The Man Who Cancelled Himself Page 12

  “So you need Uncle Chubby, too, don’t you?”

  Annabelle shot a glance at Bobby. “Cut to the chase, Hoagy. We all need Uncle Chubby. It’s our lifeline. The writers, the actors, everyone.”

  “Including Marjorie?”

  “Supervising Uncle Chubby is Marjorie’s whole reason for being here,” Annabelle replied. “She has some daytime stuff she oversees, but nothing that couldn’t be handled by the West Coast. If Uncle Chubby goes off, she’ll probably get the ax. If she can keep it on the air for another year or two, running smooth, she’ll be made a vice president. Maybe even develop some new shows out of New York.” Annabelle patted Bobby’s hand. Her way of telling him to signal our waitress for the check. He tried, but the waitress ignored him. “Marjorie loved Lyle major, y’know. And he broke her poor little heart. She still isn’t over him.”

  “Yes, I believe Amber mentioned something about that.”

  For the third time Bobby tried to catch our waitress’s eye and failed. He was starting to blink and squirm in anguished frustration. I couldn’t take any more of it, so I honked Lulu’s big black nose with my shoe. She promptly sneezed, causing our waitress to glance our way. Bobby signaled her, relaxed, mission accomplished. Lulu snuffled in protest. She doesn’t like anyone to touch her nose. I assured her that it was an accident. She bought it. Sometimes it’s a plus having a partner whose brain is the size of a chick pea.

  “Me, I never understood why Marjorie fell so hard for Lyle,” Annabelle confided, leaning forward over the table intimately. “I’m, like, the man got off on being cruel to her. Still does. She deserves better. Only, she scares most guys off. I mean, she’s a stone fox—in a wholesome, drop-dead sort of way. Plus, she’s kind of six or eight inches too tall for most of the guys in television.” Her eyes glittered at me. “But for the right guy, she’s Ms. Right.”

  “Any particular reason you’re looking directly at me?”

  “I’m, like, you do happen to be tall.”

  “I also happen to be Mr. Wrong.”

  “Positive you’re not in play?” she pressed.

  At my feet, Lulu growled.

  “Now why did she do that?” Annabelle wondered.

  “Because she’s positive. Does Marjorie confide in you?”

  Annabelle shrugged. “We’re pals. I don’t know if she tells me everything.”

  “Has she told you God wants to ease Lyle out?”

  Annabelle and Bobby exchanged a guarded look.

  “I’m, like, there’s no telling what they’re planning to do,” she replied evasively. “I mean, we never know.”

  “Because they n-never know,” Bobby added, his eyes avoiding mine. “Until they d-do it. They just aren’t that t-together.”

  “She hasn’t said anything.” Annabelle forced a smile. “Not to me, anyway.”

  “I see.” They were playing it cagey. I didn’t blame them. But I also didn’t think they were very good liars. It wasn’t speculation. It wasn’t paranoia. It was for real—Chad Roe was in and Lyle Hudnut was out. For the second time. The first time had been last spring, after that day he went to the Deuce Theater. Only who had been behind that? Who set him up? The Boys? They certainly stood to gain the most. “Let me ask you this—is there anyone who doesn’t want Lyle ousted?”

  “His fans,” Annabelle replied. “They love him. By the millions.”

  “I mean anyone who actually knows him.”

  “K-Katrina,” Bobby said, blushing at the mention of her name. “First thing The Boys would do is fire her.”

  “And what’s the second thing they’d do?”

  “The second thing they’d do,” answered Annabelle, “is fire Leo.”

  The soundstage where The Uncle Chubby Show was taped was one floor up from the production offices. It was not a large soundstage by West Coast standards. Space is more precious in Manhattan than it is in Burbank. It was more like a really large padded cell. In more ways than one. Just inside the steel fire door was the control booth, one wall of it nothing but television monitors and speakers. Six chairs were parked before a console facing it, each equipped with a microphone and control panel. There was a second row of controls situated behind it with six more chairs and mikes. Against the back wall there was a black leather sofa and a pair of armchairs where network and studio people could watch the taping in comfort. Later in the week, the booth would be command central. Right now all of the activity was out on the studio floor, where three burly stagehands were dismantling the set for the pool hall and carting it away to the freight elevator while three more were unloading the flats for the Japanese restaurant set. Two others hastily assembled a bookcase that would serve as the backdrop when Rob phoned Deirdre in the new opening scene.

  Chad and Fiona were running lines on the sofa in Deirdre’s living room. Chad wore reading glasses, either because his eyes were starting to go or because he thought they made him look deep. Lyle was on the kitchen set walking through Chubby’s scene with Jimmy the milkman, one of the few scenes that wasn’t undergoing a radical change. Unless you count casting. The actor from the singing muffler commercial was out. The actor who’d originally been hired to play Jimmy’s friend, Tony, was now playing Jimmy. The living room and kitchen sets, which were much smaller than they appeared on TV, were lit from overhead and faced a tier of bleachers that would hold three hundred people on tape day. The four cameras were presently parked out of the way, covered, as was the sound equipment. There were coils of cable everywhere. Microphones and TV monitors were suspended from the ceiling over the bleachers, along with a big APPLAUSE sign. A few crew members and extras were sitting up there in the bleachers, watching and waiting. So were The Munchkins, whispering to each other like they were at a school assembly. So were Amber and Gwen, who abruptly stopped talking when they spotted me. I took a seat in the front row. Lulu had elected to hang with The Boys and The Kids, who were downstairs working on rewrites and making a huge fuss over her.

  “Okay, pal, I’ll be over at the sink doing the dishes,” Lyle told his new Jimmy. “You’ll knock and …” Lyle stared at the script, rubbing his tight curls with a gloved hand. “Nah, that’s no good. I got it—I’m trying to get the pilot light going in the oven. It’s out, see? So when you walk in I got my head stuck in the oven. Much funnier, right?”

  “Yessir,” the actor chuckled. “Much funnier.”

  Lyle opened the oven door and knelt before it with a grunt. “Okay, go ahead and knock.”

  The actor went ahead and knocked.

  “Yo, Jimbo,” Lyle called out, head in the oven.

  “Yo, Chubbo,” read the actor. “How’s by you?”

  Lyle sat back on his immense haunches, wheezing slightly. “Okay, wait. What’s your name, pal?”

  His name was Bart.

  “Bart, instead of saying ‘How’s by you?’ say … ‘Don’t do it!’ Remember, my head’s in the oven.” He turned to a P.A., who sat at a table nearby with a laptop computer. “You getting these changes, honey?”

  “Yes, Lyle,” she said.

  “Great. Then I’ll say, ‘Jimbo, what the heck are you talking about?’ And you’ll say—”

  Naomi Leight came clomping onto the set in her cowboy boots, interrupting him. “God’s on the phone, Lyle. He wants to know how the show is coming.”

  “How the fuck should I know?” fumed Lyle. “I’m still making it up.”

  Another P.A. was trailing a few steps behind her, clutching an armload of pink pages. “Scene one rewrites,” she announced, passing them out.

  “About fucking time,” snarled Lyle, snatching one from her.

  “What should I tell him, Lyle?” Naomi asked.

  “Tell him I was in rehearsal and couldn’t be disturbed. And where’s Katrina with my macro-fucking-biotic lunch? I’m hungry enough to eat my foot.”

  “I’ll get right on it, Lyle,” she vowed.

  Lyle’s blue eyes twinkled at her impishly. “Thanks, kid. Y’know, that’s kind of a nice little
ass you’ve got on,” he observed, admiring the curve of her tight jeans. “Been wearing it long?” Subtle he wasn’t.

  Naomi giggled invitingly. Subtle he didn’t have to be. “As long as I can remember.”

  “Don’t know why I never noticed it before.”

  “Maybe you had your mind on other things,” she said coyly.

  He cackled. “You go ahead and do your thing. I wanna watch.”

  She headed off with her tail twitching, knowing he was watching her. Which he was. And from the look in his eyes it wasn’t just his foot he was ready to devour. She was next in line, definitely.

  He moved over to the living room with Fiona and Chad and flopped down into Chubby’s easy chair, where he scanned the new pages, making those flatulent noises with his lips while he read. Chad and Fiona were reading them, too. When Lyle finished he tossed the new scene aside and said “Okay, whatta we think?”

  Fiona tipped her head forward so her hair shielded her face. “I’d like to be a little more in the moment,” she replied, gurgling. “I’m always so centered all the time.”

  “You have to be,” Lyle pointed out firmly. “You hold the place together.”

  “But no one holds me together,” she countered, glancing down at the script. “Like Rob asks her how she feels about dinner. She says, ‘I happen to be a big supporter of the food pyramid.’ She has to have some vulnerability under that, like … ‘I happen to be a big supporter of the food pyramid—of course, I also supported Jerry Brown.’ Or—”

  Lyle let out his hoo-hah-hah of a laugh. “I love that. Get it down,” he commanded the typist. “How about you, Chadster?”

  Chad took off his glasses, thumbed his big, square chin thoughtfully. “Who am I? That’s my gut reaction, Lyle. Who the hell am I? I’ve been asking you and asking you. You kept telling me it would all become clear to me when I saw the script. Well, I’ve seen the script. And it’s not clear. All I am is a passenger. I need some direction here, Lyle. We have to talk about this. And we have to talk about it now.”

  Lyle shifted his bulk in the chair, staring at him. “Sure, okay. Whatever you say, pal. You wanna talk, we talk. You excuse us a minute, Fee?”

  Fiona got to her feet. “I’ll be in my dressing room.” She slipped off the set and across the soundstage. As she neared the bleachers she spotted the first major new literary voice of the 1980’s, and came on over.

  “Chad has a stage background,” she informed me. “He needs to talk things through, feel his character evolve.”

  “And Lyle?”

  She shuddered and began to claw at her cuticles. “Lyle goes more by instinct. He’s not very good at analyzing. Way too impatient.” She glanced over at Amber a few rows away. “Amber’s much more Chad’s kind of director,” she murmured. “But if he talked to her Lyle would freak. He’s very easily threatened.”

  “Does he have reason to be?” I asked her, wondering how much she knew.

  She hesitated, tipping her head forward. “This is TV.”

  “Meaning what?” I asked, tipping my own head forward. I could barely hear her.

  “Meaning,” Fiona replied, “we’re all replaceable parts.”

  “Speaking of which, what happened to the milkman?”

  “Lyle didn’t care for his delivery.”

  “I see.” Or for someone else making jokes at his table.

  “Oh, I spoke to Noble. About your book. He said it would be a positive thing for me to talk to you. He thought it would help me to get in touch with my inner core.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  She headed off to her dressing room. Or possibly her inner core. On her way out she passed Naomi, who was on her way in with Lyle’s macro-fucking-biotic lunch. Lyle lit up at the sight of it. Or possibly her. Off came his mask, better to attack his plate of brown rice and beans and steamed veggies. He ate greedily, food spraying from his open mouth as he chewed.

  “Okay, let’s talk,” he said to Chad, pausing to gulp down some mineral water. “Wait, where’s the Hoagster?” He spotted me in the bleachers. “Get your bony ass down here, man! Conference time! Now!”

  I stayed where I was.

  “Hey, come here!” Lyle commanded, louder.

  Phil, the stage manager, scampered over to me. “Uh, Hoagster? Lyle wants you on the set.”

  I stayed where I was. The crew was staring at me now.

  Lyle frowned at me, then heaved an exasperated sigh. “Uh, Hoagy, would you mind joining us for a moment, please?”

  “Be glad to, Lyle,” I replied cheerfully. I strode onto the set and sat next to Chad on the living room sofa.

  “So you’re one of those,” Lyle growled at me.

  “One of those what, Lyle?”

  “People with manners,” he replied scornfully. “I bet people in your family say please and thank you and shit like that to each other all the time, right?”

  “Actually, we don’t speak to each other at all. But we are very polite about not doing it. And Lyle? Don’t ever call me the Hoagster again. It makes me sound like some three-in-one garden gadget.”

  He roared with laughter, just a great big jolly fat man. This was him trying to loosen up Chad. Maybe get him off of his back. It wasn’t working. Chad sat there with his script, totally focused. No dimp.

  “Now what do you mean when you say you’re a passenger, Chad?” Lyle asked.

  “I mean that I have no personality,” Chad replied earnestly. “I mean that I’m a consummate wienie. Even the kids think so. It’s right here in black and white.” Chad searched through the script. “Here when they’re watching TV. Erin says, ‘I think he’s a wienie.’ And Trevor says, ‘He seems okay to me—for a wienie.’ I hate being called that. Frank Rich called me that once in the Times.”

  “Would you feel better if we changed the word?” asked Lyle patiently.

  Chad considered this. “That’s a start.”

  “To what?”

  “How should I know?” Chad demanded petulantly. “I’m not a writer.”

  Lyle looked around for his stage manager. “Phil?! Get The Boys, will ya?!” Phil promptly skedaddled off. Lyle cleaned his plate and belched and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his caftan. The mask went back on. I think I liked him better with it on. “Okay, what else is on your mind, pal?”

  “Camera angles,” Chad replied, somewhat uncomfortably.

  “What about ’em?”

  “I, uh, have certain specific angles that I can’t be shot from. When I’m seated, I mean. At least I’d rather not be.” Gingerly, he tapped the crown of his blond head. So it wasn’t my imagination after all. The man actually had a bald spot. “It’s nothing major, but sometimes if the light hits me wrong there’s, well, a … shine.”

  “Say no more, pal,” Lyle assured him soothingly. “No way I want you to look bad. You look bad, we look bad. Just remind me when we do the camera blocking on Thursday.”

  “Thanks, Lyle,” Chad said gratefully.

  Muck and Meyer came charging onto the set now, Lulu waddling along behind them. They had her dressed up in an Uncle Chubby T-shirt and crew cap, which was turned around backwards. She was one of the gang, and loving every minute of it.

  “Trouble with the new pages, Chief?” asked Marty.

  “Trouble with wienie,” Lyle replied. “Chad doesn’t feel good about it. What can the kids call him that isn’t so negative?”

  “If it’s not negative it won’t be funny,” Tommy said with a pained expression on his face.

  “What is it about wienie that bothers you?” Marty asked the actor.

  “I’m trying to get a handle on this guy,” Chad explained, working the dimp. “I need to figure out who he is. About all I have to go on is that Erin and Trevor think he’s a wienie. And to me, a wienie is—”

  “A dick,” snapped Tommy. “Commonly accepted sitcom euphemism.”

  “Or schmuck,” added Marty, nodding.

  “Well, I don’t want to play a dick or a schmuck.”
<
br />   Marty crouched before us, his elbows on the coffee table. “Okay, so what we need is a new word …”

  “Erin did call him a stud in the kitchen,” I mentioned. Never let it be said I don’t earn my paycheck.

  Chad brightened. “Now stud’s a word I can—”

  “Much too positive for here,” said Marty, trying it: “ ‘He seems okay to me—for a stud.’ No, definitely not. What we need’s a word like stud, only negative. Slightly negative,” he added hastily, before Chad could object.

  Tommy tugged at his white forelock. “Pretty boy … Hunk …”

  Marty: “ ‘He seems okay to me. For a hunk.’ Nah.”

  “Beefcake. Stiff. Drip.” Tommy was whipping through them now. “Dork. Bozo. Gonzo. Yutz. Putz—”

  “They won’t let us use putz at eight o’clock,” Marty said.

  “Putz and a half. Putz and seven eighths—”

  “Will you stop with the putz?”

  “Sissy. Wimp—”

  “Wimp means the same thing as wienie.”

  “Not necessarily,” interrupted Chad, stroking his chin.

  The Boys exchanged a hopeful look.

  “You like wimp?” Marty asked him.

  “Well, yeah,” replied Chad. “Because I’m obviously not one. To me, wimp says weakling. It’s a physical put-down. Whereas, you call a guy a wienie you’re attacking his manhood. Wimp is different. Because people will look at me and they’ll know I’m not one. Especially if I’m a rock climber.”

  “Who’s a rock climber?” growled Lyle.

  “Actually, we were thinking of making you a champion swimmer,” said Marty.

  “We were?” asked Lyle.

  “Ooh, I like that,” exclaimed Chad. “A guy who’s competitive, in great shape …” He frowned. “I don’t have to shave my chest, do I?”

  “Not on my account,” replied Tommy.

  “I had to shave it when I did Tender Is the Night with Debbie Raffin. Got this rash all over that took three weeks to go away.”

  “From Debbie Raffin?” asked Tommy, with keen interest.

  “No, from shaving my—”

  “Is wimp okay with you, Chad?” Lyle broke in irritably.