Mothers and Daughters
- Автор: Хантер Эван
- Год: 1961
- Язык: английский
- Год: Simon and Schuster
- Жанр: Современная русская и зарубежная проза
Электронная книга - «Mothers and Daughters». Краткое содержание книги:
“Sam, when you’re demonstrating this new shaving cream...”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“This Beards Away!”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“This stuff.” David held up the can. “It’s important to unscrew this little cap from the nozzle before you press the button. Otherwise, nothing’ll come out.”
“I know,” Martin said.
“Okay,” David answered, smiling. “Good luck with the show.”
“Thanks,” Martin said, and he turned back to the set designer.
At ten minutes before air time, the panic was so thick you couldn’t see through it. David remembered the shaving-cream bomb and decided to find Martin again, just to remind him, just to make sure. Martin was looking over the show’s timetable when he located him, underlining portions of the script, marking some passages with a red, others with a blue, pencil.
“Sam,” David said, “you won’t forget to unscrew that cap, will you?”
Martin looked up from the script and very calmly said, “Would you like to demonstrate the product, David?”
“No. No, Sam, no,” David said, backing away. “I just thought I’d, no, forget it.” And he went to sit in the sponsor’s booth while the announcer began warming up the studio audience. He could not shake the feeling of approaching tragedy. Unconsciously, he crossed his fingers as the clock swept toward one-thirty. There was a silence. The monitor in the booth flashed a ten-second station break, and then a telop announcing “Memos to follow,” and then the theme hit the tube simultaneously with a film clip showing New York City’s fabulous skyline and the announcer’s voice rode in over the theme, ending with the words “... and now the star of our show, Sam Martin!” The studio audience burst into wild prompted applause, and Martin ambled out casually, just as if he hadn’t been through the eight inner circles since twelve noon, and said, “Hello, girls,” and winked at the camera and then added, “And you too, fellers,” and then told a homey joke and introduced Louisa, who sang sweetly and demurely. David relaxed a little, but he kept his fingers crossed.
The shaving-cream commercial came in the second half-hour segment of the show, following the Paris bistro skit, which was finally played against the Brooklyn Bridge backdrop and which, happily, seemed even funnier that way. Martin picked up the attractive-looking can and held it up to the viewing audience and went into a homespun spiel about this new device that provided sudsy lather at his finger tips, and then said, “Well, this is how it works.”
The cap, David thought.
“You just press this little button—”
“The cap,” David whispered aloud, and a production assistant in the booth turned and looked at him quizzically.
“—and the cream comes out, it’s just magic, folks.”
He pressed the stud. Nothing happened.
“Oh, Jesus!” David said.
Martin grinned a boyishly sweet grin, studied the can casually, and said, “You’re supposed to press this button on top of the can.” He shrugged. “Well, let’s see.” And he pressed the stud again, still not removing the cap from the nozzle, and again nothing happened. David closed his eyes and then opened them and stared at the monitor in helpless fascination.
“All you do is press this button,” Martin said again, and again he pressed it, and said, “Now what the h—” and cut himself short and looked at the can of shaving cream as if it were a malevolent Russian weapon. He banged the stud with the palm of his hand. He hit the can on the edge of his desk. He hit it again, and pounded the stud again, and then said, “Well, you go out and buy a can. Maybe you’ll have better luck with it than I did,” and tossed the can across the stage to the orchestra leader, who, intent on his next music cue, missed the can as it came sailing toward him. The can hit the stage like a falling rock. The cap came loose from the nozzle and suddenly the can erupted in a shower of foamy lather, spraying everyone on the stage with shaving cream.
The call from Los Angeles came not ten minutes later. Curt Sonderman took it in his private office and said, “Yes, I know. It was just one of those unforeseen... well, how do I know whether the product was explained to him or not? Regan is supposed to take care of that, not me. Look, it’s his job! I’ve got enough things to do around here without... what? Yes, I’m the one who hired him, but... Look, don’t use that tone of voice with me! What the hell do you do, write crummy advertising copy all day long? Did you ever try to put on a network television show? All right then, shut up! All right, I’ll get a full explanation. Yes, I’ll call you back. After the show! We’re on until three-thirty, and I’m busy, and... look, what’s your name, Mac? Get off my back, it’ll be taken care of! If Regan has to be fired, he’ll be fired. Goodbye!”
David knew he was going to be fired. He had known it from the moment Sam Martin first pressed that stud. He ducked out of the sponsor’s booth as soon as the can exploded and the audience disintegrated, laughing for a full two minutes at the sponsor’s product. He went down the iron-runged steps to the street, and he lighted a cigarette outside the building and he thought, It’s happened again, and then he began walking toward Columbus Avenue, wondering what he should do, thinking, I don’t want to lose this job, why does it always happen to me?
When he saw the candy store, he entered it immediately and called Gillian. She listened quietly and patiently while he told her what had happened. When he was finished, she said, “Don’t lose the job, David.”
There was a curious note of command in her voice. He was silent for a moment.
“They’ll say it was my fault.”
“It was Martin’s fault. You did your job.”
“But he’s the star of the show!”
“Show them he was wrong, David.”
“But how? What can I—?”
“I don’t care how. Lie, if you have to. Cheat. Steal. I don’t care. Don’t lose the job.” She paused. “Where are you now?”
“In a candy store on Columbus Avenue.”
“You shouldn’t have run. Go back to the studio, David. Go back and tell them whatever you want to, whatever you have to, but make it good. And call me. I’ll be waiting for your call. Don’t lose the job,” she said, and hung up.
He walked back to the building on West Sixty-eighth. He paused outside the street entrance, and then he pulled open the door, and wet his lips, and walked upstairs to the studio. He was trembling. The sponsor had paid thousands of dollars for a one-minute spot, and Sam Martin had blown the thing sky-high before a network audience. It was David’s job to make sure things like that didn’t happen. That was why they paid him two hundred dollars a week. Damn it, he did not want to lose that income! Damn it, he liked this job! Should he go to Martin and plead with him, ask to be taken off the hook? But he had done his job, he had told Martin about the goddamn cap, so how...?
I don’t care how. Lie, if you have to. Cheat. Steal. I don’t care. Tell them whatever you want to, whatever you have to, but make it good.
Whatever you have to, and an undertone of desperation in Gillian’s voice, something he had never heard there before. He suddenly felt he was about to lose more than his job.
He found the typewriter in one of the empty offices. He locked the door to the office, and he sat at the machine, and he thought, Suppose this backfires? Suppose it only gets him sore? No. There had been so much confusion today, he won’t remember. He’ll back down. He’ll take the blame and smooth it over with the sponsor. They can raise hell with a two-hundred-dollar watchdog, but they can’t put Sam Martin, star of our show, on the carpet. He took a deep breath and began typing: