He felt his subjective head-time speeding up, like an alien drug in his bloodstream, at the focus of forces far beyond him yet at his command as letters crawled across the promptboard an electronic-dot message that seemed to take ten million years: “On the Air.”
“And what’s bugging you out there tonight?” Jack Barron asked, playing to the kinesthop-darkness shapes double-reflected (backdrop off desktop) in his eye hollows ominous with foreknowledge of the shape of the show to come. “What bugs you, bugs Jack Barron,” he said, digging his own image on the monitor, eyes picking up flashes as never before. “And we’ll soon see what happens when you bug Jack Barron. The number is Area Code 212, 969-6969, and we’ll take our first call right… now.”
Now, he thought, making the vidphone connection, nitty-gritty time, Bennie-baby, better be good and ready, here it comes now. And the screen split down the middle; left half a pallid gray on gray image of a dough-faced middle-aged woman with deep lines of defeat-tension etched around her hollow-bagged eyes like dry kernels of mortal disaster, a hag-gray ghost begging her living-color image for alms from the gods.
“This is Bug Jack Barron, and you’re on the air, plugged into me, plugged into one hundred million Americans (drawing out the words for special audience of one, one hundred million, count ’em Bennie, 100,000,000) and this is your chance to let ’em all know what’s bugging you and get some action, ’cause action’s the name of the game when you bug Jack Barron. So let’s hear it all, the right here right now live no time-delay nitty-gritty; what’s bugging you?”
“My… my name is Dolores Pulaski,” the woman said, “and I’ve been trying to talk to you for three weeks, Mr Barron, but I know it’s not your fault. (Vince gave her three-quarters screen, put Barron in upper righthand corner catbird-seat, living-color Crusader dwarfed by yawning gray need. Just the right touch, Barron thought.) I’m calling for my father, Harold Lopat. He… He can’t speak for himself.” Her lips quivered on the edge of a sob.
Jesus Christ, Barron thought, hope Vince didn’t feed me a crier, gotta underplay this schtick or I’ll push Howards too far. “Take it easy, Mrs Pulaski,” he soothed, “you’re talking to friends. We’re all on your side.”
“I’m sorry,” the woman said, “it’s just so hard to…” Her eyes frightened and furtive, her jaw hardened to numbness, the tension came across beautifully as she forced herself calm. “I’m calling from the Kennedy Hospital for Chronic Diseases in Chicago. My father, he’s been here ten weeks… die… die… he’s got cancer, cancer of the stomach, and it’s spread to the lym… lymphatics, and the doctors all say… we’ve had four specialists… He’s dying! He’s dying! They say they can’t do anything. My father, Mr Barron. My father… He’s going to die!”
She began sobbing; then her face went off-camera, and a huge pale hand obscured the vidphone image as she picked her vidphone up, turned its camera on the room. Trembling, disjointed, out of focus pieces of hospital room stumbled across the monitor screen: Walls, wilted flowers, transfusion stands, bed, blankets, the thousand deathhead’s wrinkled ether-smell shriveled face of a ruined old man, and her voice—“Look! Look! Look at him!”
Jeez, Barron thought, pumping his screen-control foot-button even as Vince changed the monitor-mix to three quarters Jack Barron, the lower lefthand quadrant still a jumble of sliding images, old man’s face fingers vased flowers trays of needles bedpan—hideous gray montage of death by inches now muted at least, surrounded by full-color embracing image of concerned Big Brother Jack Barren, and Dolores Pulaski’s screaming sobs were a faraway tinny unreality as Vince bled her audio and Barren’s voice reestablished control.
“Take it easy, Mrs Pulaski.” Barren stopped just short of harshness. “We’ll want to help you, but you’ll have to stay calm. Now put the vidphone down in front of you, and just try to remember you’ll have all the time you need to say what you want to. And if you can’t find the words, I’m here to help you. Try to relax. A hundred million Americans are on your side and want to understand.”
The woman’s face reappeared in the lower left quadrant, eyes dull, jaw slack, a spent, pale-flesh robot-image, and Barren knew he was back in control. After a little hair-tearing, she’s got nothing left in her, you can make her say anything, she won’t make more waves. And he foot-signaled Vince to give her three-quarters screen, her schtick to the next commercial, as long as she stayed tame.
“I’m sorry I had to be so short with you, Mrs Pulaski,” Barren said softly. “Believe me, we all understand how you must feel.”
“I’m sorry too, Mr Barren,” she said in a loud stage whisper. (Vince, Barren thought, on the ball as usual, turning up her volume.) “It’s just that I feel so… you know, helpless, and now when I can finally do something about it, it all just came out, everything I’ve been holding in… I don’t know what to do, what to say, but I’ve got to make everyone understand…”
Here it comes, Barren thought. Sitting on the edge of your sweaty little seat, Bennie? Not yet, eh? Keep cool, Bennie-baby, ’cause now you get yours!
“Of course we all sympathize, Mrs Pulaski, but I’m not quite sure what anyone can do. If the doctors say…” Give, baby! Shit, don’t make me fish for it.
“The doctors say… they say there’s no hope for my father. Surgery, radiation, drugs—nothing can save him. My father’s dying, Mr Barron. They give him only weeks. Within a month… within a month he’ll be dead.”
“I still don’t see—”
“Dead!” she whispered. “In a few weeks, my father will be dead forever. Oh, he’s a good man, Mr Barron! He’s got children and grandchildren who love him, and he’s worked hard for us all his life, and he loves us. He’s as good a man as anyone who ever lived! Why, why should he be dead and gone forever while other men, bad men, Mr Barron, men who’ve gotten rich on good men’s sweat, they can live forever just by buying their way into a Freezer with the money they’ve stolen and cheated people like us to get? It’s not fair, it’s… evil. A man, like my father, an honest, kind man, works all his life for his family, and when he dies he’s buried and gone like he had never existed, while a man like Benedict Howards holds… holds immortal lives in his filthy hands like he was God…”
Dolores Pulaski blanched at the weight of the word that hung from her lips. “I didn’t mean…” she stammered. “I mean, forgive me, to mention a man like that in the same sentence with God…”
Jeez, spare me the Hail Marys! Barron thought. “Of course you didn’t,” he said, picturing Howards sweating somewhere in the bowels of his Colorado Freezer with no place to hide. He tapped his right boot-button twice, signaling Vince to give him a two-minute count to the next commercial as he paused, casually kind, before continuing. “But tell me, Mrs Pulaski, what are you asking me to do?” he said, all earnest choir-boy innocence.