“Invite Ethel and the kids,” I told Elaine.

  Then Sally and I limped outside to do something really radical. Look for a taxi.

  20.

  A DAY LATER I CAUGHT UP with Hank Judson, America’s most believable anchorman, at his hang-out bar a few minutes after the network news left the air. Hank went to the same bar near the office five nights a week, unless he was out of town to interview a world leader.

  Hank always stood at the corner of the bar with his right shoulder against the wall. He would drink four or five martinis, straight-up, in about an hour, and play the match game with the boys, before a limo driver came in to deliver Hank to his apartment at the United Nations Plaza. CBC sent Hank a limo from a rental service, so the driver often was a stranger in uniform who would enter the bar and loudly say, “Mr. Judson?”

  “With you in a moment, my friend,” Hank Judson would say. Then he would turn to the bartender and say, “Chico, seeing as it is National Daffodil Day, I had best have a grand final.”

  Usually Hank Judson left the bar after the grand final martini. Sometimes he would have a grand-grand final, and then an el último, and then a “sleep-through.” Three or four times a year, Hank would drink several “sleep-throughs,” move on to a few “territorial imperatives,” and wind up “on the beach,” as he put it.

  I said hello to the guys around the bar and they made room for me in Hank’s corner.

  “Ho, Mallory!” Hank said. “Chico, dear chap, could I buy my friend Mallory a drink?”

  We drank and played the match game with the guys at the bar for an hour or so. In the match game each player conceals in his fist anywhere from none to three matches. The object is to guess the total number of matches. Hank Judson had learned the match game when he was a radio correspondent for CBC in London twenty-five years ago. Chase Morgan, our vice president for News, estimated that learning the match game had cost Hank Judson close to a hundred thousand dollars.

  Hank did his grand-grand final and his el último and his first “sleep-through” and was about eighty dollars winner in the matches when the game broke up. The rent-a-limo driver in uniform leaned against the wall by the check stand. Hank and I got private and I told him what I wanted him to do on “Just Up the Street.”

  He studied a bowl of cheese crackers on the bar as he listened. When I had finished, Hank tinked his glass with a fingernail so Chico would set up a second “sleep-through.”

  “This is a little out of line, Mallory,” Hank Judson said.

  “You can make this show work for us, Hank,” I said.

  “I mean it is out of line to approach me about it in a saloon. You’re talking an air-time thing. You’re not asking me for a personal favor, like having lunch with your father-in-law from Houston. You’re asking me to work live on camera for three hours in a show that could hurt my image. I’ve heard about this blasted thing around the shop. Because I’m tasting a sleep-through, Mallory, don’t think I’m so drunk I’ll agree to spend three hours on the air looking like a fool.”

  “Hank, you’re a News man. Look at this as a News show,” I said. “What is news? It’s what people do. News is people, Hank,” I said.

  “Mallory, please, I don’t appreciate that kind of pep talk,” Hank Judson said. “You’re prime-time, dear fellow. I’m News. You were News yourself long enough to know how we look at you prime-time blokes.”

  “I promise this will be News,” I said.

  Hank smiled and said, “What people do at home on an ordinary Wednesday night is not network News.”

  “I want you to do this,” I said.

  “Then you are calling in a favor,” Hank said.

  If he wanted to look at it like that, I decided to let him. He was probably talking about something that had happened in Saigon. We got drunk in the Caravelle bar one night when Hank’s interview with a world leader had just been canceled in reaction to a CBC—TV editorial comment written by Harley O. Chambers himself. Though dressed in fancier language, what the editorial said was that little yellow people had gone through ten thousand years of so-called civilization without inventing electricity and could hardly be expected to understand a modern world ruled by pocket calculators.

  I cleared Hank’s way back into the palace by calling in a favor from a Saigon politician who would have been shot if I had even attempted to do a CBS News piece on what I knew about him. It may sound like a violation of the principles of competitive journalism, but news guys often help rival news guys who are in trouble.

  “I’m asking you to do it,” I said to Hank in the bar. “Think of it as the Rose Bowl parade.”

  “I think of it as prime time,” Hank said.

  “I need you, Hank. It’s a favor,” I said.

  Hank Judson placed his empty glass on the bar for Chico to refill.

  “I’ll do it for you,” Hank said. “I hate to see a colleague—and I still think of you as a colleague, Mallory—in a hot spot with the brass.”

  “Appreciate it, Hank,” I said.

  “Glad to help. Tell me more about it,” Hank said.

  We talked about the show. It would have been out of line to mention Hank’s special fee in a saloon. The next day at the office, the fee turned out to be fifteen thousand dollars.

  You could look at that as about eight hundrend and fifty dollars for Hank Judson for each minute “Just Up the Street” would be on the air. And you could consider that during most of those minutes, Hank Judson would be sitting in our Manhattan studio watching television.

  Or on the other hand you could call it prime time.

  21.

  I WAS SPENDING AN EVENING at home when the blue phone rang.

  Cooper had gone to look at an apartment for him and Katherine, who was still singing on the Left Coast. He hadn’t asked if Katherine could move into the penthouse. And I hadn’t suggested it.

  I was sitting in the den with André the cat in my lap. Dump and Ling, the Yorkies, were out on a terrace barking at airplanes. The networks occupied three of my small screens and the educational channel the other. The larger four-foot Sonys were programmed like this: It Happened One Night, Gable and Colbert; a new Hollywood musical; a tape of a tennis instructional; and a CBS sitcom.

  I looked up and saw the educational channel was showing a special on space travel. I like space travel, so I switched the space show to a large Sony, killing the tennis.

  On the table beside my chair were a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich with plenty of mayonnaise, a quart of chocolate milk, and a Colombian joint rolled to the size of a panatela.

  On the same table were a half dozen scripts for pilots and TV movies.

  I had my shoes off and my feet up on a hassock. The door to the den terrace was open, and I could see lights in the buildings far across the park.

  You might say I was a fairly happy man at that moment.

  Then the blue phone rang.

  I looked at it. The number of the blue phone was unlisted. It was such a private number that most of the time I couldn’t remember it myself.

  I said, “Sorry, André.” André had to get off my lap so I could walk over to the bookcase and pick up the blue phone.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Frank, I’m worried about Cindy,” Marcie said.

  “What’s wrong? Where is she?” I said.

  “In her room.”

  “Is she sick?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Then what’s the matter?” I said.

  “Have you noticed her development?” Marcie said.

  “What are you talking about, Marcie?”

  “Frank, that girl is developing enormous breasts,” Marcie said.

  “Come on, Marcie. They’re not enormous. They’re just very pretty,” I said.

  “Then you had noticed them,” Marcie said.

  “What’s wrong with that?” I said.

  “Don’t be defensive. I’m not accusing you of anything,” Marcie said. “I suppose compared to those movie stars you run around with, Marcie’s breasts don’t qualify as enormous. But for the Rye Country Day School, they are regarded as more than ample.”

  “Some of those young Jewish girlfriends of hers have got bigger tits than Cindy,” I said.

  “You do observe them pretty closely, don’t you?” Marcie said.

  “Marcie, I’m busy. Can you move along to whatever the problem is?” I said.

  I took the blue phone on its long cord back to my chair and sat down. André at once hopped onto my stomach and began purring.

  “Do you know how many times I’ve heard you say Marcie, I’m busy, what’s the problem? That’s what you told me the night Cindy was born,” Marcie said.

  “That’s another story you tell about me that is not exactly true,” I said. “Besides, I was covering Hurricane Beulah that night and was up to my armpits in a flood when I called you at the hospital.”

  “You didn’t call me, you called Cooper,” she said.

  “I was calling you,” I said. “A good friend happened to be there with you, because I couldn’t be.”

  “Liar,” she said.

  “I was floating in a telephone booth down the street from the goddam Galvez Hotel,” I said.

  “No, you weren’t. You were at the Galveston police station when you called,” Marcie said. “And you did say you were busy when I got on the phone—after Cooper.”

  “It was a fucking hurricane!” I said.

  “It was also the night a baby girl was born. A girl who’s had to grow up practically without a father. Because her father was usually busy or out of town or both,” Marcie said. “Well, let me tell you something that might turn your head around. Did you know the girls with weak or neglectful fathers are the ones most likely to be promiscuous?”

  “Is Fornet over there? Has he been telling you this shit?” I said.

  “Dr. Fornet doesn’t come around anymore. You fixed that by pushing him into the rose bushes. After that, Frankie just laughed at the poor man and wouldn’t listen to a word he said,” Marcie said. “I don’t need Regis to tell me everything. I can read books, and I can interpret what I have seen in my life. Regis wasn’t my analyst, anyway. He was Frankie’s. My analyst is Dr. Milligan.”

  I could tell Marcie was anxious, and it was starting to make me anxious.

  “Frank, do you know how old I was the first time we made love together?” Marcie said.

  “Sixteen,” I said.

  Lord, could that be true? I thought back and, yeah, it was true. Marcie’s freshman year at the University of Texas. She had been double-promoted twice at Lamar High School in Houston. In college she never made anything below a B, and few of those. She could tell you a lot of facts about the Battle of Tours and how Die Fledermaus came to be written. But nobody asked her those things except on exams.

  Sixteen. Lord, at sixteen Marcie’s body was already a joy and a wonder. The first time we made love was behind a hedge at the far end of the intramural field, and I got her back to Littlefield dorm fifteen minutes past the 10:00 p.m. curfew. Which meant she couldn’t go out at night again for thirty days. The first time we made love with all our clothes off was at a moonlight picnic on Mt. Bonnell. Marcie was slim and brown and had a body that I got dizzy looking at. And she was so young then.

  Just about exactly as young as Cindy was right now, as a matter of fact.

  “Marcie, I understand what you’re saying,” I said.

  “What’s that?” Marcie said.

  “Cindy is pregnant,” I said.

  “Of course that’s not what I’m saying. I’m sure Cindy is still a virgin,” Marcie said.

  “Like you were?” I said.

  Marcie said, “You know there’d been only one other boy before you. And I was lucky to have a very strong, supportive father who gave me the security not to feel I had to make love to boys to gain their approval.”

  “And you were eighteen when we got married,” I said, growing more alarmed, thinking about Cindy. “Are you sure Cindy is still in her room? She hasn’t slipped out any place?”

  “Frank, don’t be silly,” Marcie said.

  I said, “Well, goddam, you call me up and suggest Cindy is screwing her way across Westchester County, and I’m not supposed to be worried about it?”

  “I only suggested that Cindy is growing up and needs guidance,” Marcie said.

  “So we should call off the divorce and I should move back home?” I said.

  “Certainly not,” Marcie said.

  “Then Cindy should come live with me?” I said.

  “Frank, they would have to shoot me dead before I would allow that,” Marcie said.

  “What are you proposing, for god’s sake?” I said.

  “I am trying to tell you, in a gentle way, that Cindy hinted tonight, with Frankie sitting right here at the table, that perhaps she might go to the doctor and be fitted for an IUD,” Marcie said.

  And Marcie started crying.

  “I can’t help it,” Marcie said. “I can’t help crying.”

  “If she thinks she needs an IUD, let her get one,” I said weakly.

  “Do you know if they’d had IUD’s when I was Cindy’s age, and if I’d had one, I probably never would have married you, and there wouldn’t be a Cindy or a Frankie?” Marcie sobbed.

  Marcie said wait just a minute, and she put down the phone.

  Then she picked it up again and said, “I’ve got to go now. Rex is here. He knows how upset I am, and he’s offered to take me to that little Italian restaurant in Mamaroneck.”

  “Rex, the tennis pro?” I said.

  Around the club he was nicknamed Rex the Wonder Horse.

  “I do have to run,” Marcie said. “Bye-bye.”

  I thought about Rex the Wonder Horse for a minute.

  Then I thought about Marcie’s strong, supportive father. He was named Herbert. Herbert Gaines. He made a lot of money in construction. Among other things, Herbert’s company built hundreds of roadside toilets. Marcie and her mother and her three sisters would stand in front of Herbert and talk about him like he wasn’t there.

  They would say, let’s trick Daddy into buying a new Cadillac. He would blink and grin and buy a new Cadillac.

  One year they said, let’s trick Daddy into taking us and all of our husbands, kids, and boyfriends to Aspen for skiing every Christmas.

  I went to Aspen once with Marcie and her family before we were married. I also went to Aspen with Marcie and her family for the first two years we were married, and again on about the eighth year, and again on a total fluke on or about the fourteenth year.

  One person you would almost never see around Aspen at Christmas was Herbert Gaines. He would have a big dinner the first night with the wife and the girls and the grandchildren and the husbands and boyfriends. The girls would laugh and say, look we tricked Daddy again this year. Then Herbert would get an emergency call and have to catch a plane. The girls would say, what a shame something comes up and Daddy has to work every Christmas. Then I started having to work nearly every Christmas. Except I really did, for a long time. Maybe Herbert did too. The only words he ever said to me in his life were, “Har Yew, Frank?”

  Anyway, after talking to Marcie I didn’t care to watch my eight-screen lashup anymore. I went upstairs and went to sleep. André slept on the pillow beside my head.

  22.

  WE HAD THE FOUR FAMILIES for “Just Up the Street.”

  Arleene thought the news called for a celebration so she gave me an extra English muffin with my morning coffee.

  Jack Nathanson had phoned in from Rochester to say that he had approved of, and firmed up, the last family. As it happened, we managed to get all four families we wanted from the list of candidates supplied by the research department.

  “I don’t know,” Arleene said. “Just because you’re going to have actual human beings on the telecast instead of astronauts, that still doesn’t mean you’ve got a fighting chance.”

  “Probably not,” I said. “But it beats the hell out of pictures of living room furniture.”

  Arleene and I discussed the families who had agreed to let us string cable across their lawns, mount cameras in their homes, and wire them for sound.

  In Rochester we had recruited Ralph and Ann Getz, who had a pretty teenage daughter named Roxie. Ralph worked for Xerox, and Ann worked for Kodak. Mr. Getz wasn’t all that happy with the idea, but Mrs. Getz had pushed it. Evidently her thinking was that this could be a show biz break for Roxie, who had all the requirements to become a future beauty queen.

  “Thank god for stage mothers,” Arleene said.

  We had a black couple in Akron. Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Lincoln Perry. He was a foreman at the Goodyear tire plant. Pearl Perry taught school. Nathanson said they were good-natured and irresistible and promised to do something like charcoal steaks in the backyard and invite some friends over, if the weather was nice.

  In Washington, DC, we would be going to the Georgetown area and the townhouse of Bob and Dorothea Skidmore. The Skidmores looked like an attractive couple in their gloss photographs. They were in their mid-thirties and they had four children, all under the age of six. Bob Skidmore was a lawyer-lobbyist in Washington for a Houston oil company.

  “It would be helpful if Dorothea Skidmore considered herself a rising young hostess in the power center,” Arleene said.

  Tampa was the prize. A plumber.

  The plumber was Angie Rocco. A tough, self-made guy, he figured to be the least camera shy of all our subjects. Carmen, the wife, was considered the gourmet cook of their neighborhood. They had a son, Mario, who was practically grown.

  Nathanson advised me that Carmen Rocco guaranteed such a spread on the dinner table for the show our remote directors would break down her door to get at the pasta.

  “It would be fun if you could surprise the Big Guy with the plumber,” Arleene said.

  “It’ll leak. Herb Grant has stoolies everywhere,” I said.

  “That reminds me,” Arleene said. “You’re supposed to see Grant before lunch.”

  I told Arleene our celebration over the four families had been rather short-lived, I thought.