Star Time (22 page)

Next day, Greg was leaving the FBS Building for a lunch meeting at the same time that Barnett was entering. They stopped to exchange a word or two.

“You look a little tired,” the older man observed. “Maybe a few days away would do you good.”

“Did Diane say anything to you?” Greg asked sharply.

Barnett regarded Greg closely before shaking his head.

“It’s a very busy time,” Greg told him.

The older man peered at him a moment longer, then nodded and walked on.

That night Greg was angrily explicit. “I don’t know what you said to your father about my going to Paris, but you are never to mention to him what goes on between us.”

Diane appeared taken aback by his vehemence. “If you think I said anything to him—”

“I don’t know. But it will never happen again.”

“Understand, Greg,” she replied tartly, “my father and I don’t talk about your work or the network. If it were up to me—”

She did not finish the sentence. Instead, she spun angrily away and departed the room.

Greg seethed all the while that Diane was in Paris. Her friend Libby joined her for shopping on the weekend. When she returned, she was vivacious and affectionate, delighted to see
him,
and eager to show off her purchases. His anger melted.

She had bought him neckties at Gucci and
Hermès
, dozens of them she thought he would like. Her client’s show had gone well, but confessed that she had missed Greg enormously. It wasn’t nearly so much fun without him; she had bored Libby silly at dinner by continuously bleating how much she missed him. From now on, she vowed, she would discuss her plans early with Greg, and they would try to agree on everything.

Sally Foster was informed that FBS had canceled her new show just after shooting on the tenth episode ended. Her agent phoned her in her dressing room with the bad news.

FBS had introduced the series at midseason, delayed from the fall because of the network’s refusal to approve writer-producer Gus Krieger’s scripts until he made their changes. The show’s premiere had pulled a rating of 9.9 percent of all households with TV sets and a 15
percent share of the sets actually in use. Instead of rising as the show became better known, its ratings slid downward. By the previous night’s viewing, the sixth week, they were down to an abysmal 5 rating and an 8 share and were crippling the entire night’s lineup on FBS. Critics had been merciless in their attacks. Sally’s personal reviews had not been bad, but those would be buried in the show’s total collapse.

“Get me anything,” she demanded of her agent.
“A role in a miniseries, a movie of the week, anything.”

She was stained now and had to wipe it off fast.

“I’ll do my best, baby,” her agent replied, trying to keep the discouragement from his voice. “This happens to everyone. This is just a little setback.”

Not much was out there right now, he knew, particularly for an actress whose show had died as if it had caught the Black Death. People in the industry would wonder if the fault lay with the series or with her ability to draw an audience.

Her friend Annette Valletta had found phoned immediately after hearing the bad news. The sincerity of her sympathy was even harder for Sally to take. Annette’s new comedy series, also on FBS, had been an instant hit. Within a month it was in the top ten and was now consistently in the top five.

Sally went looking for the little Japanese lacquer box she kept in the dressing-table drawer. She fished around in back and then remembered she had taken it home and finished the last of the pot with friends the other night.

Oh, Jesus, what a time to run out! She had always gotten her supply from a stuntman with whom she worked on her previous series, but he was out of town now.

I just need something to calm me down, make me feel a little better right now, she thought. She racked her brain for anyone who might have some or might know a dealer.

She heard a knock and opened the door. Gus Krieger was standing in the doorway, a sad look elongating his round face.

“Did you hear the bad news?” he asked.

She nodded and ushered him into the dressing room.

“We tried. God knows, we tried,” he exclaimed. He slumped down into an armchair. “You were great in it.”

“This is just a little setback,” she repeated with a confidence she did not feel.

“People probably said the same thing when they spotted the first flames on the
Hindenburg
.” Gus’s gaze lifted. “You aren’t busy right now? I’m not interrupting anything?”

“Just a good long cry.”

“Mind if we share it.”

She shook her head. “You wouldn’t happen to have any pot, would you?”

“I’ve got better than that.” He jumped to his feet. “I’ll be right back.”

His absence was brief. Gus locked the dressing-room door when he returned and sat down beside the glass coffee table. From a small envelope he began to pour white powder onto the glass in parallel lines.

“I’ve never tried it,” she admitted. “But I guess if any time is right to bury our sorrows, this is it.”

“You’re going to be crazy about this stuff,” he assured her.

He turned out to be right.

Greg was shocked to learn that one of the other men in the department was taking over his job in Station Relations. He thought he had been doing well: Just the right amount of diplomacy as the point man
who
cleared the toughest affiliates for the network and just the right amount of muscle. He had never failed at anything in his life. He was badly shaken. He immediately strode down the hall to see the department head.

An old-timer who had been with the company for forty years, the man had been recruited to join the fledgling TV network at its birth, out of the small collection of Midwestern radio stations Barnett had inherited from his father and then had grown into regional force in television as well. He had survived this long, it was rumored, by having a bloodhound’s nose for corporate politics and an astute insight into how Barnett Roderick thought. He could smell trouble wafting on the slightest breeze. He was also one of the few men in whom the Chairman was said to trust enough occasionally to confide.

“I thought I’d been doing well,” Greg declared. “You yourself told me that.”

“You are,” the older man admitted.

“Then why demote me.”

“They have something else in mind for you, I hear. It will just take some time to materialize.”

“What does that mean? Who are ‘they’?”

The older man did not bother to answer the question, which was as good as announcing that Barnett had ordered the change.

“Level with me,” Greg asked. “It won’t leave the room.”

The older man weighed Greg’s trustworthiness and then nodded. “They hadn’t realized your job was sensitive. If you mess up—a whole bunch of stations refusing to clear and really killing the night for us—someone might have to be blamed. They couldn’t afford it to be you.”

“So I’m getting penalized now for marrying the boss’s daughter.”

“If you want to look at it that way.
If I were you, though, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Sit tight. They’ll find something a hell of a lot better for you.”

“Without any responsibility.”

“With less risk.”

“I’d at least like a chance to discuss this with him.”

“Don’t,” the older man cautioned. “He’s not going to change his mind. Trust me on this. You’ll only antagonize him. He does nothing without a purpose.”

“So I just sit back and let it happen?” Greg had always gone zealously after his goals; he was not used to waiting for them to come to him.

“When it suits
his
purpose, not
yours
, he’ll act.
And not a moment sooner.”

“Damn it, I intend to make something of my life.”

“Ride with it, Greg,
don’t
fight it. That’ll take you a lot further.”

The older man stood up. That was all he was prepared to say.

Several weeks later, Greg was promoted into a different department. By then he had reconciled himself to the fact that he would not necessarily rise because he performed well, but because he did not screw up, did not make mistakes, handled himself judiciously.

Anticipating the jealousy others must feel about his privileged status within the company, Greg took greater care to be liked and not to be controversial. He emphasized his charm and modesty.

Chris’s high salary anchoring local news turned out to be a cheap investment. Within six months her new station had leapfrogged over KFBS in the ratings. By then Stew and several others at that station had moved elsewhere. One of them was Hugo Ramirez, who transferred to the network’s Buenos Aires news bureau, which covered all of South America, on the promise that he would eventually be moved to network news in New York.

A lot of newscasters in Los Angeles were capable reporters and could speak well. Some even had Chris’s tenacity and capacity for hard work. But her looks and personality elevated her above the almost
undifferentiable
multitude crowding the channels at news time. Her beauty was inviting—fresh and wholesome—engaging both men and women viewers, and she seemed an intelligent, honest friend in their living rooms. Audiences liked and remembered her.

Less than a year had passed on her contract when Carl Green opened up negotiations. He gave her network a choice: Either
move
her from local now at an increase or she’d move to another network on her own
when her contract expired next year. Network news agreed to make her their head reporter in the Los Angeles bureau.

“What exactly does that mean, Carl?”

“An extra hundred thousand a year.”

“In responsibility,” she insisted.

“You’ll be the main reporter doing L.A.
and West Coast pieces for the network’s
evening news.”

“They’ve already got Clark
Wiggens
doing that.”

“As far as they’re concerned,
Wiggens
is already history. But I’ve got ABC hot to grab him.”

“And you end up with
two
commissions.”

:enough
with the commission. Deep down you’re still a little girl from Idaho
—
“

“Wyoming.”

“—wherever, who’s counting pennies. What’s important is how much more
you’re
making, not me.”

Chris was confused. “
Wiggens
is good. Why did the network choose me?”

“
Your
Q-rating.”

“What’s a Q-rating?”

“They used to hook electrodes up to people. The more electricity popped out of their skin when you were shown on a screen, the higher viewer appeal they thought you had. Now they use questionnaires, focus groups.
Wiggens
had high negatives. You didn’t.”

Chris was incensed. “What does that have to do with my professional skills: my writing, the stories I’ve done, the work I’ve put in, my—”

“Not a damned thing. But without all that you’d fall flat on your ass a month into the job and no Q-rating in the world could save it.”

“Somehow I don’t feel the joy I thought I would at moving up to network. It feels like I just won a beauty contest.”

“Just think how you’d feel if you were the fifth runner-up applauding for the winner.”

Chris fumed for days over the reason for her promotion, on being judged like an entertainer. The Greg
Lyalls
of the world were clearly t
he future of the news industry.

“I can’t wait to show it to you,” Diane crowed. “It’s just what we need.”

At the back of
Town & Country
, she had come across an ad for a handsome country house for sale in nearby Connecticut. She immediately phoned the broker. She took the afternoon off to look at it.

To Diane’s surprise, Greg was furious. “Why didn’t you let me know?”

“They said you were at lunch. Someone else had already made a bid and was about to sign a contract, but was too cautious about putting money down.”

“The seller would have waited till the weekend or even till tonight so I could see it.”

She was hurt by his attack. “But I knew you’d like it. It has a great tennis court and swimming pool.”

“Diane, I’m sure I’ll like it. San Simeon probably looks like subsidized housing next to it. That isn’t the point.”

She was growing annoyed. “After saving you all the bother of running around with brokers, I expected you’d be pleased.”

“It’s a decision we should have made together.”

“I liked it. I bought it.”