Star Time (44 page)

"Greg, my show is funny and punchy, but it’s controversial, and I believe in it too much to pull those punches and soften it."

"Try us out, Arnold. Just let us look at it. I'll be here till Friday."

"All right, but you know my ground rules up front." Arnold eyed Chris and Greg once more. "Now you two can go back to being just good friends."

When the party ended and Greg had concluded his last conversation, he looked around for Chris. She was gone.

She had every reason to hate him, but had just confessed tonight to the same attraction he felt. She had termed it "unfortunate," and wisely demonstrating self-restraint before he had needed to, she had left.

That was better, he thought.
And safer for his marriage and hers.
Greg was grateful that Chris had had made the right decision for both of them

He refused a studio head's invitation to go somewhere for drinks and more talk and went upstairs to his room.

Marian and several men who were in conversation decided to keep the night alive by going out for drinks.
Marian was surprised to find that the men at the table were coming on to her. She did not delude herself about the reason. With a whisk of his hand, Greg
Lyall
had made her a very powerful woman in Hollywood. A relationship with her could be advantageous. Marian basked in their regard. She had never been an object of men's interest before. Months could pass without
so
much as a phone call from a potential date. She had not made love to a man in two years, and even that one had been a mistake on her part, not much of a man and less of a lover; he had hardly aroused her.

Yet, here were a well-known director and a married studio executive broadly hinting at asking her out later in the week. She tactfully discouraged them. She was not about to allow herself to be compromised.

After a second drink, the group broke up. As they were filing out, Marian hung back to converse with the youngest among them, a producer's assistant given his invitation to the party by a boss who could not make it tonight. The young U.S.C. film-school graduate had been so dazzled by the group into which he had wandered that he had said almost nothing at the table.

Marian took his phone number and told him to keep next weekend free. "Maybe I'll make dinner for us at my house. We'll play it by ear."

She prudently cautioned him that a young man seeking to make his career in television would be wise not to mention their date to anyone.

Greg could not sleep. He was obsessed by thoughts of Chris. He ached for her.

Finally, near midnight, he threw on some clothing and took the elevator down one flight. She had the corner suite, he knew, directly under his.

Even as he knocked on her door, he told himself how insane this was, how ridiculous he would look to her, how her anger at an advance would cripple their working relationship forever, and how damaging an affair would be to his marriage and to his position atop FBS.

"Yes?" her voice called from behind the door a moment later.

"It's Greg. I have to see you."

"I thought it would be you."

She drew back the door to admit him. She was naked.

"Don't talk. Not a word," she whispered.

They kissed with an urgency repudiated and dammed up to overflowing for ten years. And when his hardness felt as if it could reach no higher, it somehow did inside her.
In that instant of inward and outward embrace, each of them felt complete.

Guilt did not lead the two other faces into the room until dawn, with the sun.

"I guess once every ten years my body is entitled to a night like I that," Chris said, pushing herself into sitting upright against the headboard.

After a moment Greg did the same, gazing straight ahead as she did. Both wished to avoid the hazard of looking at the other. With morning and the slaking of their passion had come the time for reason to prevail.

"It was a mistake," he agreed.

"We got carried away."

"Anyone could slip . . ."

"Being together away from home like this . . ." she added.

"In a city where we used to live together."

"That doesn't mean we don't love our spouses."

"Or that there has to be a second time."

She turned sharply toward him. "There
won't
be a second time."

He nodded. "There
can't
be. We'd be risking too much."

"We'd be hurting people we love."

"And who love us."

"I won't go sneaking around behind Ken's back," she said firmly.

"And if it didn't work out before between us, who's to say it would now."

"It worked out fine," she reminded him. "You just saw a chance to better your prospects and grabbed it."

"The reasons I left ran a little deeper than that," he replied testily.

"See"—she smiled—"we're starting to argue already."

"Last night was wonderful, but never again."

"Absolutely."
She prepared to get out of bed and walk to the bathroom.
"Just like it never happened."

"We're mature enough to exert self-control and simply treat each other like old friends."

"In a purely professional way."

"And go back to the people who really love us and need us."

"Back to our real lives."

"It would probably be better, though, to stay away from each other for a while," he suggested. "In a few weeks we'll be able to deal with each other a little more dispassionately."

"That would make it easier for both of us."

They glanced once more at each other's eyes, to confirm their agreement.

As Chris hoped, when she emerged from the bathroom, Greg had left. She packed, dressed, and was on the nine-o'clock plane back to New York with other members of the news staff.

While the end credits ran, Arnold Mandel observed the faces of the other five people in the room and tried to gauge their responses to the pilot they had just seen for his series
What's
the World Coming To?
Greg was thoughtful. Marian was unreadable. So was the fellow from Research. Her two smiling subordinates surreptitiously glanced over at her to gain some clue to her reaction. They had all laughed a lot in the right places, and Arnold considered that good. But they were network people. Now they would second-guess themselves.

"Well, you weren't kidding about its being controversial, Arnold," Greg said.

"My psychiatrist tells me I'm getting back at all my wives.  With what it's costing me to see him five times a week, alimony would be cheaper."

"Whatever provoked it, the show is absolutely outrageous. But also funny as hell."

Marian liked that Greg had definite opinions and did not hide behind platitudes. He seemed prepared to take the heat for his mistakes and expected nothing less of her.

"I laughed my sides off," Marian admitted, "but almost felt shameful about it, like when someone is telling shocking racist jokes."

The young woman Marian had recently elevated to her old job agreed. "While you're squirming at the comparison to present-day reality, you're laughing in spite of it."

"That's the reason I set it in the future and made the situations so ridiculous on the surface," Arnold pointed out. "It makes the humor at the comparison to today more acceptable."

Greg looked over at the West Coast vice president in charge of testing audience reaction to shows. "Will we draw viewers or turn them off?"

The man locked and unlocked his fingers as he spoke. His face was grim. "My honest opinion is that I think this is probably the most offensive show I've ever seen. Many of these futuristic characters are so odd and have no redeeming qualities for the audience to identify with and like. The jokes might be about this future society, but I counted at least half a dozen special-interest groups that were attacked and would protest: blacks, Jews, homosexuals, the poor—"

"Italians," added one of the executives, chuckling at the recollection.

"So you think it's too risky to put on?" Greg asked him.

"We'll practically need bodyguards when we leave the building."

Arnold was ready to put the DVD back into his briefcase and depart. "Do you all feel that way?"

"I'd like to test it to see whether viewers are too offended to watch," Greg replied.

"Your biggest problem might be sponsors," Marian reminded him. "They'll steer clear of this show like it has the plague. We'll practically be running a full complement of public-service announcements."

"For the same groups the show is offending,” Greg added with some chagrin, “so it kind of balances out. But the show is too good and too funny to give up on without thinking it through."

Arnold was annoyed. "Look, that's the same reaction I got at the other shop. Testing is always easier than making a decision. All right, I'll give you thirty days."

"Is thirty days enough?" Greg asked the researcher.

The man nodded. "We can show it to small focus groups and have them talk about it and analyze their reactions for you within, say, two weeks."

Greg silently polled the others. Marian nodded adamantly. Perhaps following her lead, perhaps out of true conviction, her two subordinates nodded as well.

"Okay," Greg agreed, turning to Arnold. "We have thirty days. If testing shows the reaction to the pilot's positive, not negative, and that viewers will want to come back for more, we'll give you a commitment."

Arnold took out his appointment book. He would not abide delay. "Thirty days," he had granted, and that was all he was prepared to wait. "All right, make it Monday a month from now. That gives you an extra day or two over the last weekend. I'll be at your office in New York for your answer at nine o'clock in the morning that Monday."

With only a day remaining until the annual dinner for the children's wing, three celebrities, all with excellent reasons, canceled. The last and most damaging to her was the governor, the main speaker. He had just caught the chicken pox from a grandchild, and they were now quarantined together.

Diane immediately phoned Sen. Ken Chandler, who owed her and her father a good deal for their past financial support. He was facing a tough reelection fight this year and would need their help more than ever. She left a message with his chief of staff: Would he and his wife attend tomorrow night’s dinner and would he speak in place of the governor? A few minutes later he called her back to assure her that the two of them would be honored to attend.

Diane exhaled an enormous sigh of relief. A speaker and a second celebrity replaced with one couple, although the wife, an FBS employee, could hardly decline.

Greg had just arrived at his New York office when she phoned to ask whether he could arrange for one or two FBS stars to attend the dinner tonight.

"Only a couple of morning shows are shot in New York," he informed her.

"Please see what you can do. Oh, by the way, Senator Chandler and his wife will be replacing the governor. She'll be arriving as soon as her news broadcast is over. What's her name?
Christine something?"

"
Paskins
," Greg said, carefully straining all color from his tone.

Diane was concerned that Greg's crammed schedule might interfere with the dinner's careful timing. "Please, Greg, I know you're busy, but I really need you there right from the start."

"I promise."

"And you won't forget a morning person or two. With escorts, if they wish."

"I’ll try my best.”

"Oh, one more thing," Diane remembered. "The Chandlers are at our table. I'm sure she'll feel more comfortable beside someone she knows. I've put her next to you."

Greg arrived at the foyer outside the Waldorf-Astoria’s Grand Ballroom at twenty to seven. He had gotten back from L.A. on a red-eye this morning and gone straight to his office.  He found Diane bent over some papers, in discussion with another woman. She had made this a must-attend event for many of the elite in old and new society, but it meant that she had to exercise personal supervision over all the details.

He had not seen his wife for nearly a week and was troubled by the prospect of her and Chris at the same table. Don't appear anxious, he told himself as he approached her. The affair with Chris is over and done with, prudently and mutually ended.

Diane glanced up. Her face exploded into a smile. She kissed him exuberantly.

"I hope you'll forgive me, Annie," she said to the other woman, her arms around Greg's neck, "but I haven't seen this handsome man in nearly a week."

Greg nodded a greeting at the other woman.

"How's it going?" he asked Diane. He flailed about in his mind for something else to say after that, but he all he could think about was that two nights earlier he had made joyous love to another woman.