Star Time (51 page)

"It'll be fine," the man in the safari jacket answered.

John Rosenthal was a red-bearded producer-director who had cut his teeth at MTM and directed a dozen hit shows over the years. The high fees he now received and the residual checks that came in each month had made him a rich man. He was heavily in demand during pilot season because of his touch with comedy. This year, though, the project he and his wife, Marti, an experienced producer, had personally developed had fallen through at the last minute, and Marian Marcus had talked them into joining the team for
Adam and Eve's
pilot.

"You keep telling me not to worry," Biff was agonizing, "but
somebody
sure as hell better!"

John smiled. He walked over to Sally and Chad. "Take it a little faster this time. And move a little closer."

"That's it?" Biff moaned when the smaller man returned to his chair. "If the world was collapsing in front of James Cameron’s eyes, would he just say, 'Move closer?"

"Marti!" John called over to the pretty, round-faced woman in discussion with Marian Marcus near the side of the studio. "You've worked with Cameron. Would he have told them to move closer?"

She noted the hint of a smile as he spoke, and she shook her head.
"Farther apart."

John turned back to Biff. "I guess you have your choice."

Unnerved, Biff rushed away.

"Let's shoot it this time," John directed the cast and crew. “And let’s have it faster.”

Marian and her staff had spent the week racing around Los Angeles screening rooms and sound stages, worrying through last-minute changes with the producers and writers. At times, Marian suspected, her people were as much of a hindrance to them as a help, but she wanted to be sure no unpleasant surprises would turn up in the finished shows. Every project seemed disastrous now, the memorized lines slow, dull, and trite, the interaction between the actors labored. But until shows were edited, sound mixed, music added, and images cut into a dance
across the little screen, no one could foretell whether they would evoke enchantment or be doomed to a fast death. For the select shows chosen for the network's schedule, that life or death decision would be made by millions of viewers voting thumbs up or thumbs down with their remote controls.

Marian had managed to drop in personally at rehearsals or shooting for nearly all of FBS's pilot shows.

Tinsel Town
, a musical centered on young actors, writers, and directors trying to make it in Hollywood, had been disappointing. The cast lacked vitality and the direction urgency. The aerial footage looked good for
Bottom Gun
, a comedy about a bumbling Air Force pilot who somehow always manages to come out on top. In rehearsal the actors hadn’t sounded half bad, but the jokes were too few and far apart. She recommended the
showrunner
immediately hire a veteran comedy-writing team to punch up the script. That would add another hundred thousand dollars to the budget for three days work, but it was a necessity.

In a couple of weeks, Gus Krieger would begin shooting the two-hour
Miss Grimsby
pilot. A 9:30
p.m.
fall slot was being held open for the series that would follow because everyone was sure it would play well.

Marian had special affection for
Scum
and thought its often-lewd humor and outrageous characters might just have a chance; the writing and the cast and crew generated a crazy chemistry that might carry over onto the screen. But was her schedule going overboard on such fare; the jury was still out on
What's
the World Coming To?

What else? Marian tried to remember as she drove back from Universal City. The hour was late, and she had just watched a run-through of the Benny Blakely sitcom. Early tomorrow morning, she would be watching the run-through of an edgy hour-long dramatic series. God, who knew anymore?

She did not look forward to going home tonight. Derek would not be there. They had spent time apart only once, when she went to New York for a meeting. But he had finally won a small part in a TV film and would be shooting on location in San Francisco. At the one or two parties they had attended together, women had buzzed around him as if he were a honey pot.
Beautiful women.
Because
he
was beautiful.
A casting director had told him, "No man as pretty as you
is
going to be believable to the average schnook sitting at home with his six-pack. He'll probably think you're gay." One of the hot, young actresses called for in the script might make him forget the plain, graceless woman awaiting him in L.A. She rejected the fantasy that Derek could love her for herself. All that was holding him here, she was convinced, was the penury that his
unlucky career had so far imposed and his knowledge that she could change all that.

Derek was a dreamer, a little at loose ends in the practical world. He depended heavily on the few, practical people in his life.
His agent.
Her.
Marian had inwardly debated many times whether to use her influence to help his career. And whether insisting someone cast Derek would weaken the virtue on which she prided herself, the integrity she considered essential for succeeding at her job. She could foresee being asked to repay the favor with an order for a script or even a pilot. Would Derek's having a part sway her to
greenlight
a project and would he hate her if she canceled it?

To her surprise the lights were on in the house. Derek was in the kitchen.

"What happened?" she asked. "You were supposed to be in San Francisco."

"I was about to leave for the airport when my agent called. The show was running over schedule and my scene got cut. They'll just give other actors a couple of my lines."

Derek had tried for a tone of carefree acceptance, but Marian could hear the misery. The long eyelashes were downcast, the lush lower lip falling. She put her arms around him.

"Don't worry, baby," she whispered soothingly. "Marian loves you. Marian has always loved you and always will. Someday it will happen for you. I know it will. You're going to be a star. I believe in you.

Derek put his own arms around her and laid his forehead against hers. "It kills me that I have to take from you and rely on you. I could work a second parking shift. Bring in more."

Marian kissed him. "You have to keep taking acting classes and being available for auditions. Don't ever think you have to do a thing for me to love you. Whatever I have is yours. Just be here. That's all I ask. Just be here."

What separated Chris from everyone else, no matter how important his or her contribution, was her inescapable awareness that every time the red light atop the camera went on she was the one on the line. When Matt Blanchard,
Confidentially Speaking's
executive producer asked her to change some copy that had already been changed twice, she told him, "If you're so sure it works your way,
you
read it on the air."

Chris turned on her heel and marched out of the studio.

"Anchors!"
Matt spat like a curse, embarrassed in front of the staff. He asked
Hedy
Anderson, who had a piece on this week's program: an interview with a 25-year-old Silicon Valley billionaire, to smooth the squabble.
Hedy
was closer than anyone else to Chris.

"See what you can do," Matt asked, eager to shove onto her the task of dealing with the tantrum.

Heavily overworked, Chris had been made edgy by her exhausting schedule. The program's early ratings were lower than the program's it had replaced, bringing into question her ability to draw a prime-time audience. A few days earlier, an influential Internet blogger had stated that her appearance on the program was window dressing for the format unless she handled more of the interviews. The comment rankled.

"Matt sent you again," Chris observed as soon as
Hedy
entered Chris's office.

"He hasn't got much of a bedside manner."
Hedy
took a seat beside Chris on her small sofa. "You look tired."

"I've had exactly one full weekend off in the last two months," Chris tensely replied. That had been the weekend at the
Lyalls
' estate. "I've been out of the country six times and in other parts of the country twelve more since I began anchoring the nightly news. Matt ought to understand that I can't waste my time on his games."

"Being the boss is still new to him. Are you going to be able to get away this weekend?"

"I leave for Moscow Friday night." Chris grinned conspiratorially.
"An interview with Putin and his wife.
In their home.
He’ll take me and our cameras sightseeing to show off Russian accomplishments and attractions. And from there we're trying to arrange Sarkozy in Paris."

"That's incredible! Matt has to be thrilled. He's crazy to be provoking you."

Chris sought
Hedy's
gaze, to reveal something else. "I'll probably do the opening story from Moscow for the nightly news, but it'll be too awkward my trying to anchor from there at four in the morning. I've asked that you sub for me as anchor on the news until I get back."

Hedy
was stunned. "I'm . . . I'm . . . Thank you."

"No need to thank me, you're good. I've also told Greg he should consider you to anchor weekends."

"He won't think it's too many women?"

Chris laughed lightly. "Do you mean, 'Is Greg a male chauvinist
?'
"

"Something
like
that."

Chris considered for a moment. "His only concern will be whether viewers take to you. He's like a circus juggler trying to keep what works up in the air."

"You two know each other so well. There’s a kind of shorthand you use when you discuss things."

"We worked together in L.A."

"God, it's got to be great to have someone hire you because he respects you as a professional."

"Someone pulled
you
out of local and brought you to the network."

"I mean someone who doesn't want his pound of flesh or to pound yours and you owe your soul to."

Hedy
turned away. She had said too much.  Chris suddenly suspected that
Hedy
had given up the little mews apartment and sublet it to Chris in order to move where she, too, would be hard to find. Chris bent forward and kissed her friend’s cheek. "What matters is that you've made good and proven yourself."

"Well, thanks again for mentioning me to Greg,"
Hedy
said, chagrined by how emotional she had allowed herself to become. "I really admire him. He's a terrific guy." She chuckled. "You know, the kind of attractive man they always say, 'It's too bad he's married.' "

Hedy
was surprised to glimpse a flash of sadness in Chris's eyes.

"Oh,"
Hedy
said in realization, "he's the one.
My apartment."

Reluctantly Chris nodded. She felt she had to explain.

"We both thought it was over years ago. It wasn't." Her eyes implored secrecy. "Please,
Hedy
."

"Not a word to anyone. I promise."

Impulsively,
Hedy
hugged her friend, sensing the enormous and ambivalent sorrow inhabiting her.

The afternoon light squeezed through the closed curtains and upturned blinds to suffuse the little bedroom with gauzy illumination. Chris lay naked across Greg's chest. Apart for weeks, they had made love almost frantically.

She lifted her head to look at him. "This was all I could think about flying back from Europe."

"You probably said the same thing to Putin to get that interview."

"It would have been too crowded there in bed.
Me, him, his wife, the interpreter."

"The language of love needs no interpreter," said Greg with feigned dreaminess.

"One of the great lies of the Western World.
Men and women speak a totally different language. If it weren't for biology . . ."

"You'd
be,
what?
A lesbian?"

"No," Chris answered with a seriousness that surprised them both.
"Happily married."

"I've watched you and Ken together. Civility isn't love."

"No, but it's steady and peaceful. Before you came back into my life I didn't question or hate myself."

"Aren't you happy now?
With me?"

"Yes. But tonight, at your dinner party, I'll feel like a total shit. 'Nice to see you again, Diane. I do so enjoy having your husband inside me.'
And 'Ken, you know Greg, don't you? Would you believe that not three hours ago he was fucking my brains out?
Small world!'"