"Why?"
"Because of the Oriental. Because of the old man standing at the edge of the group of extras who were crowding around the winner's circle both times, first when the beauty queen refused to kiss number six and then when she did kiss him. Both times he was there, this small shrunken old man, this Oriental. Who was he? Who hired him? How did he get into the crowd? Nobody knew. But he was there all right and Nix Olympica spotted him. All the other extras were young healthy gleaming men and women. It's a commercial for mouthwash; you want health, happiness, freshness, mouth-appeal. And this sick-looking old man is hovering there, this really depressing downbeat Oriental. Look, I love the business. I thrive on it. But I can't help wondering if I've wasted my life simply because of the old man who ruined the mouth-wash commercial. On a spring evening some years ago, during the time when my wife was very ill, when she was nearing the very end, I walked up a street in the upper Thirties and turned right onto Park Avenue and there was the Pan Am Building, a mile high and half-a-mile wide, every light blazing, an impossible slab of squared-off rock hulking above me and crowding everything else out of the way, even the sky. It looked like God. I had never seen the Pan Am Building from that particular spot and I wasn't prepared for the colossal surprise of it, the way it crowded out the sky, that overwhelming tier of lights. I swear to you it looked like God the Father. What was the point I was trying to make?"
"I don't know."
"Neither do I. I guess that's what comes of trying to preempt the truth."
"What is the role of commercial television in the twentieth century and beyond?"
"In my blackest moods I feel it spells chaos for all of us."
"How do you get over these moods?" I said.
"I take a mild and gentle Palmolive bath, brush my teeth with Crest, swallow two Sominex tablets, and try desperately to fall asleep on my Simmons Beautyrest mattress."
"Thank you."
I took a shower and then called the network and asked for myself, wondering what would happen if I answered.
"Mr. Bell's office," Binky said.
"This is Charles of the Ritz. Our lipstick of the month is salmon puree."
"David, where the hell are you?"
"Give me ten seconds. It'll come to me."
"Come on now, don't fool around, Mr. Denney is furious. There's a whole crew standing by at the reservation and they can't do a thing until you get there. Now where are you?"
"About fifteen hundred miles from where I'm supposed to be."
"I don't believe it. You're crazy. You'll get fired."
"Tell Weede to send Harris Hodge out there. He's young and willing. He can handle it. I've been hearing good things about him."
"It's your project, David. You've got to be there."
"I'm not going to Arizona, Binky. At least not right now. I'd rather be there than here. But I've got to do this thing I'm doing."
"What thing?"
"The only reason I called was to let you know I'm all right. I thought you might worry if you didn't hear anything."
"I am worried, David. What thing?"
"I'm crossing the swamp. Listen, how's Warburton?"
"He died," she said.
"I guess I've known it for the last couple of days. I hope he'll be buried in England. Did Freddy Fuck-Nuts write a memo?" "Who's that?"
"Weede," I said. "Did he write a memo about Ted Warburton?"
"You shouldn't call him crappy names. Up to now he's been very good about your not showing up in Arizona. He's been backing you all the way. He told Livingston there must have been some unavoidable delay. An accident or something. David, I'll have to tell him you called and that you're not planning to go out there."
"What did the memo say? Did it say that Ted was a trusted friend and longtime associate and that no man is an island?"
"Something like that, I guess."
"Warburton was Trotsky," I said.
"David, no."
"Don't tell anyone. Let them figure it out for themselves, the bastards. No more memos. That was the only thing that made that place worthwhile anyway."
"Do you need any money?"
"I have enough traveler's checks for ten days or so. I won't be here any longer than that."
"Will you be coming back to New York?"
"I don't know, Bink."
"What will you do for money?"
"I don't know. I haven't thought about it."
"What about your apartment?"
"I haven't thought about it."
"Aren't you going to let me know where you are and what you're doing? I promise I won't tell anyone."
"It's okay, Binky. Everything's fine. I'll miss you. You and Trotsky's memos. The only things that made that place worthwhile."
"Thanks a whole hell of a lot," she said.
The old man came for the TV set. Then Carol Deming arrived wearing black pants, a black sweater and no makeup. I gave her a business kiss on the cheek, a gesture she acknowledged by smiling blankly at the camera. She sat in the armchair, her legs tucked up under her, and took another look at the script. Adjusting the tripod, I spoke to her from a directorial crouch. She bit her bent thumb, starlet in the enchanted light. The camera and tape recorder were cabled and ready to sync.
"Now the first part of this has to be simple, direct, wide open. In the second part you begin to draw back. I want to feel as though I'm listening to a stranger in a fog. The two women are very different. Maybe you've seen Persona. There are two women, a nurse and a patient, very different, who slowly begin to merge, to almost drift through each other's personalities and reappear with something added or subtracted, I'm not sure which, but a great movie, unparalleled, about the nature of diminishing existence. I'm getting off the point."
"How do you want me to sit, David?"
"Just the way you're sitting. I want the whole chair. Look directly at the camera. Very little voice. Keep the acting invisible. Then we'll cut and do part two."
"I'm scared."
"We all are."
"But I think I know what you want."
"Begin," I said.
"He had to borrow from his father at the beginning but after a while we were really on our own. It was a fun-type marriage. We had lots of friends and we were always calling them up on the spur of the moment and inviting them over. Whenever we ran out of things to say to each other we just picked up the telephone and called friends. If they couldn't come over we went to the movies. We went to the movies three or four times a week. We saw Breathless whenever it came back, at least half a dozen times. He loved it. I don't remember anything else we saw. We used to shop together for clothes and sometimes I'd buy things for him and sometimes he'd buy things for me. We liked to be seen together. We were invited everywhere and we always went. On weekends we discovered the city together. It was fabulous. Then came the period when he began to do strange things. He hit me once. He asked me to watch him do that thing that boys do. Out at the Hamptons he disappeared for twelve hours. When he came back he said he had been on a trip through the ages of man, meeting himself along the way. We called up our friends a lot during this period. We called up more and more friends and invited them over. I bought a lot of hats. I wanted a baby. I saw him in Rockefeller Center with a girl with a green raincoat. They were watching the skaters. She must have been freezing."