Star Time (27 page)

Circumstances were so far gone that Greg no longer felt the need to hide his career frustrations either. “I’m also tired of being a parasite at work. You’ve been good about paying me well, but I haven’t had a job in years that was more than shuffling papers.”

Greg stared into the ruby depths of his glass. Barnett could see he was only a moment away from making the final decision to sever ties with both his job and his wife, and knew Greg’s character well enough to
foresee that it would be permanent: a clean break and a new life somewhere else with no second-guessing,
no
going back. He also believed Greg’s comment that Diane wanted to keep the marriage together. His daughter’s happiness was threatened. As always he would do whatever was necessary to protect it. That seemed to be to restore Greg’s self-esteem.

“Please forgive me!” Barnett cried out, grasping Greg’s hand—words and an act so unexpected and uncharacteristic that Greg jumped. Barnett rushed on. “I’m the one who’s to blame. You know how highly I think of you. The sky’s the limit for your career. I told you that once, and I meant it. But I should have foreseen that all this training to widen your experience would make you think I was holding you back. It’s my fault. Of course, you’re disheartened. Why wouldn’t you be? Say you’ll forgive me.”

Not knowing how else to react to the startling outburst, Greg nodded. “Sure.”

“Thank you,” Barnett responded gratefully. “As it is, I’ve held off too long announcing the reorganization.”

“Reorganization?”

“That was what I’d been planning to talk to you about tonight. If I had any idea you felt overlooked, I would have put it in place long before this, but what with one thing and another . . .” He hung his head sadly. “And all this while, I’ve been letting you blame yourself for not moving up into the spot I’ve been aiming you for, that you deserve, letting it hurt your marriage . . .”

Barnett did not finish the sentence. He was thinking. Shielding Greg from responsibility—and from failure—had become a greater risk to Barnett’s priorities than giving it to him. He was bright and capable, but how bright and how capable were mysteries because, as Greg himself had pointed out, he had never been entrusted with a job carrying enough responsibility to test his talents.

Barnett mentally leafed through some departments that were important, but not critical to the company’s success, departments that could be aggregated into one division under Greg in some rational way. The Finance V.P. was nearing retirement. Moving Greg into his slot and adding the company’s administrative operations to the financial ones under him would make some sense. The Broadcast Division would stay under Carver, who had recently been moved up to repair its problems, principally to develop better programming. Bill Jorgenson would keep Sales and the other non-broadcast operations he was already running. The logical assumption would be, Barnett was sure, that the three men were candidates to be his successor; and their performance would decide the winner. The plan made operational sense and would placate the
directors. Barnett did not concern himself with the many executives who would be angered or disheartened when Greg was jumped over them.

“Greg, I’m dividing the company into three groups and naming three group presidents.
Just three, all reporting directly to me.
The three most capable men in the company.
You’re sure as hell one of them. I want you as my head of Finance and Administration. The salary would be a million and a half a year.” He listed the departments in Greg’s new group.

Flabbergasted, Greg was speechless; only seconds before he had been superfluous.

“Say you’ll take it,” Barnett implored him. “These are difficult times for FBS. You’re a man I can count on.”

“I had no idea.”

“But you had my solemn word. From the first day we met in my office” Barnett said with apparent astonishment. He sat back. “Now that that’s out of the way, it seems to me that you and Diane should be able to smooth out those bumps in your marriage.”

“I’d like to,” Greg answered honestly, his mind’s eye filled by the heaping platter Barnett had just set down before him.

“Good.”

Barnett went to the door. “Diane!” he called out.

Putting an arm around his daughter when she appeared and winking at Greg, he said to her, “Diane, honey, would you please help me convince this stubborn husband of yours to take the group presidency I’m offering him? He’s quite a man you married.”

Stew
Graushner
had spent his life waiting for catastrophes to batter him. For the most part he had been pleasantly surprised by their absence—until this year. God had simply been waiting until now to ambush him, he lamented, sending a sudden avalanche of misfortunes careering downhill at him one right after another, as if he were a video-game victim.

He had departed KFBS soon after Chris, not wanting to be around when the ratings inevitably dropped. Burned out, he had left TV news to pursue his dream of teaching and writing. A local university had welcomed him. Half his teaching schedule comprised courses in broadcast journalism, the other half creative writing courses in a two-man department. His pipe and elbow-patched tweed jackets finally felt appropriate, despite the southern-California warmth. His income was drastically reduced in academia, but the university did not charge his wife, Patty, the cost of tuition for completing college and her subsequent three years at the law school.

By this spring he had finally dared to feel optimistic. His teaching career appeared to be going well, even tenure was a possibility; and Patty was now firmly established in a law practice. All their sacrifices now seemed worthwhile.

One night Stew brought home flowers and announced to her that he thought the two of them should consider a second honeymoon, maybe the trip to Europe they had never been able to take. Patty told him she didn’t think that was a good idea because she had decided to divorce him.

She drew from her briefcase the separation agreement she had drawn up. She would get the house, where she and their daughter, Wendy, would continue to live. What little was in the bank would be hers as well, in lieu of child support. He would be responsible for Wendy’s college tuition, though that was not really a problem because she would be attending his university and tuition for her would be free.

Bewildered, distressed, not wanting to stay where he wasn’t wanted, Stew signed the document and left with his personal possessions. He stowed them in his Volkswagen’s trunk and drove off to a motel.

Next morning, as he was walking among the university’s buildings toward his classroom, the head of their two-man Creative Writing Department approached him with more bad news. The department’s budget had been cut back and one man would have to be let go.

“Nothing personal,” the other man sympathized, “but since I’m the one who gets to choose, you’re the one who leaves. And since the Journalism Department also has to cut someone, we kill two birds with one stone. Firing you works out quite neatly. You can see that, I’m sure.”

Stew stared up at the mocking, malevolent heavens and trudged on, refusing to be beaten down. Still employed through summer school, he would use his time to start writing that novel. By the fall he would have enough chapters to find a publisher. He would rise again.

He spent most of the summer session trying unsuccessfully both to find a teaching job for the fall and to make headway on a novel. After weeks of staring at his typewriter, he began to bang out something he knew was superficial and that bored even him. If he had been grading the work, he would have given it maybe a C—for effort and clean typing. News writing is brief and simple, and much of it is collegial, one person handing off ideas and copy to another to take the next step in the process. He found that he hated writing in isolation and, even more, writing novels, which would not be read to hundreds of thousands of viewers at six and eleven. Worst of all, he was awful at it.

His energy and attention drained quickly. Going out for ice cream became a daily ritual to break up the tedious day. He gained ten pounds and had no novel to sell.

He began looking for work in television news. He had been out of the industry for seven years, and potential employers regarded him as an academician. They wanted hard-nosed, rolled-up-shirtsleeves-style newsmen, not bearded professors who theorized about TV news.
Or
would
have wanted such people if budgets were not being cut in every newsroom in America.
A small station was seeking a one-man "backpack" reporter. Did he know how to set up and operate a video camera? He could barely figure out his cell phone.

By September he was desperate, as low as he thought possible without a terminal disease. He was broke, borrowed up to his nostrils, his rent overdue, and without prospects. He decided God was holding back on a terminal disease only out of spite—because a hospital would then have to take him in as a charity case and put a roof over his head for free. He thought things could not possibly get any worse.

But then the phone call came from his wife. She was furious. Their daughter had not been allowed to register at the university because he had failed to pay the tuition.

Oh, no! He had lost the right to free tuition as soon as he taught his last class.

With great trepidation, Stew dragged himself back to the campus and into the Bursar’s Office. The woman in charge had always disliked him, and now he would have to rely on her dubious mercy. She was a burly woman, with a mole on her chin that had three hairs growing from it. He imagined a mole like that to be the last sight the children baked into gingerbread had before the oven door closed on them.

As he had expected, the terms were harsh: fifteen hundred dollars by the end of the day and two thousand more in a month. Eyes downcast as he left her office, he expected to see his feet turn into gingerbread.

He drove the Volkswagen to a used-car lot and sold it for twenty-one hundred dollars. That left him six hundred. By sneaking out of his apartment late tonight without paying his rent, he might be able to stretch that until October. Of course, without a car, he would have to carry his belongings in suitcases and shopping bags.

He walked the two miles back to the Bursar’s Office, paid her the fifteen hundred, and began walking across town to his apartment. He tried to look at the positive side. This was God’s way of slimming him back down.

That same week FBS’s much-vaunted new prime-time lineup premiered. It soon proved to be an even greater flop than the previous
season’s
. Leery of FBS’s new shows from the start, advertisers had done far less upfront buying than usual. The company had hoped higher ratings during the new season would raise prices for the unsold or
available scatter spots, the “avails.” But with audience size way below what FBS had guaranteed the advertisers, free make-good commercials threatened to absorb much of the avails’ inventory. The company faced the prospect of staggering losses in the coming year.

The final blow came in October when Barnett Roderick was felled by a heart attack and rushed to the hospital.

By chance Diane was in the children’s ward. She rushed to Intensive Care. Near hysteria, she insisted all of the hospital’s top cardiologists convene at the bedside—and even called in two associated with other hospitals for their opinions. She refused to leave her father’s side, ferociously interrogating every doctor and nurse before she would allow a procedure to be performed.

“You can’t leave me,” she kept muttering to him.

By morning his condition had stabilized, and it was clear he would pull through. Recovery would take many months, however. Only his doctors and immediate family were allowed to know his condition’s severity. His assistant was to say he was being kept in the hospital for observation, but would not be receiving visitors. 

Barnett did not delude himself that he could continue as CEO during what promised to be a long recuperation. He would have to pick someone to replace him at the head of FBS. He could remain chairman of the Board and would doubtless continue to control the directors, but supervising day-to-day operations would be impossible, even if his health recovered enough to permit him to resume a relatively normal existence.  FBS’s current situation was too critical for the company to be without a commander at such a dangerous time. Jorgenson knew every inch of the company and had a good mind, but he was nearing sixty-five and his energy was now
suspect
. That left
Ev
Carver and Greg.

Ev
was the logical choice. He had a record of success, was the most experienced, and already possessed the most authority as head of all broadcast activities, which included the TV and radio networks and the owned stations. The stations were far and away the most profitable part of the company. However, although perhaps not a fair test, the new programming developed this first year under his aegis had not set the world on fire.

Greg had shown to advantage in the short time since the reorganization, although the company’s most important business determinations were being made in the other two divisions. He was obviously shrewd and pragmatic behind his amiable manner. The mystery was what resided behind that. Was he tough enough to make the hard decisions that faced the man at the top? Did he have the
judgement
and intuition to make the final choice of new shows that would propel the network back upward in the ratings and to revamp operations in ways
that would cut costs without harming efficiency? Greg had held numerous mid-level posts that were affected by the programming and scheduling decisions that others made, but he had never developed new programs or scheduled their placement in the lineup. Carver would try to dominate the process of making those choices. But Barnett thought he detected in Greg a tenacious confidence that matched the other man’s. He had sensed it during their first dinner in L.A. when Greg, although expected by Carver to be silent and subservient, had refused to be undermined and ably stood his ground against an attempt to take credit for his accomplishments.