Star Time (10 page)

"You keep asking me to give it some time," Stew asserted when the ratings had plateaued for a while. "As if Carver stomping all over my face to implement those recommendations in the report isn't bad enough,
I get calls now directly from the network brass. You can hardly tell the vice presidents without a scorecard. I keep a list of them next to the phone, so I can figure out who the hell is calling. All they care about are the ratings that give them their audience flow into prime time. They want results."

"Then tell Carver to schedule a hotter show as a lead-in to ours, so we don't start the hour at a disadvantage. Those game shows are filler.
Oprah
is killing us."

Enhancing the anchor's popularity remained one large area of contention between the men. Stew wanted Harris to converse cozily with other newscasters. Greg thought the hard-nosed, shirtsleeves journalist appeared uncomfortable when he wasn’t reading off of script.

"Viewers look to him for news, not comfort," Greg maintained. "Quinn just isn't Mr. Personality, and they can sense it."

Greg and begun to consider moving Chris next to Harris at the anchor desk, although he assured himself that the cause was not her prodding. She possessed the skills to hold her own, while her glamour and friendliness would provide a good contrast and balance to Harris's muscular gravity. Greg knew, though, that the thought had to come from Stew, so that Stew owned it and would fight for it. But when days went by without Stew taking Greg’s hints, Greg finally became explicit.

"Viewers really take to her—those consultants' polls showed it," he said when they were discussing the latest overnight ratings. "They trust her. Maybe we ought to try her as an anchor on the weekend. You know, just as an experiment."

Stew regarded Greg as if he were insane. "No one would take her or the broadcast seriously. Every program needs a pinup. She's ours. I don't want to hear any more about it!"

Greg did not report the conversation to Chris.

One Saturday night they decided to risk dinner out at a restaurant and chose one they were sure was too obscure to attract people who might recognize him, even if they recognized her. But a young producer on the staff named Hugo Ramirez came in with one of the secretaries and spotted them immediately. Hugo was a bright, hardworking newsman originally hired to cover the rapidly growing Hispanic community, but Greg had found him too good to be pigeonholed. Both couples were embarrassed. To cover up, Greg invited the other couple to join him and Chris, who had "just gotten together to talk business anyway." Greg gathered that the young Latin had also intended a more private and romantic evening. An awkward time was had by all, but the other couple seemed to have been taken in.

Far more dangerous was an occurrence in September: a party given by producer Danny Vickers to celebrate the premiere of his newest TV series. It was to be a huge black-tie affair held at the
Bel
Air mansion he had recently bought, and invitations were coveted. Greg had often played tennis with him. Chris had interviewed him for the broadcast's People segment. Both
newspeople
were invited. Vickers was a man who understood the need for maintaining good relations with the press.

"Do you think we're compromising ourselves by going?" Chris asked stoically, prepared to forgo the event on moral grounds, but hoping Greg would agree that was unnecessary.

"We wouldn't treat him any differently, regardless of the invitation, right?"

"Right," she replied with relief, immediately moving on to consider the next problem: a formal dress. She had not owned one since she and her mother had made one for her senior prom.

Chris and Greg took separate cars to the party, finding their way there easily by driving toward the giant beams of light slicing through the sky above
Bel
Air.

Danny Vickers was a high-school dropout who had fast-talked his way onto a television-series set by claiming to be writing a paper for school. Once inside studio walls, he roved around to other productions until he was hired as a production assistant. Now, a dozen years later, several of his series had had prosperous runs on the air. The last was still on air after six years and had already earned more millions for him in its two years of syndication. He could not direct or write scripts. He rarely even read one all the way through. He had been divorced twice and was rumored to be one of the town's spiffier cross-dressers. None of that mattered. A short, balding, kinetic man, at thirty-two Vickers was already a Hollywood divinity: rich, catered to by the networks because of his "golden touch" in coming up with hit series, and lionized by his publicity agents as the most beneficent of humanitarians.

To welcome his guests, he had planted himself close by the French doors that opened onto the garden, where the party was being held. Having a poor memory for names, he listened closely as the butler announced them before turning away from the last guests and warmly welcoming the next, who were stepping out of the house. He had been conversing with Chris when Greg arrived.

"You didn't send a camera crew," was Vickers's hostile greeting.

Greg replied evenly, "After we got that tip about the demonstration, I held off
to protect
you."

"What demonstration?"

Greg's voice dropped to a whisper. "An informer tipped us off that if we sent over a crew to shoot the party, a group of militant black actors
would demonstrate right outside your front gate. They're incensed that none of your series ever stars a black."

"Oh, shit." Vickers's belligerence had disintegrated into worry. "Did you tell them Will Smith once did a guest shot on 'The Darers'? It was before
Fresh Prince
, but still
.
"

"Window dressing, they said."

"Aretha Franklin and I are like this." He held up two fingers close together.

"I'd love to meet her."

"Hey, I could only fit three hundred people in here." Vickers regarded Greg anxiously. "These demonstrators, did you stop them?"

"Only by pulling the story and not sending out a crew.
First of all, we don't cover stories that happen only because we showed up. But most of all, I didn't want your new show and you personally—a friend—hurt by a racial battle right at your front door."

Vickers was bursting with gratitude. His arms around their shoulders, he marched Chris and Greg around clumps of guests to the stone fountain in the center of the garden that had been converted to spurt Dom
Pérignon
champagne.

"Hey, Chris, you've got to take a look at the master bathroom. The toilet's an exact model of the
Piti
Palace in Florence. You know, with the bowl like the piazza at its center.
Great story there."

As he filled their glasses from the champagne fountain, he suddenly spied Tom Cruise at the entrance.

"I owe you . . . Greg," he shouted back over his shoulder on the run, fumbling to remember Greg's name. "I don't forget those things."

"Did you really get a tip about a black demonstration?" Chris inquired suspiciously as they watched him scurry off.

A smile flickered at a corner of Greg's lips before he gravely replied, "I promised my informant confidentiality."

Among so many guests, Greg and Chris decided no one would think it odd that coworkers were walking around together. Apart from a smattering of
newspeople
, particularly from ABC, which was carrying Vickers's new series, the preponderance of guests were studio and network executives, well-known producers and directors, lawyer and agent power brokers, and the occasional politician and businessman. Liberally sprinkled among them were faces made famous by the large and small screens. To Chris's surprise she had become one of the latter and was approached by several people who recognized her. She was shy about conversing with strangers when not in a reporter's role, and she envied Greg's ease.

Greg and Arnold Mandel smiled in recognition as their paths crossed—they had met several times before and enjoyed the conversation. Greg introduced Chris, Mandel his wife, Nell.

Arnold Mandel was a reserved, slight man of about forty who usually had his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth when he conversed, as had his rabbinic forebears. A sharp-edged film comedy he had written and produced was currently filling theaters across the country. Greg and Chris had found hilarious and worrisome the scathing view of modern marriage it presented and were relieved to be hedging their bet by living together. Both carefully avoided mentioning that treacherous next step.

Arnold's wife, Nell, did not appear pleased by their praise for the film. "You wouldn't have enjoyed it half so much if it had been
your
marriage plastered thirty feet high on the screen."

Arnold tried to silence her. "Come on, it was fictitious. We've been over this. We don't need to bring it up in public. Besides, it made us millions."

Nell was still focused on Greg and Chris. "Remember the scene where the husband was caught with a stripper in the basement? In our case it was a starlet in the location trailer. Hooray for Hollywood."

Arnold shrugged apologetically to them. "My wife is under the delusion that whenever I'm alone I'm cheating on her."

She smiled humorlessly. "And that what you did is soon on the air humiliating me in front of millions of people."

Greg took Chris's arm. "I think we ought to move on."

Arnold glanced unhappily at his wife. "Say good-night, Graceless."

After they had stepped away, Greg remarked to Chris, "He's a guy I really have a lot of respect for. She made him seem like a lowlife."

"They couldn't have started out like that. I don't think I ever heard my parents argue. I guess they must have."

"People end up growing apart."

She forcefully gripped his hand. "Not people who love each other enough."

Later in the evening, they went inside the house to view the furnishings. Vickers had let the world know the interior had cost million-and-a-half dollars, "not counting the artwork." They had expected the decor to be overdone: too much gilt, too much marble. Instead it was tasteful and restrained: spacious areas, softly gleaming woods, subtly colored fabrics, and a few superbly chosen objects. They were awed, Greg particularly. This was the sort of home in which his dreams had long resided.

In the living room they noticed a small African statue on a side table. Made of ebony, it was a stocky male fertility figure with an immense
penis positioned upright as proudly as a flagpole. Greg leaned toward Chris's ear.

"That only happened after you walked into the room."

They both
laughed,
their heads close together. Greg glanced up.
Ev
Carver was staring at them from an archway cut in the far wall, a sly smile spreading across his face. He had been too far away to hear Greg's remark, but had observed their easy familiarity.

"I didn't know you two were an item, as they say."

Greg hoped his shock did not show in a loss of composure. "As they also say, we're just good friends."

Chris excused herself to find the powder room.
Ev
gestured toward the hallway behind him. He was evidently waiting for a woman who was already in there.

"
Lyall
, did Vickers hit you with something about a camera crew?" he asked as Chris walked past him and down the hallway.

Greg nodded. "I told him no."

"Good. He asked me for coverage on the phone the other day. I ignored him. Why the hell should we publicize an ABC show?"

Ev
moved into the room, the sly smile reappearing.

"That chick you're with, Christine
Paskins
. . . She looks hot as a pistol."

"Could be," Greg replied matter-of-factly, unwilling to let himself be provoked.

"I wouldn't want to think you were using your position to get a little ass."

Greg fought to subdue his alarm. "We just work together."

Ev
threw back his head and laughed. "I'd have said the same thing,
Lyall
."

Just then Sally Foster appeared in the archway behind
Ev
. She wore a black gown with a neckline that slashed a deep V of skin to her waist. Sally Foster was one of Hollywood's great beauties. Her career had been negligible until she won the role of a tough-talking former cop who was now an industrialist's mistress in the series
Heritage Hall
. Typecasting, many called it. The show was still going strong after five years.

"I'm ready," she called out to
Ev
.

"Her
show's
on FBS," the latter pointed out to Greg. Then he winked at him. "I guess we'll both be working late tonight on company business."

4

Chris's discontentment with her role at KFBS was rewarded in November, when the station's “action” reporter left to take a public relations job with a chemical company accused of polluting the drinking water near several of its plants. He had been covering consumer matters and viewer problems with local businesses or government, like mail-order goods that were not delivered as advertised or welfare checks lost in bureaucratic mazes.