Haunted Page 5

  In the viewfinder of Agent Tattletale's video camera, Chef Assassin lifted dripping green spoonsful of spinach soufflé into his fat face, saying, “I'm a professional chef. I'm not a food critic. But I can't go three months on instant coffee . . .”

  Of course, everyone said they'd still write their work, their poems and stories. They'd complete their masterpiece. Just not here. Not now. Later, outside.

  Our first week here, we got nothing done. Except complain.

  “It's not an excuse,” Miss America said, holding her flat stomach in both hands, “it's a human life.”

  Miss Sneezy coughed into her fist. She sniffed, her eyes bulging and bloodshot behind tears, and said, “My life's at stake, here.” One hand digging in her pocket for another pill.

  And, of course, Mr. Whittier shook his head no.

  Sitting there in his blue velvet chair, the lobby scrolling gold and velvet around him, Mr. Whittier spooned clam chowder out of a Mylar bag and said, “Tell me a story about the baby's father.” To Miss America, he said, “Write me the scene of how you met him.”

  And Agent Tattletale's camera zoomed in on Miss America's face for a close-up reaction shot.

  Product Improvements

  A Poem About Miss America

  “I'm always looking,” says Miss America, “for what's NOT to like.”

  Every time she looks in a mirror.

  Miss America onstage, her blond hair coils and spirals, billows and looms,

  to make her face look as small as possible.

  One high-heeled foot, placed just a little in front of the other

  to make her legs overlap

  so her hips look more

  narrow.

  Standing sideways, she twists her shoulders

  to face the audience head-on.

  All this breathless contortion to make her waist look

  itty-bitty.

  Onstage, instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment:

  Her face veiled with exercise videos.

  Her features, her eyes and lips, made up with hot-pink leotards and leg warmers.

  Her Miss America skin jumps and dances with a crowd of women,

  each of those women watching herself in a mirror.

  The film: a shadow of a reflection of an image of an illusion.

  She says, “My every glance in a mirror, it's a secret market survey.”

  She's her own test audience.

  Rating her curb appeal on a scale of one to ten.

  Every day, beta-testing a new upgraded version of herself-point-five.

  Fine-tuning to follow market trends.

  Her dress, swimsuit-tight, leotard-tight,

  her pantyhose run with women pedaling bicycles, going nowhere

  at a thousand calories an hour.

  “For the Talent portion of my program,” she says, “I'll show you how to unswallow.”

  A bellyful of peach ice cream,

  a Halloween bag of miniature candy bars,

  six frosted doughnuts,

  two double cheeseburgers.

  The usual stuff.

  And sometimes, sperm.

  Her face swimming and flickering with aerobic work, her immediate ambition is

  to diminish initial buyer resistance.

  With a long-term goal of becoming someone's long-term investment.

  As a durable consumer good.

  Green Room

  A Story by Miss America

  It's nothing personal when bombs explode. Or when a gunman in a stadium takes a hostage. When the Net Monitor shows a special alert, any television station is going to toss to the talent on the national feed coming through.

  If you're watching television, first the local booth producer and director will cut to the double-box format. A split screen to most people. Then the local talent says something like, “With the latest on the sinking ocean liner, here's Joe Blow in New York.” That's what they call “the toss.” Or “the kick.”

  The network feed takes over, and the local boys sit on their hands and wait for the network bump to signal the end of the special-alert feed.

  No publicist thinks to explain all this to each newbie they send on the road, selling an investment video, a book, a new-fangled carrot peeler.

  So, sitting in the green room, backstage at Wake Up Chattanooga!, a young guy with his hair slicked back, he explains some facts of life to this blonde.

  She's super, way-too blond, he tells her. That kind of bleach blond, it drives the floor producer nuts, because you can't light it well without it flaring. Some floor producers, they call it “blowout.” The blond head just looks on fire.

  “Whatever you do,” the slick guy tells the blonde, “if you got notes, don't reference them or the camera will be shooting the top of your head.”

  Floor producers, he says, they hate guests who bring notes. They hate guests who don't try to bury their agenda. Producers will tell you: “Be your product. Don't push it.”

  Ironical, but that same floor producer will call you “Fitness Wheel” because that's the slug written in your block on the schedule. It says “Investment Videos” for the slick guy's block. For the old man, the slug says: “Stain Remover.”

  The blonde and the slick guy, them sitting on the reject leather sofa in the green room, cups of old coffee abandoned on the table in front of them, hanging over them a couple video monitors flicker high on the walls, in the corners, mounted up near the ceiling. On one monitor, you see the national talent talking about the ocean liner, then tossing to video support that shows a ship belly-up and the specks of orange life vests floating around it. On the second monitor, the blonde says, there's something even sadder.

  Up in that other corner, you see the A Block bozo, the old comb-over guy who got out of his Motel 6 bed at 5 a.m. to be here and pitch his special stain-removing brush he invented. Poor schmuck. He gets miked and put onstage, in the “living-room set” with its rain forest of fake plants. He sits under those hot lights while the on-air talent does their opening “chat.”

  The living-room set is different from the “kitchen set” and the “main set” because it has more fake plants and throw pillows.

  This bozo thinks he's got a fat ten-minute segment because the station is playing the clock, not cutting to commercial until ten after the start. Most stations cut at eight or nine minutes. That way, we keep the audience from channel-surfing and get top ratings credit for the whole fifteen-minute block.

  “Not pretty,” the slick guy tells our blonde girl, and he crosses himself fast as a good Catholic, “but better him than either of us.”

  A heartbeat into his stain-removing demo, the A Block's cut off by the doomed ocean liner.

  Sitting in this green room, on a ratty leather sofa in some double-digit ADI, the slick guy says he's got maybe seven minutes to teach an entire world to our Miss America.

  ADI, that means Area of Direct Influence. Boston, for example, is the number-three ADI in the country because its media reach the third-largest market of consumers. New York is the number-one ADI. Los Angeles is number two. Dallas, number seven.

  Where they're sitting is way down the list of ADIs. Day Break Lincoln or New Day Tulsa. Some media outlet that reaches a consumer market demographic totaling nobody.

  Some other good advice is: Don't wear white. Never wear a black-and-white patterned anything because it will “shimmer” on camera. And always lose some weight.

  “Just staying at this weight,” our blonde tells the slick guy, “is a full-time job.”

  The on-air person, the talent here in Chattanooga, the slick guy says, the anchor here is a total straight pipe. Whatever they tell her over the IFD in her ear, those exact words will pop out her lipstick-red mouth. The director could feed her, “. . . Christ, we're going long! Toss to Adopt-a-Dog, and then we'll cut to commercial . . . ,” and that's what she'd say on air.

  A total straight pipe.

  Our blonde girl, listening, she doesn't laugh. Not even a smile.
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br />   So the slick guy tells her, other talent he's seen, one time on a live feed to location, a warehouse fire roaring in the background, the on-air person fumbled with her hair, looking straight into a hot camera and going out live, she said, “Could you repeat the question? My IUD fell out . . .”

  The reporter, she meant IFD. Internal Feedback Device, the slick guys says. He points at the anchor who appears on the monitor, and he says how one anchor will always have that kind of lopsided hairdo. The hair swooping down to hide one ear. It's because she's got a tiny radio stuck in her ear to take prompts and cues from the director. If the show is going long or they need to toss to a nuclear-reactor meltdown.

  This blonde, she's on the road with some kind of exercise wheel you roll around on top of to lose weight. She wears a pink leotard and purple tights.

  Yeah, she's thin and blonde, but the more ins and outs your face has, the slick guy tells her, the better you look on camera.

  “That's why I have to keep my before picture,” she says. Bending over in her chair, leaning over and over until her breasts press against her knees, she digs in a gym bag on the floor. She says, “This is the only real proof that I'm not just another skinny blonde girl.” She takes something paper out of the bag, holding an edge between two fingers. It's a photograph, and the blonde tells the slick guy, “Unless people see this, they might think I was just born this way. They'd never know what I've done with my life.”

  Go on television with even a little baby fat, he tells her, and you look like nothing. A mask. A full moon. A big zero with no features for people to remember.

  “Losing all that blubber is the only really heroic thing I've ever done,” she says. “If I gain it back, then it'll be like I never lived.”

  You see, the slick guy says, television takes a three-dimensional thing—you—and turns it into a two-dimensional thing. That's why you look fat on camera. Flat and fat.

  Holding the photo between two fingernails, looking at her old self, our blonde says, “I don't want to be just another skinny girl.”

  About her hair being too “hot,” the slick guy tells her, “That's why you never see natural redheads in porn movies. You can't light them right, next to real people.”

  That's what this guy wants to be: the camera behind the camera behind the camera giving the last and final truth.

  We all want to be the one standing farthest back. The one who gets to say what's good or bad. Right or wrong.

  Our too-blonde girl, going to blow out the cameras, the slick guy tells her about how these local-produced shows are broken into six segments with commercials in between. The A Block, B Block, C Block, and so on. These shows like Rise and Shine Fargo or Sun-Up Sedona, they're a dying breed. Expensive to produce, compared to just buying some national talk-show product to fill the slot.

  A promotion tour like this, it's the new vaudeville. Going from town to town, hotel to hotel, playing one-night stands on local television and radio. Selling your new and improved hair curler or stain remover or exercise wheel.

  You get seven minutes to put your product across. That's if you're not slotted in the F Block—the last block, where in half the ADIs you get bumped off the program because an earlier block went too long. Some guest was so funny and charming they held him through the commercial. They “double-blocked” him. Or the network interrupted with a sinking ship.

  That's why the A Block is so choice. The show starts, the anchors do their “chat” segment, and you're on.

  No, pretty soon, all this hard-won know-how the slick guy's put together, it will be no good to anybody.

  Maybe that's why he's teaching her for free. Really, he says, he should write a goddamn book. That's the American Dream: to make your life into something you can sell.

  Still looking at her fat-self photograph, the blonde says, “It's pretty creepy, but this fatty-fat picture is worth more to me than anything,” she says. “It used to make me sad, looking at it. But now it's the only thing that cheers me up.”

  She holds out her hand, saying, “I eat so much fish oil you can smell it.” She wiggles the photo at the slick guy, saying, “Smell my hand.”

  Her hand smells like a hand, like skin, soap, her clear fingernail polish.

  Smelling her hand, he takes the picture. Flattened out on paper, made into just height and width, she's a cow wearing a cropped top over low-rise jeans. Her old hair is a normal, average brown color.

  If you look at what the slick guy's wearing, a pale-pink shirt with a robin's-egg-blue tie, a dark-blue sports coat, it's perfect. The pink warms up his flesh tones. The blue picks out his eyes. Before you even open your mouth, he says, you have to be presentable. Presentable, well-groomed broadcast content. You wear a wrinkled shirt, a stained tie, and you'll be the guest they cut if they run short of time.

  Any television station just wants you to be clean, well-groomed, charming content. Camera-friendly content. A nice face, because a stain remover or an exercise wheel can't talk. Just happy, high-energy content.

  On the monitor, the skin hanging off the old guy's neck, it's folded and pleated together where it has to tuck into his starched blue button-down collar. Even so, as he swallows, just sitting there, some extra skin spills out over the top of his collar, the way the before-photo girl's belly fat spills over the waist of her jeans.

  This photo doesn't even look like the same girl. Mainly because in the picture she's smiling.

  Looking at the green-room monitor, the slick guy points out how the hot camera never pans over the audience, never gives us a wide shot. That means the place is nothing but old ladies with bad teeth. The audience-recruitment person, he must've worked a deal. They drag these goobers in here at 7 a.m. and fill an audience, and the station will plug their Senior Craft Fair. That's how they stock these local shows with people to clap. Around Halloween, it will be all young people coming in, so the station will plug their haunted-house fund-raiser. Around Christmas, those bleachers are nothing but old folks who want their charity bazaars to get some attention. Fake applause traded for free advertising.

  On the broadcast monitor, the national talent kicks the show back to the local anchor, who tosses to a pre-pro package tease about tomorrow's makeover show, then the bump: a beauty shot of the rain falling outside, a little fanfare, and we're into commercial.

  The ship's sunk, with hundreds dead. Film at eleven.

  The slick guy's investment pitch, he's rewriting it inside his head to include Acts of God. Disasters you can't predict. And how vitally important a good, sound investment plan can be to the people depending on you. Him, being his product. Hiding his agenda.

  Him, the camera behind the camera.

  Long as it took that ocean liner to sink, it looks as if our bleach blonde's hair will get her bounced off.

  Before they come back from commercial, bumping with a traffic report, a voice-over and the live shot from some highway camera, before then the producer will escort the stain remover back to the green room. The floor producer, she'll hand the radio mike to the Investment Video. She'll tell the Fitness Wheel, “Thank you for coming down, but we're sorry. We overbooked and ran long . . .”

  And she'll have Security escort our blonde out to the street.

  All so they can wrap and meet the network feed—the soap operas and celebrity talk shows—at ten o'clock, sharp.

  The old goober up on the monitor, he's got the same shirt and tie as the slick guy. The same blue eyes. He's got the right idea. Just the wrong timing's all.

  “Let me do you a favor,” the slick guy tells the blonde. Still holding the before fat picture of her, he says, “Will you take some good advice?”

  Sure, she says, anything. And, listening, she picks up a cup of cold coffee with lipstick smeared on the paper rim that matches the pink lipstick on her mouth.

  This blonde girl with her too-hot hair, she's the slick guy's own private personal ADI right now.

  Especially, he tells her, don't let any of these daytime-talk-show Ro
meos get you into bed. He doesn't mean the on-air talent. It's the pitch guys you have to watch, these same guys you meet selling their miracle dust mops and get-rich schemes in city after city. You'll be thrown together in green rooms in ADIs all across the country. You and them lonely from your time stuck out on the road. Nothing but a motel room at the end of each day.

  Speaking from personal experience, these green-room romances go nowhere.

  “You remember the Nev-R-Run Pantyhose Girl?” he asks her.

  And the blonde girl nods yes.

  “She was my mom,” the slick guy says. She met his dad while they were both on selling tours, meeting again and again in green rooms just like this. Truth is, he never married her. Ditched her as soon as he found out. Being pregnant, she lost the pantyhose pitchman contract. And the slick guy grew up watching shows like Out-a-Bed Boulder and Wakey Wakey Tampa, trying to figure out which of those smiling fast-talking men was his old man.

  “It's why I'm in the business,” he tells our blonde girl.

  That's why: keep it business, is his first rule.

  The blonde says, “Your mom is really, really pretty . . .”

  His mom . . . He says, Those Nev-R-Run Pantyhose must've used asbestos. She caught cancer a couple months back.

  “She was damn ugly,” he says, “when she died.”

  At any second, the door into the green room will swing open, and the floor producer will come in, saying she's sorry but they might need to cut another guest. The producer, she'll look at the girl's bright-blond hair. The producer will look at the slick guy's navy-blue sports coat.

  The F Block bailed out of here the moment the network broke in with the ocean liner. Then the E Block—Color Consultant, her slug said—bailed when the show looked doomed to run long. Then a Children's Book slotted for the D Block took off.

  The sad truth is, even if you get your hair the right color blond and fake being funny and high-energy, good content, even then some terrorist with a box cutter might still walk off with your seven-minute segment. Sure, they can always tape you and run you packaged the next day, but chances are they won't. They've got content booked solid for this week, and running you on tape tomorrow means cutting someone else . . .