Time and Chance (36 page)

Monday June 2

8:35:00 A.M. CDT

First thing Monday
morning the word went out and a hushed anticipation descended upon the halls
and offices of TV12. Joe Galbo on his office phone, was taking the A.C. Nielsen
advance ratings for the just-past four week May sweeps. More detailed than
overnight ratings, the consecutive four weeks ‘sweeps’ ratings were used by
advertising agencies as a time-buying guide, some buys through December, good
numbers were crucial for TV advertising sales departments to meet their budgets
for the year.

At 8:45, the advances
taken, Joe scurried to Berry's office. Voices were heard behind the closed
door.

Joe: “These ratings
are a hundred year fucking flood disaster … a Humpty Dumpty great fall …
Darlington Five Hundred twenty five car pileup … our news is lower than the Mad
Hatter's dick! …Channel 3 is mashing our balls like little Jack Horner in Betty
Crocker's corner … pretty soon we're gonna be sucking the PBS station's hind
tit … Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch for Christ's sake!”

Berry: “It's goddamn
promotion, I told you to do something there … goddamn Speaker.”

At 8:50, Berry
announced on the station public address system:
“Galbo, Carr, Speaker,
Overmier … meeting front office … meeting front office, now.”

CHAPTER 4

Jack’s
Time

My Saturday liquid
lunch with Sago at The Green Onion turned to a lost weekend at Tara; I entered
the TV12 lobby Monday morning running a little past late.

Sweater girl
receptionist Marcie, absent the usual smile, looking like she had just seen a
ten car pileup, said, “Berry is looking for you, meeting in his office,” she
pointed to the wall clock—9:01, “Berry said ‘now’ ten minutes ago.”

 
“Darn traffic.” I went to my office. Joy was
away from her desk. New pot of coffee brewing, I got a mug of coffee, and Joy
walked in, ashen.

“What’s a matter?”

“Galbo got the rating
advances, don’t sound good, Berry called a meeting, he’s looking for you.”

* * *

Ascending in Otis to
the second floor, I conjugated—with the May ratings not looking so good, me a
little late—Berry's mood might be more repugnant than usual.

As I approached Judy's
desk, I saw that she appeared to be in distress, actually tearing up. I nodded
to her. She rolled her smoke-blues east, west, and back, and kept typing. I
stepped to Berry's open office door, dragged Salem, smiled, and looked inside.

Four sets of dismal
eyeballs looked at me—Berry’s, Joe’s, Bobbi’s, and Jay’s.

 
I said cheerily, “Meeting start?”

No words forthcoming,
I shrugged, stepped in, and said, “Guess it did.” I looked at Berry crumpled
behind his desk, and asked, “You want the door closed?”

Staring ice at me,
Berry’s private line rang. He snatched up the receiver and said, “Frazer.”

Saved by the bell, I
closed the door and paused. I perceived, mixing in and around Berry's thick
sweet Gucci for men, something ominous in the room. Reminded me of a funeral
parlor. I wondered if maybe I was the corpse. Somebody had to be the corpse.
Otherwise, this was a bad joke on reality’s dirty little secret—we're all a
joke. I did a little wave to the ceiling just in case Greta was in record mode.

Berry, phone stuck
under his chin, listened while ogling my blue-blazer Monday attire. I hope he
didn't start on my clothes this morning, I wasn't in the mood. But then, I
knew, with everything else, he had bigger fish to fry than my wardrobe. In
short, Berry had big problems and everyone in this room knew the intimate
details of his little Peggy/Snakebite dilemma, ‘cept maybe Jay.

Time on my hands, I
wandered to the coffee pot and, while behind the bar, figured I might as well
look around for the corpse. I started with Berry: brooding, listening to
somebody on the other end of his phone, he made notes on his yellow legal pad.
Blue suit coat off, white on white shirt, TV12 gold cufflinks, red tie, I
determined Berry not to be the corpse.

I checked Joe. Slumped
on a slate gray chair—navy pinstripe suit, white shirt, silver tie, black cap-toe
shoes, legs crossed, he chewed his left middle fingernail like it was tipped
with something addictive. He seemed anxious, like an executioner waiting for
the signal to press the button, get it over, so he could move onto more
important bread and butter matters that make the world go round. Definitely not
the corpse.

I looked to Bobbi.
Yellow bow tie, white short sleeve shirt, neat as a pin, white pumps barely
touched the floor. Sitting in her usual spot on the sofa, she read a mini
printout produced by her handheld calculator. She couldn't be the corpse, Berry
wouldn't dare.

I glanced to Jay in
the hot seat beside Berry's desk. Charcoal jacket, matching shirt, green tie,
brown shoes—he wrote on a white legal pad. Corpse possibility, I thought, good
to best, ten to one.

Monsieur
Berry still on the phone, listening, playing, with an evil eye, Gucci
design guy on my khaki slacks, I revised the ten to one bet on the corpus
delicti possibility, concluded, could be me.

“I know that.” Berry
said into his phone. I noticed his face was clammy white and a splotch of red
rested high on his cheeks. He repeated, “I know all that, I'm having a meeting
now, we've got to give it time, I think promotion is the key.”

I surmised, on the
other end, he might be listening to a future boss from S&W Broadcasting.
With the latest ratings, they might be concerned their investment was headed
toward the southern tip of Peru.

“Got it.” Berry banged
his phone down and beaded me. “Nice you could make it, Carr.” He wiped his face
with a towel. “We didn't cause you any inconvenience did we?”

“Not at all. I had
another breakfast engagement, but they canceled at the last minute….”

 
“Bullshit.” Berry sneered, smacked his desk,
stood and swaggered to his window. The morning was bright and a patch of sun
crawled across the thick maroon carpet. Berry turned. The morning sun back
lighted his rounded shoulders in a dark silhouette and he looked like a wounded
animal, bleeding and hungry.

Still standing behind
the bar, I noticed Berry’s icy stare melt to ugly and he said, “Well, Mister
Carr, may we start?”

“Start what?”

“Start the goddamn
meeting! May we start the goddamn meeting!”

“Sure.”

“Are you going to sit
down?”

 
“I was waiting for you.”

“Sit down!”

I walked to the sofa
and sat next to Bobbi. “How's it going Bobbi?”

She kept calculating.

Berry charged to his
credenza, grabbed a fresh towel, wiped his face, threw the towel on the floor,
sat behind his desk, and commenced: “The next time anybody is late around here,
they're through.” He looked squarely at me. “Got that, Carr?”

“Got it.” I smiled.
“That go for Joe, too?”

Joe started to get up.
So did I.

Berry smashed his
desk. “Sit goddamn down, both of you!”

We sat.

Berry took a minute to
calm then commenced: “Now, as everybody knows by now our May ratings look like
skinny on a skeleton's ass.” He looked at Jay who appeared to be busy taking
notes. “Are you with us Speaker?”

Jay looked up and
smiled, “Yes sir.”

It was then I
confirmed the corpse.

Berry wiped his face,
“We used to own this town. Own it. Now our whole goddamn lineup is down.” He
looked at Bobbi. “Do you know why Bobbi?”

Bobbi, no dummy, what
she knew she wasn't going to say. “I don't know, no, Berry, I'm not sure.”

Berry said, “No
goddamn promotion, that's why. Zero, zip, none. We have the only unique weather
show in town and our promotion department can't promote it.” He stuck his chin
at Jay. “I need those ratings Speaker, and I'm gonna get them one way or
another … and it just might be another.”

I clicked Zippo, lit a
Salem and thought,
you wonderful son of a bitch. Peggy was your ticket to
ride, and now you're … somebody should simply kill you out of the gene pool.
I stared at him as somebody said, This is not a lie, this is truth, raped, and
I said, “Fuck right.”

Berry squinted,
“What?”

“Nothing. Just
thinking about how nice and cozy it is in here.”

Berry's face, like he
was sucking peanut butter through a soda straw, mumbled something that sounded
a little like Aunt Jane’s Rev Molino speaking in tongues.

“Shum da la mum,”
I whispered.

Berry gawked at me,
and, I also noticed, I had the attention of the other attendees.

After a moment of
silence, Berry said, “I'll see you after this meeting, Carr,” stood and paced
to his window.

I whispered to Bobbi,
“Fun, huh.”

She pressed numbers
into her calculator.

Berry turned, rested
back against his window sill, folded his arms, said, “Okay, poet laureate, the
floor is yours.”

Jay looked like a
person caught in a crosswalk when ‘DON'T’ begins flashing. He said, “For what?”

 
Berry slowly strolled back to his desk, and
sat, ““For a goddamn explanation for your fuck up, that’s why.”

Jay: “I … I….”

Berry: “I my ass.”

Jay glanced at me,
down, paused, said, “You mean the ratings?”

Berry tilted his head,
“You believe this guy, yes the ratings, what the fuck we been talking about?”

“Well, we won’t have a
chance to study the results until we get the full report, but I think, maybe it
has something to do with….” He stopped.

I know what he was
going to say, Luther, so I said, “It starts with an L and ends with an R,
sounds like ‘uther’.”

Berry beaded me,
“We’re talking to Speaker, Carr, keep your smart ass comments to yourself.”

Jay took the opening,
“I think Jack’s right … Channel 3 is capitalizing on Luth—”

He couldn’t get it
out, I helped, “—er.”

Berry stared kill.

Jay: “…and I’ve been
thinking from the beginning … maybe a total news, weather, and sports promotion
… is the path we should take, not just the weather….”

“Hold it,” Berry held
his hand up. “What have I been saying since we started this weather thing?
Peggy's weather show is the only unique thing in Nashville, the country music
capital of the world. Jesus H. Christ, that's why we did it! That's what we
gotta promote … and you tell me some total horseshit … Jesus H. Christ!” He
wiped his neck and face then spoke to Bobbi. “Bobbi, how much we pay the poet
laureate from Providence, Rhode Island?”

Bobbi, an avid golfer,
I knew she would never use a driver when a wedge would do, peered over her
bifocals, shook her head, and continued to compute.

Berry looked at Joe,
shifted his eyes to me, then stuck his stare back on Jay. “Mr. Speaker, for
your information, I could have Carr go down to Printer's Alley and hire a
hooker for fifty bucks to tell me,” he held up his right pinkie, “'I think we
should do a total package.'.”

I said, “I think a
hooker is up to two hundred now, unless you want something special, have
something to trade … mediocre hooker, some are even up to five hundred, if they
sing, play the guitar.”

Berry's stared at me
like Sterling Hayden, in
The Godfather
, in that Italian restaurant,
after Pacino had put a bullet between his eyes.

Joe froze.

Bobbi stopped
calculating.

Berry threw his Wall
Street Journal at the window. Then he kicked his desk, mumbled, in tongues
again, something like, “Dirtyfuckingsonofabitch.” Then he got a new towel,
wiped his face, and said, “I'll see you after the meeting, Carr.”

I figured I was history
anyway, had decided, over the weekend, ark finished, to squeeze it out. I said,
“That's two 'see you after the meetings', maybe we could have lunch.”

Berry bit his lip. “Mr.
Carr, you are officially….” He paused and looked at Bobbi who stared him down (I
figured, saved for the moment, he would get to me later). He went back to Jay.
“Speaker, you have exactly one minute to start talking about a promotion
campaign for the weather. One minute.” He held his wrist up and looked at his
watch.

Jay seemed to be ignoring
Berry, distant, outside of time, writing on his note pad.

 
“SPEAKER!” Berry yelled.

“What?” Jay was back
in the room.

“The weather, the
weather, the goddamn weather! Promotion Speaker, promotion. We're talking about
promotion. Jesus H. Christ!”

Berry looked at Joe,
Bobbi, me, shook his head, then marked a spot on Jays' forehead like he was
taking aim at a Cape Horn Buffalo.