Time and Chance (13 page)

In a moment she
appeared at the entrance. “Yes sir?”

“Call Jay Speaker. Get
him in here.”

“Yes, sir.” She left.

Looking out the
window, he said, “Maybe we can get Speaker kick-started on promoting this thing
… kid's slow as molasses in January, analyzes too much, Joe picked it up right
away.”

As mentioned earlier,
Jay is our new program/promotion manager; he had been the poet laureate of
Providence for a time.

CHAPTER 13

Real Time

10:35: 20 CDT

Jay Speaker—five foot
ten, slender, rectangular face, brown eyes, fleshy nose, dark brown collar-length
hair, legal pad in hand—stepped from the TV12 elevator into the second floor
hall. Dressed casually in corduroy slacks, checked sports shirt, white knit
tie, he walked to Berry's reception area and, standing to the side, did a
little wave to Judy.

“Hi,” Judy whispered.

“Love you.” He said
softly.

She whispered, “Me
too,” and kept typing.

Jay, barely audible:
“We still on for tonight?”

“Chinese, my place,
7:00.”

He feigned a smile and
whispered, “Wish me luck,” and stepped to Berry's office doorway.

CHAPTER 14

Jack’s Time

Berry on the phone
again with, I think, somebody at The Berry Inn, I pushed around a recurring
thought: from conception to death, the only thing human beings are really
doing, in a bundle of sacks, bladders, and tubes, connected by inferior
plumbing, is maintaining a leaky ark to cross over and hope, if necessary, a
‘sorry’ will save the day.

I heard a knock.

Berry heard the knock
too. He said into his phone, “Handle it,” hung up and gawked past me toward his
office entrance.

I looked there too.

Jay—gray corduroy
slacks, long-sleeve sports shirt, collar unbuttoned, white tie—stood with legal
pad in hand and an uncertain smile on his face.

I noticed Berry seemed
to be tweaking up his Gucci critiquer. Eyebrows lifted, head tilted to the left,
eyes peering down his nose, he said, “Where'd you get those corduroy trousers,
Speaker, J.C. Penn-ays?”

Jay said, “I….”

“That may be the way
they dress up in Providence, Rhode Island, but not around here, and get a haircut.”

Watching Jay struggle
to decipher Berry's mood, I was reminded of an oboe setting the pitch for an
orchestra.

The uncertain smile
vanished and Jay looked like people do when they're searching for meaning in
every day run-of-the-mill life things like breathing. He said, “Judy, she called,
said you wanted to see me.”

“Yes we do.” Berry
said. “Come in, shut the door.”

Jay closed the door,
walked to the sofa, and settled in. “Hi, Jack.”

Ignoring Berry, I
said, “Get some coffee, behind the bar, Costa Rican bean, good.”

“No thanks.” Jay
rubbed his palms on his pants.

I spoke loudly for
Berry's benefit. “WHAT TIME DID YOU GET IN this morning?”

Jay said, “Around
9:00. Traffic is really messed up. I stopped by the news room … they say the
rain is supposed to let up though.”

I raised my voice
toward the window, “Yep, OL’ LUTHER's left shoulder is feeling better, you know
what that means, rain's about over … and you know OL’ LUTHER, never wrong.” I
looked at Jay. “You come in the expressway?”

“No way. I went
around.” Jay relaxed, like he had almost forgotten Berry's stare. I didn't. The
Kid's energy was expanding across the room like the ceiling in that Harrison
Ford doom movie.

Jay said, “What about
you?”

“I messed up, came in
the expressway.”

“Really, I….”

”Excuuuuse me ladies,”
Berry said, “I hate to interrupt the little breakfast club at the bistro chit
chat but….” He smacked his desk. “Let me tell you guys something. Time is
money. Never forget it. Especially never forget it in the broadcasting
business. That's all we got folks. Time. And, I'll say it again, time is money.
Got it?”

I thought
so that’s
what time is, hmm.

Jay said, “Yes sir.”

Berry beaded me,
“Carr?”

I smiled, thinking
I
don't got it, don't want it, never had it
. Fuck it. I said, “Does Joe got
it?”

Berry said, “What?”

“I was just wondering,
Joe not being in yet, if he knew that time is money.”

“Are you looking for
trouble, Carr?”

“Just wondering.”

Berry mumbled
something in tongues, sounded like Rev. Molino's shum da la mum with a son and
a bitch mixed in. He stood, strolled to the front of his desk, rested one hip
on the edge, said, “Jay, this isn't for publication yet, we have to tidy up a
few things so don't say anything just yet, to you know, your staff.” He folded
his arms, “Jay my boy, we've been doing some serious thinking, studied the last
rating book, and, to keep on the cutting edge, we've come up with a sure thing
for Music City U.S.A. We're going to hire a lady country and western singer to
do our five, six, and ten o'clock weather.”

There it is, I
thought, ‘we’, history's best friend.

Berry smiled, “You
probably heard of her, she has a couple records out, Peggy Moore.”

Jay looked at me for a
moment like he wasn't sure he had heard right, or that he had and the words had
come out wrong, or gone in wrong, something wrong.

Berry straightened his
cufflinks. “The reason we called you up here, we need to get the promotion ball
rolling. I want you to come up with a dynamite promotion campaign. We'll want a
ton of newspaper, billboards, billboards on every corner … expressways … of
course we'll want to saturate our own air, every break with promos.”

That ‘we’ again.

I noticed a puzzled
frown form on Jay's face and I noted that Berry noticed it too.

Berry said, “What's
the frown for, Speaker? Carr passing gas over there?”

Jay gave a little
chuckle, “What about Luther?”

I thought, mistake
one, or was it two, for Jay.

Just then Berry's
private line buzzed. He walked over, picked up, sat at his desk, and said,
“Frazer.” Listening, he turned his chair and looked out the window.

While he talked, I
said to Jay, “Jay you remember that error in time thing you were telling me
about a few weeks ago … you read somewhere.”

“Yeah, Pope Gregory?”

“Yes, that’s it, what
was that again?”

“The Julian calendar
worked on the assumption that a year was 365 1/4 days long. Every fourth year
had 366 days. Back then they used movements of the planets … sun, moon, earth …
to calculate time.”

“That's it, what was
that?”

He glanced at Berry,
still talking on the phone, then continued: “Around 730 A.D., a monk discovered
that the 365 1/4-day Julian year was 11 minutes 14 seconds too long … that made
an error of about a day every 128 years. Nobody paid much attention, but by
1582 A.D. the error in time was 10 days.”

“Yeah, that's it, so
what did they do?”

“So Pope Gregory XIII
decreed that the day following Oct. 4, 1582 should be October 15, dropped 10
days.”

“Yes, bingo, that's
it.”

Jay glanced at Berry,
still talking, “So what has that got to do with this?”

“So where is Pope
Gregory when we need him. I mean, maybe we could drop a few days. Hell, drop
the whole month.”

Jay smiled. “I wish it
were that simple.”

“It is, all you have
to do is do it.”

Berry still talking on
the phone, Jay nodded to him and said, “Tell him.”

I said, “Maybe we
could call the Vatican.”

“Right.”

Berry yakking, I
stood, walked to the bar, sat on a stool, lit a Salem, rested my chin in my
hands, and thought:
this is insane
. But then, I had come to know, in
real time, insanity is reality. That's the only way the logic puzzle pieces
fit. But then I thought,
someday somebody is going to have to convince a
jury this was all done in innocence.

I looked at Berry's
bottle of Jack Daniels, rested next to Chivas, Wild Turkey, J&B, Jim Beam
and assorted lesser relatives and, as I studied the booze, I pondered the
difference between nightmares and reality. A good old fashioned standing up in
bed screaming nightmare, red snakes and all, is easy compared to this. This is
real. I simply have got to get out of here.

I crushed Salem out in
a TV12 ashtray and looked at the gray day outside the window and as I looked, I
studied a large cumulus cloud.

“What are you mumbling
about over there, Carr?” Berry had hung up.

“Nothing.”

Suddenly a flash of
lightning exploded and brilliance filled the room.

Berry said, “Jesus
Christ,” walked to his window and looked out.

I listened to the
moment before the thunder. And in that moment I wanted to go back but I
couldn't go back, and when I started to move forward I lost my nerve and I
cursed my cowardice knowing the thunder would come.

And it did, shaking
the building, and as the thunder trailed off to the east, I swore I heard a bag
pipe playing Amazing Grace and I saw time marching over the green hide-covered
years and I saw the other side of the thunder. Almost had it. Didn't want to
come back.

Berry turned and said,
“What you say, Carr? Didn't hear you.”

Jay plunged in,
“Berry, on the weather, maybe we should do some research, focus groups, before
we, ah, replace Luther, he's an institution in this town.”

Mistake number three,
or was it four, for Jay?

Everybody at TV12 (‘cept
Jay, I guess) knew Berry loathed objections. To him any objection, plain and
simple, was negative thinking. Besides, this weather idea was sealed in blood,
somebody's blood, and the talk Jay spouted was not only negative thinking, it
was, as Angelo would say, cojone suicide.

Berry swaggered back
to his desk, “That's bullshit, Speaker. I don't need a pimp researcher to tell
me a country singing weather girl, in Music City USA, will work. Jesus Christ,
come up for air, boy.”

Jay, silent, seemed to
be seeking a better read of Berry, beyond the optics, past the pupils, to
motive. Like he was searching for the right answer in an oral exam, he tapped
his ballpoint pen to his temple, said, “Our news is number one, we are winning,
in no small part due to Luther's popularity.” He smiled, “Remember the old
adage, if it isn't broke, don't fix it—applies here.”

I said, “As I recall,
I do recollect something along those lines … yes, if it ain't broke, don't fix
it, yes.”

Berry put his hands on
his hips. “That's inside the box thinking … I'm talking outside the box, ahead
of the curve, cutting edge millennium stuff.”

I thought
that’s
two epiphanies this morning: time is money, and an insight into what the new age
millennium stuff is all about.

Seeming to miss the
epiphanies, Jay looked like a kid wondering why there was no peanut butter on
his peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Berry sat behind his
desk.

Jay said, “I'm just
concerned, Berry, I….”

Berry cut him off,
“Our Phi Beta Kappa concern for the day. Ya hear that Carr. Put that down. Look
out when Yankee talk turns to concern.”

I think Jay still
believed that logic must prevail in life, in the world, in the universe. He had
been at TV12 less than a year and hadn't yet figured out Berryisms. I had some
of it down—yes is maybe, no is depends, never is sometime, fifteen is twenty,
maybe ten—all depending what you were dealing with and from who, what, where,
and when.

Berry said, “Where was
it you were poet laureate, Speaker?”

“Providence.”

“What you write up
there?”

Jay looked puzzled.
“Poetry.”

“Ever make any money,
get published?”

I hated this.

Jay smiled, “Didn't
pay the rent.”

Berry straighten his cufflinks,
looked at his manicure. “It's called economics son, the marketplace, producing
something then selling it … nobody ever ate a poem for lunch.”

Poem never ate anybody
for lunch either, I thought, too bad. Then I thought, let's just please get the
fuck out of here.

But Berry seemed to be
on a roll. “Let me tell you something son, we're in a business and don't you
forget it. Like the hide factory down the street is a business. We're here to
make a dollar. Nobody gets nothing if we don't make that first goddamn dollar!
And let me tell you something else. Everybody with any sense knows it is. But a
lot of liberal assholes like to hear that stuff about saving the masses and get
tears in their eyes when you say humanity and think that's some big pie in the
sky with love and lollipops and everybody holding hands on top of a hill, with
a flower stuck in their mouth, singing some shit. I got simoles riding on this
thing. We all do. It's called capitalism, boy, capitalism with a capital C. You
think all we have to do is … is what?” Berry cocked his head a little and
stared at Jay. “I never could figure out what it is you bleeding hearts would
do if you were running the show.”