Heartbeat Page 3

  “How'd it go?” Betsey asked. She had been his secretary for nearly two years, which in television was half a lifetime. She was a stand-up comedian at night, and she thought Bill walked on water when no one was looking.

  “It went okay.” He looked relaxed and pleased. The knot in his stomach had turned into a peaceful hum of satisfaction. “Did we hear anything today from the network?” He had sent over some new concepts for some interesting directions for the show, and he was waiting to hear, although he knew they would pretty much let him do anything he wanted.

  “Not yet. But I think Leland Harris is out of town, and so is Nathan Steinberg.” The gods who ran his life, omniscient, omnipotent, all-thinking, all-seeing, all-knowing. He and Nathan went fishing together from time to time, and although the guy was said to be a son of a bitch, Bill actually liked him and insisted that he had always been very pleasant to him. “Are you leaving early tonight?” Betsey looked at him hopefully. Once in a while when he'd come in at the crack of dawn, he left before five o'clock, but it was rare, and he shook his head as he walked across the room to his desk where his ancient typewriter sat on a small table just behind it. It was a Royal, and it was one of the few souvenirs he still had left from his father.

  “I think I'll hang around. The stuff we put in today worked, which means they've got a lot of changes to make for the next few segments. They have to write out Barnes completely. We just killed him. And Vaughn is going to wind up in jail, not to mention the fact that Helen is getting wise to John. And wait till she finds out that her little sister has been turning tricks to support her drug habit thanks to her own darling husband.” He beamed happily as he stretched his legs under the desk and leaned back with his hands behind his head in a pose of total delight and relaxation.

  “You have a sick mind.” Betsey made a face, and closed the door to his office, and then popped her head back in. “Do you want me to order anything from the commissary for tonight?”

  “Christ …now I know you're trying to kill me. Just get me a couple of sandwiches and a Thermos of coffee and leave it on your desk. I'll grab it if I get hungry.” But more often than not, it was midnight before he even saw the time, and by then he was no longer hungry. It was a wonder he didn't starve to death, Betsey often said, when she saw evidence that he had worked through the night, leaving overflowing ashtrays, fourteen mugs of cold coffee and half a dozen Snickers wrappers behind him.

  “You should go home and get some sleep.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” He grinned as she closed the door again. She was a terrific person and he liked her.

  He was still smiling to himself, thinking of Betsey, when the door opened again, and he looked up. As always when he saw her, he felt a sharp intake of breath at how she looked. It was Sylvia, still wearing her costume and makeup from the show, and she looked stunning.

  She was tall and thin and shapely, with full high silicone breasts that just begged for men to reach out and touch them, and legs that seemed to start at her armpits. She was almost as tall as Bill, and she had cascades of thick black hair that hung to her waist, creamy white skin, and green eyes that were strikingly catlike. She was a girl who would have stopped traffic anywhere, even in L.A., where actresses and models and beautiful girls were commonplace. But Sylvia Stewart wasn't commonplace anywhere, and Bill was the first to say that she did wonderful, healthy things to their ratings.

  “Good job, babe. You were great today. But you always are.” He stood up as she smiled, and he came around his desk to give her a half-serious kiss as she sat in a chair and crossed her legs, and looking down at her, he felt his heart beat a little faster. “God, you destroy me when you come in here looking like that.” She was wearing the sexy little black dress that she had worn in the last scene on the show, and it was clearly a knockout. Their costume department had gotten it on loan from Fred Heyman. “The least you could do is put a sweatshirt and some jeans on.” But the jeans weren't much better. She wore them skintight and all he could think of when he saw her in jeans was taking her clothes off.

  “Costume said I could have the dress.” She managed somehow to look both innocent and sultry.

  “That's nice.” He smiled at her again and settled back behind his desk. “It looks good on you. Maybe we can go out to dinner next week and you can wear it.”

  “Next week?” She looked like a child who had just been told her favorite doll was in the shop for repairs until next Tuesday. “Why can't we go out tonight?” She was pouting at him, and he looked faintly amused by her. These were the scenes that Sylvia was singularly good at. They were the downside of her incredible good looks and irresistibly sexy body.

  “You may have noticed on today's show that several new developments occurred, and your character just wound up in jail. There are a ton of new scenes for the writers to write and I want to be around to write some of it myself, or at least check on how they're doing.” Anyone who knew him knew he was going to be working eighteen- to twenty-hour days for the next few weeks, kibitzing and coaxing and rewriting it himself, but the material he would get out of it would be worth it.

  “Can't we go away this weekend?” The incredible legs uncrossed and recrossed, causing a disturbance in Bill's jeans, but she still appeared not to have understood him.

  “No, we can't. If I'm lucky and everything goes okay, maybe by Sunday we can play a little tennis.”

  The pout deepened. Sylvia did not look pleased. “I wanted to go to Vegas. A whole bunch of the kids from My House are going to Vegas for the weekend.” My House was their stiffest competition.

  “I can't help it, Sylvia. I've got to work.” And then, knowing that it would be easier if she went without him than if she stayed and complained, he suggested that she go to Vegas with the others. “Why don't you go with them? You're not on the show tomorrow, and it might be fun. And I'm going to be stuck here anyway all weekend.” He waved at the four walls of his office, and even though it was only Thursday then, he knew he had at least three or four more days of intense work overseeing the writers, but Sylvia looked cheered by the suggestion that she go without him.

  “Will you come to Vegas when you finish?” She looked like a child again, and sometimes her ingenuousness touched him. In truth, her body appealed to him more and it had been an easy relationship for him for the past several months, although not one he was overly proud of. She was a decent person and he liked her, but she was less than challenging for him, and he knew he didn't always meet her needs either. She wanted someone who was free to run around and play with her, to go to openings and parties and ten o'clock dinners at Spago, and more often than not he was tied up with the show, or writing new scenes, or too tired to go anywhere, and Hollywood parties had never been his forte.

  “I don't think I'll be finished in time to go anywhere. I'll see you Sunday night when you get home.” The timing was going to be perfect for him and it would keep her off his back, although he felt mean thinking of it that way. But it was easier knowing that she was happy somewhere else rather than calling him at the office every two hours to ask him when he'd be finished working.

  “Okay.” She stood up, looking pleased. “You don't mind?” She felt a little guilty leaving him, but he only smiled and escorted her to the door of his office.

  “No, I don't mind. Just don't let the 'kids' from My House try to sell you a new contract.” She laughed, and this time he kissed her hard on the mouth. “I'm going to miss you.”

  “Me too.” But there was something wistful in her eyes as she looked at him and for the flash of an instant he wondered if something was wrong. It was something he had seen in other eyes before …starting with Leslie's. It was something that women said at times, without actually saying the words. It had to do with feeling alone and being lonely. And he knew it well, but there was nothing he was going to change now. He never had before, and at thirty-nine, he figured it was too late to do much changing.

  Sylvia left his office, and Bill went back to work. He had a
mountain of notes he wanted to make about the new scripts, and all the upcoming changes, and by the time he looked up from his typewriter again, it was dark outside, and he was startled to realize it was ten o'clock when he looked at his watch, and he suddenly realized tie was desperately thirsty. He got up from his desk, turned on some more lights, and helped himself to a soda water from the office. He knew Betsey would have left a bunch of sandwiches for him on her desk, but he wasn't even hungry. The work seemed to feed his spirit when it was going well, and he was pleased as he glanced over what he'd done, and leaned back in his desk chair, sipping the soda. There was just one more scene he wanted to change before giving it up for the night, and for the next two hours, he banged away on the old Royal, totally forgetting everything except what he was writing. And this time when he stopped, it was midnight. He had been at it for almost twenty hours and he was hardly even tired, he felt exhilarated by the changes he'd made and the way the work had been flowing. He took the sheaf of pages he'd been working on since that afternoon, locked them in a desk drawer, helped himself to another soda water on his way out, and left his cigarettes on the desk. He seldom smoked except when he was working.

  He walked past his secretary's desk, with the sandwiches still sitting in a cardboard box, and walked out into the fluorescent-lit hall, past half a dozen studios that were closed down now. There was a late-night talk show in one, and a bunch of odd-looking kids in punk clothes had just arrived to make an appearance. He smiled at them, but they didn't smile back. They were all much too nervous, and he walked past the studio where they did the eleven o'clock news, but that was dark now, too, having already been readied for the morning broadcast.

  The guard at the front desk handed Bill the sign-out sheet and he scrawled his name and made a comment about the most recent baseball game. He and the old guard shared a passion for the Dodgers. And then he walked out into the fresh air, and took a deep breath of the warm spring night. The smog didn't seem so bad at that hour, and it felt good just to be alive. He loved what he did, and it made it seem somehow worthwhile to work those ridiculous hours, making up stories about imaginary people. Somehow when he was doing it, it all made sense to him, and when he was finished, he was always glad he had done it. Now and then it was an agony, when a scene didn't go right or a character slipped out of control and became someone he had never intended, but most of the time doing it was something he loved, and there were times when he missed doing it full-time, and he envied the writers.

  He sighed happily as he started his car. It was a '49 Chevrolet woody station wagon, and he had bought it from a surfer seven years before for five hundred dollars and he loved it. It was maroon and it was in less than perfect condition, but it had soul, and lots of room, and the boys loved riding around in it when they came to visit.

  As he drove home on the Santa Monica Freeway toward Fairfax Avenue, he realized suddenly that he was hungry. He was more than hungry. He was starving. And he knew that there was nothing in his apartment. He hadn't eaten there in days. He had been too busy working and before that he'd eaten out, and he had spent the weekend before at Sylvia's place in Malibu. She rented it from an aging movie star who had been in a retirement home for years but still kept the house in Malibu she had once lived in.

  Bill stopped at Safeway on his way home, and it was after midnight as he pulled his woody into the parking lot and slid into a space right in front of the main entrance. He parked it next to a battered old red MG with the top down, walked into the brightly lit all-night store and helped himself to a cart as he tried to decide what he wanted to eat. There were chickens barbecuing in a nearby aisle, and he noticed that they smelled terrific. He helped himself to one of them, a six-pack of beer, some potato salad from the deli area, some salami, some pickles, and then he headed to the produce section for lettuce and tomatoes and vegetables to make himself a salad. The more he thought about it, the hungrier he got, and he could hardly wait to get home and have dinner. He could no longer remember if he'd eaten lunch, or if he had, what it had been. It seemed like years suddenly since he had eaten. He remembered then that he needed paper towels, too, and toilet paper for both bathrooms, he knew he needed shaving cream, and he had a feeling that he was running out of toothpaste. It seemed like he never had time to shop for himself, and as he roamed through the store feeling wide-awake, it seemed like the middle of the afternoon as he helped himself to cleaning products, olive oil, coffee beans, pancake mix, sausages, syrup—for the next time he had breakfast at home on a weekend—and then bran muffins, some new cereals, a pineapple and some fresh papaya. He felt like a kid going wild as he kept putting things in his basket. For once, he wasn't in a hurry, he didn't have to get to work, there was no one waiting for him anywhere, and he could explore the store at his leisure. He was just trying to decide if he wanted some French bread and Brie with his dinner, as he rounded a corner, looking for the bread, and collided with a girl who seemed to rise up out of the floor with an armful of paper towels. She seemed to come up out of nowhere, and before he could do anything about it, he had almost run her down with his cart, and she jumped back, startled, dropping everything around her as he watched her. There was something striking about her, and beautiful, in a clean, wholesome way, and he couldn't help staring at her as she turned away, and gathered up her paper towels.

  “I'm sorry …I …here, let me help …”He abandoned his cart, and stopped to give her a hand, but she was quick to stand up, and smile, blushing faintly.

  “No problem.” Her smile was powerful, strong, her eyes were huge and blue, and she looked like someone who had a lot to say, and he felt like a kid as he stared at her, and she drove her cart away, smiling at him again over her shoulder. It felt almost like a movie scene, or something he might have written for a show. Boy Meets Girl. He wanted to run after her …hey, wait …stop! But she was gone, with her shining dark hair that just brushed her shoulders as it swung freely, her wide ivory smile, and blue eyes that seemed enormous. There was something so straightforward about the look she gave him, yet something quizzical about her smile, as though she had been going to ask him a question, and something friendly as though she had been going to laugh at herself. She was all he could think about as he tried to finish his shopping. Mayonnaise., anchovies …shaving cream …eggs? Did he need eggs? Sour cream? He couldn't concentrate anymore. It was ridiculous. She was pretty but she wasn't that great-looking after all. She had the kind of preppy good looks of a girl fresh out of an eastern college. She'd been wearing jeans, a red turtleneck, and sneakers, and his heart skipped a beat when he saw her unloading her cart at the checkout a few minutes later. He stopped pushing his own cart for a moment, and looked at her. She wasn't that fantastic after all, he told himself. Nice-looking, yes …very nice-looking, in fact, but for his taste, his current California taste in any case, she was by far too normal. She looked like someone you could talk to late at night, someone who could tell a joke, someone who could make dessert from scratch, or tell a good story. What did he need with a girl like that when he had girls like Sylvia to keep his bed warm? But as he watched her put her empty cart away, he couldn't have explained why, but he felt a kind of empty longing for her. She was someone he would have liked to know, and he wondered what her name was, as he rolled slowly toward her. Hi …I'm Bill Thigpen …he rehearsed in his head as he pulled his cart into the checkout lane where she was paying. She seemed not to notice him this time. She was writing a check, and he glanced over but he couldn't read her name. All he could see was her left hand holding the checkbook. The left hand with the gold ring. Her wedding band. Whoever she was, it didn't matter anymore. She was married. He felt his heart plummet, like a disappointed child, and he almost laughed at himself as she glanced over at him and smiled again, recognizing him from when he'd collided with her a few minutes before with the paper towels. Hi …I'm Bill Thigpen …and you're married …what a damn shame, if you get a divorce, give me a call…. Married women was one kind he didn't mess around with.
He wanted to ask her why she was doing her shopping so late at night, but there was no point. It no longer mattered.

  “Good night,” she said, in a soft husky voice, as she picked up her two grocery bags, and he unpacked his cart.

  “Night,” he answered as he watched her go, and a few minutes later, he heard a car roar off, and when he went back to his own car in the parking lot, the little MG next to his car was gone, and he wondered if that was what she had been driving. He grinned to himself then. He was obviously working too hard if he was starting to fall in love with total strangers. “Okay,Thigpen,” he muttered as he started his car with a roar of exhaust fumes, “take it easy, boy.” He chuckled as he drove out of the parking lot, and as he drove home, he wondered what Sylvia was up to in Las Vegas.

  AS ADRIAN TOWNSEND DROVE AWAY FROM THE supermarket, her thoughts were full of Steven waiting for her at home. She hadn't seen him in four days. He had been stuck in meetings at a client presentation in St. Louis. Steven Townsend was the bright shining star of the ad agency where he worked, and she knew that one day, if he wanted to, he would run the L. A. office. At thirty-four, he had come a long, long way from humble beginnings in the Midwest, and she knew just how much his success meant to him. It meant everything to him. He had hated everything about poverty, his childhood, and the Midwest, and in his opinion he had been saved sixteen years ago by a scholarship to UC Berkeley. He had majored in communications, as Adrian had three years later at Stanford. Her passion had been TV, but Steven had fallen in love with advertising from the beginning. He had gone to work for an ad agency in San Francisco right out of school, and then he'd gone to business school at night and earned his MBA once he got to southern California. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that Steven Townsend was going to succeed, no matter what it took, or cost him. He was one of those people who were determined to get where they wanted to go, who planned things out in great detail. There were no accidents in Steven Townsend's life, no mistakes, no failures. He would talk to Adrian for hours sometimes about clients he was going to get, or a promotion he had set his sights on. She marveled at him sometimes, his determination, his drive, his courage. It hadn't been easy for him. His father had been an autoworker on the assembly line in Detroit, with five kids, three daughters and two sons, of which Steven had been the youngest. His older brother had died in Vietnam, and the three girls had stayed close to home, perfectly content not to go to college. Two of them had been married while still in their teens, both pregnant, of course, and his oldest sister had married at twenty-one, and had had four children before her twenty-fifth birthday. She had married an autoworker like her dad, and when there was a strike they all went on welfare. It was a life Steven still had nightmares about, and he seldom talked to anyone about his childhood. Only Adrian knew how much he had hated it, and how much he had come to hate them. He had never gone back to Detroit once he left, and Adrian also knew that it had been more than five years since he had communicated with his parents. He just couldn't talk to them anymore, he had explained it to her once when he'd had a little too much to drink and they'd come home after an office party. He had hated them so much, hated their poverty and despair, hated the look of constant sorrow in his mother's eyes over all that she could not do for, or give, her children. But she must have loved you all, Adrian had tried to explain, sensing the woman's love for them, and her sense of helplessness in the face of what they needed and she couldn't give them, in particular, her youngest child, anxious, ambitious Steven.