“Cutting down on the overhead?”
“Bill Paley said it years ago, Benny, we’re not into real estate. We buy and sell programs. That’s the way ahead. There’s a lot of confusion, especially with the old diehards who like the smell of the greasepaint. But that’s Dodo-land. That’s ancient history.”
I wanted to ask who Bill Paley was, but I’d shown off enough ignorance for one afternoon already. We walked past a protesting commissionaire and through a back door leading to a sound stage. Here dozens of children dressed in blue tulle and sporting silver halos and wings were pulling at the contents of three boxes of pizza. Walking around them were various floor managers and kid wranglers, carrying bags of knitting in case a dull moment should unexpectedly appear.
“Ernestine, you can’t carry a wand if you’re going to be an alto! The altos aren’t carrying anything. It’s just the little ones who carry wands, dear. Understand?” I outgrabbed a wedge of pizza from under the nose of a blonde, blue-eyed angel, who gave me a withering sneer. Vanessa led the way through the tulle to a control booth overlooking the sound stage. We walked in and closed the door behind us. On a line of illuminated monitors, I could see a band of brass players in grown-up versions of the costumes I’d already seen. The monitors blocked the view of the studio below from the right, and flats on the set obscured it from all the other directions. In fact, the eight or so people sitting closest to the glass could only see what was going on below through one or more of the monitors. Nobody turned around as we came in.
The angelic brass players were standing on steps rising towards a set of pearly gates. Highlights from the French horns, trumpets and trombones shone through the smoke or fog that was obscuring what was going on. One of the musicians was coughing into a red bandana that probably hadn’t been cleared with the costume department.
The control room supported a gloom of its own. The monitors supplied the only bright spots in view. The rest of the illumination came from tiny points of red and green lights shining on control panels. Script assistants read by lights so dim as to imperil their vision. For a moment, nobody looked at us; then, when we were spotted, the producer called “Cut!” and everybody went on a five-minute break, while Vanessa and he had words in the suddenly emptied room. “Eric, I want you to meet my new assistant. Eric Carter, Benny Cooperman.” Carter glanced in my direction and bussed Vanessa on both cheeks.
“I’m half a day ahead of schedule, Vanessa. In spite of the lighting trouble I told you about. The kids are going to be terrific. Just like you said. I can’t believe this woman,” Carter said to me, “she’s right about everything. Even the effects! You said they’d slow us down and you were right, but I’ve got fifty replacement kids so I’ve cut down on the kiddy breaks. I just use different kids and keep rolling. Saved me hours and hours.”
“When do you wrap, Eric?”
“Friday night we’re out of here. I won’t cancel our Saturday and Sunday booking just in case-”
“Sure, insurance. Use the time for publicity stills. Get somebody you trust to handle the turkey-shoot before you head for the hills of Caledon.”
“Good idea.”
“Eric’s really a farmer, Benny. He’s happy as hell with his quarter horses nickering for their lunch.”
“When are you coming out again, Vanessa?”
Vanessa’s eyes narrowed. “You know you’re way over our agreed budget on this, Eric. I make it at least by three hundred thousand. That’s including your saved half-day.”
“Look at the film, Vanessa. You’ll love it. You’ll see it’s worth every cent.”
“Where can you save in what’s left? I need this, Eric! Can you reprise anything? Think, love. You’re too dear for this crapshoot.”
“I won’t have it savaged at this stage!” he said, pursing his thin lips and folding his arms in front of him.
“You’ll come up with some cuts, or I’ll get somebody else to finish it. You know I’m not kidding.”
“Vanessa!”
“Eric, you’re not Mickey Rooney and this isn’t Judge Hardy’s old barn! Get your ass in there and make the hard decisions. You’ve got the band on tape. Do you need them standing around on the steps? Anybody wearing one of those nightgowns can hold a trumpet. Extras cost less than the high-price help, darling.”
“If I had time, I’d fight you on this!”
“You and everybody in town. Climb aboard. I want to screen this Monday morning. You hear?”
“It’ll be on your desk, damn it!” Angry red spots had appeared under his eyes.
Vanessa turned and headed out into the light. Before I had the wit to follow her, I caught a monosyllable in my ear. To Carter, it summed up Vanessa and all other women in a word.
FOUR
Outside in the narrow lot, I tried to quiz Vanessa about her delicate health, while she foraged in her bag for car keys. “I may look healthy, Benny, but I’m desperately run down. My bones are dissolving. My doctors tell me that I need six months with nothing to do but watch geraniums grow. Some tropical paradise without e-mail. Oh, wouldn’t I love it! Palm trees, bougainvillea!”
“Well, if that’s what the doctors say …”
“There wouldn’t be a designated parking place at NTC when I got back. Do you know how many names come off doors around there in a week, Benny?”
“But a needed rest for health reasons …?”
“Sudden death is the only excuse they understand, darling. And even that makes them angry this time of the year. When Harry Cassidy suffered a fatal stroke, the brass were sure he’d done it on purpose. Look! There’s a drugstore at the corner. Be an angel and get me some aspirin, Benny. I wouldn’t ask unless I really needed something for my head.” Vanessa pulled the car over into an empty space reserved for buses without waiting for my answer. I got out of the car and ran into the over-bright store to do as I was told. I bought a Kit Kat bar for myself, not knowing when Vanessa was going to call a halt to all this rushing around. When I got back, she ripped open the aspirin package while I wrestled with the top of the plastic bottle of mineral water I thought she might need to get the pills down. This accomplished, I continued to ask questions while she moved the car expertly through the heavy traffic.
“Do you suspect colleagues like Carter or Green of plotting against you? I mention them because their names are stuck in my memory.”
“Of course I do. They and everybody else in the place. Bill Franks. He’s head of Drama. Shotguns are his style. He likes to get a moose every fall. You know the type. But I don’t think he’s got the balls for it. And Nate Green’s out too, of course.”
“Why ‘of course’?”
“He’s dead, Benny. Don’t you read a newspaper? He died of a nasty cancer. I don’t even want to think about it.”
“Hy Newman seems desperate,” I offered.
“Hy is dead and buried like Nate, only he doesn’t know it yet. He’s an old man. The network isn’t a home for tired artists, Benny. If it was, the floor would be littered with has-beens.”
“That’s a bleak picture, Vanessa. We all get to be has-beens.”
“I’ve no time to worry about that. Let Human Resources deal with it. That’s what they’re there for. I’m not the Salvation Army, and Hy Newman’s not my rehabilitation project. Let somebody else try to regenerate him. I’ve got to keep my ass moving fast enough so that I don’t become the next victim of the system. Hy knew two years ago, long before I came aboard, that the network was getting out of producing its own programs. Even the CBC’s getting out of that. Hy knows it as well as I do. We are all looking for independent producers to pioneer ideas and create series. That’s when I can be approached. We horse-trade and out of it come sweetheart deals. Everybody’s happy. That’s how it works today, Benny.”
A Volvo ahead stopped abruptly at a stoplight. Vanessa was quick with the brake, but not quick enough to avoid bruising the bumper. The owner, a small, dark woman with curlers under a bandanna, got out and looked for signs of the impact. Judging by her sour expression, she could find none. Still Vanessa’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. She seemed to be bracing herself for the second impact of the trouble the woman was going to make. The woman didn’t. She returned to her Volvo, merely telegraphing a dirty look a moment before she slammed the door. By now, there was honking behind us. Vanessa leaned on her horn as well.