"Is this entertainment ladies and gentlemen? Or what?"
I had the bitterness of a Xanax on my tongue.
We had Ramon haul out some videotapes of old "Late Night" editions, and watched them.
"How do you feel?" my husband asked me.
In slow motion, Letterman let drop from a rooftop twenty floors above a cement lot several bottles of champagne, some plump fruit, a plate-glass window, and what looked, for only a moment, like a live piglet.
"The hokeyness of the whole thing is vital," Rudy said as Letterman dropped a squealing piglet off what was obviously only a pretend rooftop in the studio; we saw something fall a long way from the original roof to hit cement and reveal itself to be a stuffed piglet. "But that doesn't make him benign." My husband got a glimpse of his image in our screening room's black window and rearranged himself. "I don't want you to think the hokeyness is real."
"I thought hokeyness was pretty much understood not to be real," I said.
He directed me to the screen, where Paul Shaffer, David Let-terman's musical sidekick and friend, was doing a go-figure with his shoulders and his hands.
We had both taken Xanaxes before having Ramon set up the videotapes. I also had a glass of chablis. I was very tired by the time the refrigerator magnets were perused and discussed. My husband was also tired, but he was becoming increasingly concerned that this particular appearance could present problems. That it could be serious.
The call had come from New York the Friday before. The caller had congratulated me on my police drama being picked up for its fifth season, and asked whether I'd like to be a guest on the next week's "Late Night with David Letterman," saying Mr. Letterman would be terribly pleased to have me on. I tentatively agreed. I have few illusions left, but I'm darn proud of our show's success. I have a good character, work hard, play her well, and practically adore the other actors and people associated with the series. I called my agent, my unit director, and my husband. I agreed to accept an appearance on Wednesday, March 22. That was the only interval Rudy and I had free in a weekly schedule that denied me even two days to rub together: my own series tapes Fridays, with required read-throughs and a Full Dress the day before. Even the 22nd, my husband pointed out over drinks, would mean leaving L.A.X. very early Wednesday morning, since I was contracted to appear in a wiener commercial through Tuesday. My agent had thought he could reschedule the wiener shoot — the people at Oscar Mayer had been very accommodating throughout the whole campaign — but my husband had a rule for himself about honoring contracted obligations, and as his partner I chose also to try to live according to this rule. It meant staying up terribly late Tuesday to watch David Letterman and the piglet and refrigerator magnets and an unending succession of eccentrically talented pets, then catching a predawn flight the next morning: though "Late Night'"s taping didn't begin until 5:30 E.S.T., Rudy had gone to great trouble to arrange a lengthy strategy session with Ron beforehand.
Before I fell asleep Tuesday night, David Letterman had Teri Garr put on a Velcro suit and fling herself at a Velcro wall. That night his NBC Bookmobile featured a 1989 Buyer's Guide to New York City Officials; Letterman held the book up to view while Teri hung behind him, stuck to the wall several feet off the ground.
"That could be you," my husband said, ringing the kitchen for a glass of milk.
The show seemed to have a fetish about arranging things in lists of ten. We saw what the "Late Night" research staff considered the ten worst television commercials ever. I can remember number five or four: a German automobile manufacturer tried to link purchase of its box-shaped car to sexual satisfaction by showing, against a background of woodwinds and pines, a languid Nordic woman succumbing to the charms of the car's stickshift.
"Well I'm certainly swayed," Letterman said when the clip had ended. "Aren't you, ladies and gentlemen?"
He offered up a false promo for a cultural program PBS had supposedly decided against inserting into next fall's lineup. The promo was an understated clip of four turbaned Kurdistani rebels, draped in small-arms gear, taking time out from revolution to perform a Handel quartet in a meadow full of purple flowers. The bud of culture flourishing even in the craggiest soil, was the come-on. Letterman cleared his throat and claimed that PBS had finally submitted to conservative PTA pressure against the promo. Paul Shaffer, to a drum roll, asked why this was so. Letterman grinned with an embarrassment Rudy and I both found attractive. There were, again, ten answers. Two I remember were Gratuitous Sikhs and Violets, and Gratuitous Sects and Violins. Everyone hissed with joy. Even Rudy laughed, though he knew no such program had ever been commissioned by PBS. I laughed sleepily and shifted against his arm, which was out along the back of the couch.
David Letterman also said, at various intervals, "Some fun now, boy." Everyone laughed. I can remember not thinking there was anything especially threatening about Letterman, though the idea of having to be peeled off a wall upset me.
Nor did I care one bit for the way the airplane's ready, slanted shadow rushed up the runway to join us as we touched down. By this time I was quite upset. I even jumped and said Oh as the plane's front settled into its shadow on the landing. I broke into tears, though not terribly. I am a woman who simply cries when she's upset; it does not embarrass me. I was exhausted and tense. My husband touched my hair. He argued that I shouldn't have a Xanax, though, and I agreed.
"You'll need to be sharp," was the reason. He took my arm.
The NBC driver had put our bags far behind us; I heard the trunk's solid sound.
"You'll need to be both sharp and prepared," my husband said. He judged that I was tense enough to want simply to agree; Rudy did know human nature.
But I was irritable by now. Part of my tension about appearing knew where it came from. "Just how much preparation am I supposed to need?" I said. Charmian and I had already conferred longdistance about my appearance. She'd advised solidity and simplicity. I would be seen in a plain blue outfit, no jewelry. My hair would be down.
Rudy's concerns were very different. He claimed to fear for me.
"I don't see this dark fearful thing you seem to see in David Letterman," I told him. "The man has freckles. He used to be a local weatherman. He's witty. But so am /, Rudy." I did want a Xanax. "We both know me. I'm an actress who's now forty and has four kids, you're my second husband, you've made a successful career change, I've had three dramatic series, the last two have been successful, I have an Emmy nomination, I'm probably never going to have a feature-film career or be recognized seriously for my work as an actress." I turned in the back seat to look at him. "So so what? All of this is known. It's all way out in the open already. I honestly don't see what about me or us is savageable."
My husband ran his arm, which was well-built, out along the back seat's top behind us. The limousine smelled like a fine purse; its interior was red leather and buttery soft. It felt almost wet. "He'll give you a huge amount of grief about the wiener thing."
"Let him," I said.
As we were driven up through a borough and extreme southeast Manhattan, my husband became anxious that the NBC driver, who was young and darkly Hispanic, might be able to hear what we were saying to one another, even though there was a thick glass panel between us in back and the driver up front, and an intercom in the panel had to be activated to communicate with him. My husband felt at the glass and at the intercom's grille. The driver's head was motionless except to check traffic in mirrors. The radio was on for our enjoyment; classical music drifted through the intercom.
"He can't hear us," I said.