Third Saturday Fiction

Chapter 2. “Making It Happen,” from The Unmaking of the President: A Bicentennial Entertainment (a novel)

By W.M. Dean

[The novel is set in the 1970s of Watergate. Chapter 1. “Downstairs at the White House,” appeared last month.]

Austin Froth waited in the guest lounge of the Simon Sample Talk Show. The room smelled of greasepaint and powder. It was furnished with tag-end furniture from studio properties.
    Through Austin’s unruly beard a meditative smile shone on nothing in particular – or on everything in general.
    A frail man with thinning gray hair and weak eyes collided with the door into the lounge.
    Austin jumped up and guided him in. “Here, you dropped your book...Will you be able to go on without your glasses, Professor?”
    “Oh, I think so. But it aggravates me that I should have mislaid them.” He patted his pockets and felt around his forehead and bald spot.
    The stage girl appeared behind him. “The show’s about to begin, Professor.”
    Austin watched her lead him out and guide him down the hall.

Simon Sample’s secretary told the man on the phone that Mr. Sample didn’t have time for jokes, it was almost air time.
    “This is no joke, Goddamnit. This is Ron Zinger. Put Sample on.”
    “I can’t. He’s about to go on.” She hung up. “Nuts everywhere these days.”
    Backstage, Simon Sample’s stage girl was nibbling his ear.
    “Not now – how do I look?”
    He was a little man, but his clothes were tailored to accentuate a physique pressed, bent, curled, and pounded into coverboy shape by Body Wonderful.
    “There’s the tone. See if the professor’s found his glasses. Check the cue cards.” He patted his stage girl’s rear absentmindedly.
    Simon Sample had butterflies. He always had butterflies at curtain time. His mind invariably went blank the moment the curtains opened. His reaction the first time it happened had established his famous entrance. He wandered about the stage, smooching the air and wafting it toward the audience: left, right, center, balcony, camera. He acknowledged everyone, but in his obliviousness saw no one.
    Audiences still loved it. Sample had dreams in which they were jackasses or sheep or hyenas – but he denied any unflattering interpretations. He preferred to conclude that he was the hottest afternoon television property in the business.
    Who would deny it?

Austin Froth considered his objective.
    Sidon Sample was an ass. He didn’t know what was going on, had no idea why his rating was high. And if he had no idea why some people worshipped him, neither did they.
    The world wished to be deceived.
    The audience could be moved and would be moved because it demanded to be moved. Whatever you did would move it one way or the other. It wouldn’t suffer its own indifference.
    Today Simon Sample’s audience was going to let itself be moved – moved to disapproval, and because mere disapproval was too mild, perhaps moved to anger.
    Simon Sample was vulnerable.
    The show’s producers were fools not to delay broadcasts a day. There was only a few seconds’ delay to enable the censors to bleep certain sounds they had been trained to find offensive. There was not enough time to reverse a disastrous trend, whose direction would be perceived too late.
    A lot depended on the audience’s response to this mild-mannered psychology professor. Austin would have preferred to plant his own man, but it was safer to use an innocent one.
    Sample’s estranged wife demanded this affair not be traced to her. If revenge were her sole motive, she might enjoy her husband’s knowing she was responsible. But she also wanted him to come back to her – she could provide consolation in the time of his loss only if he didn’t suspect her of engineering the loss.
    Austin toyed with ways he might have gone about planting his own man if he had chosen to do so. The problem wasn’t to plant his own man, but to plant him for the same day he himself appeared on the show.
    Possibly both he and his plant could have told the producers that they could appear only on a certain date – ”coincidentally” the same date.
    Or, since Sample was fond of debauching in practical jokes at a guest’s expense, Austin or the plant could have approached the producers with a particularly nasty joke, which, because of its personal nature, could be played only on the other person.
    Of course, the part for an accomplice could have been written out of the script altogether – in favor of another plan. Anyway, Austin had chosen the final plan only an hour before, after he had met the professor, whose convex lenses, though not wide, must nevertheless have been nearly a half-inch thick at the edge.
    The third guest, who would go on between the professor and Austin Froth, returned from the powder room.
    “Hi!”
    “Hello, my dear.” Austin enjoyed the girl’s vitality. Her enthusiasm was powerful, yet controlled – not a hysterical adolescent fanaticism. Melissa McKenna was probably less than half his age, but she was a woman.
    And how old was he? He felt both very old and very young: old enough to have learned a thing or two and young enough to see things for the first time.
    Melissa was tall and slender, but her floor-length frontier dress left the dimensions and disposition of her body to interested imaginations. Her long black hair was thick and wavy; her skin white and fine.
    “Professor Young said the President meditates. Who would have thought of that?” Melissa sat on the floor near Austin’s feet.
    “You wouldn’t have thought of that, Melissa?”
    “No. In public prayers Presidents move their lips, but nothing moves inside their heads.”
    “President Flawless, however, you would consider inviting to your commune?”
    Melissa considered it, and, a bemused grin spread over her face.

“This is a catchy title, Professor, The Sinister Subconscious.” Simon Sample held the professor’s book up to the camera.
    Professor Young couldn’t see that Sample held it upside-down.
    “Nice dust jacket too. Did you think of the title yourself?”
    The professor started to speak, but Sample continued. “Editors pick the titles.”
    Sample could usually establish at least a remote possibility that he had read a guest’s book. To even the most willing to be deceived, it was obvious he hadn’t got past the dust jacket of the professor’s. What’s more, whoever wrote the cue cards had never heard of it. Sample was on his own.
    “It says on the back here you have a theory that the direct cause of Watergate was President Trick E. Dixon’s horoscope. Would you care to explain that?”
    “Well, that’s somewhat exaggerated, but the Capricorn traits of cautiousness and need to control what happens were flagrant in President Dixon. He was born under an unlucky star.”
    “I guess there’s some agreement on that...Huh?” Sample had noticed a sign from the sound room.
    “Oh, yeah. Time for a loving message from one of our sponsors. See ya’l.”
    The professor spoke to the blur at the host’s little desk. “You’re causing me to be even more nervous than I am, Mr. Sample, but if you’ll permit me to talk a little, I think I’ll overcome my anxiety.”
    “Hey, that’s a good idea. Maybe I can calm down too. They got the cue cards screwed up. Always blows my mind…Yeah, when we come back on, you just go ahead and tell them about your book, okay?”
    They came back on. “Okay, ladies and gentlemen, the professor here is going to tell us about his hook, The Sinister— uh, Unconscious.”
    “Actually—”
    “Does it deal with exorcism, Professor?”
    “—it...Why, yes, it does have a chapter on exorcism. But the book is primarily a psychological profile of President Flawless. I got the idea for the title from something Dixon’s chief of staff once said about some of the goings-on in the White House – and from the fact that we all have tapes playing in our heads.”
    Professor Young was speaking rapidly in a monotone.
    At the mention of tapes, a few people in the audience hissed.
    “Uh, relax there, Professor. You’ll run out of gas before your segment is over.”
    Sample leaned over and stage-whispered. “Are you suggesting that we all bug ourselves – we don’t want any politics on this show, you understand?”
    “The book isn’t about politics. That I’ve done—” The professor consciously slowed down.
    He took a deep breath and shifted to his lecturer’s style. “What I’ve done is analyze President Flawless’s writings and speeches and actions and draw some tentative conclusions about his psychological makeup.”
    Sample leaned over again. “Hey, are you sure this book isn’t political? You don’t want to get our titties caught in a wringer, do you?”
    The audience tittered.
    “No, it’s not about politics. It just happens that the subject of the profile is a politician, that’s all. And it’s no secret, although the President would like it to be, that Trick E. Dixon is his hero.”
    A stout red-necked man in the audience stood up and raised both hands high over his head. “Yah! Yah!”
    Two women in the row behind him and a man to his left grabbed him and pulled him down into his seat.
    Professor Young went on. “There’s a strong resemblance between President Flawless and his hero. President Flawless often says, for instance, ‘Now, let me make that perfectly clear.’ For another example, President Flawless didn’t go to law school, but he is taking a correspondence course, and he likes to say, ‘As you know, I’m studying to be a lawyer.’ These reveal his hero worship for Tricky Di— uh, Trick E. Dixon.”
    “Uh, just a minute there, Professor. Let me see if I get this. You’re saying that the President is a hero worshipper? Well, so what? Every President has admired one of his predecessors more than all the rest.”
    “That’s not exactly so, Mr. Sample. Who was George Washington’s hero? But it’s not that the President’s a hero worshipper. It’s who the hero is. And as a psychologist I don’t make any value judgments on that. I merely use it as a fact in my analysis.”
    “Ha! I’ve heard that before. You scientists think you’re so objective. We’ll see whether you make value judgments. Tell me, who did you vote for?”
    “Just let me talk about the book, please—” The professor turned red.
    “No, let’s get this out in front first. I bet you didn’t vote for either Dixon or Flawless. Your book sounds like a put-down to me.”
    “As a matter of fact, I voted for Dixon” – the professor swallowed hard and turned a deeper red – “twice.”
    “What?...Oh. Well, so much for scientific objectivity.” Sample called for another commercial break and left the stage.
    His secretary looked alarmed. “Say, boss, I didn’t say anything before, but we’ve been getting calls from somebody who says he’s the White House press secretary. Sounds like a nut, but he’s so persistent. If he calls again—”
    “What does he want?”
    “He just says to put you on. He sounds mad.”
    “Christ! Maybe you’d better call the White House.”
    “Okay, but what do I do when I get them?”
    “Take a message.”

Austin had been learning about life in the commune.
    “You mean everybody shares everything?” He couldn’t see how anybody could live with an arrangement that seemed to preclude individual privacy.
    “That’s right, but I’ve told you enough about the Farm. Tell me about you.”
    Austin sensed that Melissa was anxious to discover in him someone not at all ordinary. He wouldn’t have to play a role, in that case.
    He was big and soft-looking. Thinning but still dark brown hair curled unruly around his ears and neck. His beard was a nest for mice. Round red cheeks and watery blue eyes completed the picture of an indulgent uncle.
    “I photograph nudes,” he said. He detected no jumping back.
    The girl’s pretty, all-accepting eyes widened with delight at the revelation. “Is that what you’re on here for today, to show your pictures?”
    Austin laughed. “I don’t think television is ready for my pictures, do you?”
    She smiled slyly and shook her head. “No, it isn’t, is it? But…what kind of nudes do you photograph?...Naked women, I suppose?”
    Austin’s eyes momentarily lost their twinkle. She seemed to be poking fun at him. The balance of power was shifting to her.
    The stage girl came in. “Boy, is that professor blind! First he couldn’t find the opening in the curtain. I had no idea, or I would have held his hand.”
    “You didn’t escort him across the stage?” Melissa said.
    “Oh, no, that’s not done. This isn’t the Academy Awards. But I wish I had. He tripped on the platform when he reached out to shake Simon’s hand. Come on, Miss.”
    “Good luck.”
    “Thank you, Mr. Froth.”
    “Call me Austin.” He winked at her.
    The aloneness in the room was tangible. He felt her absence, turned it over, looked at all sides of it. He missed her – she challenged him.
    Oh well, he would see her again soon enough.
    He touched the metal and glass object in his hip rocket and waited.

What happened next on stage reminded some viewers of the time Professor Irwin Corey came on a talk show and, approaching the guest couch, where sat a girl in a skirt so short she could hardly be sitting on any of it, managed to trip so that he could plausibly place his best hand on her thigh to keep from falling.
    Melissa McKenna came on, and Professor Young stood up. Be stepped forward and extended his right hand.
    “Aaaw!” He fall down the step in front of the couch, as he had fallen up it when he came on.
    Simon Sample was gleeful. Those few in the audience whose immediate reaction was a concerned ooh soon joined him and the other laughers.
    “Are you all right sir?” Melissa helped the professor up.
    “Here, let me do that.” Sample needed to do the right thing, but it eluded him.
    He pushed Melissa aside, and the professor, who was hanging onto her to get his footing, went down again and pulled her down on top of him.
    When they all finally got seated and the laughter died down, Sample explained to the audience: “The professor isn’t always this clumsy. He mislaid his glasses and doesn’t see so good is all.”
    At the next break Sample ran off to his secretary. “Well, have you got the White House yet?”
    “They wouldn’t talk to me – said I was some kind of nut.”
    By the time Austin’s turn came to join the other guests, Sample was bored and irritated, and there were four more breaks.
    “This next guy’d better be good,” he told his stage girl.
    Back on, Sample introduced Austin: “Our next guest is presently a New Yorker, but he’s been all over. He says he does whatever strikes his fancy. Let’s have a big hand for Austin Froth!”
    Austin strolled out and checked the seating arrangement on stage. He glanced at the audience – he supposed their buzz signified some sort of curiosity about this big fuzzy man who looked like a member of the British Parliament or a supervisor of a Scottish wool district.
    His tweed jacket was brought in at the waist and had flaps over the hip pockets. His checked wool parts were baggy. He wore a plaid wool hat. He seemed eccentric, but there was an aura of command about him.
    Sample stood at the edge of the platform with his hand outstretched, but Austin didn’t take it. He stepped onto the platform and only then, when he towered over Sample, did he shake hands.
    The professor and Melissa moved over. Melissa saw that something was happening, and the professor sensed it too. “What did he do?”
    Austin sat down on the end of the couch near Sample’s desk. He patted Melissa on the knee and reachd across her to touch the professor’s sleeve.
    “How has simple Simon been treating you?”
    The professor shook his head and smiled stoically.
    Simon Sample cleared his throat. “Austin, may I call you Austin?...What are you doing these days? What strikes your fancy?”
    Austin tool- out a huge curved pipe and slowly filled it with tobacco from a pigskin pouch.
    Sample was no longer bored, but he was becoming impatient. “Come on, Austin, what are you doing these days?”
    “I help people believe.” He lit a wooden kitchen match with his fingernail and sucked on his pipe.
    “Oh, you’re in church work?”
    Austin mmm’ed and considered the question at length. His pipe emitted thick clouds. “No, I wouldn’t say so, although the people I help believe are lost generally.”
    Professor Young seemed captivated by Austin’s relaxed, self-assured manner.
    “Uh, what do you help people believe, then?”
    “What they want to believe and are bound to believe. I let it happen.”
    “You don’t...make it happen?”
    “Hmmm. You know, they’re twenty-five of one and two dozen of the other – very nearly the same thing.”
    The audience was restless.
    Melissa was squirming too. “This is like What’s My Line?”
    The audience joined in a relieved laugh.
    Austin began to feel kinder toward the audience. He confessed to himself that he was probably enjoying being in the spotlight. Well, what the hell?
    “Judith Crist, those are huge cue cards.” Austin pointed with the stem of his pipe.
    “Watch your language,” Sample stage-whispered. He continued in a normal voice. “Yes, they’re large so I won’t miss the pauses for our lovely sponsors. I see we’ve got one right now. We’ll be right back.”
    Sample ran off the stage.
    Austin glanced around, but he saw no one signaling to Sample to come off.
    “Are you going to tell then?” Melissa had a bemused smile. She turned to the professor. “Austin is a pornographer.”
    “I’m not going to talk about that, professor – you wouldn’t be able to see the pictures.’
    After the pause, Sample returned to the party game. “What sorts of things do you let happen, Austin? You’ve got us all dying to find out.”
    “My clients have been happy, by and large.” Austin seemed engrossed in the behavior of the smoke that meandered from his pipe. His short answers had the advantage of drawing out the conversation. Sample had to come back with a question each time. It was Socrates in reverse.
    “Oh, you have clients. Who are your clients? What sorts of clients?”
    “People who want things to happen, of course. Must you be so dense?”
    “Now, God d— uh...” The famous blankness seemed to descend on Simon Sample.
    Austin noticed the audience’s nice derisive laugh.
    He waited a few moments for Sample to think of something, but grew impatient.
    “One thing has always interested me: Why does a person come on your show? I’ve asked myself that question about the guests of a few shows I’ve watched. There are a variety of reasons, but they have in common the object of making something happen. Haven’t you noticed that, Simon?”
    It was a rhetorical question, but Sample replied: “And, what have you come on for?” He was mad.
    Austin ignored him. “A lot of your guests want to sell books, for instance. That’s an honest objective. A lot of your viewers – or some of them anyway – read, and they might like to learn about a new hook.”
    His pipe had gone out. He struck another match. “You don’t read, do you, Simon? The big cue cards and all.”
    Austin thought the only reason the cameras were still running was because he was speaking calmly and neutrally. The merely watching audience wouldn’t notice anything. The live audience was enjoying the attack.
    Sample’s secretary appeared through an opening at the side of the stage. She was whispering frantically to the stage girl and handing her a note.
    The stage girl came on and handed Sample the note. “It’s the President,” she whispered, “…of the United States.”
    Sample was startled. He read the note and waved to the control room, then announced a break.
    “Austin, I’ve got a phone call from the President. It may take longer than the commercial. If it does, the note says maybe you could carry on...Is he one of your clients?...You’re doing just fine. Don’t be nervous.”
    Sample rushed off and Austin changed places and motioned for Melissa and the professor to scoot back up. Austin was sweating profusely, but he reminded himself he couldn’t remove his jacket.
    The audience was buzzing again, excited, expectant. What was this wild innovation? Was it planned?
    Back on the air, Austin announced: “Hello. We were just discussing the reasons a person appears as a guest on a show like this. The reasons should interest all of you, since they relate to the reasons why you come or watch. In fact, we would like to hear your reasons. Please write them on a post card and mail it to the Critical Broadsiding Station, New York City. You can use the letters C-B-S. Members of our studio audience are invited to tell us their reasons after today’s show. Everybody should come up onto the stage when it’s all over.” Austin covered all the points efficiently.
    “Professor Young, you came on this show today to promote your book, isn’t that right?”
    The professor nodded uncertainly.
    “Would you say the readers in the audience were given a fair chance to become acquainted with your book?”
    “Uh” – the professor cleared his throat – “no, I wouldn’t. I’d heard about talk-show hosts not reading the books, but— Well, Mr. Sample hadn’t even looked at my book. It was pretty humiliating.”
    The people in the studio were hushed. What they were hearing was said in a low key, but it devastating. Had Simon Sample been called away to be fired? Was Austin Froth his permanent replacement?
    Austin stood up and stepped toward the footlights. “Would you like to hear some more about the professor’s book?”
    No one said no.
    “Professor” – Austin sat clown – “tell us why we should find your book interesting to read.”
    “Well, it’s about the man who holds what they say is the most powerful position in the world. My book reveals some insights into his behavior.”
    “Such as?” Austin glanced at his watch.
    “The most intriguing thing about President Flawless is the contrast between, on the one hand, his belief that his every action, almost his every facial expression (whether his upper lip sweats or not, for example), is cosmically important for the history of the world and, on the other, the fact that he has very little influence on it. The fact is, the President doesn’t act. – he reacts. He isn’t a decision maker. Events overtake him, and he’s very slow on the uptake.”
    “That sounds interesting. Would you autograph copies of your book for the audience after the show? And now, tell us, did anything else happen today to detract from your appearance?”
    The professor’s brow furrowed. “I don’ t—”
    “Your glasses!” Melissa was jumping up and down.
    Simon Sample walked back onto the stage. He seemed worried, and he didn’t notice the hisses that greeted him.
    Austin got up from Sample’s chair. He went out to the edge of the platform and extended his right hand to take Sample’s. He put his left hand, which was away from the audience and the cameras, into his hip pocket.
    Sample tried to extricate his hand from Austin’s, but Austin held it tightly. He towered above Sample and looked down on him sternly.
    He turned his head toward Melissa. “What was that you said? The glasses?” His left hand was inside Sample’s jacket. “What have we here?”
    A pair of metal-rimmed glasses was in his left hand.
    “Huh?” Sample was dazed.
    But the crowd came to its feet. People shouted and rushed the stage. They drowned Sample out.
    “But there are two more breaks,” he said.
    Austin handed the glasses to the professor.
    “Let’s get out of here, my friends.”
    Someone shouted: “Aren’t you going to autograph your books, Professor?”

Copyright © 2015 by W.M. Dean