“Oh,” Paul remarked, evenly. “I guess Bronwyn didn't tell you.”

A florid news story came to Annie's mind, one that she'd assumed, until now, had been an urban myth, about a French housewife who, after God knows how many decades of marriage, had calmly stabbed her husband clean through the heart with a carving knife shortly after he'd complained about her roast lamb. “Somehow you've arrived at this idea that being a good father has anything to do with being a good husband,” she countered. “But it doesn't, Paul. They're two entirely separate things.” Annie dug in her purse.

“There's a reason that Claudia Silver has a screw loose,” Paul continued, “and I have tried to be a resource to her, so that Phoebe can be declared an emancipated minor and they can start getting their lives in order. Neither of these girls has a father to speak of, Annie.”

“And what's the reason
you
have a screw loose?” Annie asked, having found her hand cream. “Have you been having an affair with her?” They stared out their respective windows as Columbus Circle approached.

Paul shifted, evoking surrender as he rested his head on the seat back and let his knees fall open. “I may have gotten too close,” he said, looking squarely at Annie. “But that's only because you won't let me get close to you.”

“Whatever it is that you've been doing,” Annie replied, “has nothing whatever to do with me.” The car had entered the serene harbor of Central Park West. Paul reached out to rest his hand on Annie's folded knee. She looked at the hand and the knee with complete removal and some relief. To look down on the scene. To see the angry toddler, dressed up in his proud man suit, and his proprietary gesture on her small frame in the car hurrying home. To consider the possibilities, from this vantage, that had once been far beyond the horizon. She could keep going, all the way to Harlem. She neither felt the entitled hand, nor fought it. “She's not your first,” Annie declared, evenly.

“She's my last,” said Paul.

 

Avenue M Studios was nestled behind a brick wall and capped with a vestigial smokestack. For some who passed by and all who worked there, the vintage production complex was a beacon among the charmless bagel shops, discount clothiers, and second-rate yeshivas of deepest Midwood. Here, enduringly, the widgets of popular entertainment were still being churned out, in this case the thirty-third year of
Hope Valley,
one of the longest-running daytime dramas on network television.

“Can I use this phone?” Claudia Silver called across the lobby to the young, slope-shouldered guard, a neighborhood
cuzine
whose lacquered hair aspired to Italian stallion while the rest of him grew pimples.

“Yeah,” the lobby guard nodded. “Dial nine to get out.”

The few minutes before a high-stakes job interview may not have been the ideal time to try Paul again. Plus, there was knowing better.

Claudia found herself pulling the phone to her mouth.

“Golden Fenwick Tate Stein and Lowe,” the operator purred.

“Paul Tate, please.” It was, Claudia realized, her motto.

“Please hold.” That, too.

Across the studio lobby a door swung open, and Claudia glimpsed a tall bank of monitors illuminating an otherwise dark room as a figure emerged. She was a woman of color, that color being caramel. Her hair, relaxed and permed into a high, smooth helmet, her skin, knit ensemble, ruched ankle boots—they were all this most golden shade of brown, worthy of a ladies lunch with Claire and Denise Huxtable. The woman paused in the doorway. “When am I seeing a rough cut?” she called into the glow with a domineering warmth. “I'll be
baaahck,
” she joked, then strode across the lobby. “Hey, Wayne,” she said to the guard, glancing at Claudia as she passed.

After a few bars of Vivaldi, a new voice returned. “Mr. Tate is not available at the moment,” Paul's secretary informed Claudia. Then, a pause, in which, according to office protocol, she should have asked if Claudia would care to leave a message. Claudia waited, but the silence persisted.

“Can I leave a message?” Claudia asked.

The secretary lowered her voice. “Listen,” she said quietly. “I'm gonna do you a favor right now, okay? You should probably stop calling him.”

Suddenly, Claudia's eyes were stinging, her mascara threatened. “Gotcha,” she managed to say. Somehow, she floated the receiver back to its cradle. She kept her hand on it. She looked around and tried to remember what it was exactly that she was doing.

“Shelly's office is through those doors,” the lobby guard miraculously reminded her, “straight down the end of the hall.”

She was holding her breath, and tried to stop doing that.
In today's performance,
she decided,
the part of Claudia Silver will be played by Claudia Silver.

Decorated with framed
Hope Valley
posters and strewn with platters of mini breakfast pastry that tormented all who entered there, Executive Producer Shelly Gerson's office was the domain of a male assistant with spiked hair, double-pierced ears, an expensive nose, pressed jeans, and a silver thumb ring.

“I don't understand why everybody is just plain bonkers,” he declared. His was the bored voice from Claudia's answering machine, but in person he was a stern hive of activity, tearing about on his wheeled Aeron, hydra arms simultaneously scrambling in script cubbies, receiving casting breakdowns off the fax machine, flipping through an alphabetically organized binder of the show's sprawling contacts, and punching at the various illuminated buttons on a phone that made the ones at Georgica Films resemble Fisher-Price toys.

“Hi, I'm Claudia Silver. I've got an eleven
A.M.
with Shelly.”

The assistant stared at Claudia blankly, formed a finger pistol, and pointed it at the phone.

“No, have her leave it,” the assistant was saying, as Claudia realized, embarrassed, that he was on the phone. “By which I mean
make
her leave it, Wayne. Do you need me to come down there?” He hung up, but kept his headset on. “Actors,” he sighed, scanning Claudia from crown to sole and deeming her acceptable, if not interesting. “Such desperate, desperate people. This one delivered a carnation slipper.”

“Um—” Claudia hedged, still unclear to whom he was speaking.

“As in a
giant shoe.
Fashioned from
carnations.
” He scooted his chair to the fax machine and plucked a warm sheet from the tray, then pointed at Claudia and snapped his fingers impatiently.

Claudia handed him her plastic folder as he rolled back to pluck it.
Now there's an idea,
Claudia reflected. She could have her ass done in baby's breath and left it with Paul's secretary. “Why a shoe?” she asked the assistant.

“Because we're doing yet another Cinderella story line this year, I suppose,” he replied with a snort, reviewing Claudia's resumé in a single sweep. “It's absolutely
tragic.
Do they think Shelly just fell off the turnip truck? You don't get the part with
flowers.
”

“What's your name?” Claudia asked, heartened by this worker bee and everything she thought he might stand for.

With this, the assistant narrowed his eyes and returned her plastic sleeve. “Hang on,” he said, shoving off from his desk with the resumé as a sail and landing at the double doors of the inner office. He knocked once, rose, kicked his chair to its starting position, and disappeared inside.

“Go ahead in, Claudia,” he said as he reappeared, moments later. “You get the job,” he whispered as she passed, “and I'll tell you my name.”

“It's on,” Claudia replied.

Shelly Gerson's office, dominated by a giant, champagne-colored leather sectional sofa draped in butterscotch cashmere throws, was the perfect nook for a temper tantrum or a nap. Claudia's resumé sat in the center of a large white desk with a beveled glass top, behind which a tan leather chair was turned toward a bank of monitors showing views of the taping floor, where a hospital scene was currently being shot, as well as yesterday's final cut, a morning talk show, and a commercial for Zest deodorant soap.

“Come on in, Claudia,” Shelly said. The chair pivoted and Shelly Gerson—Madame Caramel from the lobby—rose to greet her.

Claudia was horrified by her own surprise. You should never be surprised, she knew, to realize a black woman could well be your next boss. But there it was. “Thanks for having me in,” she said, shaking Shelly's hand with an extra dose of nonchalant professionalism.

“I always meet with Barnard girls,” Shelly said, pushing aside Claudia's resumé. Claudia assumed with a silent gulp that the stack of papers at the edge of Shelly's desk under the
WOMEN IN FILM
paperweight represented the competition. “Any trouble finding us here?”

“Nah. As it says on my award-winning resumé, I'm a Brooklyn girl, too.”

“I got that,” said Shelly, nodding at her resumé. “We stick together. Erasmus Hall, right?”

“Bedford.”

“Oh, right. My husband, Arnie, went to Erasmus.” It was then that Claudia noticed the framed photos, everywhere. Shelly and Arnie Gerson in snow pants with that guy who played the single dad of the smart-alecky brood on that show. Shelly and Arnie Gerson in wet suits with former child stars and in hot-air balloons with the major impresarios of disco. On all those red carpets. Arnie Gerson, always with the sunglasses and three inches shorter than Shelly Gerson, his various attempts to bridge the gap smacked down by her ubiquitous Stuart Weitzmans.

“Where did
you
go?” Claudia asked.

“Boys and Girls High.”

Claudia nodded, impressed.
“Bed-Stuy, do or die,”
she commented, wanting Shelly to know she was down. But Shelly, who'd finally arrived at the place where every single item in her wardrobe required dry cleaning after one wearing, dismissed the slogan with a wave of a French-manicured hand.

“Arnie lived in the same building as Barbra Streisand,” she shared. Claudia, observing Shelly's talons, connected the dots.

“So you're practically related,” said Claudia.

Shelly smiled. “We
are
related, in a way. We all are.” She gestured to her wall of signed head shots, hung in a dense mosaic. “A lot of the entertainers you love have come through
HV.
Recognize any of them?”

Claudia scanned the gallery. “Is that Mr. Whipple?” Shelly made a face. “I'm kidding—I'm a huge fan of Anne Heche,” Claudia bluffed, blessedly remembering the bit of trivia she'd gleaned from the college career counselor who'd wrangled the interview. “I think it's so cool that she played Denise
and
Diane.”

“So you watch our show?”

“I'm not as current as I was in high school,” by which, of course, Claudia meant
never
. “But I'm excited to catch up.”

Shelly plucked Claudia's resumé from the desk. “We're telling a lot of exciting stories,” she said. “Tell me yours. Georgica Films. What's that?”

“I've been the staff production assistant there for two years.”

“And what sorts of films do they make over there at Georgica Films?”

“Avant-garde shorts that run between regularly scheduled programming,” Claudia replied. “We call them commercials.”

Shelly glanced up from the resumé, suitably amused. “And what do you do there?”

Hm, let's see,
Claudia thought.
Order family-style lunch, fuck the doorman, pinch a bud, get fired.
“My boss is the executive producer, Ricky Green,” she replied. “Every day is different, which is an aspect of production I really love. I basically assist in the company's creative and production process, from agency pitch all the way through client management and post.”

“Do you know what the most important thing is to
me?
” Shelly asked, removing a stray no. 2 pencil from her pen jar and dropping it into the wastepaper basket under her desk. Claudia shook her head. “
Discretion.
When you work for me, you quickly learn everything about everybody. It's quiet down here right now, but the stuff that unfolds in this office can rival our story lines. Most importantly, in here you'll learn where the actual story lines are
going,
which means where the actors' contracts are
headed,
which affects their many, many moods. Capiche?”

“I think so.”

“So tell me about your boss. What's he like?”

You mean other than a seething JAP with elf boots and no recognizable skill set other than star-fuckery and restaurants?
“He was great. He
is
great. I've learned a lot from Ricky and I'm grateful for the experience. But, um, my own goal is to make the move from commercial production into narrative storytelling. Plus, you know. Ordering lunch is my specialty.”

Shelly smiled. “The last kid I had in here heard the same speech and then proceeded to tell me all about his boss's eating disorder.” She tipped back in her chair and folded her hands behind her head. Two small, round pit stains, the size of quarters, had appeared in the thin wool jersey, an extra pair of eyes whose gaze Claudia avoided. “So tell me what you think about soaps in general.”

Nothing wrong with empty calories for geriatrics and inmates, Shell, if you're into pop-culture landfill and happen to be a broke, unemployed home wrecker.
“Well . . . ,” Claudia began. “Soap opera. It . . . it gets a bad rap. As melodrama. It's the stuff of spoof. You know, cue Carol Burnett and Harvey Korman, trying hard not to laugh—”

“Harvey used to be Arnie's doubles partner when we lived in L.A.,” Shelly interrupted.

“Very cool.”

“Continue.”

“But, um, what do we say about our lives, what's the shorthand we use for the inevitable complications that defy all logic? ‘It's a total soap opera,' we say to our friends. When we love the wrong person. When mothers don't act like they're supposed to. When siblings emerge from long-lost trysts. When illness that doesn't appear in any medical journal alters the course of our lives.” Claudia, who'd stumbled her way here, who, unlike Shelly Gerson, had the most unwieldy of plans for her future and not enough cash to pick up her dry cleaning, felt the groove and gave herself to it. She wasn't just popping shit. She was taking verbal dictation from on high, and listening to it herself. “We describe our lives as soap operas because that's what soap opera
does,
” she continued. “It
illuminates
our lives, heightens the conflict we already know so that it can exist outside of ourselves, which is how we can find peace
inside.
”