He looked up. It was Brenda, her lean, leggy form silhouetted in the light from the hallway.
“Trying to make this tape consistent, on the optical quality side,” he said. Then, almost as an afterthought, “What about you? What time is it?”
“Almost nine. I had a lot of paperwork to finish.”
“Oh.” He took his hands off the control knobs and gestured to her. “Come on in. I didn’t realize rd been here so long.”
“Aren’t you going back to L.A. tomorrow?” Brenda asked. She stepped into the tiny room, but left the door open behind her.
He nodded. “Yes. That’s why I thought rd stick with this until the job’s done: The editors can’t handle this kind of problem. They’re good guys, but they’d probably ruin the tape.”
“Which show are you working on?” Brenda asked, pulling up a stool beside him.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. They all look alike to me.”
Brenda agreed. “Will you be at it much longer?”
“Almost finished… another ten-fifteen minutes or so.”
“Can I buy you dinner afterward?” she asked.
He started to say no, but held up. “I’ll buy you some dinner.”
“I can charge it off to Titanic. Let B.F. buy us both dinner.”
With a sudden grin, he agreed.
He worked in silence for a few minutes, conscious of her looking over his shoulder, smelling the faint fragrance of her perfume, almost feeling the tickling of a stray wisp of her long red hair.
“Bill?”
“What?” Without looking up from the control board.
“Why do you keep coming up here every weekend?”
“To make sure the equipment works okay,.”
“Oh. That’s awfully good of you.”
He clicked the power off and looked up at her. “That’s a damned lie,” he admitted, to himself as much as to her. “I could stay down at Malibu and wait for you to have some trouble. Or send one of my technicians.”
Brenda’s face didn’t look troubled or surprised. “Then why?”
“Because I like being with you,” he said.
“Really?”
“You know I do.”
She didn’t look away, didn’t laugh, didn’t frown. “I hoped you did. But you never said a word…”
Suddenly his hands were embarrassingly awkward appendages. They wouldn’t stay still.
“Well,” he said, scratching at his five o’clock shadow, “I guess I’m still a teenager in some ways… retarded… I was afraid… afraid you wouldn’t be interested in me:”
“You were wrong,” she said simply.
She leaned toward him and his hands reached for her and he kissed her. She felt warm and safe and good.
They decided to have dinner in his hotel room. Oxnard felt giddy, as if he were hyperventilating or celebrating New Year’s Eve a month early. As they drove through the dark frigid night toward the hotel, he asked:
“The one thing I was afraid of was that you’d walk out on the show, like everybody else has.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” Brenda said, very seriously.
“Why not?”
“B.F. wouldn’t let me.”
“You mean you allow him to run your whole life? He tells you to freeze your… your nose off here in Toronto all winter, on a dead duck of a show, and you do it?”
She nodded. “That’s right.”
He pulled the car into the hotel’s driveway as he asked, “Why don’t you just quit? There are lots of other studios and jobs…”
“I can’t quit Titanic.”
“Why not? What’s Finger got on you?”
“Nothing. Except that he’s my father and I’m the only person in the world that he can really trust.”
“He’s your father?”
Brenda grinned broadly at him. “Yes. And you’re the only person in the whole business who knows it. So please don’t tell anyone else.”
Oxnard was stunned.
He was still groggy, but grinning happily, as they walked arm-in-arm through the hotel lobby, got into an elevator and headed for his room. Neither of them noticed the three-dee set in the lobby; it was tuned to the evening news. A somber-faced sports reporter was saying:
“There’s no telling what effect Toho’s injury will have on the playoff chances of the Honolulu Pineapples. As everyone knows, he’s the league’s leading passer.”
The other half of the Folksy News Duo, a curly haired anchorperson in a gingham dress, asked conversationally, “Isn’t it unusual for a player to break his leg in the shower?”
“That’s right, Arlene,” said the sports announcer. “Just one of those freak accidents. A bad break,” he said archly, “for the Pineapples and their fans.”
The woman made a disapproving clucking sound. “That’s terrible.”
“It certainly is. They’re probably going crazy down in Las Vegas right now, refiguring the odds for the playoff games.”
15: THE WARNING
“You don’t understand!” Bernard Finger shouted. “Every cent I had was tied up in that lousy football team! I’m broke! Ruined!”
He was emptying the drawers of his desk into an impossibly thin attache case. Most of the papers and mememtoes—including a miniature Emmy given him as a gag by a producer, whom Finger promptly fired—were missing the attache case and spilling across the polished surface of the desk or onto the plush carpet.
The usually impressive office reminded Les Montpelier of the scene in a war movie where the general staff has to beat a fast retreat and everybody’s busy stripping the headquarters and burning what they can’t carry.
“But you couldn’t have taken everything out of Titanic’s cash accounts,” Montpelier said, trying to remain calm in the face of Finger’s panic.
“Wanna bet?” Finger was bent over, pulling papers out of the bottommost drawer, discarding most of them and creating a miniature blizzard in the doing.
Montpelier found himself leaning forward tensely in his chair. “But we still get our paychecks. The accounting department is still paying its bills. Isn’t it?”
Finger straightened up and eyed him with a look of scorn for such naivete. “Sure, sure. You know Morrie Witz, down in accounting?”
“Morrie the Mole?”
“Who else? He worked out a system for me. We keep enough in the bank for two weeks of salaries and bills. Everything else we’ve been investing in the Pineapples. Every time they win, we bet on ’em again. The odds keep going down, but we keep making sure money. Better than the stock market.”
“Then you must have a helluva cash reserve right now,” Montpelier said.
“Its already bet!” Finger bawled. “And the Pineapples play the Montana Sasquatches this afternoon…” He glanced at the clock on his littered desk. “They’re already playing.”
“Shall I turn on the game?” Montpelier asked, starting to get up from his chair.
“No! I can’t bear to watch. Without Toho they’re sunk.”
Montpelier eased back into the chair.
“Yes!” Finger burst “Turn it on. I can’t stand not knowing!”
He went back to rummaging through the desk drawers as Montpelier walked across the room to the control panel for the life-sized three-dee set in the corner.
“The Pineapples still have their defensive team intact,” Montpelier reasoned. “And Montana’s not that highscoring a team…”
He found the right channel and tuned in the game. The far comer of the office dissolved into a section of a football field. A burly man in a Sasquatch uniform was kneeling, arms outstretched, barking out numbers. The crowd rumbled in the background. It was raining and windy; it looked cold in Montana.
The camera angle changed to an overhead shot and Montpelier saw that the Sasquatches were trying to kick a field goal. The ball was snapped, the kicker barely got the kick past a pair of onrushing Pineapple defenders, who ruined their orange and yellow uniforms by sprawling in the mud.