Turn of the Century (13 page)

“I don’t—I was asleep. The key phrases?”

“My Media Perception Index. MPI. We track Nexis and a few other databases to measure how frequently Harold and our competitive peer group are described in the press as ‘visionary,’ ‘brilliant,’ and so forth.”

“With Hank’s help, I’m ‘voracious’ and ‘mercurial’ forty percent less often than I was in early 1999. And I’m holding firm on both ‘shrewd-slash-savvy’ and ‘contrarian-slash-maverick-slash-pirate-slash-asshole.’ ”

“ ‘
Buccaneer
,’ not pirate,” Saddler says, and then adds, “We do
not
monitor the
a
-word. Harold is joking.”

“I’m still up in the stratosphere on ‘vanity,’ higher than Mort Zuckerman ever got in the early nineties. Buying into the network television business at the turn of this century remains, according to journalists, an insane, egomaniacal act.”

“Most of the numbers are where we want them,” Saddler says, “but ‘visionary’ is lagging a bit. Over the last decade in the entertainment and communications sectors, ‘visionary’ has correlated with market valuation. And, anecdotally, with deal leverage.”

“Your formula can actually predict how many times Larry King and
Fortune
need to call Harold a genius in order to push up the stock price?”

Saddler nods emphatically, as proud and smug as a fugitive Serbian army officer. “Something like that.”

“Disgusting, isn’t it, George?” Mose says. “It’s no longer about my ego! Well, it isn’t
just
about my ego. Hank has discovered the wire that connects my reputation to the stockholders’ interests. He’s the PR Einstein. Earnings equals spin squared.” Mose looks down at a sheet on which a half dozen sentences are printed, each in big, sixteen-point type. “Now who am I supposed to
say
these things to, Hank? People in elevators? Random pedestrians?”

“Media interviews. Analyst presentations. Staff memos. All the public-perception crucibles.”

“All the PPCs, you mean?” Mose says, deadpan, a joke in code for George’s benefit, George figures, flattered.

Saddler nods. “Right. And each nugget represents a piece of your current on-the-record thinking. Distilled by our guys. All of them are between five and fifteen words apiece. Every one has been focus-grouped.”

Mose looks up at Saddler, either aghast or impressed. “A focus group? Composed of whom?”

“Focus
groups
. Journalism graduate students. Geographically, demo-graphically, and ideologically balanced to reflect—”

“ ‘Euphoria is not a business strategy.’ That’s nice and simple. Did I say that?”

“No. Not originally. But it struck me as
so
Harold Mose. Tested well, too.”

“ ‘Market research is bad navigation.’ Good. ‘We don’t just make TV programs—we create broadband content franchises.’ No. That one’s horrible, Hank. ‘We’re not technology bigots. The technology is irrelevant.’ Okay. ‘Television is the ultimate high-volume end-user delivery business.’ That’ll be easy to drop casually over Diet Cokes with Gates. Although it is the sort of thing
he’d
say. ‘Managing change and not being completely in control of that change—
that’s
the adventure.’ Christ, Hank, I’ll sound like goddamn Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“Hey!” It’s Featherstone, suddenly hovering. “The force be with us!”

“Where’s ‘consensual marketing’?” Mose asks Saddler.

“Tested badly. Sex connotations. And we couldn’t register the trademark.”

“And ‘transparency’? I love ‘transparency.’ ”

Saddler shrugs, and Featherstone fills the space. “George, your kids are keeping it real back there, watching the
Episode I
DVD. Sir is unbelievable, by the way—he knows the
day
of the
week
that the original
Star Wars
was released.”

“Yeah, he can do that mental trick with dates,” George tells him.

“Rain Boy!”
Featherstone says, and then snatches his inspiration before it flies off. “Series concept, do you think? Kooky kid superhero? Anyhow, he and I agree: Liam Neeson ain’t no Harrison Ford. And Sarah Smile agrees with me that Ewan McGregor is much, much hotter than Luke—what’s his name? The kid, you know, who smashed his face up.”

Lizzie, returning from the back, slips past Featherstone. As she sits, the poof of her seat cushion sends a sugary disinfectant gust past George.

“ ‘Hotter,’ Timothy?” Mose turns to George and Lizzie. “If I were you, I wouldn’t let this man anywhere near my daughter.”

Everyone smiles except Featherstone, who draws a hash mark in the air with an index finger, makes a quick frying sound with his tongue, then laughs loudly, actually slapping his thighs with both hands like Sammy Davis, Jr., used to do.

“Speaking of
Star Wars
, boss, we’re a bitsometer away from closing the
Shampoo
sequel in time for November sweeps. Carrie script, Drew signed to play
her
daughter.” Saddler scribbles a note. “We’re begging Warren to do a cameo.”

George catches Lizzie’s puzzled look: Warren (Beatty) and Drew (Barrymore) she gets, but
Carrie?
she mouths to him. “Fisher,” he whispers quickly.

“Beg away,” says Mose, looking straight ahead at his
Wall Street Journal
. “By the way,
not
Ethan Hawke for the hairdresser role, please, even if he’ll do it; Robert Downey, maybe.” Mose glances down the aisle to where the three children sit, then lowers his voice a symbolic notch. “Do you really intend to use the word
blowjob
? Can we?”

“Standards and Practices says no problemo if it’s after ten. It’s an overall tonnage issue, too. We can use
blowjob
once. Plus one use of the verb
suck
.” Featherstone turns to George. “
Suck
’s a verb, right?”

“It certainly can be, Timothy,” George says.

“So,” Featherstone continues, “we just slip that scene to the end of the second act, and bingo, we’re cool.” Saddler scribbles another note.

Still holding the
Journal
in front of him, Mose folds down a corner of the paper with his index finger so he can see Saddler, and says, “I introduce fellatio to network television. Shouldn’t that qualify as ‘visionary,’ Hank?” Saddler blushes.

The black flight attendant brings Mose a fresh Pellegrino with Rose’s lime juice, a Virgin Mary for Featherstone, Diet Pepsis for the other adults, and asks Lizzie’s permission to serve the children root beer floats.

“Of course,” she says. “Sure.”

Mose puts down the paper and shifts in his seat to face George and Lizzie again.

“A woman of the modern age who lets her children watch violent movies
and
gobble sugar. Bravo.”

Lizzie smiles and shrugs. “They’re Americans,” she says. “I figure they need to develop their own immunities.”

“Yes!” Mose replies. “Just so.” George glances at her. The idea of cultural inoculation, letting the kids buy plastic toys and eat occasional Whoppers so that they develop a kind of robust autoimmune response to mass culture—that is his theory, which Lizzie derided and resisted when they were first married. Lizzie didn’t let Sarah watch TV at all until she was four, when a preschool classmate told her she was a retard if she didn’t know who the Power Rangers were.

“How’s business, Elizabeth? Timothy tells me your company is involved in this mental-modem breakthrough.”

“Business is just great, but, no, the thing in the papers—my chief technology officer knows the researcher working on it.” She pauses, sensing the disappointment. “But we are developing biofeedback software, where the computer responds automatically to input from skin sensors—pulse, skin moisture, that kind of thing.”

“Cool,” Featherstone says.

“It really is,” Lizzie replies.

“By the by, Georgie, while I’m thinking—on
NARCS
, my ESP idea, I thought you could have our team wiretap the drug dealers’
brains
.”

George does not respond immediately. “That sounds pretty far over into sci-fi territory, Timothy. You know?”

“You mean like the season of cloning on—” Mose grins. “What was that disaster you had on Fox, Timothy? The sitcom you turned into science fiction in the middle of its first season?”

“
Whoa! That’s Awesome!
, you mean. Actually, the first cloning show with the Barbi Twins and the two Sheen brothers was the biggest number that
Whoa! That’s Awesome!
ever got. And with
NARCS
, there could be some interesting synergy. You know,” he says to Mose, eyebrows arched meaningfully, “computer-wise. Digital-wise.”

Mose nods with a kind of diagonal sweep, once, which indicates provisional agreement.

“All I’m saying, George,” Featherstone continues, “is don’t forget to leverage it up. Leverage it up.”

“Right.” George has no idea what he means.

Mose leans toward Lizzie. “We have an online business. That is, ‘business,’ in quotes.”

“R and D,” Featherstone says. “You’ve got to pay to keep your plug in the port.”

George feels small about feeling anxious that Lizzie is having a conversation with Mose. He doesn’t know if it’s because Mose pays his salary, or because Lizzie can be conversationally rash, or because he’s a sexist, or what.

“I know,” Lizzie says to Mose, her smile a little tight. “I’ve seen the web site.” She pauses. “How big is the MBC-dot-com staff?”

“A hundred people, give or take,” Mose answers. “Almost all of them in News.” He’s looking straight at her.

“If I were you?” she says sweetly, reminding herself for an awful moment of the lawyer from Microsoft, “I’d get rid of about ninety of them. Keep the web site up, but if you’re not committed to it as a business, why spend what you’re spending? I mean, either be in the online business or stay out if it, but
kind
of,
sort
of being in it is a waste of money. And focus. In my opinion. I’ll bet you don’t even get any credit on Wall Street for it, not this late in the game.” Her smile has loosened. “All the money you’ll save you can spend on George’s new show.”

“Hey, girlfriend!” Featherstone says.

“So,” Mose says, “it’s fish or cut bait, you think?”

“I do.”

“I do, too,” he says. “I do, too.”

The engines are whining down. The flight attendants are at the door, smiling, with Max and, in her oversize satin
NARCS
crew jacket, Sarah.

George holds the sleeping LuLu toward Lizzie. “Can you take her?” He needs his good arm free to get up. Lizzie takes her, and as George pushes himself up and out of the seat one-handed, he puts his weight on the swiveling video screen in the armrest. The TV snaps off and drops into the aisle, dangling stupidly from a cable. George has slipped and slammed with a loud thud back into his seat. The Cindy Crawford stewardess rushes back.

“Can I help—”

“Hell. Sorry,” George grunts, and is already up and walking when Saddler puts a hand on his left arm as if to help.

“You know, George,” he says, “I always forget that you are a disabled person.” Saddler squeezes George’s elbow and smiles. “I really do.” George nods. “God bless.”

George says nothing until they are all loaded into the rented Volvo wagon, Lizzie driving. “You know that scumbag Saddler has hair-plugs
and
wears a rug?”

“George,” Lizzie says.

“Smarmy little fuck.”

“George,”
Lizzie says.

“No cursing, Daddy,” LuLu says from the backseat.

“What’s ‘smarmy’?” Max asks, eyes fixed on the screen of his new Touch Terror Game Boy, which shudders, and grows physically cold and hot as it’s played.

“Oh, excuse me
—you
find
my
language offensive? That’s funny.”

For a couple of minutes, the electronic growls and hip-hop whinnies from the Game Boy are the only sounds in the car. Finally Lizzie turns on the radio, an Ani DiFranco song. Sarah and her mother sing along. The temperature inside the car is returning to normal.

Then George speaks. “By the way, I’m sure your advice to Harold to stay focused is right.” Lizzie gives a small conciliatory nod. “It’s ironic, though, since whenever I suggest that you might think about focusing your business, you yell at me.”

“I’m sorry you slipped on the plane.”

“That is not it, that’s not—”

“And I know your mother just died, but I’m not your rival, George. I’m not competing with you.”

“I know.” Then, “You realize you probably just got people fired?”

“What are you talking about?”

“ ‘If I were you, I’d dump the news online service.’ He’ll do it, you know.”

“Come on.”

“I’m serious. You can’t do that casual la-di-da shit with someone like Mose. There are consequences. These are people’s lives.”

“Oh, fuck you, George.”

“Mommy!” LuLu scolds.

But Lizzie can’t stop. “Like Henry Grisham, Harvey Grisham, that sixty-year-old writer you fired. Don’t get righteous with me.”

“Herb Griscom is fifty-eight. And he hadn’t produced a usable line of dialogue in nine months. It was
a
person. And at least I didn’t have Harold Mose do my dirty work for me.”