“Send Howards in,” Barron half-groaned, hoping Carrie had the intercom volume up so Bennie would know how pleased he was to see him, but knowing she ran tight ship under network orders (try to keep Barron from devouring vips for chrissakes, Miss Donaldson) cool, competent Carrie, efficient and distant even in bed. (Network orders there too? he often wondered.)
The office door opened, held by willowy, dark, suppressing-her-distaste-for-sloth’s-den (I sit here on sufferance) decor of inner office Carrie, as ’70s-elegant (black buttonless silk suit, white ascot over red ruff-collared shirt), tall, pink-skinned, thin-hair-worn-long, semi-chubby Benedict Howards bustled by her to stand wordlessly in front of the randomly-littered desk.
“Split, Carrie,” Barron said, knowing it would bug Howards, who wouldn’t publicly first-name secretary he had been balling for five years. (Wonder if he is balling that iceberg of his?) As Carrie left, Barron motioned Howards to the moldy ancient leather-covered chair in front of the desk, and grinned as Howards gingerly planted his ass on the edge of the chair like a man thoroughly convinced you could too get clap from a toilet seat.
“Well, Howards,” Barron said, “to what do I owe the somewhat dubious pleasure of your company?”
“You’re not on camera, Barron, so you’re wasting your smart-ass cleverness on me,” Howards said. “And you know goddamned well why I’m here. I don’t like knives in my back, and I warn you, no one does it three times to Benedict Howards. First time you get a warning, second time you get squashed like a bug.”
“If you weren’s so fucking charming, Howards, I’d take that as a threat,” Barron said. “Fortunately for you, I’ve got an easy-going disposition. Because I don’t like threats, man: they bug me. And this Wednesday you got a small taste of what happens when you bug Jack Barron. But it was just a taste, Howards, nobody got really hurt, and we both know it. I made some points because that’s the name of the game, but I gave you a chance to get out from under. It wasn’t my fault you didn’t take me up on it. I hope you got yourself a big one.”
Barron smiled as he saw Howards’ face go blank for a moment. (Mr Howards is on a hunting and fishing trip in Canada, Mr Barron.) “I thought so,” Barron said. “I don’t know why you thought it was a smart move to be out to me when I was on the air, but I didn’t like it. You got cut up, it was strictly your own fault. You had your chance to make points for your goddamned Freezer Bill, and you blew it. I run a simple show, Howards. You make me look dumb. I return the favor. Whis is why I cut up Yarborough and gave Luke Greene the floor.”
“I seem to remember that you and Greene were pretty tight at one time,” Howards said. “For all I know, you’re still involved with the Social Justice Coalition. The way you made Yarborough look like an asshole, and then let that goddamned coon spout his Communistic—”
“Let’s get a couple things straight,” Barron snapped. “One, John Yarborough is a self-made asshole. Two, I’m in show business, Howards, I’m not a politician. I kissed the SJC goodbye when I got this show, and I consider it good riddance. I’m interested in my ratings, and selling cars and dope and nothing else. You don’t like me, fine, but give me credit for being a cut above an imbecile. I use the show to roll any party’s little red wagon, I get stomped by the FCC quicker than you can pass the word to your two tame commissioners and then I can really go back to waving picket-signs. But there’s mighty little bread in that line of work, and I like the way I’m living now a lot better than I liked scrounging around Berkeley and Los Angeles.
“And, finally, Howards, while I don’t give a shit about Luke’s politics, he is an old friend of mine, and if you call him a coon or a nigger to my face again, I’ll kick your ass all around this office.”
“Do you know who you’re talking to?” Howards shouted. “No one gives lip to Benedict Howards! I’ll squeeze your sponsors and the network and put pressure on the FCC, and I’ve got more than enough muscle to do it. Cross me, and I’ll cut you to dogmeat and feed you to the fishes.”
“And how long do you think that’d take?” Barron asked mildly.
“I can have you off the air in a month, and you’d better believe it.”
“Four weeks, four weeks,” said Jack Barron. “Think about that. Think about what I could do to you if I had nothing to lose because you were killing my show anyway. Four weeks’ worth of sheer spite. Four hours in front of a hundred million people, and me with nothing better left to do than take revenge on you and your Foundation.
“Sure you can destroy me if you want to commit hara-kiri—and, for that matter, I can always kamikaze you. We’re both big boys, Bennie, too big for either of us to do the other in without making it a Samson-smash. I don’t like you, and you don’t like me, but you’ve got nothing to worry about from me unless you back me into a corner. But if I go, you go too, and don’t you forget it.”
Suddenly, unpredictably, Howards went smooth. “Look,” he said, with jarring reasonableness. “I don’t come here to trade threats with you. You hurt my Freezer Bill, cost me a few votes, but—”
“Don’t blame me,” Barron said. “Blame that schmuck Hennering. He’s your boy, and that’s why I put him on, to let your side make points and even things out. It’s not my fault if the dum-dum—”
“That’s all ancient history, Barron,” Howards said. “I’m interested in the future. Man like me’s gotta take the long view. (Howards smiled a weird beatific smile. What the hell’s that? Barron thought.) The real long view… And the Freezer Utility Bill’s mighty important to my future, to the future of the human—”
“Aw, spare me that crap, will you…” Barron drawled. “You want a bill passed to give you a Freezer Monopoly, that’s your bag, but don’t try to bullshit me about the future of the human race. You’re looking out for Number One, period. Keep it on that level, and maybe I’ll listen.”
“All right, Barron, I’ll lay it on the line. You’ve got something I need—Bug Jack Barron. You’ve got a pipeline to a hundred million Americans, and what they think about the bill can swing some votes in Congress, not as many votes as they’d like to think, maybe, but some. I want those votes. I want you to do the kind of shows that will get me those votes—not every week, we can’t be too obvious, but just the right touches here and there. You’ve got the following and the know-how to pull it off. That’s what you can do for me, Barren, and in return—”
“You’re crazy, you know that?” said Jack Barron. “You expect me to risk the show by grinding your private ax? Where’s the percentage, Howards? I knock down four hundred thou in a good year, and I got a lot of years left with Bug Jack Barron. Show biz gives me enough money to let me live exactly the way I want to, and I dig it. Forget it man, you can’t buy me the way you buy loxes like Teddy Hennering. You just don’t have anything I want that bad.”
Benedict Howards smiled a smug smile. “Don’t I?” he said. “I’ve got something everyone wants, something you can’t buy with money—life, Barron, life itself. Immortality. Think about it, man, a life that goes on and on, not for a lousy century but millenium after millenium, young and strong and healthy forever. Think about what that means every morning when you wake up, knowing it’s all there forever—the way food tastes, the way a woman’s body feels, the smell of the air—all of it yours, and all of it forever. Wouldn’t you sell your soul for that? Wouldn’t anyone? Because you wouldn’t need a soul to go somewhere and play a harp when you croak. You’d have it all, right here on terra firma. Forever… Forever…”