Sellevision (19 page)

After presenting the revolving tie-rack, moving on to a sixteen-piece socket wrench set, and ending her on-air appearance with a presentation of a pocket fishing rod called, questionably, the Pocket Rod, Peggy Jean Smythe exited the set and walked directly into her office.

She had one new E-mail.

To: [email protected]

Fr: [email protected]

Subject: Big Guy

I couldn’t help but think how appropriate it is that you are hosting the grand finale of Gifts for Guys. You Big Guy, you.

Don’t think your arm hair went unnoticed while you were demonstrating those socket wrenches.

Oh, did you like my gift?

Zoe

Peggy Jean took four Valium to stop the shaking. She had been off air not even ten minutes, and already an E-mail commenting on the show. Zoe was clearly obsessed.

She considered having a little bottle of something because her mouth was dry. She decided,
no
. She’d already had some
before
the show to even her out.

Then she glanced at her arms and saw the dusting of pale, almost pure white hairs. A dizzying amount of them, no matter how fair.
My own body is turning against me
. She took three small bottles of peach schnapps from her desk drawer.

It just didn’t make any sense, none of it.

Peggy Jean: a leading figure of her church, a loving wife, the mother of three beautiful children and a top host with America’s premier retail broadcasting network. She had once been Junior Miss San Antonio! She received fan mail on a constant basis asking her to reveal her hair coloring, makeup, and manicure secrets.

“I’m a good person. I sponsor two AIDS babies at St. Mercy. I even
held
one of them!” she cried to the computer screen. “
Just like Princess Diana!
”

This monstrous Zoe person was making Peggy Jean out to be some chromosomally damaged, testosterone-pumping beast. She was attacking the one thing Peggy Jean prided herself on: polished femininity.

As if dealing with a terrible medical condition wasn’t bad enough, she had a stalker. But who? A dangerous stranger? An obsessed cohost? Trish? Leigh? Don? Adele? It could be any of them. More and more Peggy Jean was actually being affected by this mystery monster. She was edgy, anxious.

Just the other night when she was hosting a Crafter’s Quilts show, she’d become dizzy gazing at the geometric pattern on one of the quilts, taken a step backward, and tripped on the edge of the rug, falling onto the floor, the quilt landing on top of her. And to make it worse, the camera had
zoomed
in on her. It was the single most mortifying experience of her on-air life. It had been her own fault, because she had neglected to have a sip of something before the show to smooth out the Valium. But she wouldn’t even have to take the little pills if it weren’t for Zoe.

It was even affecting her marriage. The other night she had exploded at her husband when he suggested they try a
new position
during an increasingly rare moment of intimacy, that position being one with Peggy Jean on top,
where the man belonged
.

She had recoiled from him instantly, climbing out of bed and cursing, then locking herself in their bathroom where she turned the faucet on and sobbed, looking at her breasts in the mirror. And she couldn’t help but think they looked just fine. Especially when she turned profile and lifted her arms above her head.

And yet what was she to do? If she dared write back, asking to be left alone, the Zoe person would only be fueled in her personal attack. Yet it seemed that the form letter was only serving to make the stalker angrier and angrier.

What she needed was advice from a Stalking Survivor. A celebrity, like herself, who could help her manage the situation before this Zoe person finally and completely deteriorated, sending Peggy Jean a letter bomb disguised as a pretty bouquet of flowers.

Surely Debby Boone had experienced a stalker. And the two
had
hit it off during Debby’s recent appearance on Sellevision. In fact, they’d even exchanged personal phone numbers and promised to stay in touch.

Peggy Jean decided that although these were not the ideal circumstances under which to forge a friendship with the multiplatinum recording artist, she simply had no other choice but to call. After all, wasn’t it quite possible that God had put Debby on Sellevision for a purpose much larger than simply introducing America to Dolls by Debby?

“Who’s calling, please?” the voice on the other end of the phone asked.

“This is Peggy Jean Smythe. I’m a host with Sellevision and recently shared a show with Ms. Boone.”

“One moment please.” Peggy Jean found herself placed on hold, listening to a recording of Debby singing her legendary hit, “You Light Up My Life.” It calmed her slightly.

“Peggy Jean?” the familiar voice said.

“Hi, Debby. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“No, of course not. What an unexpected surprise!”

Oh,
thank God
, Peggy Jean thought. Then, as calmly as possible, she explained the situation to Debby, beginning with the first, seemingly innocent earlobe letter, all the way to the shocking on-air event, including the crucified rat and the recent, sinister
Cut Cut
note.

“Debby, I’m afraid it’s getting out of hand and quite frankly, I have no one else to turn to.”

thirteen

“T
here’s nothing like a microorganism to bring two people together,” Eliot said, carefully lowering the tray of chicken noodle soup and chamomile tea onto the plush comforter on Bebe’s bed.

“Eliot, you’re an idiot to be staying with me when I’m sick. A sweet idiot, but an idiot. You’re going to catch my cold, and you know I can’t cook.”

“I’m not going to catch your cold. Besides, you can cook, I’ve seen the can opener.”

“Very funny.”

Bebe sipped the chicken soup that Eliot made from scratch the night before, occasionally removing a small piece of cartilage and discretely folding it into her napkin. As she stirred the soup to cool it, Eliot set a fresh box of tissues on the bedside table and glanced at the television. Yet another Amtrak had derailed, this time colliding with a bus of circus clowns.

“Poor clowns,” Eliot sighed, shaking his head.

Bebe nodded. She sipped another spoonful. “The soup is lovely, thank you Eliot.”

“You’re most welcome.” Then, “You know, we usually end up at my place. It seems I’m hardly ever over here.”

“It’s cramped here, that’s why.”

“It’s because you’ve got so much stuff. I mean, what on earth do you need that wet-vac for?” He pointed to the corner, next to several Nieman-Marcus bags.

“In case I have a spill,” she said.

“What about the drafting table in the living room?”

“Someday I might want to take up drawing, that’s all.”

He looked at the chair across from the bed and saw five boxes of shoes, but decided not to say anything.

“Did the mail arrive yet?” she asked.

“No, why, are you expecting something?”

“No, not really.”

“Let’s see what all your friends are doing this fine day.” He reached across her chest for the remote control and aimed it at the TV.

“H

i, everybody, I’m Leigh Bushmoore. Welcome to Sellevision. I’ve got a great show for you tonight that I guarantee you are not going to want to miss. Stay tuned for Simulated Ruby Sensations, because I promise you, this is going to be one sensational show.”

The prerecorded intro to the show played and Leigh took a sip of water from the bottle of Evian discreetly tucked under her chair.

She was wearing a deep-blue velvet dress, with a lower neckline than she would normally wear on the air. The dress, Howard’s favorite, took on a rich, luscious sheen beneath the studio lights. Backstage, she blew some of the curl out of her hair so that it fell voluptuously across her shoulders. When she first entered the stage, one of the grips had whistled at her.

Because this was going to be her last night on Sellevision, she wanted it to be special. She already knew it would be memorable.

The first item Leigh was to present that evening was a choice of Simulated Ruby Pendants, each three carats. Emerald cut, pear shape, or trillion cut. All on an eighteen-inch fourteen-karat gold chain, included in the $39.79 price. The pendants had sold out on their last three appearances.

When the intro to her show was over, and Camera Two opened with a medium shot of Leigh sitting at the elegant black table, she smiled boldly into the camera and asked, “Ladies, how many of you would enjoy having a handsome man tell you how beautiful you look? Take you to dinner, gaze into your eyes, maybe even tell you how much he loves you?”

Amanda, Leigh’s producer for that evening’s show, urged her along. “Really nice opening, Leigh, but get to the item number ASAP so we can put the graphics up on the screen.”

Leigh smiled and continued. “If you would like to have a man promise you the world, you’re going to want to write this number down.”

Inside the control room, Amanda shouted to one of the engineers, “Okay, she’s giving the number, throw on the graphics.”

A graphic box containing the item number for the pendants appeared on the lefthand side of the screen.

“His home phone number is 917-555-5555, and his name is Howard Toast. He’s the head of broadcasting production here at Sellevision and I don’t want him anymore, because I don’t believe he really is going to divorce his wife. I think he’s just fucking with both his wife and me and I’m tired of being both fucked and fucked over by Howard. Because I am through with selfish bastards!”

At first, nothing happened. Amanda simply stared at the monitor and remained motionless. Which gave Leigh the chance to continue.

“If you’d buy a simulated ruby, why not a simulated man? His phone number again is 917-555-5555.”

Just then, Sellevision cut to a prerecorded promotion for Adele Oswald Crawley’s upcoming American Indian Pride Home Furnishings show.

And even though Amanda was screaming into Leigh’s earpiece, Leigh didn’t hear it, because she had already taken the earpiece off and thrown it out onto the set behind her, where it slid across the highly polished floor and bumped to a stop against the model’s glossy left pump.

I

t had been Howard himself who insisted that he and his wife watch that evening’s Simulated Ruby Sensations show. Suzette had wanted them to go to the movies, but Howard had explained to her that it was important for him to see Leigh’s performance as he had just given her many additional on-air hours, and he would very much like his wife’s opinion on her presentation style.

So, moments before Leigh’s show began, the two had sat side-by-side on their white sectional sofa. Because the sofa was upholstered in an exquisite raw silk, the couple had never even entertained the notion of Scotch-guarding it.

And that is why his blood would never be fully removed from the fabric.

Suzette had simply taken the closest available object and blindly swung it in her husband’s direction. The closest available object had been a solid-brass coffee-table sculpture in the shape of a dolphin.

Swinging in Howard’s general direction, the dolphin had made solid contact with the left side of his face, including his eye, cheek, nose, and lips.

Yet despite his needing thirty-two stitches at the emergency room, the biggest blow to Howard was actually delivered the following morning.

Leigh’s improvised, forty-three-second appearance on Simulated Ruby Sensations had made not only
The Philadelphia Tribune
, but also
USA Today, The New York Times
, and
The Washington Post
.

It was also a top news story on all the major networks, pushing the Barbra Streisand vice-presidential nomination scandal into third place.

He was phoned in his hotel room just after breakfast and terminated from Sellevision.

“U

m, okay, um, hold on a sec,” the twenty-three-year-old advertising copywriter told Max. “We’re gonna listen to a playback.”

Max was standing inside a small recording booth wearing earphones, a microphone inches from his mouth. On a music stand before him was a voice-over script for a Tender Tasties cat food radio commercial.

Sitting behind a long engineering console, the copywriter pushed a talk button that allowed him to communicate with Max through the thick glass. “Okay, here’s what we need you to do. Just pick up the pace of everything, and try to give a smile to the word ‘Tasties.’ ”

Max nodded.

“Also, when you say ‘safe for all cats, even long-haired breeds,’ don’t make that sound so serious, just lighten it up a little bit.”