Til the Real Thing Comes Along (34 page)

“Great Look, I really don’t think that I…” R.J. picked up her purse. This was too much.

“Hey, I know you want to talk about the nurses,” Beth Berger said, “but just let me tell you this one thing. Woman to woman.
I mean, only another woman would get a kick out of this. I was going to make a romantic little dinner for him. You know? The
best way to a man’s heart and all that? So I went to the Italian butcher to get some veal so I could make him veal piccata,
and of course I couldn’t put the veal on my charge account in case Larry looked at the bill and remembered that we didn’t
have veal at home that night. So I paid for the veal with cash, and when the butcher was ringing up the sale he said to me:
‘You know, you look just like my customer Mrs. Larry Wayne. Only I
know you’re not because Mrs. Wayne always puts the meat on her charge account.’” Beth Berger let out a hoot. “Can you believe
it? My heart was pounding like I was a criminal.” She dapped at her desk and laughed a laugh that made her face bright red.

R.J. bit the inside of her cheek. Unless she said something now to stop her, this woman would go on and on. This was not right.
The red of Beth Berger’s face was paling a little and was now only a bright pink.

“Always puts the meat on her charge account,” she said, still amused at her own story, but the seriousness of R.J.’s face
was definitely having a sobering effect on her.

“Beth,” R.J. said, “I have a real instinct that this isn’t such a good way for us to start doing business.” Now Beth Berger’s
face was pale pink. “I mean, probably if you think about it, you’ll agree that the kind of personal information you’re giving
me could be stuff that next week you’ll wish you hadn’t told me. Maybe you’ll even wish that in an hour,” R.J. said. “So why
don’t we just proceed here? Okay?”

Beth Berger shuffled some papers on her desk. She was obviously embarrassed.

“You’re right,” she said, hurriedly now, and glanced at her watch. “Anyway, about the nurses. Listen, I know your work, I
always watch Patsy’s show, the network likes you, so why don’t I just call your agent today and we’ll make a deal, and we’ll
meet again next week and we’ll talk story?”

The buzzer buzzed. Twice this time.

R.J. was taken aback, but thrilled with the turn of events. She was glad she had stopped the conversation where she had. “Great,”
she said. Beth Berger grabbed the phone. “Yes?” she said nervously into the receiver. Then she listened for a moment and looked
at R.J., who stood. She wasn’t going to sit through another phone call. Beth Berger held her hand up like a traffic cop to
tell R.J. to wait a second, then held the phone against her navy blazer.

“We’ll talk more next week. Okay?” and she smiled.

“You bet,” R.J. said as Beth Berger pushed a button on the phone. R.J. was nearly out the door when she heard her say into
the telephone: “Sweetie, Daddy will be home for dinner, but I have a meeting, so ask
him
to help you with the map of Italy, all right?”

A job. She had a job. Thank God. A pilot. Nurses. One
was psychiatric. One was surgical. Talk about having nothing to go on. But so what? She’d make it work. She’d get home and
try to come up with good solid funny characters, and at the end of the day she’d call her agent and see what the offer was.
Whatever it was she’d take it. Pay her bills. Put a few dollars away for Jeffie’s bar mitzvah. Beth Berger. So crazy. Imagine
telling a total stranger about her illicit sex life. Her affair. And this was a woman R.J. would be working with for the next
however long it took to write the pilot. The cost of doing business. That’s what Arthur would have called having to deal with
a person like Beth Berger.

At home at the card table, R.J. made some preliminary notes, thinking about what the emotional makeup of the nurses could
be. How their lives at the hospital affected their interactions with one another. Who else lived in their building. What kind
of men they’d be involved with. What were the doctors like whom they worked for? She stopped for a few minutes to make a meat
loaf for Jeffie and put it into the oven. Then back at the card table she made a note to call a friend of Dinah’s who was
a nurse at Valley Presbyterian Hospital and interview her. Then she wrote some more notes about the characters, and when she
finally looked up it was six o’clock. She would call her agent and see if the negotiations had begun.

“Hiya babes.” Her agent, Stanley, answered her call, and before she could ask he said, “Hey, sorry, but it’s no go on the
nurses pilot. She says you’re not right for it.”

“What? Who does?”

“Berger at Meteor. Says she thought it over after the meeting with you. You’re just wrong for the project. Go figure. Huh?”

“Stanley, she told me I had it.”

“Hey! I’m just the messenger. She hired Karen Ambler off a M*A*S*H spec script. Don’t wony,” he said. “Maybe you’ll sell
Laugh a Minute
tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Stanley,” R.J. said. She hung up the phone, stood, and walked downstairs to check on Jeffie’s dinner. The meat loaf
was raw. She was furious at herself for forgetting to turn on the oven, until she reached for the knob and realized she hadn’t
forgotten at all. She had turned it on but there was no heat. Maybe the pilot was out. She struck a match and lit the pilot
but it wouldn’t stay lit. The oven was broken. She made the meat loaf into
hamburgers that she cooked in a frying pan on the top of the stove, and called Jeffie down for dinner. After dinner she would
go over her notes for
Laugh a Minute
for tomorrow’s meeting.

“It’s about a woman comedy writer,” R.J. said to Kip Walters, who smiled and said encouragingly, “That’s great,” Thank heaven,
R.J. thought. “And she works on the staff of a TV variety show,” she went on.

“like on
The Dick Van Dyke Show,”
Walters said. He was still smiling.

“And all of the bizarre people she has to deal with when she’s working. She’s the only woman on the staff.”

“Funny,” Kip Walters said. “Funny. Like who are they?”

“One is a chauvinistic head writer who calls her ‘the broad,’ and then there’s a bunch of really neurotic guys and she mothers
them as if she was Snow White and they were the seven dwarfs.”

“I love it. This is great. Go on.”

“And she’s always wisecracking to everyone, because she has a hard time turning it off.”

“But inside she’s vulnerable as hell,” Kip Walters added, nodding.

“And her conflict,” R.J. said, feeling confident now, “is that on top of working day and night on this show, she’s raising
a son and she has to be at home, too, so we get to see the real problems of the working mother.”

In an instant the smile disappeared from Kip Walters’s face, and he opened his mouth, inserted his index finger, and pretended
to gag.

“Yecchh,” he said. “Major turnoff. Real problems. I’m not interested in real problems. Next.”

“Pardon?”

“What else have you got? Something sans real problems. This network needs an eight o’clock show. A fairy tale world. Nothing
real. Got anything like that?”

“I don’t I really don’t.”

“Too bad. Let us know when you do.”

* * *

“This oven is shot, lady. I’m amazed it lasted this long. It’s at least thirty years old. And ovens are like women. After
a certain age, they just don’t get hot no more.”

R.J. had waited ovenless for this repairman for two weeks or she would have thrown him out the door for that. Instead, she
watched him as he laughed at his own joke. And while he was laughing he said, “It’ll run you about two hundred and fifty bucks,”

An oven. How could she do without an oven? Two hundred and fifty dollars. Christ. “Go ahead and fix it” she said. While the
man was fixing the oven she went back upstairs to work, and the phone rang. It was her agent Stanley.

“Good news,” he said. “Not great news, but good news. You know your story about the chicken?” He’d obviously never read “Chicken
in a Pot.”

“Yes.”

“I sold it to
Women at Work
magazine.”

“Stanley! That is great news. I’m thrilled. How much?”

“Two hundred and fifty dollars.”

The oven, R.J. thought.

“Before my commission, of course,” Stanley said.

Almost the oven, R.J. realized, amending her thought. But most of all it was a sale, in a new form. She had tried something
new and it had worked. She sat at the card table for a few minutes after she put the phone down, smiling. Imagining herself
going to the newsstand to buy the copy of
Women at Work
that had her story in it and how much fun that would be. Short stories. She was now a writer and seller of short stories.
And she would write more of them, too, as soon as she could make some money to support herself and her son so she could afford
to.

“Stanley sent you over because he said you’re my writer,” Dick Crawford said. Above the sofa where he sat was a poster of
a bikinied woman’s groin. “Just the girl to write this idea I have, so I’m going to pitch it to you. It’s real simple. A guy,
his wife, and her kid sister. The wife and the guy are in their early thirties, see? And the kid sister is twenty-one and
gorgeous and she lives with them. And what we have to believe, even though it’s never stated, is
that the guy is slipping it to the sister on the side. What do you think?” The successful television producer gave R.J. a
boyish grin.

“I think Stanley was wrong,” she said, standing. “I’m not your writer.” Then she left.

The green blanket had holes in it. It was a wedding gift from Arthur’s aunt Louise, but since Aunt Louise sent a blanket that
was double-bed size and not king size, which was the size of the bed, and Aunt Louise lived in Canada, they couldn’t return
it, so they used the blanket to sit on at picnics. And this was sort of a picnic. An outing with Jeffie’s class to the Los
Angeles County Art Museum, and afterward a brown-bag lunch on the grounds. Jeffie had invited R.J. to be a driver and a chaperone
in that same kind of way her mother used to invite poor people in the neighborhood over for Passover dinner. Pitying. Anticipating
gratitude. And when R.J. wavered, not sure that under her unemployed circumstances she ought to give up a writing day, he
said, patting her arm, “You really should, Mom. It’ll be good for you.”

That sold her. Obviously her son had noticed the edge of panic she was feeling because of being out of work, and the way she
hardly left the house anymore, and he was hoping to be able to keep her happily occupied, at least for a few hours. And the
truth was she was having a great time. Every one of the boys in Jeffie’s class was taller than R.J. was, and so was almost
every one of the girls. They were all so darling.

“I see your name on the Patsy Dugan show, Mrs. Misner. Is it fun working for her?” one of the girls asked.

“It
was
fun. I’m not working there anymore. Those are reruns you’ve been seeing.”

“My mom said Patsy Dugan had silicone in her breasts or implants. Is that true?” Natalie, a girl with frizzy blond hair, asked
seriously. Then, as if to emphasize the question, she blew a big pink bubble with the gum she’d been chewing.

“I don’t know,” R.J. answered. It was a warm dear California day. Jennifer, a girl who had a turned-up nose and wore big tortoise-shell
glasses, poked the bubble, which splattered all around Natalie’s mouth.

“Have you ever seen them in person?” Matt Wallace, Jeffie’s friend asked. He was foraging in R.J.’s basket. Probably for more
cookies.

“Seen who in person?” R.J. asked.

“Her breasts,” Matt answered.

“Aghhh,” the kids screamed. “In person.”

“Can’t say that I have,” R.J. replied, trying not to laugh.

“I mean, you could tell if you’d seen them because they’re much harder when they’re fake.”

“Ugh, how do you know that, Matt?” Natalie shrieked.

“They look like footballs,” the boy said.

“Footballs, agghh.” That sent the group into screams of laughter. Infectious laughter that made R.J. laugh. And soon they
weren’t laughing about footballs anymore. They were just laughing at one another’s laughter, and at Natalie’s trying to remove
the bubble gum from her face, and every now and then someone in the group would say
footballs,
and they’d all fall apart all over again. Including R.J., who was glad she’d worn her overalls and not any decent clothes,
because somehow she’d managed to get mustard all over one leg and Hawaiian Punch all over the other. Oh, God, these kids were
so cute. If anyone on the faculty heard what they were laughing about. Her eyes were wet from laughing so hard and she said,
“Agh, I need a Kleenex.” As she reached into her purse to pull out a tissue, she noticed that a handkerchief was being handed
to her, and when she looked up at the handkerchief bearer, she saw David Malcolm. Oh, God. She wasn’t wearing a drop of makeup.
She was covered with food. She was dressed in a pair of overalls and an old T-shirt.

“Hi,” he said, smiling.

R.J. smiled at the sight of him, but she wanted to disappear under the green blanket. He was so wonderful to look at in a
suit and tie. And he had such a sweet smile on his face. Her heart was pounding and her face was hot with the excitement of
being near him.

“Hey, look who’s here,” Jeffie said.

“How are you, Jeff?” David asked with a big smile, and offered his hand to Jeffie to shake.

“I was on my way out of a meeting at the museum and heard the laughter over here, so I looked over, and I might
have known you’d be in the middle of it,” he said, grinning at R.J. “What was so funny?”

His question sent the whole group into hysterics again, except for R.J., who was trying not to laugh. Oh sure. Tell proper
David Malcolm that she’d been discussing Patsy Dugan’s breasts with a bunch of twelve-year-olds.

“Football,” she answered, and all the kids squealed again.

“Yeah, football,” Matt Wallace said.

“I had no idea you were a fan,” David said to R.J.

She couldn’t answer. Just stood and straightened her wrinkled overalls, certain that she looked horrible and dumpy and askew.