“Not the only one. Hundreds of thousands, millions of people saw the show.”
He winced, standing in the middle of the living room and taking inventory of its furnishings as if to ensure they were still there. “I feel like I’ve been in another world, even though L.A. is less than three hundred miles away.”
“Listen, compared to the rest of the country, L.A. is three hundred light-years away. Scared you off with their manically laid-back ways, huh?”
He shrugged, still looking around.
“Louie’s lounging in the other room, and nobody else is here, or has been recently, if that’s what you’re looking for signs of.”
“I’m not looking for anybody,” he said quickly. “I’m just trying to make sure I’m on terra firma again. That whole lifestyle there makes you feel as if you’re standing on a fault line. The costly clothes, the sleek convertibles, the head-turning blonds—”
“Hey, don’t put them down: you are one.”
“Toys R Us, huh?”
He sat on the sofa suddenly, and eyed the VCR as if it were a spy machine.
Maybe it was Temple’s imagination, but just a few days on the fabled coast seemed to have sun-streaked his blond hair to a beachy sheen. Matt favored clothes in modest shades of beige and sand and khaki, but they just enhanced his brown-eyed, blond good looks.
“So what’s the verdict on the home screens?” he asked.
She sat beside him and picked up the remote control. “Obviously the camera loves you to pieces.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re ultra-telegenic. Don’t have a bad angle. Voice is pleasant. Since this was a panel discussion show, you were in competition with a whole lineup of guests. Interesting.”
“I didn’t consider this a competition.”
“No, but some of the other guests did. They want their moment in the spotlight, their fair share of airtime, which means more than anybody else. You were just there to talk about the issue of the day, and it shows. Shows them up. I’m going to run it, and you look at it like you were the other guests’ agent, wanting your client to shine. See what you think of yourself as the competition.”
He frowned. “We were there to communicate on a hot-button issue: unwed teens, and kids desperate enough to abandon or even kill their own newborns. I wouldn’t have gone on if it was some shallow media feeding frenzy. You told me the Amanda show was respectable.”
“It is, as talk shows go. Not quite the cachet of Oprah, but not everybody can be number one, A. S. After Springer. I’ll roll the tape. Just relax and watch. And then we’ll discuss it.”
This time Matt frowned at his wristwatch, the more formal model his mother had given him for Christmas instead of the drugstore variety he usually wore. He was still dressed for stardom. “That’ll take a whole hour.”
“No, it won’t. I’ll fast-forward through commercials, and there are a lot of ‘em.”
“This will feel silly. Watching myself. I was hoping you could summarize everything. You know, tell me: talk slower or faster, or quit looking at the floor, or whatever.”
“Quit looking at the floor and watch the tape,” she mock-ordered. Essentially private people could be very obstinate about public appearances. At thirty-three, Matt had the reserve of a man twice his age. Not so surprising. In a few months he had catapulted from newly ex-Roman Catholic priest working as an anonymous local hotline counselor to radio shrink to a national hot property because of one fateful phone call only days ago.
On the other hand, maybe nowadays his diffidence had a different cause: Temple’s vanished live-in lover, Max Kinsella the magician, had reappeared to resume their relationship just as Matt was making tentative goo-goo eyes at her. Temple admittedly had goo-goo-eyed back, or probably first. So now that she and Max were again a matched pair, Matt made the awkward hypote-nuse of a triangle etched in dotted lines. Darn! Templecouldn’t have a lover who wasn’t a friend, but it could be hard to have a male friend who wasn’t a lover.
She finally hit the right buttons on the remote. AMANDA, a graphic announced over the theme music. Suddenly, a recorded telephone conversation—an interrogation, actually—crackled over close-ups of the hostess clutching a mike, listening intently against a background of sober audience members.
The girl’s voice was a numb mumble, quietly hysterical. The man’s voice was Matt’s, sounding calm, but deeply concerned.
As the shocking sentences faded, Amanda eyed the camera. “Actual audiotape of an almost-tragedy, folks: a teenager having a baby in a motel room called a late-night radio psychologist, convinced the infant was an alien she had to destroy. Only the man on the other end of the line could talk her out of it. And here he is.”
Matt entered from stage right, wearing pretty much what he wore now, except for the addition of a blazer and muted tie. Amanda climbed the shallow steps to the stage and joined him in sitting dead center in a row of empty chairs.
“Matt Devine works for WCOO-AM in Las Vegas. When did this happen, Matt?”
“Ten days ago. And I’m not a radio psychologist, just a counselor.”
“More than ‘just a counselor,’ I think. You used to be a Catholic priest.”
“Yes, I was.” Temple could tell he was unhappy about publicly confessing that ex-identity, but fame demands all the information that’s fit to mention, and more, if it can get it.
“So it must have appalled you, this young girl so distraught that she viewed her own newborn as an alien being that needed to be destroyed.”
“Most people toss around the word ‘denial,’ but they don’t truly understand it. Denial is an emotional version of hysterical blindness. The consequences of her situation were so unthinkable, she couldn’t see them as real. In her case, imagining some X-Files type of alien-baby substitution played into her need to deny her condition, to keep it secret at all costs.”
“And she was willing to drown her baby in the bathtub?”
“Who can say? She sounded like she might.”
“Given your religious background, you show a lot of compassion for her on the tape.”
“There’s no contradiction. A religious background should evoke compassion. Condemnation never helped anyone.”
“Well, Dr. Laurel might disagree.”
“Dr. Laurel wasn’t there.”
“No, but she is here. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Laurel Lawson.”
Temple hit the mute and pause buttons. “That must have been a bad moment. Didn’t you see her in the greenroom backstage?”
“No.” Matt stared ahead at the freeze-frame screen. “She was a surprise.”
“They call it confrontational television.”
“I thought you said this was a decent talk show.” “Well, no talk show is really decent, is it?”
“But she’s a veteran. Been at it much longer than I.” “And takes a much tougher stance.”
“Tougher? Or just less tolerant?”
Temple rolled some more tape to follow the slim, suited figure as she entered and took a chair on the moderator’s right. “Very symbolic placement. You on the left, her on the right. What a media vixen. Spouting holier-than-thou inflexible Ten Commandments stuff, and she had an affair with a married man years ago; even has some undraped photos zipping around on the Internet.”
“They ambushed me,” Matt agreed, refusing to rise to the bait of his rival’s ancient shenanigans. “So I ended up defending myself and my caller.”
“I thought it was pretty brilliant when you accused Dr. Laurel of being willing to throw the mother out with the bathwater.”
“I was getting angry.”
“It didn’t show.”
“That’s when I’m angriest. I never would have gone on if I thought that confused child was going to be used as a bad example. She was simply stressed beyond her fragile defenses. And that dysfunctional family … What you’re saying, Temple, is that I was out of my league.”