The Man Who Cancelled Himself (8 page)

“It’s a battle you can never win,” Tommy continued. “It’s his ball, his court, and his game. Lyle always has to get his way. Always. He won’t listen to anybody else. He won’t take criticism—”

“I’m like, he doesn’t even
hear
it,” said Annabelle. “He has this screen that filters out anything negative.”

“He has to feel like he’s in total charge at all times,” said Tommy. “If he doesn’t, he feels threatened. And when Lyle feels threatened you’d better duck—he wigs out big-time. So nobody challenges him. Not ever.”

“Not even you?” I asked.

“We used to,” said Marty, a bit defensively. “First season. It bothered us the way he kept changing our scripts in rehearsal. He’d throw out half our gags, schlock everything up. So we’d fight.”

“Creative differences,” Tommy recalled sourly. “We wanted to do something creative and he wanted to do something different.”

“But the fight’s gone out of us,” admitted Marty. “We have zero clout. We can never change his mind. So what’s the point? Besides, who are we to tell the man he’s wrong? He has the top-rated show in America. We just give him what he wants and try to stay out of his way.”

Tommy: “Think of us as master furniture makers laboring in a chair factory.”

Marty:
“Formica
factory. Formica says fake. Plus it’s a funnier word.”

Tommy: “You’re right. Formica factory it is.”

Now here were two guys who had been writing together a long time. They even punched up each other’s conversations.

“I’m, like, you guys are being so negative,” objected Annabelle.

“Okay, okay, maybe we do sound like total cynical hacks,” acknowledged Marty. “But at least we have no illusions about what we’re doing here.”

“Unlike Bobby.” Tommy sneered unpleasantly. “Where is the Bobster anyway? The Boston shuttle running late again?”

“Naomi was looking for him,” said Annabelle.

“Why, she need servicing?” he cracked.

“No, the copier does,” Annabelle fired back. To me she said, “Bobby’s the only one around here who’s handy.”

“Another thing you’re going to discover, Hoagy,” Marty went on, choosing his words carefully, “is that Lyle changes directions on you a lot. The man’s completely unpredictable. Which means a lot of our time is spent stabbing around in the dark—”

“Or, if possible, in Lyle’s back,” chipped in Tommy.

“For a gag that pleases him. And that’s a nonstop adventure, because what he says he loves one minute he may hate five minutes later. We never know why. We only know it’s out. So a lot of what we do is …”

“Trial and terror?” I suggested.

Marty nodded approvingly. “Not bad. You’re going to be okay.”

“So I keep telling myself.”

“Okay, wait, why’s she doing
that?”
wondered Annabelle, intently observing Lulu, who was snarfling at the wall next to the couch, tail thumping. “Is it a mouse?”

“No, she’d be cowering between my legs if it were any form of rodent life.” Now Lulu was growling at the baseboard. “Offhand, I’d say there’s a person listening on the other side of the wall.”

“Lyle,” Marty whispered. “He’s in Katrina’s office eavesdropping on us with his Super Ear. Some stupid James Bond gadget he bought at this spook supply shop on Madison Avenue. He can hear through walls with it. Show him, Tommy.”

Tommy got up out of his chair and creaked over next to the wall. “Just remember, Hoagy,” he exclaimed, voice raised. “No matter what happens we know we can always count on Lyle to come in at the last minute
and pull it out!”

There was a brief moment of silence. Followed by a tremendous crash on the other side of the wall.

“See?” chuckled Marty.

“And so another Uncle Chubby mug bites the dust,” intoned Tommy, clipping off the words like David Brinkley. He bent and gave Lulu a pat on the head. “You, Lulu, are okay.”

“I love her deadpan, too,” Marty observed, inspecting her. “Reminds me of Lady Macbeth.”

“Marty’s first wife,” explained Tommy. “Actually, she looks a lot like Beth. Especially around the nose.”

“She does,” Marty agreed. “Does she get PMS?”

Lulu let out a low moan of outrage. She has a rather Victorian sense of propriety. Picked it up from her mommy. Or so I’d once believed.

“Does Lyle often eavesdrop on you?”

“One of his favorite hobbies,” Tommy confirmed with dry dismay. “The man likes to go through our trash, too. He thinks people are constantly plotting behind his back to overthrow him. We’re talking serious paranoia here.”

I nodded. I wondered if that’s what all his talk about being set up at the Deuce was: paranoia. I wondered indeed.

“Tommy and I also happen to be in the middle of a rather ugly contract dispute with him,” Marty confessed.

“No way!” exclaimed Annabelle. “Not again!”

“Stick around, Hoagy,” said Tommy. “You may be head writer within the hour.”

“See, we found out last night from our agent that he’s trying to chisel us out of ten grand a week,” said Marty.

I tugged at my ear. “I’m afraid that may be my doing, indirectly.”

Tommy peered at me bleakly. “That what he’s paying you?”

“It is,” I replied. “And, believe me, if I’d known it was coming out of your—”

“Oh, hey, hey,” Marty cautioned me, with a raised hand. “Don’t you feel responsible, Hoagy. Not your doing. It’s
her
salary that’s killing us.”

“Katrina,” said Tommy distastefully. “He’s paying her thirty grand a week this season to be his coexec producer. Christ, she was Leo’s runner last season, making three hundred a week. Now she gets to sit in on writers’ meetings. She even gets to
speak.”

“I hate, hate, hate this scene,” squeaked Annabelle. It was a drop-dead imitation. Her eye even drifted. “Where’s the irony, guys, comedically speaking?”

“The woman,” said Marty, “has Lyle’s ear.”

“In addition to various other parts of his disgustingly gross anatomy,” added Tommy.

“The woman,” said Marty, “knows very little about comedy.”

“The woman,” snapped Tommy, “is a stupid, nasty twat and we all hate her stupid, nasty fucking guts.”

No one disagreed. Tommy’s designated role, it appeared, was to give voice to what the others were too afraid to say out loud. It was a role he seemed to savor as much as he did his sourness.

“You notice that rock on her finger? The show paid for it—twenty grand easy. She wanted a john for her office—the show paid for it. Hey, if it’s for us, no way. Nickels and dimes. He even charges us for our long-distance calls. But if it’s for him and his bim, the money’s there. Would you believe the show paid for all his coke last season? It was right there in the budget, under car and driver. Hell, the show pays for half a dozen extras every week who don’t even exist. He pockets their wages himself. He must pull in thirty grand a week under the table.”

“And then he pockets the table,” Annabelle chimed in. “Him and Leo. I’m, like, one time last season our art director, Randy, needed to build a set, last minute, and discovered there was no money left for it in that week’s budget—even though he hadn’t even built one set! I’m, like, so he went out to the prop warehouse in New Jersey to see what he could beg and borrow and, guess what, he discovers an antique dining table and chairs being loaded onto a truck headed for Leo’s place in the Berkshires. Leo sells the stuff up there to dealers and then splits the proceeds with Lyle. They’re thick as thieves, those two.”

“That’s why Lyle insists on personally supervising the entire production,” Tommy explained. “If there were a lot of lawyers and business affairs people around he’d never get away with all the shit he pulls. Or he’d have to cut them in on it. That’s also why he insists on doing the show here instead of in L.A. God and Jazzy Jeff are three thousand miles away. And with Marjorie he can play human bulldozer.”

The office door suddenly burst open. And there stood the human bulldozer, filling the doorway shoulder to shoulder in his unbleached caftan. He wasn’t kidding about taking precautions against germs in the studio. Over his mouth and nose he wore a surgical mask, on his hands latex gloves. He looked like he was on his way to the O.R. to take out somebody’s spleen. The man was boiling. His face, what little of it showed, was a deep shade of crimson. His eyes were high beams of intense light, the whites huge. They looked like a pair of poached eggs. He slammed the door shut behind him, shaking the whole office. Papers flew from the desks. “Your agent is
scum!”
he raged at The Boys. “Your agent
is filth.
Your agent is—!”

“Why do you say that, Lyle?” Marty asked him calmly. “Because he’s trying to hold you to a deal you already agreed to?”

“Human pollution!” Lyle roared on. “That’s what he is—
human pollution!
He’s
everything
that’s wrong with the television business! I
won’t
speak to him again! I
won’t
let him destroy my show! I won’t … !” He trailed off, chest heaving. He’d noticed me there. “Hiya, pal,” he said pleasantly. Total mood change. He may have even been smiling—hard to tell with the mask. “Getting settled in?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Good, good. Knew you’d fit right in. We’re all family here.” He glanced around the office. “Where’s Bobby?”

“Not here yet,” replied Annabelle, cowering. The man clearly terrified her.

He turned back to The Boys, who were glaring at him. He softened. “Now, guys, you gotta be reasonable. That’s all I’m asking. Agents, they make it about money. They make it about threats. He even said you guys were gonna walk out on me. Christ, if you did that I’d die. I
need you.
We’re not about money. We’re about doing what we love doing, with people we care about. What do we need agents for, huh? Let’s us settle this thing between ourselves, like family, okay? Whattaya say?”

“We say no, Lyle,” Marty replied, quietly but firmly. “We are
not
going to negotiate our contract with you. That’s why we have an agent. You’ll have to go through him.”

“I refuse!” Lyle bellowed. “I won’t talk to him! I won’t! I’ll fire you if it comes to that! You hear me?! I’ll fire you!”

“You can’t fire us, Lyle,” Tommy said scornfully.

“I can, too!” screamed Lyle. “I don’t need you hacks! I’ve never needed you!”

“You
can’t
fire us!” Tommy repeated.

“We
quit!”
screamed Marty.

“Bullshit!” yelled Lyle. “You don’t have the nerve!”

The Boys sat there in tight-lipped silence a moment.

“All right, we’ll listen,” Marty allowed grimly. “But we’re saying nothing, and we’re agreeing to nothing.”

“Totally cool,” said Lyle. “That’s all I ask.”

Annabelle made for the door. Lulu and I joined her. I did not slam it behind me.

Outside, all was quiet. Everyone in the production office was staring at us, examining our faces for a clue as to what was going on in there. Particularly the occupants of the two desks in the alcove outside of Lyle and Katrina’s offices. Naomi Leight, Annabelle’s designated babe-in-waiting, sat at one, sneaky eyes gleaming. At the other sat a woman in her fifties with close-cropped silver hair and olive bags under her eyes. She got up and came charging right at me, clutching a handful of papers. She was a bunched fist of a woman, in a gray gymnasium T-shirt and fatigue pants. She had a pair of glasses on a chain around her neck. Stuck behind her right ear was a Sherman, one of those dark brown cigarettes that come in the red box.

“Stewart Stafford Hoag,” she boomed in a deep, authoritative voice. “Do you wish to get paid at any time in the near future?”

“It would be nice,” I replied.

Somehow, she seemed to be looking down her nose at me, even though I had a solid ten inches on her. I guess it was her manner, something of a cross between a women’s prison guard and David Frye doing Bill Buckley. She moistened her thin, dry lips. “Then would you like to sign your payroll forms?” she demanded.

“By all means.”

We went to my office. Lulu was already there, curled up under my desk.

“I’m Leo Crimp, your line producer,” she announced gruffly. “You got a question, you come to me. You got a complaint about the P.A.’s, you come to me. You got a problem with Lyle, you don’t come to me—but you will anyway.”

I sat at my desk. “I was expecting a man—from the name.”

“Leo’s short for Leona,” she growled impatiently. “But if by that you mean you were expecting somebody with balls, you got somebody with balls.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“No problem if you don’t. I’ll remind you.”

Leo laid the payroll forms out on my desk and offered me her Bic pen. I used my gold-nibbed Waterman. I’ve found that true luxury is found in the little things, not the big ones. Especially when you can no longer afford the big ones. When I was done Leo snatched the forms back from me. She tried to take my Waterman, too, but I was too fast for her.

“You’ve joined the Writers’ Guild, correct?” she asked.

“Correct.”

“Good. Remember—they’re the only protection you got”

“From what?”

“Not what,” she snapped.
“Who.
Lyle, naturally. From when he tries to fuck you out of the credits on any episodes you write. Don’t let him get away with any of it. Fight him. Because it’s residuals money out of your own pocket, and because he’s full of shit.
He
doesn’t write the show—
you
do.”

This from Lyle’s own partner in crime. There wasn’t a lot of warmth around this place. In that sense it was like the house I grew up in.

Leo took the Sherman out from behind her ear and stuck it in her mouth. She didn’t light it. Smoking was prohibited in the production offices. “Just telling it like it is,” she explained brusquely. “I admire writers, but most of you are babes in the woods when it comes to money and what people will do to get it.”

“Thank you, Leo. I appreciate the advice.”

“You know good from evil?” she demanded, removing the unlit cigarette from her mouth.

I tugged at my ear. “Does anyone?”

“Watch out for Katrina,” she said vehemently. “She’s the worst kind of evil.”

“And which kind is that?”

“She’s a user.”