Authors: Robbins Harold
"Would you be interested in trying to work
something out?" he asked. "A weekly show. The
Glenda
Grayson Show."
"Sure."
"Then I work with you. Or Sam?"
"With me.
And
Sam. He's a great guy.
I'm not gonna shut him out. But he's the business side of things. We
make a deal, he'll negotiate the contract."
Bat reached across the table and took her hand in his. "We could
come up with something real great, you and I," he said quietly.
Glenda put her other hand to her face and used a
finger to wipe the corners of her eyes. "Hey," she
whispered. "Careful. I'm a sucker for handsome
shkotzim.
I've made a fool of myself more than once."
"
Shkotzim
?"
She grinned and closed her hand around his. "Guys that're not
Jewish," she said.
"Glenda ..."
He rose and walked around the little table to stand behind her. He
put a hand on her curly blond hair and found it stiff. He realized he
was touching hairspray. Throughout her energetic performance her hair
remained in place because of spray lacquer.
"Another word," she said. "Shiksa.
It doesn't just mean non-Jewish girl, like you may think. My family
calls me shiksa. It means a Jewish girl who tries to act like a
gentile. They
spit
the word."
"Glenda ..." He ran his hand along her cheek.
She turned and looked up at him, smiling tearfully. "My real
name is Golda Graustein. But why do I tell you this? You didn't ask
for an education in the peculiarities of my background and family.
I'm sorry, Bat."
He bent down and kissed her forehead. "If it
helps you at all, any way at all, then
tell me
," he said.
"Are you going to stay with me tonight?" she asked
abruptly.
Bat nodded. He was surprised but was not going to pass up the
opportunity.
"You don't know what you're getting into," she said.
"Glenda falls in love. Glenda makes a fool of herself."
"So do I," he said.
She stood and began taking off her clothes. Besides the blouse and
skirt she was wearing a bra and panties, garter belt and stockings.
In a minute she was naked. She had a beautiful body, oddly white as
if she never exposed it to the sun. She had no swimsuit marks. The
contrast between her bright pink nipples and the white skin of her
breasts was fascinating.
"C'mon, baby," she said. "I wanta see you, too."
Glenda grew visibly excited as Bat stripped. She winced when she saw
the bullet-wound scar on his chest, but her eyes stayed on it only an
instant before they dropped to his loins as he pulled down his
shorts.
"Oh, marvelous!" she whispered. "Not
mutilated. Not circumcised. My uncle is a
mohel.
He cuts
little boys. I hate it. Bring it to me, Bat! Oh, God, I want it!"
She dropped to the floor, rolled on her back, and spread her legs for
him. She brought to lovemaking the same energy and frenzy she brought
to performing on stage, and she ascended to levels of rapture he had
never seen a woman attain before. They coupled twice on the floor
before she would consent to interrupt long enough for him to carry
her to the bedroom and put her down on the bed. No other woman had
ever exhausted him, but when finally Glenda Grayson grew heavy-lidded
and soft of voice he was glad.
"C'n we put it in the contract that you'll give me nights like
this at least three times a week?" she asked.
"I'm not sure I could handle it," said Bat.
"What an admission!" She laughed. They were her last words
before she fell asleep.
A week later Jonas arrived in Las Vegas, flown in from the airstrip
at Cord Explosives. Bat met him at the airport.
"What's this crap about making a television show?" Jonas
asked as soon as they were on the road.
"I've got a good idea," said Bat.
"Yeah? Well, when did I say I want to make a television show? I
suppose you mean to use my money?"
"It's a business proposition," said Bat. "A good
business proposition. One we're going to need."
"Need?"
"We're beginning to lose money on the manufacture of television
sets," said Bat. "The little makers are going to be
squeezed out. That's why I think we should go into producing."
"Why should we be squeezed out?" Jonas asked. "The
Cord sets are quality."
"Research and development costs are going to go out of sight,"
said Bat. "Are you aware of this thing called the transistor
that they developed at Bell Labs? In a few years, the only tube in a
television set will be the picture tube."
"What good will that do?" asked Jonas. "Sure, they've
got pocket radios, which is all very well and good, but a TV set has
to be big enough for its picture tube."
"How often does a Cord set have to be serviced?" Bat asked.
"Servicing television sets is a minor industry. Day or night,
somebody will come in a little truck and fix your TV. And what are
they fixing? Tubes. Ninety-nine percent of all service calls are
tube-replacement calls. Tubes fail."
"Transistors don't?"
"Occasionally. But not regularly, like tubes. And they're
cheaper, too. I've read some technical papers on this. In a few years
tube sets will not be competitive. Not only that, the sets of the
future will receive color broadcasts. Aside from that, the Japanese
are coming in. Ever hear of a company called Sony?"
"I've heard of Sony. You paint a goddamned gloomy picture, for a
guy just now sticking his toes in the water."
"Not gloomy. Television will be bigger than ever. That's why I
recommend we go into the production of shows — and maybe get
out of the production of sets."
"So you got this broad you want to use as a star. What you think
she can do?"
"A combination situation comedy and variety show," said
Bat. "She's a performer more than an actress: a singer, dancer,
and comedienne. But she can act, particularly comic acting. The
situation comedy would be based on the idea that Glenda has a weekly
television variety hour, featuring herself as principal performer.
But we show her at home, too, with a husband and children; and we
show in a comic way the difficulties she has combining the roles of
wife and mother and performer."
"That's a cliché," Jonas observed.
"Name a successful television show that isn't. They're all
cliché-ridden, and they're all predictable. Originality is
poison on TV. Let's say we open each show with Glenda singing a song,
then do the situation comedy, and close with a production number. I
think it'll work."
"It'll work if somebody, namely me, puts in a pisspot full of
money."
"Not all that much. We can build the New York apartment into one
soundstage, the theater where she does the variety show into another.
We don't have to do any location shooting. Talent costs will be
reasonably high. We've got one young little dancer I want to use on
the show. She's a newcomer, so she'll be cheap. Her name is Margit
Little. She's going to be a star one day, and we'll have her under
contract."
Jonas sighed heavily. "You're way outa line. When did I tell you
to get me into a new business?" Jonas asked.
"If all you want me for is to run errands for businesses you've
already got going, then take my resignation," said Bat. "Your
father checked out and left you to run things your way. You put Cord
Explosives into businesses he would never have approved of:
airplanes, movies. Or maybe he would have approved, when he saw the
money they could make. I don't think you'd have stayed with him if
all he'd let you do is make dynamite. You — "
"You assume a lot," Jonas snapped.
"All right, forget what I assume about you
and my grandfather. I'm telling you I won't stick if I'm shot down
every time I come up with an idea. Even you can't turn me into an
errand boy.
Capisce
?"
Jonas raised his chin high. "I'd have more confidence in your
judgment if you weren't screwin' this woman you want to make your
star."
"What do you want, a virgin?"
"Uhmmm," muttered Jonas nodding. "She a good piece?"
"Fantastic."
"Maybe
I
should give her a try."
Bat shook his head. "She isn't a whore we can pass back and
forth."
"Will she do a nude audition?"
"She's a star," said Bat. "Already. Without us."
"Shit."
Glenda squeezed Bat's hand when he opened the door and admitted her
to the suite. She let his father see no other sign of her affection.
She had dressed for this meeting with the redoubtable Jonas Cord: in
a tight black knit dress that looked modest enough but strikingly
displayed her figure.
"Bat has told me what kind of show he
proposes you do," said Jonas. "I assume you know what
you're doing. Miss Grayson. I assume Bat will hire people who know
what
they're
doing. It seems to me, though, that you're taking
on a damned heavy burden by trying to do this show every week —
or by trying to do thirty-nine of them a season. Bat hasn't had any
experience in show business, but I have, and I think it's too much.
If I'm funding this deal, I want to do it every other week —
twenty shows a season, not thirty-nine. Apart from saving you from
burning yourself out, that'll make it possible to build a little more
quality into each show."
"I think that's a good suggestion, Mr. Cord," said Glenda.
"I haven't accepted the idea, you understand," said Jonas.
"Bat's still working at selling me."
"Yes, I understand," she said.
"Then I have a question," said Jonas. "Is this show
something you really want to do? Do you feel a real commitment to
it?"
"Mr. Cord," she said, "I've been a hoofer and singer
more than half my life. It's all I've ever wanted to do. My family
still doesn't like it, but it's all I ever wanted to do. To have my
own television show, with my name on it — Well, that's the top.
That's everything I ever dreamed of. Of course ... it has to be a
success. I'll work my ass off for it, Mr. Cord."
"Well ... let's see how much you're
committed. What I'd like to see is an audition. A
nude
audition, like a dance number in the altogether. Okay?"
Glenda turned to Bat, stricken, her eyes wide.
"No way," said Bat coldly. "No ... fuckin' ... way.
Cut the crap, Jonas."
Jonas flushed deep red, and the veins in his neck stood out. But he
said nothing. He dismissed Bat and Glenda with a toss of his hand.
"Well ... I suppose that's that," said Glenda as they
waited for the elevator. "Maybe I should have done it."
"No. We'll produce the show."
"What makes you think he'll go along?" she asked.
"He knows what's gonna happen if he doesn't — which is
that he's gonna lose a vice president."
"And a son?" she asked. "I still say, maybe I should
have done it. Maybe I should go back in there and do it now."
"No," said Bat firmly.
"You trying to save my feelings or my dignity?" Glenda
asked. "You should know my dignity doesn't amount to much. Golda
Graustein did some undignified things scrambling to become Glenda
Grayson."
"
Shiksa
!"
The first time she heard the word spat, it was not directed at her
but toward her Aunt Leia, her mother's younger sister. That would
have been — Oh, she had been seven or eight years old. Aunt
Leia had been twenty-six or twenty-seven at the time.
The occasion was that Leia had broken the Shabbat
that morning. While the men of the house were at worship, Leia had
discovered that someone had forgotten to buy the extra bag of bagels
that should have been in the house because they had four guests. Leia
had slipped out of the house, first carefully covering her head with
a scarf, as a modest Jewish girl did before she went out on the
street. She had walked eight blocks to the market run by goyim on
Eighty-seventh Street in Ozone Park. There she had made a
purchase
.
She had touched money on the Shabbat. Someone saw, and someone
brought the word to Rabbi Mordecai Graustein.
"
Shiksa
!"
It was not Leia's first transgression. She had broken the law before.
What the family held most against her, though, was that Leia had
reached the age of twenty-six or -seven and was not yet a wife and
mother.
Nor was she finished with offending. When she was twenty-eight she
would marry a young man from New Jersey and move with him to a town
there. He was a member of a Reform congregation. They reared three
sons in Reform Judaism. Rabbi Graustein forbade his wife ever to see
those children, or ever again to speak to her sister. (She did see
them, as he probably suspected, but husband and wife avoided
confrontation by pretending she obeyed his injunction.)
Rabbi Mordecai Graustein was the father of Golda Graustein —
Glenda Grayson. He was a formidable man. If not for her certainty
that he loved her, little Golda would have been afraid of him. He was
a bigger man than most: broad-shouldered, bulky inside his long black
coats. He wore starched white shirts with collars buttoned tightly to
his throat, without neckties. His beard usually covered his throat in
any event. He wore his black hats set squarely on his head. He was a
respected man in his Queens neighborhood. Many people spoke of him as
holy. Men came to the house seeking the benefit of his wisdom and
learning. Men came to him to hear him elucidate the law. Worried men
came to the house to hear his opinion of the frightful things
happening in Middle Europe.
Golda listened respectfully sometimes, and one day she heard him rule
that the law proscribed the making of fire on the Shabbat and
therefore light switches should not be moved on that day. Flipping a
switch caused fire to appear inside an electric light bulb, he
reasoned; therefore the switches should be set before the Shabbat and
not touched until the Shabbat was over. A yeshiva student gravely but
humbly argued the question, and the rabbi patiently overwhelmed his
argument with citations to holy books.