‘That’s not what I want to hear,’ said Garry in mock disgust. ‘I want aggression! I want tantrums! I want overweening egos!’
‘Oh, I think you’ll get plenty of contention,’ said Dr Fortensky. ‘Just because we’re all nice people doesn’t mean we don’t have very strong differences of opinion.’ Dr Fortensky had a bald, suntanned dome of a head and the kind of huge yellow-tinted designer glasses that had been popular in the mid-1980s.
‘That’s right,’ put in Sara Velman. ‘So far we haven’t even been able to agree what sexual domination actually is. Is it handcuffing your lover to the bedpost and whipping him with wet spaghetti, or is it making him iron his own shirts?’ Sara Velman had glossy brunette hair, fashionably chopped, and a highly groomed assertiveness that came from being the Vassar-educated only daughter of a very wealthy family.
‘Give me the handcuffs and wet spaghetti every time,’ said Garry.
A bespectacled young studio assistant opened the door and said, ‘Two minutes, Mr Sherman.’
Garry went to the mirror on the opposite side of the room, jutted out his chin, and closely inspected each of his profiles in turn. ‘OK, I’m going to introduce you to our studio audience one after the other. I’m going to say a few highly flattering words about your respective books, at which time your book covers will appear on the screen. I’m going to ask each of you in turn what you think about today’s subject: Women on Top. After that, I’m going to invite you to rip each other to shreds, and I don’t care how outspoken you are or how riled up you get, short of getting out of your seat and socking each other on the nose. This isn’t the Jerry Springer show – besides, my budget doesn’t run to bodyguards.
‘Halfway through we go into a short commercial break and then we open up the floor to questions from the audience, some of which will be dumb and some of which will be stupefyingly dumb. See if you can coax the audience to come up with some personal anecdotes about sexual domination . . . you know the kind of thing – I make my husband fry pork chops in the nude.’
‘What’s wrong with frying pork chops in the nude?’ asked Dr Fortensky.
‘Nothing,’ said Jean Lassiter, ‘so long as you wear a little frilly apron.’
‘What did I tell you?’ said Sara Velman. ‘All men secretly want to be women. Under every business suit is a metaphorical garter belt.’
‘OK, then,’ said Gary Sherman, smacking his hands together. ‘Let’s get out there and shake our tambourines.’
He led the way along a corridor stacked with folding chairs and pieces of studio backdrop. At last they came out into the studio itself, under hot and dazzling lights. An audience of over a hundred people were sitting waiting for them, and when Garry walked over to his big white leather chair, there were whoops and whistles and a clatter of applause.
Studio assistants led Garry’s three guests up on to a raised platform, where three white chairs were positioned, with white side tables and glasses of water. The audience stared at them as if they were human exhibits on The Planet of the Apes.
‘Why do we do this? We must be mad,’ Sara said.
Jean flapped her hand dismissively. ‘We do it to sell books, dear. Can you think of a better reason?’
‘Who cares about books?’ said Dr Fortensky. ‘They give us warm white wine and curled-up Kraft cheese sandwiches and our plane fare home. What more could anybody ask for?’
‘Quiet, please,’ said the producer, raising his arm.
Tuesday, September 28, 3:41 P.M.
Outside Studio V, where The Garry Sherman Show was being recorded, Bill Dunphy and Joan Napela were sitting on an Italianate garden bench made of fiberglass painted to look like stone. Bill had tilted his cap over his eyes but Joan had taken her sunglasses off so that she could refresh her tan. She had been on night duty for the past three weeks and thought that she was starting to look yellow.
The lot was almost deserted, except for two stage hands outside Studio III, moving pieces of Greek columns and lengths of scaffolding with a forklift truck. Now that the studio tours had been suspended, the whole Panorama TV complex was eerily quiet. Bill and Joan had only had cause to challenge one visitor today, and he had turned out to be a plumber who had been called to unblock the executive toilets, and got lost in costumes.
‘Three weeks, two days, five hours and forty-one minutes,’ Bill announced.
‘Since when?’
‘Since I gave up smoking.’
‘That’s very good, Bill! You should be proud of yourself.’
‘I don’t have time to be proud of myself. I’m too busy feeling like something the dog sicked up.’
Joan sat up straight and put on her sunglasses. ‘You’ll get over it. One day you’ll go to bed and you’ll realize that you’ve not even thought about smoking all day.’
‘I’ll be dead from overeating by then. I’ve put on seven pounds already, and all I can think of is cheeseburgers. I’m thinking of cheeseburgers right now, as a matter of fact. Triple cheeseburgers, with extra cheese, and a basket of fried pickles on the side.’
Bill had worked for Studio Security for over eleven years. Back at home, he had photographs all over the living-room walls. Bill and Warren Beatty; Bill and Meryl Streep. Bill and Leonardo DiCaprio. He was an ex-traffic cop, a big dog-faced man with a scar down his left cheek. He looked as if he would tear your arms off just for looking at him funny, but in reality he was shy, soft spoken and careful in his ways. His hobby was collecting the tiniest moths.
Joan was small and wiry, with a big nose and frizzy blonde hair. Her alcoholic husband Carl had left her eighteen months ago with two children under five to take care of, and for a time she had held down two jobs – one behind the deli counter at Ralph’s and the other as an office cleaner. But then her best friend’s husband had told her that Studio Security were looking for recruits, male or female, big or little, white or black, and she had astonished herself by being accepted. She didn’t know that she had impressed Studio Security’s personnel manager by the fact that she never stopped talking. People would stop causing trouble just to shut her up.
‘You should try acupuncture,’ she suggested. ‘My friend Lena lost seventeen pounds with acupuncture. Mind you, she lost her husband as well. He said that if he had wanted a human skeleton he would have married Calista Flockhart. Now there’s the inflated male ego for you. He looked like an orangutan in a plaid sport coat.’
‘Acupuncture, that’s when they stick needles in you? I can’t stand needles. Brrr.’
‘Well, maybe you should try hypnotism. Or aversion therapy.’
‘What’s aversion therapy?’
‘What they would do is, they would make you eat triple cheeseburgers all day, every day, so that you never want to look at another triple cheeseburger, ever again.’
Bill shook his head. ‘Sounds great. Wouldn’t work on me. But I sure wouldn’t mind trying it.’
As they talked, a dark blue Mack truck came around the corner of Studio IV, and drove slowly toward them.
Tuesday, September 28, 3:47 P.M.
In the studio, the audience were screaming with laughter. Sara Velman had said that women were sexually excited by hurting their lovers, and so Garry had invited her to prove it by hurting him. She had strutted over to his seat and climbed on to his lap. Now she was twisting his ears and pulling his hair.
‘Hey, be careful with the hair, all right? This cost me nearly fourteen hundred dollars!’
One tall ginger-freckled woman put up her hand and said, ‘I love to bite my husband. I give him love bites all over, especially on his tush.’